NAOS Emerging Opportunities Company Limited ($NCC)

All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Sebastian Evans. I'm the Chief Investment Officer of NAOS Asset Management, and welcome to the Quarterly Investor Update and Q&A session for the third quarter of FY '26. If for whatever reason, there's a technical issue, you can't hear me or whatever it may be, please e-mail [email protected]. And hopefully, we'll be able to fix that as soon as possible. Firstly, it's been a -- I think I said this last time, I always feel like when we get to these quarterly webinars, a lot of the data and commentary in here is a little bit dated. And given some of the machinations of what's going on around the world, it does feel like that yet again. Towards the middle of the webinar, we'll be joined by Ryan O'Hare, who's the Chairman of one of our newer investments in the NCC portfolio, Comms Group, CCG, the ASX code. where Ryan will do a short presentation and overview of the business and some expectations going forward. If you do have any questions for Ryan about the business specifically, please feel free to use the Q&A box. I think it's in the top right, hopefully, of your Zoom panel. If you do have any questions for myself and Rob here today, we'll address those at the end of the presentation. We'll let Ryan go after his short presentation. Moving along, the disclaimer, I will leave it, as I've said now for however many years. We do tend to talk about stocks. I know people do appreciate that, but please don't treat it as possible. Please take into account your own personal circumstances, seek independent financial advice. Don't rely on the commentary within this presentation or what is said throughout this recorded webinar. The acknowledgment of country, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and recognize their continuing connections to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to elders past, present and future. So just 1 or 2 slides on NAOS. I did go through the slides, but I realize I've actually written quite a bit, so I must have got a little bit carried away. So I'll do my very best to get Ryan on, hopefully, by 10 to 11. But for those of you who don't know NAOS, we are quite hands-on active long-term investors. We want to compound people's capital and hopefully pay a steady stream of dividends franked to the maximum extent possible. We're highly aligned. directors and staff are some of if not the largest investors within the LIC. I don't own any shares outside of the LIC. But we are rather concentrated. So we take large minority positions in businesses. In the case of Comms Group, I think we own close to 10% of that business. In the case of Big River, I think we own close to 35% of that particular business. We like to partner with proven, highly aligned people, who have got a long-term track record of compounding capital either in that current business or in a previous life that tends to serve us relatively well. And then finally, we are index unaware. So less than 1% of all our investments form any part of the small ordinaries index, and you would notice that sort of coming to fruition in the performance of late, whereby our results have been rather different compared to that of the small ordinaries, especially in significant times of high volatility. If you look at the portfolio composition, I would say the one thing that stands out, the 2 pie charts on the right probably haven't changed too much. But the industry exposure has definitely changed over time. We're probably more industrial focused. I think if people have a look at where our large exposures are, clearly, building materials, but technology now surprisingly represents the largest single industry exposure across the group. And you can see there are a few other ones starting to creep up. So the diversification across industry has changed, I would say, notably over the past 6 or so months and probably a reflection of where we are in the cycle and where we're seeing some more relevant opportunities given the price volatility we've seen more recently. The portfolio performance summary and what a quarter of volatility it has been, April, unfortunately, has been no different. I would say, pleasingly, 2 of the funds outperformed in a pretty tough Q3 for a lot of fund managers and investors. You can see that the 1-year performance thankfully has started to improve with all of the funds significantly outperforming their benchmarks. I think the thing I would highlight is if you look at the NAC benchmark on a 1 year, it's produced just under 2%. If you look at the small [indiscernible], it's close to 13.5%. So we have seen a re-rating of small cap businesses, but I would say it's a little bit deceiving because a lot of that performance is due to small cap resources, which has probably produced over 2/3 of that total return. Industrials in general have been probably still on the nose for a lot of investors. But hopefully, the 1-year performance is a sign of future things to come. And as I will finish off in this presentation, I still believe, and I'm sure Rob does as well, we are very catalyst heavy. So either way over the next 12 months, we're going to have a very good idea of where we stand based on what we expect to happen for 5 or 6 of our largest investments. So a few slides on where we stand today from a market perspective. The rising wall of uncertainty. I was -- I came out of Christmas feeling pretty good. Unfortunately, that lasted about 4.5 seconds. And a big reason of that is due to these 5 points here. The SaaSpocalypse, many have talked about AI as sort of effects on Software-as-a-Service businesses. Inflation is back on the agenda. The RBA is now doing the opposite of what they did a few years ago and being much more aggressive on rates to stamp out inflation, and we probably think they may go too far. The Middle East conflict, which everyone is talking about and then the Australian issue, which has been an issue for as long as I can remember more recently, the falling productivity worsening, federal balance sheet from an Australian perspective. Five reasons, unfortunately, to be negative equities, but they definitely do provide opportunities if you take a longer-term view. So touching on the first one, and I won't go through this line by line, but the SaaSpocalypse has got an awful lot of commentary from all sorts of fund managers and market commentators. I think in summary, it would be the rise of artificial intelligence and many people ask us how we're using it. We'd happily say AI is real. It's provided enormous productivity for our business, the amount of information we can automate and processes we can automate