Frontier Digital Ventures Limited (FDV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Good morning, perhaps, in Malaysia. My name is Anthony Klok, and I am the company's Chairman. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 2020 Annual General Meeting of Frontier Digital Ventures Limited. It is now 11:00 a.m. in Malaysia and 1:00 in the afternoon in Australia, and that is the time appointed for the meeting. So as we have a quorum, I declare the meeting open. Since FDV listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, we've always held hybrid AGMs, that is, using technology and also welcoming shareholders in person at the meeting. Due to COVID-19, obviously, this is our first virtual meeting. And although we've had a practice run and things have gone smoothly, we should all be aware that it is a technology platform we haven't used before, and hopefully, there'll be no issues. If any of the participants in today's meeting are unfamiliar with some of the functions of the Zoom technology such as audio, video and the muting of voice, we'll try our best to assist you during the meeting in order to make your experience a good one. And that includes -- I'll explain a little bit later on how you can virtually ask a question. I'd now like to, again, virtually introduce my fellow directors. Sorry, there's the first glitch. The video stopped. My fellow -- I'd like to introduce my fellow directors, Shaun Di Gregorio and Mark Licciardo. Mark's also the Joint Company Secretary of the company, together with Belinda Cleminson, who is also with us today.

Hi, everyone.

The company's auditor, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, is represented here by Anneke Du Toit, who I also had a pleasure of welcoming. Hi, Anneke.

Hi. Good afternoon.

The auditor, Anneke, will be available to answer questions on the conduct of the audit and the audit report for the year ended 31 December 2019. I would like to make a few remarks, they won't be very long, about our company's progress. That won't be very long because Shaun is going to take us through a presentation and provide some more detailed information a little bit later in this meeting. And we did recently release our results for the March 2020 quarter, together with an update in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is available on the website, should you like to look at that. In brief, I think calendar year 2019 was another very successful year for Frontier Digital Ventures. Our portfolio of companies grew their total revenue at around 74% for the year, and FDV's economic share of revenue grew by a pleasing 65%. I should also -- it's worth looking over the history of the company since listing in, our economic share revenue since listing has grown 9x from 3.5 years ago. And that, of course, includes some acquisitions we've made in various of our portfolio of companies topping up. But it's still, I think, an impressive result. During calendar year 2019, we increased our shareholdings in Infocasas and Autodeal. And I should also mention that during the current calendar year, we have added to our equity positions in iMyanmarhouse and LankaPropertyWeb. We're happy with those additions. We think they're all quality companies with good potential. I also will mention, we completed the sale of our interest in Propzy in February. So overall, I think the results have been very pleasing, and the Board of Directors would like to thank Shaun and the management team for the efforts during calendar year 2019. Of course, calendar year 2019 did not experience any impact from the COVID-19 virus, and we're seeing that economic impact during 2020. Again, later on, Shaun will give a bit of detail around the initial impact that we're seeing on our portfolio of companies from that pandemic. At the FDV level, I'd also like to note that we have a historically high level of cash, perhaps back to 2017 since we held this much cash. So that's positioned us well to get through this crisis and to provide support to our portfolio of companies, should that prove necessary. I'd now like to turn to the more formal part of this meeting. Before we commence with that formal part of the meeting, I'd like to address a few procedural matters. The notice of this meeting and explanatory memorandum was sent to all members, and I propose that the meeting -- the Notice of Meeting be taken as read. Proxies received prior to the meeting will be shown on the screen for each resolution as we deal with them today. The resolutions at today's meeting will be decided by a poll, and it's no longer thought appropriate to decide by showing of hands given the virtual nature of this meeting, and that poll will take place after the last resolution. As stated in the Notice of Meeting, I will, as Chairman, vote proxies left to my discretion in favor of all resolutions. I also note that resolutions 1 and resolutions 3 through 9 are subject to various voting exclusions, which are detailed in the Notice of Meeting. Should anyone wish to review them, please, if you direct yourself to that notice. These exclusions will be dealt with as part of the counting at the poll. I now turn to the business of today's meeting. The first item of business is to receive and consider the annual financial report, together with the director's and auditor's report for the year ended 31 December 2019. If I could just make a general comment applicable to all the resolutions. If you have any questions on any of the matters, please feel free to ask them. And as I've mentioned earlier, the way to do that is by selecting -- there's a hand icon under Reactions tab on the Zoom platform, which you should be able to see. And if you click on that Reactions tab and then click on the Hand, then the moderator will be able to unmute you and you can ask the question. If you do ask any questions, please state your name and/or the organization you represent just before you ask the question. So sorry, back to the annual financial report, director's and auditor's report for last year. Are there any questions or comments in relation to the director's and auditor's report? Belinda or [ Kelly ], are we getting any hand icons raised? Okay. [ Kelly ], I'll take that as a no. Okay. There being no further questions on that item of business, we come to those items for which a vote is required. Details of the proxy votes. This is the first -- that was the first resolution. Details of the proxy votes will display on the screen as each resolution is considered. So the Resolution 1, which you should have on the screen before you, is around the adoption of the remuneration report. And there're the proxy voting numbers at present. Are there any questions or comments on the adoption of the remuneration report? [ Kelly ], no questions?

