Webinar Voya's Global Closed-End Fund Review. Before we get started, I'd like to go over a few items so you know how to participate in today's event. If you have joined the presentation listening using your computer speaker system by default. If you prefer to join over the telephone, just select telephone in the audio pane and the dial-in information will be displayed. You have the opportunity to submit text questions to today's presenters by typing your questions into the questions pane on the control panel. You may send your questions at any time during the presentation. We will collect these and address them during the Q&A session at the end of today's presentation. Please note today's webinar is being recorded. Now I'd like to introduce Sean Doyle, SVP Product Manager. Great. Thank you, Tracy, and welcome, and thanks for joining our webinar. In today's webinar, we'll be reviewing the Voya Global Advantage and Premium Opportunity Fund, IGA, Voya Global Equity Dividend and Premium Opportunity Fund, IGD, and Voya Infrastructure, Industrials and Materials Fund, IDE. My name is Sean Doyle, and as Tracy mentioned, I'm a product manager at Voya Investment Management, helping oversee our closed-end funds. Joining me today is Justin Montminy, a portfolio manager from our quantitative equity team who helps oversee our thematic enhanced index and smart beta strategies, along with Susanna Jacob, a portfolio manager and head of strategy research for our Multi-Asset Strategies and Solutions team. Today for our agenda, we will review the current closed-end fund market, our investment process and performance, and market outlook, and end with a Q&A. If you have any questions, you can certainly put them into the chat box, or follow up with myself or the team after the webinar. To begin, just advance the slide. To begin, let me just give a brief overview of Voya Investment Management and these funds. Voya Investment Management is the asset management part of Voya Financial. Voya oversees $318 billion in assets, including around $1 billion in our closed-end funds. Voya's closed-end fund lineup consists of five funds, all residing in the Morningstar category, derivative income. We believe these strategies provide a unique investment opportunity by providing access to markets not widely available through other closed-end funds, combined with income from options. All five have unique sector or geographic exposure and consist of a long equity portfolio with a call writing strategy on top. The beta and call writing differ by far, dictated by their area of investment. The equity portion is managed by the Voya equity team, which oversees $74 billion in assets, including $29 billion in systematic strategies. The options overlay is managed by the Voya Multi-Asset Strategies and Solutions team, which has deep expertise in managing and executing derivatives across their $39 billion in assets. The three strategies we're covering today are the two global funds, IGA and IGD, and the Voya Infrastructure, Industrials and Materials Fund, IDE. IGA and IGD were both launched in 2005 and were taken over by their current investment team in 2019. Prior to that, they were managed by a different sub-adviser. I highlight that when we get to the performance page, when looking at the periods longer than five years, there is a difference of investment teams between them. Both funds seek a high level of income, with IGA also possessing a secondary objective of capital appreciation. They're managed in a similar manner, which we'll get to in a moment. IDE was launched in 2010, and the current investment team took over in February of 2019. IDE seeks total return through current income, capital gains, and capital appreciation. One item of important note to begin are a couple of personnel changes. Number 1, Paul Zemsky, who was formerly a portfolio manager on all 5 funds, as well as the Chief Investment Officer of the Multi-Asset Strategies and Solutions team, retired at the end of November 2023. In conjunction, Susanna was added as a portfolio manager to the closed-end funds. Susanna's addition was part of a thoughtful succession plan for Paul and reflective of her contributions in managing the funds. Susanna serves as Head of Strategy Research for the Multi-Asset Strategies and Solutions team and has been involved in our derivative strategies since joining Voya 5 years ago. Paul's role as CIO of the MASS team has been filled by Barbara Reinhard. Secondly, Peg DiOrio, who was formerly a portfolio manager on these funds, was removed effective March 1 as part of her departure from the firm. Peg was previously the Co-Head of Quantitative Equities. We're not replacing Peg as a PM, and her responsibilities have been absorbed by the remaining PMs on the funds. A couple of notes around personnel changes. Next, I'll be moving to discounts. Discounts have been through certainly a meaningful cycle of widening, narrowing, and widening again over the last 5 years. During the height of the COVID sell-off, IGA and IGD widened to as much as negative 20% discounts, but returned to narrower levels in mid-late 2021. Discounts widened back out in early 2022 and remained wide through 2023 into 2024. Discounts across the board are at historically wide levels, with average closed-end fund discounts at the widest point we've seen in the last 20 years. All sectors and strategies have been impacted and weighed on closed-end funds, including the Voya funds. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, increase in rates, and this impacts the funds in a multitude of ways. Firstly, increase in rates provide alternative sources of consistent cash flows beyond the closed-end funds. Closed-end funds historically have been a strong source of regular distributions at compelling levels. Now that U.S. Treasuries are at 4.5%, there are other options. Secondly, for funds that use leverage, it has become more costly to implement that leverage, which can weigh on potential returns. Of course, the Voya funds do not use leverage, but it is a factor that can impact other closed-end funds in the market. Additionally, the closed-end fund IPO market has been largely shuttered since early 2022, with a single IPO occurring in the last 2 years. There have been some recent filings that may portend reopening, but the overall lack of activity likely weighs on engagement and we believe impacts discounts with closed-end funds. More recently, specific to the Voya funds, we have seen IGA, IGD, and IDE narrow in April by a couple percent, which has brought their discounts more in line with the full closed-end fund market at 10%-12% discounts, versus previously being closer down to 15% in Q4 of 2023. It naturally prompts the question: What are you doing to support closed-end fund discounts? There are a number of factors that impact discounts on closed-end funds, some of which we can control, and some of which, candidly, we cannot. What you saw in March 2020, obviously, not as much can be done in a panicked or highly volatile market. Some of the widening in early 2022 as well as part of a broad sell-off, we believe, falls into a similar bucket. Performance, of course, is a driving factor, and to the extent we are not performing in line with where we should be and not delivering for our shareholders, we can always take action, including replacing the manager like we did in 2019. We will talk further about our performance on subsequent slides, but we have full confidence in our strategy and the results of the underlying investments. Recently, we announced changes to our distribution policies, which we believe make the funds more attractive for investors seeking regular cash flows. I will review those changes in more detail on the next page. These funds are also approved for share repurchases, which Voya will implement if the funds are particularly wide. You can view our annual report for further information on our executions, but generally, we will be opportunistic in execution when our funds are wide on an absolute and peer relative basis. Ultimately, our goals around consistent dividends and regular investor communication are also intended to provide clarity to the market on our funds, which should help trading and demand. Moving to my next slide on distribution update. Voya recently announced changes to across our funds. For IGA and IDE, we changed the distribution frequency from quarterly to monthly, while IGD was already monthly. This change is effective with the payment starting in May, and this aligns all five of the Voya closed-end funds with monthly distributions. In conjunction, we changed the distribution amounts on all five funds, increasing the annualized distribution rates for each fund. This was announced in mid-April, where the distributions are now at about 10%-11% as a percent of NAV. This increase is intended to address the demand in the market for higher distribution rates, given the increase in market yields and competition from alternative sources of regular cash flows. The combination of monthly payments with higher distribution rates, including potentially returning capital to investors at net asset value, aims to have the fund serve as an attractive regular source of cash flow for investors. One of the items to note, particularly on IGA and IDE, that the periodic distribution amounts went down, but the distribution frequency went up, which while resulting in a lower amount on a periodic basis, the annualized amount has increased. We believe that we view this as an overall increase in the distribution of the funds. You can view our press releases for greater detail of the source of distributions and timing of the changes. Moving to the following slide. This information is our historical distributions, as you can see, IGA and IDE were quarterly but have now moved to monthly. IGA was monthly, but we announced was already monthly. Excuse me. IGD was already monthly, but we announced an increase from $0.04 to $0.05 per share. The distribution rates shown here are reflective of the amounts paid over the prior 12 months and is not reflective of the increase in rates, which I previously mentioned. As a reminder, the distributions are declared monthly and are subject to change. Voya aims to provide consistent regular payments to investors, but there is no guarantee, and the portion of the distribution may be characterized as a return of capital. Moving to fund level performance. You will note that the market performance is greater than NAV performance for the trailing 12-month period, which is consistent with the discount dynamics that I mentioned earlier. Over the last 12 months, IGA and IGD both increased around 13%-14% on a NAV basis and 14%-16% on a market basis. Year-to-date, similarly, they are both up around 6% on a NAV basis. With the strong global equity market, as reflected by the benchmark, the MSCI World Value, the options overlay has detracted, which has caused both funds to underperform the benchmark. Susanna will talk in greater detail about the derivative strategy. I will note that the equity sleeves changed benchmarks in January of 2021. For the periods over three years, there was a difference of benchmark between those periods or over that period. Moving to IDE. Fund performance for the trailing 12 months is 15.7%, and year-to-date, the fund is up 5%. As a reminder, the fund focuses on infrastructure, industrials, and materials, and so has a unique sector exposure with limited investment in energy. Over time, that lessens the volatility that energy can introduce. The fund also has less exposure to utilities than many of the funds in the infrastructure category, and this has helped lessen volatility with the recent rate changes. With that, I am going to hand it over to Justin to talk about equity sleeves. Thanks, Sean. I will cover the equity sleeve performance and then pass it along to Susanna, who will discuss the derivative sleeve performance. The equity sleeves of both IGA, the Voya Global Advantage and Premium Opportunity Fund, and IGD, the Voya Global Equity Dividend and Premium Opportunity Fund, utilize the same underlying equity model and have the same objectives. Both funds seek to maximize total returns while also generating higher income and have lower volatility relative to our benchmark, the MSCI World Value Index, over