and get results quickly in a repeatable manner has been excellent for our business. It will be the same for many businesses, especially businesses a lot more sophisticated than us. And ultimately, what does that mean for software businesses that have charged significant amounts of money for their services? I would say we are unsure. But we would say not all businesses are treated equally. Some of the examples will be like Adobe creates Photoshop, their share price has fallen significantly, I think, 70% to 80% over the last 12 months, much more of a consumer-focused business, whereby others that are much more business orientated and own and I suppose, hold significant amounts of data that's quite sensitive, probably have more opportunities and are more insulated. So it will be very interesting to see how it unfolds over the next 5 years. We don't think everyone has the answer, but it does create opportunities for us, and it is sort of allowing us to change certain investments and bring some new investments into the portfolio and hopefully reduce some of the other ones we feel might be more at risk longer term. Over here, we've put together an interesting slide on just the growth in AI tokens. I know a lot of people say some people are quite skeptical on AI usage in general. And I think the big conundrum is the return on investment is it going to stand up in the face of just the sheer spend we're seeing. It's a topical slide because last night, Google and Meta both reported their Q3 results. And some of the quotes are being sent around in the office this morning. The Google CEO came out and said, our forecast or our end result would have been significantly better, but we simply just didn't have the compute power to handle the demand. So it's showing you the demand for compute is real. Businesses are using artificial intelligence. They are seeing certain returns. I know some people have probably noticed more recently that Microsoft and Meta have started to shrink the size of their workforce because they are getting productivity gains from their artificial intelligence initiatives. Will it apply to all businesses? Maybe not. But in our view, it does apply to an awful lot of businesses and not just businesses but technology businesses. In the case of we've got a business in MaxiPARTS, who deals with truck parts. Could it apply there and how they, I suppose, deal with customers, how they source truck parts, how they interpret those parts, most definitely. All things do take time, but we think the opportunity is significant, and it's very real, but it will take time. What it means for us, and I did put these slides in, and I think that's why the presentation is a little bit longer. And I think it's important as an investor, you want to understand, well, how is this going to affect NAOS. Clearly, we've got some large technology-related investments. I put it out there Urbanise, Firmus being another one. So how does it relate to these sort of investments? And I would say, if you look at our software investments, they tend to own very sensitive data in the case of Urbanise. When you're dealing with banking and financials, it's very sensitive data that you're just not going to shove in Claude as an example and who knows where the end data resides. In the case of something like Firmus, based on the comments I just said about Meta and Google, demand is real. They need compute power. Only certain businesses can bring that on in a short time frame with the right partners, and we think Firmus will benefit from that. We also think a lot of software businesses, including the likes of Urbanise, and I would point you towards some commentary they've recently done on some of the AI initiatives for their business over the past couple of weeks. It will bring with the cost efficiencies -- it will also bring product improvements. So the time to market due to the, I suppose, efficiency gains will be significant. And it provides a better outcome for customers in our view, if it's done properly. So I wouldn't say we're as negative as others. We think it does bring with it opportunities for these businesses to have a stickier customer base, maintain price and hopefully grow over the longer term. The Middle East conflict and oil price and supply volatility clearly brings with it a high level of uncertainty. As you can see here, the price increases we've seen across a number of different commodities. I'm not going to go through all of them, but it's not just oil. It obviously applies to diesel, it applies to fertilizer, coal, rice, all sorts of things. And there is a knock-on effect across the entire economy, in my view, and we're yet to really see that, especially some of the second order effects, we think will take a little to play out, and we have seen that more recently in some of the company announcements. One that everyone would know is Cochlear. They recently downgraded their earnings citing I think they've got some company-specific issues but did cite probably a lack of demand in the U.S. market post March. We saw that share price fall by close to 40%, which I'd say is almost unheard of for a business like Cochlear. So there are a lot of knock-on effects here, and I'm of the view that we are yet to see a lot of these. I think a lot of trading updates will occur between now and June, and we've seen those. Some will be positive. We did see some reaffirm, but I think there will also be a high level of uncertainty on how forecasts look into FY '27 for a lot of these businesses. And the reason why is it's just really basic investing basic economics. So activity levels. [ EVT ] as an example, they have the Rydges hotel chain, QT hotels chain, they've come out and said post-Eid of forward bookings, it's quite highly uncertain. They're not seeing the same level of activity. Consumers generally spend based on confidence. And I would say, from what we understand, confidence levels are very low. The other big one is project costs for anyone building a house or currently in the midst of a project, a civil project or a commercial project, costs are on the rise. It's not just fuel. So it's not just transport. It's things like PVC piping. I'm sure people have seen [indiscernible] put through some significant price increases for their PVC pipes. And all that cost has to be passed on, and that leads to that last point, consumer confidence. The one I missed is a defense related. Given the political environment, I know people naturally think well, defense spending must continue to be on the increase and needs to be efficient, needs to get to market. But I think the flip side to that is potentially it's harder to get on site, considering the