AMCIL Limited (AMH.AX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to AMCIL Half Year Financial Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the presentation over to Mr. Mark Freeman, Managing Director of AMCIL. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Okay. So good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mark Freeman, the CEO and Managing Director of AMCIL Limited. I'm also the Portfolio Manager for the company, and welcome to this half year result briefing. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional owners and custodians from all the lands we are gathered on today and pay my respects to the Elders past, present, and emerging. I have joining me today on the webinar, Jaye Guy, an investment analyst; and Gilbert Battistella; Andrew Porter, our CFO; Matthew Rowe, our Company Secretary; Geoff Driver, our General Manager of Business Development; and Suzanne Harding, our Business Development Manager. Before we start the presentation, a bit of housekeeping on this webinar. This briefing is based on the material available on the company's website. If you are using your computer to access the presentation via the webcast, the slides will change automatically. Finally, please note following the presentation, there will be time for questions and answers. You can ask a question via the webcast using the tab at the bottom of the screen. And now I'll move to the Slide 2, which is our disclaimer to say we're here to talk about the company. We're not giving any advice as such. Moving to the next slide, just the agenda. I'll just talk a bit about our approach. Andrew Porter, our CFO, will give an update on the half year in summary, and I will present the rest of the slides for the presentation. So just to remind everyone, our purpose and attributes around AMCIL, obviously, this is a focused portfolio. It is a high conviction fund. There is alignment of interest, relatively low cost. There's no performance fees paid to an external party, and there is strong equity ownership across the directors and staff. So in that regard, we're all in it together. We want to be low turnover. We don't want to be a trader. We understand that tax is a significant drain on returns at the end of the day. So we are trying to be a longer-term investor in quality companies. We move to the next slide. We've been talking through this slide for a number of years now, and we want to be consistent to our approach. That is we're focusing on what we call higher-quality companies where we can take a longer-term view. We are seeking companies that have unique assets that are hard to replicate or businesses that have a leadership position, sustainability of a competitive advantage. So we talk about business moat in that regard. We're aware of companies that have external factors that can impact the business. We like to be in companies that have strong balance sheets. We prefer companies that have more consistent long-term earnings stream. We like companies that are run by effective passionate management teams with ownership alignment. And why all these factors matter is that together, they drive sustainable long-term competitive advantage, which generally will lead to high return on capital, allow for reinvestment to drive growth, the ability to capture the market share, enhance their position, which will ultimately deliver shareholder value through growing profits generally organically. And as stated there, the ability to grow profits over the long term is what we're looking to achieve because ultimately, share prices follow profits. And we want to buy and add to positions when we see value appearing. So we want to be a value investor around quality businesses. We will exit companies when we -- when they no longer fit those frameworks. I'll just quickly pass to Andrew Porter to talk about some of the numbers, and then I'll get into the portfolio and market.