a full market cycle. Our approach is sector and region neutral, meaning we have the same exposure to economic sectors and global regions as our benchmark index. Also, both sleeves target a dividend yield that is 15% higher than the benchmark while maintaining a lower beta in the range of 0.85-0.90. The main difference in the funds, as Sean mentioned, is that they employ slightly different derivative overlay strategies, which Susanna will discuss later. Stock selection for both sleeves is driven by our proprietary sector-specific multi-factor model. This model, which we call our core model, evaluates around 8,000 stocks globally. Our core model was built and is maintained in-house and places varying degrees of emphasis on sentiment, valuation, company management, operational, and ESG indicators across sectors. Regarding performance over the trailing one-year period ending March 31, 2024, the equity sleeves of both IGD and IGA underperformed the benchmark index, the MSCI World Value Index, by about 240 basis points on a gross-of-fee basis. Of the three strategy main alpha drivers, the core model and the portfolio's higher dividend yield orientation contributed positively to excess returns, while the portfolio's lower beta detracted significantly from excess returns, offsetting the performance of the other two alpha drivers. The portfolio's small size exposure also significantly detracted from excess returns during the period as larger market cap stocks outperformed smaller market cap stocks. Outside of factor exposures, the fund's individual investments in the energy and healthcare sectors added value, while investments in the information technology and industrial sectors detracted. The next slide, please. The equity sleeve of IDE, the Voya Infrastructure, Industrials and Materials Fund, provides thematic exposure across six GICS sectors: energy, industrials, information technology, materials, utilities, and communication services. One thing to note, though, is that only the sub-sectors in those six sectors that are related to infrastructure are included in the benchmark. The fund seeks to maximize total returns by investing in global companies stand to benefit from increased government and private infrastructure spending. In our investment process, we attempt to maximize returns and thematic infrastructure exposure while mitigating economic policy, interest rate, and crowding risk. We do this by maintaining sector and region neutrality so that we have the same economic and interest rate exposures as our custom infrastructure benchmark. Stock selection is driven by the same proprietary sector-specific multi-factor model as IGD and IGA. Once again, this model places varying degrees of emphasis on sentiment, valuation, company management, operational, and ESG indicators. Regarding performance over the trailing one-year period, IDE's equity sleeve outperformed our custom benchmark by 322 basis points on a gross-to-fee basis. The primary performance driver was strong positive performance from our core model, specifically our valuation, sentiment, and operational indicators. This performance was partially offset by the portfolio's small market capitalization exposure as large-cap stocks outperformed small-cap stocks during the period in the universe. Outside of factor exposures, our individual investments in companies in the industrials and materials sectors also added to performance. Now, with that, I'll pass it to Susannah, who will cover the derivative sleeve performance. Thank you, Justin. I will now talk about the derivative strategies of IGA, IGD, and IDE, and hand it over to Sean to talk about the Q&A. The derivative strategies of IGA, IGD, and IDE are systematic in nature. We employ a call option overlay designed to capture the volatility risk premia by selling call options. The overlay supports two main objectives for these funds. It supports the total returns of the funds. It also enhances the stability of the fund's returns. As I mentioned previously, IGA and IGD also engage in foreign currency hedging designed to minimize impact of currency rate fluctuations. We expect that writing call options will perform differently in different market environments. When equity markets are down, flat, or slightly higher, writing call options will likely contribute to fund returns. When equity markets move significantly higher, the call options may detract from the fund's total returns. The equity and option return streams are uncorrelated, thus providing some stability to overall fund returns. For IGA and IGD, we expect that the currency hedging will perform well when the USD is strong. This slide summarizes the option strategy guidelines as well as the systematic design that we currently employ. Both IGA and IGD sell calls 1% out of the money on indices and ETFs on 50% of the portfolio. We choose these ETFs because they have good market liquidity and they're highly correlated to the underlying equity benchmark. IGA hedges 100% of the non-USD exposure, while IGD hedges 50%. IDE sells at the money call options of various ETFs on 35% of the portfolio's value. Option performance for one-year period ending March 31st was a modest detractor across IGA, IGD, and IDE. The past year was a tale of two halves for option performance, with options contributing positively in the first half as markets fell and giving up its gains during the strong market rally over the past six months, particularly in international markets. The option did help reduce the volatility of the portfolio during this period. The currency hedging added value to IGA and IGD over the past year as the USD strengthened. Next slide, please. As shown on the slide, the past one year has been very rough and a tough environment with the most asset classes experiencing negative returns. Most of the pain came from 2022 and 2023 and has been much friendlier to investors with broad equity and bond indices posting solid returns through Q1 of 2024, as displayed in the year-to-date column of the table on this slide. The ride higher has been a volatile one, as concerns over inflation and growth were unexpectedly joined by questions of financial