U.S. is at war. I don't call it a war or a conflict. So therefore, there may be delays associated with some of these projects coming to market and some of the efficiency gains may not be there for some of these businesses, who are working with the U.S. or the Australian defense force. So overall, it just brings a whole lot of uncertainty. I would say a lot of the headwinds are probably unknown to the market, and I think you'll get more granularity over the next few months. You can see there just the chart of the consumer confidence, really highlighting it's the lowest level it's been since COVID. It's funny talking to a lot of people. A lot of people use COVID as the analogy these days. Interestingly, and it does provide a level of optimism for a lot of the people we do talk to, but it's really finding just some certainty on where the world will be over the next few months, especially from a fuel supply and a fuel price perspective. You can see here, courtesy of Jefferies that the EBITDA change based on the diesel price does hurt a lot of industrial businesses. Strangely enough, it also hurts a lot of mining businesses. A lot of mining businesses rely on diesel for their inputs. to get those commodities out of the ground. So therefore, what's the knock-on effect for those businesses that service a lot of these mining. Obviously, mining is a dominant industry in this country. A lot of contractors, logistics, transport companies all deal with the miners. Ultimately, what does it mean for them? Again, unsure. But I think some of the commentary we've seen is maybe a little bit skewed in the sense that the effect across Australia as a whole is a lot more widespread than what people may perceive it to be. And then rising inflation and interest rates, clearly, we went through a very short interest rate easing cycle, which lasted just 6 months. And the RBA is now back on an interest rate increase in path in February and March, expected to raise again next week, given what we're seeing from an inflation perspective. Obviously, the stark difference this time is that a lot of this inflation, yes, it's been driven by commodity prices like oil. But if you take that aside, a lot of it is driven by public consumption. Australia is an outlier when it comes to public consumption, the government is spending more money than ever when it comes to employment and demand. And obviously, that puts a lot of pressure on the ability to source staff as an example. And when you overlay it against certain effects or events such as the Brisbane Olympics, there is a lot of demand in certain areas of the economy that is pushing prices up. And we see that the risk remains to the upside because demand remains too elevated. And from a supply perspective, the supply is just not there for a myriad of structural issues in this country. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out But I would say, longer term, we are a big believer in deflation, things like artificial intelligence, the use of software and aging population are deflationary. So one way or another in the next 12 to 24 months, maybe not. But beyond that, we do believe that we will enter a deflationary -- a structural deflationary environment in this country. You can see here just from a GDP perspective, we really just wanted to highlight public consumption, now the third largest -- sorry, it is the third largest part of overall GDP growth in this country, which is significant to where it has been in previous cycles and especially compared to things like dwelling investment and private business investment. And then finally, what does it mean for some of our investments. So clearly, some of our investments like your Big Rivers and your MaxiPARTS, even SomnoMed in the health care space, it does bring uncertainty. I think there's no doubt about that. We've been quite bullish about the prospects for these businesses from a demand perspective. I don't think that changes. But when you have a large network of property as an example, rental increases become an issue again, just like they were in COVID because you have a lot of rental increases associated with CPI and you have to pass on that cost. Wage increase is another, the ability to source quality staff at reasonable rates, again, becomes an issue. And the one that's probably a little bit of an unknown is price increases. Can you -- well, you can justify the price increase, but will the market take it? Unsure. And I think today, from what we understand and what we've heard from a lot of businesses is the market still remains reasonable. People have been willing to accept the price increases and probably been taking a small hit to profitability. But I think that's a different conversation if this continues to last another 3, 4, 5 months. I think then businesses will need to adjust. I think there will be an adjustment from a demand perspective as well. And how that plays out, we do not know. But I think you are seeing the equity market has probably already factored it in. We're yet to see some of the results, but we'll continue to see some of those more recently. And then before I pass on to Ryan, I think it's important to be half glass full. Otherwise, there's really no point being an equities investment manager. So the reasons to be optimistic. Don't forget the markets over 80% of the time do rise, believe it or not. And I would say from a demand perspective, there's a lot of structural reasons that demand will remain strong. In the case of housing as an example, there's still a significant housing shortage. Many of you would see there's a lot more apartment buildings being approved coming out of the ground. So they will last for a few years as an example. Defense is real. The demand for compute power in this country is starting to get some real traction. There are some structural drivers across certain industries that are real and will continue for a period of time. Valuations, as I touched on before, valuations have adjusted. You can see the earnings growth expectations for the market is close to 0 now. So people have dialed back their expectations. PEs have also dialed back as stock markets have obviously fallen in Australia. Anyway, how this plays until FY '27, I think it's hard to tell, but I think expectations have definitely been rebased. And I think that's important because if expectations remain high and people get caught offside, share price falls are significant. The other 2, I would say, is balance sheets have probably never been in a better shape, especially across our group of investments, most businesses are in a net cash position or have very low debt positions, that allows them to continue to invest. It allows