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. So many of you will be familiar with these 4 boxes, which we look at each period. The profit for the half year, $4.1 million, actually up on the profit for the same time last year. Dividends were generally flat. What has changed is the contribution from our options trading in a rising market, the option prices are somewhat higher, and we're able to make just under $500,000 in option trading this year, whereas the previous year, small loss in options, we had a trading portfolio, which at that time had an unrealized loss on it. So those are the main reasons for that increase in profit. The interim dividend has stayed the same. That is $0.01 that the Board have announced. Obviously, when it comes to the final, that's when the Board will have a look at what the total status is of the factor credits, including any realized gains. But the interim dividend itself comes at $0.01. The management expense ratio, the box on the top right-hand corner, this is the cost -- the ratio of running the company, the expenses that are incurred, 0.43%, which is $0.43 for every $100 invested. It tends to be a bit lower than would normally be the case at half year due to a lower cost from AICS from the nonvesting of incentives. It's 0.53% in 2024. It can go up and down a lot, which is why we don't -- although we disclose it, we don't focus on it at the half year as much as we do at the full year. The 0.43% is not unusual. It was 0.46%, for instance, in 2023. Portfolio, $358 million. And as Mark said, he'll come in and discuss the portfolio and portfolio performance later. The next slide, this is something we put up with the NTA every month. We think it's important for shareholders to understand what they're buying. Are they buying at the end of December, for instance, [ $112 ] $1.12 worth of assets for $1.01 or as they were in '21 and '22, buying actually shares at a premium, so paying more for the shares than their underlying value. So discount was about 10% at the end of December 2025. One thing I would mention because we've been asked about it before, ETFs were introduced in a big way to the Australian market in 2017 and 2018. So they have been around for some time. Obviously, ETFs are a different structure. You won't, for instance, get consistency of dividends. So yes, there has been a growth in ETFs, but they're not quite the same thing as LICs. And it's interesting to note actually that in December 2024, this time last year, when just a reminder to shareholders, the 6-month performance, 1-year performance, 3-year performance -- sorry, 5-year performance and 10-year performance, not the 3-year performance, were all comfortably ahead of the index. The discount was actually much higher than it is today. So the discount isn't something that we can control, but we have been doing a buyback of shares in the last 6 months in an attempt to ensure that we weren't -- it was actually -- it makes economic sense if you can buy shares back at a discount when they've been issued. So that neutralized the DRP. And as Mark introduced, we've taken on Suzanne, who one of her roles is to talk about the benefits of LICs and AMCIL in particular. And with that, I'll pass back to Mark.