stability when several U.S. regional banks suddenly failed and the collapse of Credit Suisse shook the banking sector. Markets regrouped after the government intervened, but regional banks are still struggling, and the impact on lending activity is an open question. We expect a modest contraction in credit growth, which we think will contribute to deflationary trend, which has already occurred and is highlighted as the first multi-asset portfolio theme on the next slide. Next slide, please. Inflation peaked in June last year with year-on-year CPI at 9.1%. Since then, it has been on a steady decline, with the April reading at 4.9%. However, prices in the services sector remain sticky. Tight labor markets and strong wages have supported consumer spending and propped up GDP. There are signs that employment is softening. We expect income growth will be challenged and personal saving will be spent down, which could hit services and shelter inflation in the months ahead. Which leads into the second theme. We expect monetary policy to remain tight. We think the Fed is done hiking and don't see the banking sector stress as systemic. We also don't think a recession is imminent, while the bond market is pricing in interest rate cuts this year, we believe the Fed stays higher for longer, which will probably eventually result in a recession. This will hopefully get inflation down to a palatable level from which the Fed can cut rates, which should keep the recession relatively shallow and short-lived. While we aren't bullish on stocks, we think they could grind higher in the medium term, the equity market should be range bound. We do acknowledge the macro backdrop is tenuous and therefore prefer relatively stable stocks holding an overweight in U.S. large cap stocks. This outlook should be helpful for equity strategies like employed in IGA and IGD, which invest in low risk, stable companies and offer significant downside protection if markets do turn lower. Our next theme is that the bond bear market is over. Real yields are positive across the interest rate curve for the first time in years. Given the uncertainty around macro backdrop, we recommend higher quality areas in the fixed income and an overweight to an investment-grade credit. Finally, our last theme is stay close to home, across asset classes, we favor U.S. over international markets. In terms of the outlook for infrastructure stocks, this could be a very good entry point given valuation levels and decent fundamentals going forward. Currently, most infrastructure subsectors are trading in the bottom half of their historical valuation ranges, and infrastructure companies may be poised for strong cash flow growth in an inflationary environment. Research has shown that roughly 70% of the investable infrastructure universe has explicit inflation protection built in via pricing contracts and regulations. Additionally, infrastructure could benefit from secular trends such as digitization and decarbonization, which are likely to drive future investment into infrastructure. Thank you. Over to you, Sean. Great. Thank you, Susanna. We got a couple questions into the chat box during the webinar. I do have on there the email address if you do have any follow-up questions that you can contact us, and we will respond in kind. You're now distributing 10% of the funds. Can you earn 10%? What I'd say is distribution rates are set to balance the sustainable earning power of the fund against the demand for cash flows from investors. When overall demand is outweighed by supply, you can end up out of balance, which we believe the increase in distribution rates can help attract investors. In doing so, it does increase the risk of not earning the full distribution and returning capital. While returning capital is not an inherently bad event, it can be a tax-efficient way to distribute cash to investors. If you're not earning the full amount of what you're distributing, ultimately, that's not sustainable over time. Ultimately, we believe the rates are appropriate in the current market and aim to deliver the returns that best support the rates. There have been a couple of changes. Another question, there have been a couple changes to the PMs over the last year. Will there be any change to the strategy? I'd say we are regularly evaluating our strategy to ensure we're meeting our investors' needs and meeting the objectives of the fund. With changes in the market, there can be new opportunities for the team to deliver income and capital appreciation. We're constantly looking into those items. I'd say any changes that may occur would be based on that research and opportunities and not related to the personnel changes. Susanna and Justin are longstanding members of the team and contributors to their investment teams, even though the addition as a formal title of Portfolio Manager is a more recent addition. Last question was, would you consider merging the two global funds? IGA and IGD are similar funds with the difference lying in the currency hedging. We do believe there is difference in demand relative to the exposure to currencies. Over the last five years, as Susanna mentioned, and over the recent year, USD has outperformed global currencies, which has supported the fully hedged version. In the event the next phase of the cycle is different, that could flip the other way for the less hedged fund. I'd also note that some mergers have attracted activists, which can challenge the execution. Voya is certainly cognizant of that risk and would incorporate that aspect in any assessment of corporate actions. With that, there are no more questions in the chat box. If you do have any follow-up questions, please reach out to the email address shown on the page. I'd like to thank all of you for joining the webinar, and also want to thank our presenters for joining as well, and we appreciate your interest in the Voya Closed-End Funds. Voya is a committed partner in the closed-end fund space, managing close to $1 billion in assets. If you have any follow-up questions, please contact the email address shown on the page. We appreciate you dialing in and have a wonderful day.