No questions.

No? Okay. As there are no questions or comments, I now put the motion that the remuneration report be adopted as set out in the Notice of Meeting. And just to remind everyone, all resolutions will be decided by a poll, which will be conducted at the end of the last -- considering the last resolution. The next resolution relates to my reelection, and I will hand over the chair to Shaun to take us through that resolution. But just before I do that, Shaun, I think it appropriate to provide to shareholders a brief background as to my experience as I'm being considered for reelection. I trained a long time ago as a lawyer and spent the first part of my career as a lawyer partner in one of Australia's national law firms. Part of that role led me to live in Asia for 10 years, in Indonesia and India. And I think that knowledge of how business is conducted in Asia is relevant to some of the business we do in FDV. When I returned to Malaysia in 2001, I worked for Publishing and Broadcasting Limited, which some of us will remember. And I was in -- the head of the new business development section there, where we focused on buying interest in technology platform companies such as Seek and Carsales; eBay, actually; Betfair, Ticketek, NineMSN. And I think it was the -- those which first led to my strong interest in technology as a platform. I think after that, I was CEO of one of those technology platform companies, which gave me a real appreciation for the issues that come along. We've been part of management. And for the last 8 years, I have been a Fund Director at Ellerston, Ellerston Capital. We have a couple of funds which take equity stakes in early-stage start-up technology companies in a very similar manner and philosophy to FDV. That is, we like the entrepreneurs with the passion to run the company, and we provide support on the Board and support in other means to those companies. And I think that it was this background, as much as anything, which first fostered my interest in working with FDV and probably FDV's interest in working with me. I've also been asked to address my workload as on various boards. At present, I am Chairman of 2 other companies and director on 3 -- sorry, I just need to get the video going again. That's better. The -- all of those companies are private. None of them are listed. Relatively small ones, but 100% owned by Crown and only has 3 board meetings a year. I'm very comfortable with the workload associated with those directorships. In fact, most of them relate to my position as an investment director. And I think that the experience I get on those boards is actually very beneficial to the role, I feel, with Frontier Digital Ventures. So hopefully, that's enough of my background and me talking about myself. Shaun, did you want to take us through the voting on the resolution?

Yes, can do, Anthony. I think my part here is fairly straightforward. So Resolution 2 relates to the reelection of Anthony Klok. Are there any questions or comments? Just give people a moment if they want to use the icon on the bottom of the page there where you can raise your hand. If you want to ask a question, you can type it into the box there. Looks like we have a question from John Whittington. Says he has a question. So go ahead, John, if you want to unmute yourself or perhaps type it in. It's up to you. He says he can't unmute himself. Can you quickly type the question, John? Or perhaps, [ Kelly ], can you unmute while the -- John...

I have already unmute John.

Okay. John, so [ Kelly ] says you're unmuted.

My name is John Whittington, and I'm a volunteer company monitor to the Australian Shareholders' Association. Today, I hold proxies from shareholders for over 2 -- over [indiscernible] FDV shares. Mr. Chairman, I have only one question today. I'm very impressed by the number of boards on which you sit. You mentioned you were chair of 2 and on 3 others, but your LinkedIn profile gives you chair of 5. Anyway, the main thing is all of this is in addition to your full-time job. Whilst we're very sure that you're very capable, the ASA is [indiscernible] that perhaps you're taking on too many boards. And when things go pear-shaped, with COVID with most on that, you just don't have enough time to devote to each board, and one or more board then effectively loses a director. Would you outline how much time you spare, each board takes of your time, please?