them to acquire businesses that are probably under more financial pressure, especially private businesses, and we're seeing more of that. And hopefully, you get to acquire them at reasonable prices. But I think having a strong balance sheet is imperative because if you don't, you'll be raising equity at hideous prices under significant pressure. And the other thing is investor sentiment has been bearish. And I think you've seen that from a positioning standpoint, especially in Australia, maybe not the U.S. I think the U.S. is different. The demand for equities are definitely in our space, and we've seen this already, like volume is back to very low levels again. We're seeing redemptions across a number of funds that's affected a few of our shares more recently, where investors are pulling money from fund managers and forcing fund managers to sell their equities in small and micro caps. I would say sentiment and demand for micro and small cap equities, especially illiquid ones, is very, very low. And for me, I think that tells you that investors are probably already positioned for the downturn. I think the flip side to that is if things aren't as bad as people expect, and we do get a change, the potential for upside reversion is significant because the amount of quality businesses that remain listed on the stock exchange is low because of market consolidation and the lack of IPOs. And I think investors will be clamoring over themselves to get an exposure. The classic one will be, well, rates are actually aren't getting higher. The Brisbane Olympics is coming for the next 4 to 5 years, how do I get an exposure? And if you're making those sort of comments, I'd argue that the train has already left the station, so to speak. And I think that is a reason to be optimistic. The same as saying you want to acquire things, investments and shares and equities when people are being forced to sell them for whatever reason. And you can see there, that's just the fear and greed index. Yes, it is quite basic, but it does show you how low we got relative to some of the more extreme levels in early April 2025. And yes, given some of the macro events and political events globally, it has been volatile, but does show you we had to reach periods of almost extreme fear. So with that, I'd like to pass it on to Ryan O'Hare and obviously thank Ryan for taking the plunge and presenting to our investor base. It's been a pleasure investing alongside Ryan. Ryan is a very large shareholder in Comms Group. So thanks for your time. And if you do have any questions, anyone, please type them in the chat box, and we'll pass them over to Ryan towards the end of his presentation. So thank you, Ryan.

Thanks very much, and nice to be on the screen, and thank you for inviting me. I would just clarify that NAOS has been a shareholder since around about June last year when we conducted the capital raise for another acquisition into our group, and we've enjoyed having NAOS as now our largest shareholder. They picked me to the post. And we've got some exciting things to say and our growth and talk about the business. So if you -- can we change the slide? And I have a disclaimer as well, but we'll skip past that. So who is Comms Group? Well, Comms Group originally listed around about 8 years ago. It was a consolidation of about 4 or 5 small telcos and the listing wasn't that successful. So it -- its core business at the time was the development and rollout of a global call termination network. And about 3 years ago, I sold my business into it called NEXT Telecom, and I became Chairman about 18 months ago. So comms Group is predominantly split into international and domestic and provides telecommunications services to medium enterprise and government businesses. It's a profitable growing high-end telecoms provider. And in international, I'll talk about the global network that has been built over about 10 years. And I'll also talk about the domestic services, which run under a number of brands, providing telecommunications and managed services to medium and small business. In the global side, we tend to provide services to direct enterprise customers and also through our global wholesale partners such as Vodafone and Tata. And we're expanding that wholesale capacity. And in the next slide, I'll just talk about how that actually works. We're an award-winning business. We won a lot of awards. We have little or no bad debt, and we're focused predominantly at the moment on a fast organic growth path. People may say it's boring, it's like utilities, but unfortunately, everyone needs us. Everyone needs this service. And in a market, where there is pressure on businesses to reduce costs, the ability for us to [ walk ] in and cut the cost of communication and improve services is where we certainly win. So if we can move to the next slide. This gives you an overview of our global telecommunications network. And what we provide here is call termination services, Microsoft Teams and Teams voice calling to, as I say, those wholesale and direct retail customers in approximately 16 countries, and we have built over 10 years, 15 super points of presence. What's unique here though, is that after 10 years, we've managed to roll out a network that's in demand. And it's really hard to emulate. We've managed to achieve some things that even some of the global players couldn't achieve. As an example, in Manila, we're the only non-manila-based company that has a license to operate a telecommunications network in that country in the world. And not dissimilar in places like Vietnam. And in some cases, we're a short list of suppliers in Japan, et cetera, et cetera. So we have a network that the likes of Vodafone Global, for example, and Tata can offer services to their customers that they wouldn't have been able to do before. Some of the customers that come through them, which obviously we provide on a wholesale basis, are major manufacturing car companies, some of the global banks and even very large tech companies out of the U.S.A. So we've managed to grow that business, I think, from around $10 million annualized revenue to about $20 million. Don't hold me to that because I haven't got the end of your numbers, but the growth in that particular international division is very exciting to us. So just to give you a snapshot of the performance of the business in the last half, revenue was up to $37.6 million, gross profit $17.8 million, and we're holding quite well in our gross profit margin despite the fact we're probably one of the only companies I know that don't put our prices up, and that's an argument I'm always having. Underlying EBITDA is also up to $4.5 million. and