Okay. Thanks, Andrew. So just moving on in the slides, just some of the conditions we're seeing. Clearly, there's considerable geopolitical tension in the world that is creating a lot of movements within subsectors within the equity markets, and we'll come to that shortly. We still think markets appear to be bit full in terms of valuation. I mean, they're not extreme, but just full. But economic conditions, I guess, have been more resilient than what we perhaps were expecting. Tariffs continue to play havoc with economies and the outlook. There is significant political tension coming out of the U.S. We've seen a resources boom, particularly gold and silver prices, some of the strongest gains we've seen in gold in decades and more recently, concerns that the market has around AI and how that may impact stocks going forward. And again, we'll touch on that shortly. If you look at some of the long-term valuation on metrics, the P/E on the Australian market is still at a high level, and the dividend yield is pretty much at record lows. And if you look at the U.S. market, you see some similar fundamentals, very high P/Es, very high -- low dividend yields. The difference perhaps if you look at the U.S. market, there has been very strong EPS growth, much stronger than Australia that could justify a higher multiple and also the return on equity out of the U.S. market has been rising. And again, it's much higher than what we've seen out of the Australian market. So if we go then to look at the portfolio and look at the returns, this has clearly been a very disappointing year for the portfolio. As Andrew stated, given that we're sitting here 1 year ago, seeing outperformance across 1, 5 and 10 years. A lot has changed in 1 year. We haven't changed our style approach. There's just been significant movements within the sectors that we focus on, and I'll come to that shortly. Interestingly, when I look at perhaps the 3-year number, that underperformance of that period is more than accounted for by simply having our -- we've got no exposure to banks. We see them as fully valued and gold. As I said, those 2 factors alone having strategic positioning around those 2 sectors is more than covers the underperformance over 3 years, and we'll come to that shortly. If you look at the next slide, particularly on the left, you can see over 12 months, health care and information technology, home to several structured compounders. We like compounding businesses because they allow us to take a longer-term view and allows us to be a longer-term investor. As I said, we're always aware of the impact on tax. And then materials, you can see up over 35%. Most of that is coming from the mid- and small cap resources where you've seen gains anywhere between 70% to 100% within those sectors. So a very unusual time in our markets. So just looking at a couple of those sectors that have really hurt us certainly over that 3-year period. We don't own any of the major banks at the moment. It doesn't mean we'll never own them, but we just think they continue to be fully priced. We've seen a little bit of a pullback in CBA more recently. We think CBA is an excellent company. We would love to own it. It fits our process, but we still find some of the valuations on the banks pretty extreme. But this movement in the banks, this P/E re-rating, I said, has been a key source of underperformance on 3 years. And then if you move to the next slide, the other area, key area of underperformance over 3 years is not being an owner in gold. At the start of the presentation, as I've been saying for 3 years, we've had a framework about wanting to be quality structured compounders and being wary of the rest. Clearly, we've missed this part of the market at the moment. When you see the price where it sits at the moment, it looks pretty extreme, likely other extremes we've seen in around 1977 and around 2008 and a little bit in 2017. Obviously, there's lots of reasons why the price run. We prefer to be in productive assets. Gold is inherently volatile. But clearly, there's been a lot of money made over there in more recent times, but we've been pretty consistent in saying our focus is on companies that we see as long-term structured compounders. I'm very interesting to see what this chart looks like over the next few years because if you look back through history, there is a pattern there once you get to these pretty heavy extremes. If we go to the next slide, this is a bit busier, and it may not be -- it might be difficult to read, but this is some analysis by Macquarie looking at how certain styles of investing have performed over time. We've circled down the left-hand column, a group called quality compounders. So these are businesses that have that strong market position that can grow for many years. On the right-hand side, it shows the relative performance. So -- and this -- the right-hand column, I think, goes back to 1998. So in the long run, investing and holding quality compounders is a great way to outperform. But if you go back a couple of columns, we circled in red, that's how that performed though in the last calendar year. So you can see it's been an absolute terrible year to be in quality compounding businesses, probably one of the worst ever as they've derated. And just below that, you can see it's really a result of money flowing out of that area of the market and going into the resource segment. So this is -- that the last calendar year has been one of the best years to be in loss-making businesses, and a lot of those are start-up and junior mining companies. But in the long run, loss-making businesses are not a good place to be, but they've certainly provided great shorter-term place to make money. So we've had, I guess, a perfect storm against us. We're most overweight quality compounders. And as I said, one of the worst years on history, I can remember. And we are underweight loss-making businesses and junior mining companies, which has been the strongest part of the market, and that's what's created the performance gap over 12 months. Our current plan is to stick with our frameworks and our processes. And the best way to pick up that is by looking at stocks, which we'll do shortly. Moving on to the next slide. So we put those into buckets. So I've talked about and left significant share price weaknesses across quality growth companies. In most cases, though, the long-term thesis is still intact. There has been some cyclical headwinds on a couple of our stocks, Reece and James Hardie also took a hit from an unfortunate transaction. I don't mind the business they bought, but the way they did it, I think has passed value across to the company they've acquired. And then banks and gold resources, and I've touched on that in previous slides, their strength. So if we think into some of the stocks, you can see some of the numbers here. I've started with some stocks that we have had some issues with. WiseTech has had a significant pullback. We have reduced our holding. We have maintained a position there. It's an interesting company. There's obviously been a lot of media press issues, governance. We've certainly been giving our feedback to the company around those negative issues. The positive issues is that the business continues to grow and is becoming the operating system of the biggest transport and logistics companies in the world. And up to this point, we haven't seen that, that's changed. They made an acquisition, which is going to slow the rate of earnings growth. I understand why the company did it, but it has caused people to reassess the EPS growth and therefore, the multiple it trades on. This is a complex business. There's concern on all software companies around what AI might do. So that's the ability to AI to write code to replicate such products. But businesses like WiseTech and even Xero are actually heavily using AI to actually improve their moats. And if you think about WiseTech, they use a lot of proprietary data. they've gathered over many years to help run their process and systems. AI cannot replicate that. So we've decided to, in this portfolio anyway, maintain a position given if they get through this period, it is a very unique piece of software they have to be embedded in the biggest logistics companies in the world. It should sustain good earnings growth, but clearly, it is strongly out of favor at the moment. The