Yes. So my -- I guess my working life, John, is to deal with the companies we've invested in through the 2 funds at Ellerston. So if you look at those companies, we're talking to the founders of the companies on a very regular basis, of course. The Board meetings therefore -- 2 of the companies only have 4 board meetings a year, and they don't tend to go for more than 2 or 3 hours because we're in a weekly or contact every few days with the founders anyway. That's just the nature of investing in those smaller technology start-ups. For sure, you know with this team, you've really got to stay in touch and make sure you understand what's happening. So for 2 of the companies, they have those 4 to 6 board meetings a year. Majority of the work is done during my working day anyway. One of the companies is Betfair. It's 100% owned by Crown. I am on the Board as Chairman -- well, no longer as Chairman actually, as a Director. That's a recent change. Because I used to be CEO, and so my job is mentoring the CEO once every 2 weeks in 1.5-hour session. Crown only has a couple of board meetings a year because it's 100% owned. So the other 2 companies are privately held equity interest I took some years ago. And again, one has the 4 board meetings a year, and one has 6 board meetings a year. So -- and no more than 3 hours. So the workload is not excessive. And I know yourself -- I think the [ ASA ] doesn't like -- they consider it not good corporate governance to have more than 5 listed company directorships. So I know our chairmanship is more than that, but I do think there's a big difference between a listed company and the amount of work involved and some of the small private technology companies, which I'm involved.

Anthony, John's just asked a follow-up question, which I'll read out, which says: surely, you have responsibilities outside of board meetings?

As in my role as a Director, Shaun?

Well, I think John just said you've got responsibilities outside of board meetings, meaning that as a director, you obviously sit at the board meetings. But outside of that, there's the ad hoc tasks that come along with being a director.

Yes. Absolutely. And that is part of my role as Investment Director at Ellerston. It's all about assisting those companies. So this isn't a role where I'm fully employed. I'd probably put in 3 to 4 days a week for Ellerston. This is not a full-time job and then I'm doing the board meetings on top of it. So all of those investments we have in those companies, the directorship is wrapped up with day-to-day conversations anyway. But I would know by now if the workload was too much. And it's not. I'm very comfortable. Hope that satisfies, John.

Yes. He said thank you. So I'll take that as a tick. I'll just wait if there's any other questions from any of the other attendees on the call. You can put your questions into the chat section there at the bottom of the screen. You just press chat and a little screen will pop up and allow you to post a question. All right. I'm going to assume that there are no other questions. So thank you. I'll now hand back to the chair of the meeting to Anthony.

Thank you, Shaun. I'm sorry, I'll just get my video going again. It's not quite seamless. Resolution 3 relates to the approval to issue shares to Nonexecutive Director, Mark Licciardo, in lieu of director's fees. Are there any questions or comments on Resolution 3? I'll just give another 10 or 15 seconds to see. No one's raised their hand, [ Kelly ]?

No one for now.

All right. I'll assume there's no questions or comments. And we can always -- if someone does type in and I just miss it, we'll come back and answer it. Thank you. Resolution 4 relates to the ratification of issue of 75,403 ordinary shares pursuant to ASX Listing Rule 7.4. Are there any questions or comments on Resolution 4? Resolution 4, there's no questions or comments. It doesn't seem to be. I'll move on. Resolution 5 relates to the ratification of issue of 141,940 ordinary shares issuant to ASX Listing Rule 7.4. Any questions or comments on Resolution 5?

No, Anthony.

Thank you, [ Kelly ]. There doesn't appear to be any questions or comments on this resolution, so I'll move on. Thank you. Resolution 6 relates to the ratification of the issue of 3,749,412 ordinary shares pursuant to ASX Listing Rule 7.4. Are there any questions or comments on Resolution 6?

No, Anthony.

Thank you, [ Kelly ]. Resolution 7 relates to the ratification of the issue of 6,759,097 ordinary shares pursuant to ASX Listing Rule 7.4. Any questions or comments? Again, you should have the screen in front of you showing the proxy voting results on this resolution.

No question, Anthony.

Thanks. Resolution 8 relates to the ratification of the issue of 618,286 ordinary shares pursuant to ASX Listing Rule 7.4. Are there any questions or comments on this resolution?

No, Anthony.

Thank you. Resolution 9 relates to the approval of a 10% placement facility. Do we have any questions or comments on Resolution 9? Proxy votes are on the screen for this resolution as well.

No questions, Anthony.