underlying net profit after tax of $1.8 million. We focus very disciplined on our cash flow. And I think from memory, the last time I asked the CFO what our actual EBITDA to cash flow ratio was starting with a [ 9 ], which is quite exciting. And so we're looking at a full year run rate coming out of this quarter of around about $75 million in revenue and between $9 million and $10 million underlying EBITDA. And we are a dividend-paying organization, have been now for about 1.5 years. And I'll talk about cash flow -- cash disciplines in a few minutes. If we can move to the next slide, please. So there was 2 strategies in growing the Comms Group. One was through acquisition. It's very -- we have a very significant integrations team, who can buy like-minded businesses predominantly in domestic, not international. That's definitely organic growing organization. And in domestic, we can acquire like-minded businesses and significantly increase their gross margin by bringing them on to our own telecommunications network, which we operate around Australia and obviously get cost synergies through OpEx savings, et cetera. The exciting part of that is we've done about 6 acquisitions. And last year, we acquired the business of TasmaNet, which provides basically all the telecommunication services to the most of the Tasmanian government. We bought that out of receivership from another company. We've stabilized the revenue. We've added a major $1 million contract post that, which demonstrates the fact we're rebuilding the sales in that area. It gives us a strategic understanding of how to operate and work within governments, which we can expand into other states. And it was very exciting because we bought that at around about 3x EBIT. The issue we have and one of the challenges we have is the fact that our own market capitalization, despite the fact that I think NAOS bought in significantly lower than the current share price is the fact that we're still running at around about 4x underlying EBIT, and it makes it very difficult to make acquisitions. So we're very much focused at this particular point in time, if we can't find an acquisition that fits both strategically and financially to grow the business faster organically. And this has been demonstrated in the last half as we've really driven sales through the NEXT, the TasmaNet and our managed services brand called onPlatinum. So looking at capital management, as I mentioned, we're a dividend-paying company. We look to increase that dividend. We have a debt position. We have a total debt facility of around about $19 million. We're currently sitting between $10 million and $11 million. And we are reducing that debt significantly at around about $1.2 million per year, but we'll look to reduce that debt further if the cash flow continues strongly as it has and we expect to. We also looking at investing in technology and service platforms across the business. It's not huge CapEx. I think it's around $450,000 this year. Integration of our technology layers and integration of duplicate networks can deliver quite a few million in savings to the organization. So it's something we can't take our eye off. And yes, AI is being introduced into the organization. We've got AI robots going live. We've got AI across our collections, which has improved our collection significantly. We've also got it on automated sign-up capabilities, which is coming through on our website. So there's a lot of work going on there. And luckily, we've got some really talented people to deliver that internally. As I mentioned, if we can find accretive M&A activity -- opportunities, we'll certainly pounce on to those, and we continue to hunt for those. And well, we talked about the dividends before anyway so. Look, this is probably a recap of what I was talking about before in terms of the performance and highlights of the first half. I won't particularly go through those. But I wouldn't mind, if I just bring something up on my screen, just recapping some of the key performance indicators. TasmaNet integration is going well and is on track. And we've completed about 50% to 60% of the network integrations in there, which delivers circa $2 million per annum in savings. We're recapping the fact that we're focusing on organic growth, and we have new annual recurring revenue of $5.4 million signed up in the first half, strong wins in a range of corporate and government clients and a strong pipeline in all divisions, $450,000 in monthly recurring revenue in pipeline sales coming through global. We're looking to significantly improve our network capabilities and cybersecurity, which is top 2 anyway, but it's very high. So there's a lot of activity going on, and we're really excited about what the next calendar year looks like for us, and we're excited to have NAOS on our register as with a number of other key institutions. And we hope to deliver a great value to the NAOS shareholders, as we go forward. I think that's it.

Excellent. Thanks very much, Ryan, for your time and your insights presenting that. I'm sure the investors got a fair bit out of that. There's 2 written questions that we've got here, if you've got a couple of minutes to take them okay. First one is your background shows extensive experience in the telco sector. How is AI -- and you touched on this a little bit, but how is AI shaping the telco sector? And is this similar or different to other technology shifts you've seen previously in the telcos.

Well, being in telco for such a long time, technology shifts are usually in the network layer. And it's been a race to the bottom for years with telco in terms of the fact that I remember in 1997 when we charge $1.30 just to connect a call to the U.S. So there's been a significant change in 30 years and the average spend per customer has significantly decreased. People that used to spend $50,000 a month in telecommunications 30 years ago are now only spending $5. So you've got to build a technology and service layer that allows you to continue to provide cutting-edge technologies and customer services to customers for a lot less revenue. But AI is the next iteration. What that's going to do is create more automation simplify automation. I mean there's companies that have spent an absolute fortune building automation in the last 10 years that we can now do for next to nothing due to AI. So we're actually in box seat. We might have been a bit late to the party in building some tech, but now it's rolling out really fast. So we see AI not necessarily reducing headcount because we're quite headcount light anyway, but certainly an improvement in service, which hopefully will drive further organic growth.