market doesn't like it. I'm reluctant to sell it in that environment. And so we are seeing how it plays out, but continue to give feedback to the company about some of the improvements we want to see out of the business. Xero has been, again, another company that did an acquisition to speed up their development. They felt like they needed to improve the product suite to grow in the U.S. They're investing heavily to try and take a position in the U.S. The company has executed on everything they said they'd do. I think the biggest fear more recently, again, is what AI might do. I'm probably still seeing in a camp that this is not an expensive product for end user. It is mission-critical software for those that use it, such as WiseTech. You cannot afford to have this product not work. Again, Xero investing heavily in AI to improve their moat, but the stock is under still significant pressure. Both those holdings are about 1% each in the portfolio. Reece has suffered a downturn in the U.S. for those that follow the U.S. housing market is cyclical. You're at a cyclical low point. I think the company understands that because they've been heavily buying back stock in the market in more recent times. I touched on Hardie's that was disappointing the way they constructed that transaction. We've sort of expressed our views to the company what we think about it. But at the end of the day, the fiber cement business they have is still very strategic and fits our process. The company that they bought is also -- has a leadership position this time in the decking market. There's merit for the 2 to get together. I just don't like the way they did it. But with it having been done, we've got a smaller position. We're not happy with the balance sheet. But if they can continue to perform well over the next couple of years, the balance sheet will improve a lot. And from that point, the assets are really strong. CSL has probably been the most disappointing because we had a large position in that, and we were clearly -- the view around that was too optimistic, and that was wrong. There's been a reassessment of the market really around the earnings growth. The market going back 12 months ago was expecting EPS growth in the teens. Now it's probably high single digit. that's caused a significant P/E rate in the multiple. If you have a look at the long-term EPS growth of this company, it's still been growing, but not in the mid-teens and more like in the high single digits. Our expectation is they should be able to continue that. And the P/E has gone to a level that has seen a number of what I'd call deep value managers start to buy the stock. And so we're going to stick with it for the moment as long as we see profit growth coming through. But that one, that hasn't been a good decision for us. And IDP has been hit by, I guess, the sector moving from peak to trough through government policy. They're still the leading player in the sector. It's still a very fragmented industry. There are signs of things picking up in Australia and the U.K. It's a small position in the portfolio because of that leadership position they have, we're going to hold that. So there are some issues around each of those, but there are also some good reasons that they continue to be structured compounders into the future. And so we are holding positions in them still. If we move to the next slide, we've got a whole bunch of stocks here. You can see how much quality compounding went out of favor. You can see the share price falls. These companies, we really haven't changed our long-term investment thesis on them at all. We still think they're well-run companies. They've got leadership position in what they do. There's every reason they can grow earnings and profits over the long term. Many of these have net cash on their balance sheet, but the share price movement over the 1 year has been pretty extreme to the negative. And if you think about it, I'll just pick out a few of them, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, they dominate humidified oxygen in hospitals. They don't really have any competitors. They spend a lot on R&D. Business is growing strongly, but the stock was down over the period. Goodman Group did a capital raising last year to get to a position of no debt, extremely well-run business, many opportunities globally, but it was down. REA still essentially got a dominant position in what they do. I'm not sure how -- it's really a marketplace, difficult to see how AI can disrupt a marketplace like that, but it's had a significant pullback. Auckland Airport, it's a monopoly asset, is down 10%. TechOne, incredible company growing earnings in the mid-teens, rolling out their business where they're getting great traction in the U.K. now, which is a much bigger market, well run, no debt, but the stock was down 10%. So I could go through this whole list and carsales is another one, CAR group, lots of opportunity to grow in South America. Dominant position in Australia, but the stock was down 13%. So I've just covered more than half the portfolio, and many of these companies continue to perform well. And we did trim some of these at the top. Harry Hindsight might say, well, maybe you should have exited, but we said we'd be a long-term investor in quality businesses, but it's been a tough year for all these stocks. But we want to look behind these businesses and continue to hold where we see a good opportunity. So there's been really no catastrophic failures in any of the companies. Most of it's been a valuation issue as such. Happy to take any questions on those at the end. So if you look at the recent activity, we ended up exiting -- we had a small balance in NAB and Westpac. They were only small amounts. We exited those. We have exited equity trustees, and there was some trimming we did higher up in some of the stocks such as Gentrack, Netwealth, Wesfarmers, HUB and Goodman Group. We have added to some of the stocks now we're seeing some weakness in EVT.. We thought Woolworths look good value around $26, $27. So we built that up. We've nibbled a little bit in Xero. We have added to Woodside. We think the dividend yield is pretty good there around current prices. And Gentrack has been -- had a significant pullback from where we trimmed it, really only 6 to 12 months ago, and we've now been buying some of that back. And we saw some weakness in Nanosonics. We took a small starting position in that and likewise in peXA, given that they're starting to get some success in the U.K. banking sector. So both of those are just small starting positions within the portfolio. So we continue on. We've got our top 20 there. And you can see we generally are a long-term investor in these companies. And perhaps we'll just move on to the next slide, which is the entire portfolio. And we need to be able to look through these stocks and say, we think these are well-run companies, the ability to grow their profits, strong market positions, and that's a test we keep applying to the stocks in the portfolio. But it is very narrow in its style in terms of the way we do it. If our style goes out of favor and others go in favor, it creates this volatility, but we still want to hold true to the way that we said we'd invest in AMCIL. So just on the outlook, we still think the market is looks to us a bit full, compared to long-term metrics. We did go a bit defensive 12 months ago, we held cash. Hindsight says you probably should have put all that cash in gold, but we had the cash. And what we're starting to do is now off specific opportunities that we're seeing as quality stocks get sold off, and we've seen a couple of those appear over the last couple of weeks where we've been able to put that cash to work. At the moment, we are saying we're going to stick to our approach. There is still always ways we can improve on how we do things. And we're talking a lot more about should we be taking more advantage of shorter-term opportunities if we see them, should have acted quicker on CSL. But our approach to find and we want to be able to say we own good quality companies hasn't changed. So with that, I think it's better to open it up for questions. And again, it is disappointing the 1-year number, the way it's impacted all the numbers all the way through. But we're wanting to stick to our process of being in good quality companies. Over to questions, Geoff.