Thank you. I -- it's interesting how far technology has taken us. This is a little bit clunky doing the meeting by Zoom, Zoom Platform. But actually, it's workable, which is fantastic. I think 10 years ago, it would have been much more of a problem for the Company Secretary to solve. That concludes the business to be considered at this meeting. I'm going to ask for a representative from Computershare, who I know had joined us previously and hopefully is still on the platform to provide instructions to shareholders who have not voted on today's resolutions.

Thank you, [ Kelly ]. So for those holders who have not voted prior to this meeting, you will have been sent in a message asking for your instructions. If you could please send that to Computershare on the chat platform and giving your voting intentions for each of the resolutions, we will ensure your vote is included. For those who have voted proxies prior to the meeting, you will not need to do this as your votes are already included. If you do have any questions, please let me know via the chat box. And we'll leave it open for a few minutes for everyone to get their votes in. Thank you. [Voting]

Thank you. I think it will take some time, obviously, for the poll results to be known. Once they're calculated, tabulated, checked, those results will be announced via ASX later today. Shaun, it's probably a good time in the meeting to hand over to you in Malaysia to walk us through the year we had with Frontier Digital Ventures last year. Of course, it all seems a long time ago, but it shouldn't be forgotten. And also, if you could just make some remarks around the business and what you're seeing with the impact of the pandemic. Thanks, Shaun.