And second question, there's been a number of small listed telcos that have gone on to become big successful businesses actually in the likes of Superloop, Aussie Broadband, Uniti, there will probably be a few in that category. Whilst many others don't experience the same level of success, what do you put this down to?

The ones that are not successful or the ones that are.

I suppose what's -- in your view, what are the hallmarks that make the ones successful what they are?

Well, I'm quite close to understanding M2 because I sold one of my businesses into it before it became [indiscernible]. But I think in the past, those roll-up plays were very successful because there was a lot of things to buy. But the market is condensed a bit. So there's less to buy. But also I think having access to the capital markets in a much stronger sense than the smaller players and having a market capitalization that's holding up and enabling them to make acquisitions at the right multiples. And on the flip side, if you look at the ones that are much smaller than us, they're just too small to be doing anything I see that shouldn't be on the ASX anyway. But also, they're not really disciplined in their strategy and their ability to generate cash. So I don't want to talk of the others. But if you have a look at them, none of them are dividend paying, none of them are growing and generally evolving around. So a question why they're even there. Where does that leave us in the middle? It leaves us to push the organic growth path until such time as our market valuation gives us the capability to make acquisitions at the right multiples and/or find acquisitions that can fit within the multiple of earnings that we currently have to make them accretive. So we're not going to blow it out of the park like a Uniti or an M2 at this point, but that's not impossible.

It's good to kind of reinforce the disciplined focus you have on running this business, so.

We certainly have the groundwork to do it. We have the base to do it. It's just some of the other things need to align.

Well, Ryan, thank you very much for your time today. I'm sure all the listeners enjoy that and got a bit more insights out of the company that's reasonably recent in terms of one in our portfolio, but we certainly think there's some upside there and underpinned by strong fundamentals. So I appreciate your time today, and we'll no doubt talk to you again soon.

Thanks, Robert. I appreciate the opportunity.

Thanks, Ryan. So thank you again for everyone who's joining. So I'll just quickly run through some of the key portfolio investee companies and what they've -- some of the updates that have [Technical Difficulty] was. It's certainly in the rearview mirror now, but there was plenty of activity even though Q3 is typically a quieter quarter, but plenty did happen. So firstly, with Schoolblazer, which is a business we've recently gone substantial and have been in for a number of -- a couple of years now. So the words next generation and school uniform probably don't normally go together, but there is no doubt that what they offer in the U.K. is that. They are an organic -- has grown organically over many, many years in terms of their positioning in the U.K. market, they've got probably about 1/3 of the market and their win rate is very consistently above kind of 75%, 80% of new tenders that they do win. So we've seen success in the U.K., and we've seen that they are bringing this to the Australian market now. And they've -- through the quarter that was they simplified the brand positioning and simplified the strategy globally. It's taken some time to get there. There's a lot of moving pieces for acquisitions and whatnot, but we're at a point of time, where we're close to seeing the first set of fully consolidated financials for our March year-end business. So they will be coming out in May. And that will be, in our opinion, a key catalyst for this business, whereby a lot of people will probably put and it was an investment company structure previously, put it in the 2 hard basket until you see bonafide financials come out. So we're not too far away from that point in time. And as you can see in the above point there, they have put out some medium to longer-term targets around what they believe they can do from a revenue generation point of view and from a margin standpoint. And if we can adopt some of the success that they've had in the U.K. into the Australian market, we think they are readily achievable targets, and there is a long runway for growth for Schoolblazer if they can execute. Coming to Pharmx, which is certainly announcing mission critical digital infrastructure piece of a requirement, I suppose, for the pharmaceutical sector. So if you're John's Chemist and you have supplying -- you've got many suppliers in terms of vitamins from Blackmores, you've got things from Bayer, Apotex to name a few. This is an ability to have a gateway whereby all of your purchases from your suppliers are consolidated in one spot and go through a gateway. So it is a widely used product within the marketplace and very much a piece of underlying infrastructure that a lot of people rely on for day-to-day use in the sector. So within the quarter, Sigma has been or Chemist Warehouse specifically has been a long-term customer of Pharmx and we saw them renew that relationship with an extension of 5 year. But perhaps more importantly or equally as importantly along that side of things was a strategic announcement at the same time, where Pharmx will become the core infrastructure provider for the wider group, the Sigma Chemist Warehouse Group, which are going through their own transformation. And in return, Sigma will get a 10% equity stake and a Board seat on the Pharmx company. And we've seen Mark Conway, who's the Chief Strategy Officer for Chemist Warehouse, join the Board of Pharmx recently. I suppose what may be misunderstood that certainly the share price would reflect that there has been a selloff of late since the announcement. So the skeptics would say that Pharmx has given away 10% of their issued capital for an unknown quantity of upside. And [indiscernible] that point to date, but we would probably raise the other side of the fence saying that Pharmx now has the opportunity to generate a very strong return on investment for all parties involved and be a very key partner for Chemist Warehouse. And there's not many examples, but if you look at previous partnerships, where Chemist Warehouse have -- Sigma Group have done, the partnerships they do have a smaller provider does often generate quite a bit of success. So we're very optimistic about this, but albeit there has to be execution that does