Okay. Thanks, Mark. So just to remind you, you can ask a question via the webcast using the tab at the bottom of the screen. I've got a question here, it covers a couple of questions about WiseTech. Can you please comment on the main holdings that contribute to the $34 million capital loss for the year? Was WiseTech one of them? And why does AMCIL still have a holding in the company? We heard yesterday with the AFIC briefing, the very sound reasons of poor corporate governance and high debt. Why AFIC exited the position?

I touched on that during the presentation as to, I think, why we continue to hold a small position. I mean, when companies are not doing what you want, you can either run and jump and get out of the stock, and there's various reasons. I mean, we think in the context of AMCIL, we took the view we could hold a bit more, but continue to speak to the company about and we have spoken to them about corporate governance and the like. We still think there is a very interesting underlying product there, and we've maintained a small position in that on that basis.

So a question here about CSL has a significant fall in CSL, which was a major holding. Many LICs led -- has led to the demise of LICs in favor of ETFs?

Well, look, I'm not sure just one stock makes a difference. ETF is growing in the market, as we touched on earlier, the fact that LICs are trading at discounts is not something that's new. It has happened before. Interestingly, and all the other periods in the last 30 years, we've traded a discount. It's actually been a precursor to a market correction. So it typically happen when the market is hot. people are chasing other opportunities. So for example, at the moment, to be mid- to small-cap mining stocks, and we tend to get left behind. So this is the LICs as a group. We've seen that pattern. But when you get a market correction, then the market then looks back at the traditional LICs and often we sustained or there's usually good dividend flows even during tough periods. We tend to have more conservative stocks and then they tend to go at a premium. So this cycle at this point is repeating itself. But let's see where we go from here.

I think that's right, Mark. LIC's offer a different feature to ETFs. So people need to understand and recognize that particularly around that.

Yes. I guess we continue to push the view that there we are traditional LICs. There's no external manager. There's no performance fees going off and relative to the approach at a relatively low-cost.