Yes, certainly. Thanks, Anthony. And firstly, I should thank the number of attendees at the meeting today. It's probably a record for us. I don't know whether that's a reflection on people's adaptation to Zoom and the like sort of technologies or something to do with a certain virus that might be buzzing around the earth as well. So -- but great that we've had the volume of people join our meeting today. I just want to walk you through our most recent update to the market, which was our Q1 update. Typically, in these meetings, we'd reflect a bit more on 2019. Obviously, the world has changed significantly in the first part of 2020, so much more applicable that we focus our update and our commentary around that. Before we go there, I think as Anthony mentioned at the start of the meeting, our 2019 was certainly the best year that FDV has had in its relatively short life. We actually increased our revenue growth year-on-year. We reduced our EBITDA loss. Many of our companies -- our portfolio of companies began to trade at breakeven. In fact, I think into the end of the year, we had as many as 6 companies in our portfolio, which is half our portfolio trade breakeven. So it was -- 2019, you could say, went pretty much the script for us. We committed very early on in our life to certain strategic goals, which we have been very true to following. We have, I think, worked really hard to ensure that our reputation is one that when we say we're going to do something, we actually do it and we don't pivot on a narrative to suit the moment. But certainly, 2019 was a really strong year for the business. If you go back and look at our investor presentations in '16 and '17, many of the goals we set then for sort of heading into 2020, we are being on track. And a big one of those was to get that portfolio through to breakeven. So I want to thank the team for their great work in 2019, thank the Board for their support, and obviously, thank all of our investors who we value dearly. Heading into '20, obviously, some interesting times. Just want to point you to what's on screen there, which is the Q1 update. So we had a really strong start to the year. January and February, obviously, we're trading really well and we're very, very pleased with our progress. COVID-19 came along in March. We basically got our full year results out to the market, and then we were confronted with a fairly interesting set of circumstances. Some of the parts in our start to the year, we said -- our revenue continued to grow through Q1. Our profitability continued to improve into Q1 with a number of our companies trading breakeven. And our cash balance is now sitting at a level that we haven't had since we listed. So as we head into this year, some fortuitous decisions were taken. We exited the business in Vietnam, which was problematic in its EBITDA performance, and that increased our cash balance. We've been really studious in growing our company's revenue so that they can trade closer to breakeven. And we continue to grow our revenue in Q1 at a rate certainly better than most other businesses. So it was a really interesting quarter. Obviously, as we got to the end of Q1, mid-March, we saw the impact of the coronavirus [ wave ]. I'm lucky I'm old enough that I've seen a couple of recessions, certainly, '08, '09, and I can still remember the '90s. So we were able to go to our portfolio of companies and spent a lot of time in early March preparing them for what we anticipated to be a softening in revenue. We've spent some time studying what happened with the SARS pandemic in Hong Kong in 2003 and the impact that, that had on the general economy, and more specifically, what happens when you get lockdowns, what happens to property transactions, what happens to automotive transaction. We'd studied what was going on in Wuhan at the time. So Wuhan had gone into lockdown early Jan or late in December actually and were starting to come out in sort of early March. We were looking at the impact of commerce as to that lockdown. We could also reflect on what had happened in '08 and '09 when you had the financial crisis. So we spent a good chunk of March working with our portfolio of companies, really preparing them for two things. One is to expect a contraction in commercial activity, which was going to affect revenues, that's happened globally, and really to prepare them for that. We were able to reflect on those instances that I mentioned with SARS and Wuhan and the financial crisis and really get our companies well set. So as they entered lockdowns and the pandemic-induced lockdowns, that we're really well prepared from a cash perspective, we're well prepared in having cut fixed costs. And that was a piece of work that took up a fair chunk of March. Through April, we were then -- and certainly into early May, we were then in a position where we could talk to our portfolio of companies about preparing for how they wanted to exit this pandemic and more specifically the lockdowns. And once you make all of those hard decisions, you can then start to go from defense to offense. So all our portfolio of companies are now very focused on how they can make the most of their competitive position. And we know that this period is going to be really tough if you're not the leader in the market, if you're [ burning ] cash, if you have high fixed costs and you make slow decisions about getting your company ready. We made fast decisions. We made difficult decisions that we made back in March. And that really freed up the management teams in each of the companies to then think about how they wanted to make the most of what was a tough situation. And that was all about improving and consolidating their market leadership position. It's all about remaining active with your consumers and reminding them that digital has become an even more valuable part of the way in which they can safely look for houses and cars in a changed environment. We encouraged our portfolio of companies to really engage with our paying customers. All of our customers in each country are either property agents, property developers, car dealers, car manufacturers, and really work closely with them on innovating from a technology perspective about how we can help them shift inventory in a completely different environment. For example, in the Philippines, our business there, Autodeal, which is the leading automotive portal in the Philippines, has now developed a piece of technology which enables consumers to purchase a vehicle from start to finish online. And it wasn't possible before heading into the pandemic. So the lockdowns, while they've been difficult, if you make hard, fast decisions, if you get a cost base right, you can actually spend more of this period focusing on improving your competitive position, on improving your innovation, in connecting with your consumers and obviously working really closely with your customers. So we now feel quite well prepared and