occur to get this to where it needs to be. And then coming to MOVE Logistics, which as our regional investment thesis still stands there in the sense that the New Zealand market, which is heavily reliant on road freight as opposed to rail or anything else has a desperate need for a strong second incumbent in the space. There is a [indiscernible], very well poised to become that kind of next provider. Where we got it wrong, and we've said this many times in the past is our understanding of the New Zealand economy at the time when they went from a rate environment up to 5.5%, and they quickly dropped back to 2.5% cash rate. So there was a major recession there, which is we all know about and it's been in place for quite some period of time. But they were coming out of that prior to the Middle East situation, and we're probably expecting -- the market is expecting another rate cut in New Zealand shortly, I think, at the end of May. More -- probably more importantly, despite the economic environment over there, Move's done a lot of heavy lifting under the management team they have in place now, which to be credit to where credit is due, they have done a pretty remarkable job of turning it around to where it is. And in our opinion, it's at the point, where it's no longer probably deemed a turnaround. They've delivered a breakeven -- close to breakeven result in the first half and refinance their debt, which will take effect later in the year. And just by default, if all else being equal, their debt refinancing does occur, then they're likely to hit their FY '26 guidance, albeit that is on a later point in time. So we think if they can achieve their guidance of normalized profit before tax, this would be a major step in the right direction and put to rest, I suppose, the turnaround and we can look to move forward. Coming to Comms Group, you obviously heard it from the horse's mouth just now, and I think probably 2 of the key words that were said within -- from Ryan's speech earlier, it's -- he used the word boring and he's very much focused on cash flow. And when we think about Comms Group, the piece of the jewel in the crown, I suppose, from our perspective is the global wholesale piece, which is growing in excess of 20% and is on a very strong gross margin profile, higher gross margins than the rest of the business, which as a whole is on -- is a higher growth than a lot of the peers in this space. So we think there's a long runway for growth within the global part of the business, putting aside [Technical Difficulty] Ryan did comment on how kind of defensible that position. It is hard to replicate their digital infrastructure, and we are very much a big believer in that as well. In the quarter, they announced the debt refinance, which should flow through to interest savings as of now and into FY '27. So putting anything else aside, you've got that natural, I suppose, opportunity that flows through to the bottom line into FY '27 and beyond. And coming to the next slide, Firmus, Seb has already touched on a little bit, and I suppose making a statement here is in my career anyway, I certainly haven't seen a company in the media will be a, as polarizing as this and b as kind of covered, well covered in the media is what it is all sorts of different parts of the company and the individuals behind it. Putting all that aside, the narrative that is in place, dealing with the facts, the facts remain that Sebastian touched on it earlier, the demand profile and the demand supply imbalance specifically for compute is quite remarkable, and it's hard to find a stronger tailwind globally, I would say. You're seeing this evidence not only from what is being spent by the hyperscalers on their CapEx profile and how they are -- with the opportunity cost they're missing out on by not having enough compute. It's also the fact that the old versions of NVIDIA GPUs as an example, are pricing higher than perhaps, where they were even thought when they were sold in their original form 4 or 5 years ago. So it is quite a remarkable demand profile environment with a lot of our investment thesis in Firmus. In terms of what happened in the quarter, it's been well covered in the media, but that USD 10 billion deal with Blackstone is a major box ticker in terms of the ability for Firmus to fund a lot of their asset financing associated with GPUs going forward. And it almost is a chicken and egg situation, where to win big customers, you need to have the financial capacity to win those big customers and they want to see that. And then equally, you're probably not going to get a strong capital funding facility unless you've got customers that are willing to take to -- willing to that offtake as well. So it is very, very impressive to see what they've done in that space. And obviously, signing a multiyear deal with a leading hyperscaler is unnamed at this point in time. In terms of the IPOs, very well covered again in the media in terms of, the latest say there was an article, I think it was yesterday saying that may now be in the September quarter. From our perspective, it's probably more about getting everything lined up and having the business operationally where it needs to be as opposed to in any given months required to be an ASX listing. So we want to see the business as strong as possible. And finally, on Bravura, which is a business we've had for quite some time in that mission-critical financial services part of the software stack, particularly for superannuation fund [Technical Difficulty] and for a lot of their large fund administration providers, where they have another -- every quarter, it seems at the moment or close to, it seems they've provided an update -- an upgrade to their financials Certainly, in FY '26, this is their second upgrade from their original guidance that they did announce, and they announced this just before the half year results were released. And if you look back to FY '25 and FY '24, this has been a very consistent business in terms of providing upgrades. And that it's quite remarkable actually how often it has occurred. And whilst that has been happening, they've certainly been paying dividends and special dividends along the way. The new CEO has commenced, and he started January, and we got a pleasure to meet him during the reporting season roadshow. And whilst there's no catalyst lined up for FY '24 -- sorry, the rest of FY '26 in Q4, we expect that Colin will certainly get his feet under the desk and be understanding the business a lot better now and what's associated with in terms of the capital management strategy going forward. We expect to hopefully learn more in time. So with that, I will hand it all back to Sebastian.