I've got a question here about the ownership of directors and staff. I mean I've calculated the numbers here very quickly. Staff and directors out of the annual report, got about 3% of the ownership and ex directors would have close to 20%. So across those 2 categories, about 25% ownership across people who have been closely associated with AMCIL and haven't seen any selling from -- major selling from those exit directors? Considering the recent date, is there any concern that, that local sales of the target vehicle for ARB products are falling or other models such as the BYD Shark are becoming increasingly popular. These alternative figures less likely to accessorize despite ARB having suitable products for these models?

Yes. So that's an excellent question, and that's the question I have that's still outstanding. I think at the moment, I'm still comfortable because I guess my sense is that the people buying the BYD Shark not the people that would be buying traditional petrol/diesel engines and we'll be adding ARB products through them. So if you -- your traditional ARB owner of those types of vehicles typically want to tow something, something heavy, BYD Shark, if you try to tow something heavy, would probably run out of battery in about 10 minutes or you want to put heavy loading on the back of it. Again, that drains the battery considerably. So at this point, it's something we need to watch really closely, but I think that is that segment are not the buyers of ARB products. I think buyers of ARB products are sticking with traditional vehicles in that area. At the same time, we had a lot of confidence with the growth that the company was achieving out of the U.S. So I remember that they were able to buy into that U.S. business, they paid, I think, $30 million, an unbelievable deal to get into that footprint of about 50 stores. I think the big opportunity from there is to over time transfer those stores and get more and more of their own product. That's been the model here in Australia is most of the products sold in ARB stores is their own product. That drives incredible margin uplift that opportunity is significant for the company in the U.S. And if they can then get that right, then maybe roll out more stores over time because the U.S. market is massive. It's massive for 4-wheel driving and all the activities that come around that. And so at the moment, the business doesn't operate in a straight line. They've had some headwinds in this half around currency. They were perhaps guided by OEMs for a stronger outlook than what it's been in the short term. You always have some ups and downs, but on balance, there's no one in the world that does what ARB do in terms of the R&D, they're doing products, the specialization they have. They've got no debt, significant opportunity. So we're sticking with the story at the moment, But it's an excellent question, for sure.

Next question, Mark, in light of improved valuation metric as management be increasing our holding in TechnologyOne, particularly since it's likely our cost base is above the current share price.

Yes. So just to answer that, the current share price is well above our cost base. We brought in at around $17. So it's been a great investment for us. It ran all the way to $40. We trimmed it a few times on the way up. And now it's pulled back with the overall fear around structured compounders and tech. So it's getting to a valuation now that we think is starting to look interesting again to add to it. We have added a little bit, but we're watching it closely because we think this company has got some pretty strong growth ahead of it.

Thanks Mark. I'll throw this question to Andrew actually to give you a break. The recent share buyback has it achieved the expected outcome? Any information for the buyback cost per share? Any merit in paying out special dividends instead of going on market to share buyback?

Thank you. So has it achieved the expected outcome? Well, it was done because market conditions warranted and the shares were trading at discounts. So that still certainly happened. The cost per share, that's in the interim report is $1.06 was the average cost of buying back. And those shares were issued at $1.11. So we were able to buy back shares for less than they were issued at. That is a function of the market and the AMCIL share price performance. So whether the buyback itself had an effect on lessening the discount from 15% to 10%, it's very difficult to say whether that is the case or not. History would say. On average, it doesn't have that much impact, but those are the figures. AMCIL has been paying special dividends. It did pay a special dividend at the end of the 2024 year. It's got a history of paying special dividends. And special dividends are a way of getting the franking credits back to shareholders that we have realized particularly through capital gains when we exit a position in the portfolio. A on-market share buyback won't enable us to distribute those franked dividends. So it's not a question of either or it's a question of both. And if we have the franking credits, the Board will look at doing a special dividend where appropriate. And if the market conditions are appropriate, they'll look at doing an on-market buyback.