relatively speaking, positive about what our companies can do out the other side of this pandemic. And I think what we will -- we will probably look back, and I think most businesses will see April as a really tough month. But we're already seeing some positive signs in May. So I think heading into this period, where it came out in 2019, made some smart decisions around making sure we had a really good cash balance. We exited a business that was in a really challenging EBITDA position. We've continued to grow our revenue. We continue to encourage our businesses to get toward breakeven, and that's prepared them well for this period. And we think that there is absolute opportunity out of this period to have improved competitive positions and actually leverage a crisis to the advantage once you get through making those hard decisions. So [ Kelly ], if you can just go over the next page on the deck there. So you would have seen -- this was released to the market a couple of months ago. Typically, it breaks down the pro forma of 100% view and then we carve-out of that the FDV basis. So I'm sure many of you have seen this data. So we won't stop on it necessarily. But it just demonstrates the first quarter and how we progress. If you keep going, please, [ Kelly ]. One thing I mentioned, you can see on the bar chart there, has been our continued progress toward our portfolio EBITDA position. So you go back to 2016 when we listed, and you can see that we've worked really hard to get our portfolio to trading breakeven. So 1.9% EBITDA loss as a percentage of revenue in Q1. So we are very pleased with that. Towards the end of last year and early this year, we actually increased our stakes in 4 of our portfolio of companies to take us up over 50%. So our strategy has been really clear over time, and that's to invest in our companies, to build our portfolio, to improve the management teams in each of the companies, to improve their market positions. Obviously, it helps them generate revenue, gets them trading really strongly. And at that point, our strategy has been to acquire more of the businesses that are growing well and performing well. And we've executed against that piece of our strategy in the latter half of 2019 and into the first part of 2020. Just down the page there, you'll see a bit of a business update we gave on COVID-19. We really wanted to emphasize the fact that going into a period like this with a really strong balance sheet, which we have with companies that are well prepared, which they are, we think that we can come out of this certainly in stronger competitive positions and certainly in a position to make as much of the situation as we can. We know it's obviously difficult for every single person in every country that's been affected, but we've made hard decisions. We have prepared our companies. And now we think that as May starts to improve, we can trade out of this and be in an even stronger position. I think what we're seeing across the portfolio is fairly heartening in that. We're starting to see May improve over April. So that's a really good sign. And what we do notice, if you look across the portfolio and look into each of the countries, is that -- in any country that's in a lockdown, obviously, it has a reduced level of commercial activity. But the moment those lockdowns are lifted, you see commercial activity return. We saw that in Hong Kong with SARS. We saw that in Wuhan. And we think that, that's a reasonable way to look at what's happening across our markets. As they come out of lockdowns, we see a lot of commercial growth return pretty rapidly. So I mean, if we go over the page, please, [ Kelly ]. And in terms of looking forward to Q2, as I said, we don't provide guidance on this stuff. But what I can tell you is that we're very, very studious about our balance sheet. We're very studious about working closely with our portfolio of companies to ensure that they have reduced costs and can trade through this period. And more importantly and certainly what we've been focused on in the last little while has been positioning our companies to make the most of the recovery. And that's underway, and we're pretty pleased with the work we've put in to achieve that. The other thing we mentioned in our quarterly was just an update on our largest investment or our most valuable investment, which is Zameen, which is a property portal in Pakistan. That's been a great business for us. There are 2 shareholders in that business, FDV and a company called EMPG. EMPG is made up of the founders of Zameen and a few of their investors. So they own 70% of Zameen. We own 30% of Zameen. EMPG recently merged with OLX, which, if you look at the maths and do the numbers within that business, it puts a really healthy valuation on the Zameen business. The Zameen business is the largest business that EMPG have. So when they merged, you could put a reasonable look-through valuation on Zameen. And that was certainly more than we'd valued internally, which was a really good sign in terms of the value of the assets in our portfolio. So when we look across our portfolio, we're really comfortable with where the businesses are at. We think we can make the most of what is a tough situation by trading on our competitive market positions. And through that, we've seen a significant merger in the Middle East, South Asia between EMPG and OLX, which puts a considerable value on the asset that is Zameen, remembering that we own 30% of that. So it's been a fascinating start to 2020. No one could have predicted this. We were very lucky that we made some fortuitous decisions in late '19 and early 2020 which has put us in a really strong position to trade through this period, and we think that our businesses are well prepared. And this is going to be a time when there will be a premium placed on market leadership, and I think, the flight to safety around market-leading brands and their ability to help consumers, particularly in houses and cars, their ability to help consumers find a house, find a car and ultimately transact. And we've spoken a lot in the past about the evolution of property portals and automotive portals going from just being ad platforms where people would click and find something and go talk to an agent, go talk to a car dealer, to being environments where consumers could go right the way through the transaction. So there's probably not a more pressing time in recent history where that model, we think, will work really well through this period and out the other side, where you can go to a portal and you don't have to leave. You can, in fact, do more and more of the transaction by the safety of your keyboard. So as I said, we think we're well positioned. We made some fortuitous decisions in late '19 and early '20, which we think have put us in a pretty strong position heading into 2020. So on that note, I'm happy to take any questions from anyone who's on the call or any comments.

