Johnson Matthey Plc (JMAT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to this General Meeting of Johnson Matthey. Joining me here today at the table is our Chief Financial Officer, Alastair Judge; our Chief Operating Officer, Richard Pike; and our General Counsel and Company Secretary, Simon Price. And we also have our Chief Executive of the group, Liam Condon, joining us on Teams. It's 9:00 just gone. We are quorate, so I'm declaring the meeting open. As previously announced, following the completion of the divestment of our Catalyst Technologies business on the 17th of July this year, we intend to return GBP 1 billion of value to our shareholders. Approximately GBP 800 million of this will be distributed to shareholders by way of a special dividend. This general meeting is being held in relation to the proposed GBP 800 million special dividend and the share consolidation. which is intended to maintain comparability in the company's share price before and after the special dividend is paid. The notice of the general meeting, together with explanatory notes were posted to shareholders on Monday, the 27th of July. And accordingly, the requisite notice of the meeting has been given. Ladies and gentlemen, before moving to voting on the resolutions, we would be very happy to take any questions that there may be? If you are here in the room with a question, please raise your hand, and we'll bring a microphone to you. [Operator Instructions] We'll take any questions first from the room, then from the telephone conference and finally from the webcast. Before asking your question, please introduce yourself. So let's start here in the meeting room, are there any questions that people have? Very well. Thank you. I will now turn to the telephone conference for any questions.

There are no questions at this time.

Thank you very much. That's very efficient. I will now move to the webcast then to see if there are any questions through that means. Jo, anything that we need to be aware of?

Chair, no, there are no questions.

Okay. Well, thank you very much. There have been no questions. I would now like to move, therefore, to the formal part of the meeting, which is the voting and as usual, this will be conducted by way of a poll. So as a reminder, those joining via the webcast or telephone conference will not be able to vote during today's meeting and they were given the opportunity to cast their votes in advance. Those of you in the room will have been given a poll card when you registered this morning. Our registrars are in the room with additional ones if you need them. On a poll, each member present in person, by corporate representative or by proxy is entitled to 1 vote for every share that they hold. If you're representing more than 1 shareholding, please ask for additional cards because a separate poll cards should be used for each shareholder. If you've already returned your form of proxy appointing me to vote on your behalf and you do not wish to change your vote, then you do not need to fill in a poll card. The resolutions are set out in full behind me. And in the notice of the meeting, and I propose that the notice is taken as read and that the resolutions are proposed to the meeting accordingly. Once the final votes have been counted, we will announce the figures via a regulatory information service and publish them on our company website. The latest proxy voting figures are here. The figures reflect the proxy votes received so far, and these will be updated later today to include votes cast at this meeting. [Voting]

Thank you very much for voting. The poll will close in 10 minutes. And that concludes the business of the general meeting. Please pass your completed poll card to a representative of Equiniti, when leaving the room, if you are here. Thank you for taking the time to join us today, and I wish you all a very pleasant day. The meeting is closed. Thank you.