And I think, Andrew, given recent history, the Board has, as I said, history of paying special dividends over the last few years that may vary, but there's a history of those. Right?

That's right.

Look, question again on CSL, given its impact on performance. I guess the question is how do we go about looking at CSL in terms of its appropriateness in the portfolio? And do we consult people outside the, I guess, the investment industry to think about how we invest in CSL.

And I think I did mention the question around [ 112 ], which was a large investment for the company and turned out it was a failure, and they tort a significant amount of capital doing that. So obviously, you've seen from the company a scale-back approach to what they're going to be spending on R&D. Going forward, it has been a significant trade on performance. But at the end of the day, they still produce products that people want them have to take to stay alive essentially. And it is in areas in terms of conditions that the demand is unmet and they're still finding more and more people that have these conditions. And so the market potential is still significant, and that's why we still think there could be growth extracting these products from plasma is tricky and complex. So there are a couple of competitors, but CSL is the larger, and we think it's got advantages because of that, particularly around the collection of plasma. So I would say that the market is -- was overly optimistic on the ability to get margins back to what they used to do. But it does seem reasonable they still should be able to grow over time, help in more at the high single-digit level, which is still very, very good growth.

Have we considered taking a small position in gold in the trading portfolio, if worthwhile would have been necessary some time ago, of course, but the question is in principle.

Yes. Look, in principle, clearly, I'd have to say yes. And so we have talked about that how perhaps even our focus is on quality compounders, you can still find opportunities if we think a sector is going to run what is the best player in that segment, should we take a shorter-term position. And so those sort of reflections, we have certainly had on that. We get a bit of exposure to resources. We've had a good holding in ALS. There's still a lot of the minerals testing. But clearly, that hasn't sort of made up for the strength that we've seen in the gold stocks.

Thanks, Mark. A question here about the general LIC sector. It seems to be that poorly performing LICs follow the same path of lifting dividends, special dividends and do share buybacks. So I would question the success of that other than provide holders of liquid LICs as an opportunity to get out, could the funds have been better utilized.

Yes, it's a very good question. So just on, I guess, the reasons we do that. It's not really related to like any performance. What we take a view on some of the LICs do hold some franking credits for a rainy day. Just a general view, if you beyond that, they belong to the shareholders. So you -- so you pay them out. And that -- I mean, we have that policy, whether we were talking about this 12 months ago, when we were hit on all our figures, we still talked about what's our excess franking credits to get them out to shareholders. So I don't think that's a matter of performance. I think it's just -- we think that's a good practice to get the franking credits out if you've got excess than what you believe. And on buybacks, I think it's been -- our decision on buybacks is really more around where we're trading against to NTA. And if we're sustaining a DRP and the people that tend to go in DRPs tend to generally be the same one, sometimes at a premium. You have to remember, it was only 3 years ago during COVID, that many LICs were trading at premiums. And so we tend to leave the DRP on and we've obviously had lot of shareholders saying, well, if you're issuing stock at a discount, why don't you neutralize it by buying back at that level. And that makes sense to us. And so we have been doing these buybacks to neutralize the diluting impact of the DRP. If we were trading close to NTA, then I mean it's a question for the Board, but I think pretty fair to say that we wouldn't be buying back stock if that were the case.

And if you're buying back, you're effectively buying stocks or portfolio that you like at a discount to what it would cost you to go on market to buy.

Yes. But in principle, we'd rather not be doing it because we wouldn't be doing it if we were trading around NTA, we just wouldn't be doing it. And we still have the facility in the funds to be able to go and buy stocks that we like anyway. So it's not a question that is not stopping us from going out and utilize those. And once again, if months ago a good performance, and we're trading at a discount, and we still look to buy back. So it's not a performance decision. It's about where the stock is trading in the market and looking to neutralize a DRP.

Do you think LICs could add more value to investors become more relevant as the market goes, potentially goes more passive. How do you go about helping the market, particularly younger people understand?