So you can place them in the chat box. On the bottom of your screen, there's a chat icon. You can place them in there. Or I think, [ Kelly ], there's also the facility where you can raise your hand on the reactions and [ Kelly ] can unmute and we can take your question live. So either one is available. You drop a message in the chat there if you want to be unmuted rather than type your message, or you can simply press the reaction button there and Kelly will unmute you and you can ask a message -- ask a question.

You have a question from [ David ]?

First of all, great to have the online AGM for those of us that can't make any particular geographic location. It's obviously great to be able to attend. Just on Zameen, do you get to Pakistan? Or is there any point going there just in terms of the market, understanding the market?

Yes. We've been there a few times. So both Zameen and PakWheels are based in Lahore. So 3 big cities that they focus on in Pakistan, which is Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi. So we tend to go to Lahore. Always gives us a great opportunity. We go out and we spend the days with sales guys. And you drive around, you meet the property developers, you go see the projects, we go meet car dealers, we go to meet second-hand car dealers and spend time with the team as well. So yes, we do get over there. It's -- from Malaysia, it's actually -- there's actually direct flights from Kuala Lumpur to Lahore. So it's actually not that difficult to get to. But yes, so long as you get your visa in place before you go, and I made that error in my first time I went over there, but I haven't repeated that twice. But yes, we get over there and enjoy spending time with the team. We just got a question from [ Andrew ] who is asking on the chat box, which everyone can see. If they pick up one of the various potential paths with Zameen -- well, OLX plus Zameen, if so, how will it work with FDV? Look, I -- on the middle part of that question, I guess, that's a question for OLX. We know the guys at OLX. We know them very well. Obviously, I've been in the same industry for 20 years so you get to know a few other familiar faces. And guys at OLX are nice guys, easy to deal with. Look, what we do know is that, that deal has done a few things. It's crystallized the value of EMPG, which, in turn, crystallizes the value of Zameen. It brings to emerging markets a very large strategic investor who they themselves, Naspers, who is OLX, have $100 billion market cap. They are a very serious player in classifieds. So it brings those 2 elements to Zameen. In terms of what will -- what are the paths forward, look, I think the near term is continue to run the business, continue to grow the business and build as much equity value as we can. What happens down the track remains -- I guess the options remain open. And if you're talking about a liquidity event for Zameen, there's all manner of different ways that can be achieved. I think all shareholders right now are really focused on continuing to grow the business and are really not looking past that at the moment. But it certainly does bring another dynamic to the fact that we own 30% of Zameen. And that is the largest asset that EMPG own. It's a very valuable one, and we know that OLX likes it. So I can't speculate much further than that. But we -- I would also just let people know that Zameen itself is run independently. It's not run just by OLX and EMPG. Zameen has its own board. Zameen has its own shareholders agreement. It's an independent entity. It's audited independently. It's run independently. So it's run for the value of the shareholders, and FDV is one of those. So it's a stand-alone business in that sense and is a very valuable one. So as I said, we're pretty happy with that transaction. And [ Andrew ], if you want to post a follow-up question, feel free to do so. I'll just move on to a question from [ Joe Dahl ]. So [ Joe ] said, do you put any actual rough numbers around what -- what does it mean transaction NAV values FDV's holding at? I'm happy to forward you some analysis that's been done independently, externally by, I think, Bell Potter, maybe even Morgan. So [ Joe ], if you -- if you want to drop me a note, I'll certainly forward you that coverage, and you can have a look at that. That might give you a really good way to look at it rather than me speculate. So I'm happy to send you that coverage. So it's question from [ Joe ]. He said thanks, fine. Great. Happy to take any more questions if people want to raise their hand or drop a question in the group chat there. So we'll give people another 10 or 15 seconds if they want to type something in. You can raise your hand if your typing skills are similar to mine. Anthony, I think in the absence of any more questions, that brings my update for investors, shareholders alike to a conclusion.

Thank you, Shaun. Thanks for that. And look, maybe just a couple of concluding remarks on that. Obviously, the pandemic has knocked companies around. As Shaun said, I don't think we could have been in a much better position -- not just us, but the fact that most of the companies we're approaching breakeven, except for Propzy, which we exited, they're impacted. Zameen has taken in some extra funding to help it get through this, number one. I think one thing we do know is that digital online technology businesses will be the first ones to come back as the economy recovers, so -- the speed of that. So there is, we think, a good case to be made, that it will be really interesting to watch how the companies come back in each of the geographies over the next year. And this presentation next year will have a very different feel about it. So lastly, congratulations, Shaun and the team. I think you have had a really good time. And we did get on to the portfolio of companies early in this crisis, which helped a lot. But also, before I formally close the meeting, just thank you to all the shareholders for your support during the year, for dialing in today, yes, but also for the support during the year.

Anthony, there is one more question that came in independently of the chat, which I'm happy to answer now. It was a question that was asked to be addressed at the meeting. Should I go to that?

Yes. That's fine, Shaun.

We had a question from a shareholder who I'll just call [ Peter ]. He was from Melbourne or Victoria. It's actually from Warragul where I used to live, so right around the corner from my old neck of the woods. [ Peter ] has asked some questions around the placement that was done through Barca Capital in December. Just to give people some context, we acquired 20% -- another 20% of Infocasas, which is a portal in Latin America. One of our very favorite companies. It's growing really, really well. We like long term. We had an option to buy 20% of that business at a very good price. We took that option. We funded that option by way of a placement to an institutional investor called Barca Capital, who's in San Francisco. And [ Peter ] is asking why -- wasn't I and other shareholders of this company offered shares at a discounted price? He says I would like to know. So I just want to give some context. Our, I guess, responsibility -- well, actually, the second question was, did the Board consider ordinary shareholders the second class? Clearly, we don't. My responsibility, our responsibility as directors is to act in the best interest of all shareholders. We have only raised money once before, which was via a rights issue. So everyone had an opportunity to participate in that. We took a strategic view that we wanted to do the deal with Infocasas. We wanted to bring in new institutional investors. And it was a relatively small amount, which had the impact of helping us broaden our register stock. It helped us increase our exposure in North America, which had been a long-term goal, to promote our business in the U.S. and to get more emerging market funds invested in our business. And this gave us a great opportunity to do that. To the extent that people were diluted, I think it was less than 2%. And I would point to the fact that on the back of that deal we did with Infocasas, on the back of the way we funded it, we were able -- we actually -- the net-net impact was that all shareholders ended up with a higher share price. So our responsibility is to deliver value for our shareholders, and we think that, that was a strategic way of achieving that goal. Second question is certainly, I don't consider any shareholders second class. And we take our responsibility as a listed entity very seriously. It goes without saying. I've been running listed companies for 20 years, and I think our track record is fairly solid on the equitable treatment of all shareholders and making sure that we generate returns for shareholders. And there was another question which was around -- would we -- would the Board commit any feature in any capital raisings offered at a discount if ordinary shareholders are given an opportunity to participate? Firstly, the discount that it was done at was remarkably modest. It was about $0.015 to the trading price, which we thought was a pretty good achievement of in itself. We can't give iron-clad commitments that we're going to do capital raisings in a particular way in the future under circumstances which we don't know. As you know, there are various ways you can do it, rights issues, SPPs. We've tried SPPs in previous businesses before, and it was a rather underwhelming and expensive processes to undertake. But what I can tell you is that we will absolutely commit to making decisions that are to the benefit of all shareholders, and we always give deep thought to making sure that our smaller shareholders are given due consideration as much as our large shareholders. So I guess our commitment to our shareholders is that we will always treat everyone equitably and make sure we make decisions that are to everyone's benefit. And I would point out without sounding a bit cheeky that our share price did dip in March, which gave everyone an opportunity to buy shares at a fairly low price. So making opportunity out of adversity is always a good strategy as well. But our commitment is unwavering in doing the right thing by all our shareholders. I think a couple of comments from [ Peter ] were that even under tight time frames, ASX-listed companies can make offers that give access for all shareholders. We've always done that in the past. We did that in May of 2018, obviously with our IPO in '16. From time to time, we might make decisions that we think are to the benefit of all shareholders, which was the placement that we did in December. So I hope, [ Peter ], that answers your question. You obviously have our direct contact details, so please feel free to follow up if you'd like more information. But I appreciate the question and hope that gives you some insight into the way in which we arrived at that decision.

Thanks, Shaun. It's a detailed answer. We've received another question from [ Andrew ]. Do you think there will be additional investments in new companies in the near future? Let me respond first, Shaun, and then you can add your comments. We're always looking for opportunities, and that hasn't ceased. Obviously, we have a level of cash. Our primary responsibility at the moment is to the existing companies in the portfolio. We're quite pleased where they are in a cash sense. We've obviously been supporting them over the last 2 years. And part of the drive to get them to a cash flow breakeven position is, in fact, so they can support themselves. There's been an impact from coronavirus. We're not giving actual numbers. We're obviously reviewing that. And over the top of it, we've recently put some money into Zameen. We don't know whether it will need more money or not. It will depend on how it trades in the next 3 or 4 months. It looks okay at the moment. So we're not sitting here saying that all of the money will need to be supporting the companies, but it is a priority. But outside that, yes, we're constantly evaluating opportunities. Will this crisis throw up some opportunities? It should. But we're really just at the beginning of what's happening in various countries in terms of recession. So I'm not sure there's any near-term opportunities we could tell you about. But we do expect some opportunities to be thrown up. Shaun?

Look, I'll just add to that, that you just want to be well prepared should there be opportunities come our way. And to Anthony's point, our #1 focus is our existing portfolio. But it's a famous quote by Winston Churchill is, "I never waste a good crisis." So we'll continue to look at opportunities should that come along. But right now, it's more about the moment, and we'll see how the year unfolds.

Thanks, everybody. Last opportunity to ask questions. I don't think there are any. I'll draw the meeting to a close. Sincere thanks to everyone who's dialed in. This is the best attendance we've had, which is fantastic. We love shareholders attending. But also, just a thank you to the organizers of today's Zoom call. We hoped it would go well, and I think it has actually. It's worked pretty well. So thank you very much for setting that all up, and thank you one and all, for attending.

I apologize. We weren't able to provide virtual coffee or virtual sandwiches at the conclusion of the meeting, but you have to go up and pop the kettle on and look after yourselves.

Thank you, Shaun.

Thanks, guys. All right, everyone. Cheers to that.

Thank you.