Yes. I think -- I mean I'll comment more on our group as traditional LICs. So these are generally low cost where you could say they are similar to an ETF. But then they had different characteristics and different ways of going about it. So I think it's important we try to understand or educate the market that we are low cost like ETS, we are an alternative to an ETF. But there are certain characteristics of being in a company structure such as consistent dividend pays. We don't have flows in and out. I mean, the growth in ETF, we haven't seen it tested in a while on a decent downturn given the amount of money that's pouring into them. We can buy when we want to, we can sell when we want to. So it's just a matter of trying to differentiate the product. But the key thing is that -- and so -- I mean a lot of people like the transparency that comes from being an LIC as well. So I think there's -- we are trying to beef up our education of the market. I've been doing more webcast and podcast, sorry, to talk about this and try and expand the understanding of LIC, traditional LIC.

Yes. And some of those podcasts are particularly targeted at the younger generation, as you well know, a lot of that demographic would use podcasts rather than actually looking online for things as well. So we are focusing on those. We also have Suzanne, as Mark mentioned earlier before, our business development manager who has come on board, and we're certainly doing a lot more marketing to financial advisers, which has only just really started off in the last 6 months. So hopefully, we'll see the benefit of that over the next 12 to 18 months. Do you think you selected overpriced stocks with very high IP. Some have no earnings at all. How do you consider that in the context of the portfolio?

Yes, I can see -- I mean, I can see the question. Most of those Life36 stocks are actually, I think, pretty much all them except for Life36 [indiscernible] they're all profitable companies with strong balance sheets. And I think you're asking about the P/Es. They're not the P/Es. I mean, for example, sort of asking about carsales inferring that the P/E is 49. We do prospective P/Es at the moment, we probably think it's about 24x. So I can see a number of the P/Es you're putting there that are very different I'm happy to take that question offline if you want to check in because some of the P/Es here are pretty much all those P/Es are not the numbers that towards that we have -- they're way different. So look, valuations are important. We obviously considerations when we buy. We tend to be a holder after that. But as I said, apart from one, you've listed many, many companies, they're all profitable businesses that are growing strongly.

Okay. Just reminding you can ask a question via the webcast using the tab at the bottom of the screen. A question here regarding CSL, just more about how confidence in the management, given the $20 billion that we spent on that before acquisition?

Yes. Obviously, there's the CEO that was in place is not there anymore when that decision was made. So there's been a new CEO, and obviously, they've had a strategy day at the end of the last year where, again, they talked about a renewed approach to R&D. They accept that, that was a poor acquisition. You can't change it now. What you want to hope is that they won't do another one. I don't think they will. I think they're just very focused now on the core business. Yes, the idea to spin out Seqirus, we were sort of scratching our head a bit at that, but they stepped away from that. And again, I think they're sort of getting -- we've got the message that just getting there. And improve the core business. And I like that focus. I think there's questions about how much the cost base have gone up over time, the way they were doing a number of R&D projects and the like. So I feel like the company is now very focused on the core. And when we -- usually when we see that we get better outcomes from businesses, but I don't know sure what's going to happen in this result. But looking for over the next few years, typically, when you get that, I guess, a moment where a company sees let's get the core humming. Let's focus on that. You get much better outcomes.

Question about will the DRP be neutralized?

Well, look, it depends on where the stock is trading against its NTA. If it at a large enough discount, and we think it adds value to do that, then we will -- if it makes sense, we will do it. If for some reason it closes, then we won't do it. So it's more about what we're seeing in the market.

Okay. Mark, I haven't got any questions here. I noticed the viewer numbers are starting to drop off here. So perhaps we'll end the presentation there.

Okay. So thank you, everyone, for attending. And as I said, we are very focused on wanting to improve the returns. It has been a very disappointing year, but we do believe in holding good quality companies for long term. And there's a bit we can take away from that. And we are -- I mean still would have a balanced portfolio over time. And to have stocks across a range of sectors. So with that, I'll pass back to the moderator. Thank you.

Thank you. That does conclude our webinar for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect the lines.