All right. Thanks, Rob. I'm just -- I'll finish with just a couple of slides. And I think I alluded to this at the very start of the presentation. I think if any going to take a couple of bits of information, obviously, there's been some excellent information through the entire pack, but to me, this is sort of the money slide. So looking forward for the remainder of calendar year '26, I think this is how we sort of see the next few months play out. Clearly, the outlook for revenue growth for our businesses in the last couple of months of the financial year is clearly more uncertain. [ Robinson Crusoe ] is making that statement. It is a fact. I think the one thing that does work for many listed businesses is the world has gone pearshaped towards the end of FY '26 as opposed to the middle or the start. So I think what updates you may see, hopefully, they will be patted well to reach consensus expectations considering it happened towards the end of the financial year. I think businesses should be able to pull enough levers to get to where they need to be. I think the million-dollar question is how that plays out for FY '27. And obviously, we don't know that. But I think business is going through COVID. They understand their inputs and variables much better than what they did when they need to sort of meet expectations and manage cost and manage margin. And I think that ties into that second point, be embarking on more radical initiatives to protect and grow margins. I think the third point is we expect the levels of merger acquisition and potential takeovers to remain high, even though the market is volatile. I think you saw this with OML or oOh!media, one of the largest players in the outdoor advertising space. They got a bid yesterday when the share price is absolutely on its knees due to sort of, again, the machinations of the world economy over the past 3 months, I think the stock fell by about 40% to 50%. And actively, they get a bid from a large private equity player. I think we -- you will continue to see more of that as private businesses and private equity firms can take a 5 to 7-year view on where the business and where the economy may be, and they will use that to their advantage why equity investors tend to value things in the next 3 months, unfortunately. But for us, I think 4 or 5 is really what we wanted to bank home, and we've said this. We entered calendar year '26 with some -- for us, it wasn't a make or break here, but we knew where we standed or stood and what catalysts needed to occur to realize value. That remains. I think no doubt. What remains is the catalyst are taking a little bit longer to eventuate than maybe what we estimated, but we always said calendar year '26. And some of those catalysts include the likes of Urbanise releasing their product to market. They had an update yesterday. They said they remain on track for calendar year '26. That is a massive event for that business. If they get that product out with National Australia Bank, it gives them runway to double or triple their revenue profile over the next 5 years as an example, and take Macquarie head on in the strata space for banking and payments. So for us, that's a big one. Rob's talked about the Firmus IPO, their ability to secure a second large customer is key. Big River Group, they made the acquisition of JBS. They put out the $10 million run rate for profitability. I think from our perspective, the ability for John and his team to beat that $10 million figure next year based on the run rate and so probably some of the tailwinds we're starting to see in the space is a big one because it's trading on a [ PE of 12 ] when you look at the that run rate. And the second one is obviously, they've had a large corporate player continue to increase their shareholding. They're up to 15%. Obviously, they can't go higher than 19%. So it will be interesting to see what the true intentions of that corporate shareholder are. So Big River longer term. And some of the other ones really stand out, MaxiPARTS hitting their guidance. The reason why that's important is because it implied a big second half uplift. So we'll be looking for an update from that business on how they are in regards to that run rate because if they can get there, it implies an improved, obviously, FY '27 with the stock. If you took the run rate, the stock is now trading on single-digit PEs with hopefully a net cash balance sheet, which in our view is well undervalued for what it is. And then the last 2 is MOVE Logistics finally getting to profitability. It's been a couple of years coming, but they haven't -- they reaffirmed at the half year. Strangely enough, MOVE Logistics moved most of New Zealand's petrol around. So arguably, they could be a beneficiary, and I know clearly, they will have headwinds, but they could be a beneficiary just because the amount of fuel that's had to be trucked around both Australia and New Zealand. In that case, New Zealand is significant. So hopefully it will be a benefit. In the case of SomnoMed getting their new Rest Assure product out to market. So I've run off a lot there, and it may not mean much to everyone. But the point is these catalysts are not company-making announcements, but they really put their best foot forward and opens up their market and this is a significant growth run rate -- runway is our view, and it changes the game from a valuation standpoint. So the ASX and domestic market has never been hungrier for catalysts and news flow more than ever. So if those 7 or 8 investments can get to where they need to be and release these statements as we expect or as we expect, I suppose, it's a really big tick in the box for the potential performance of all 3 of the NAOS LICs. And I have finished there just with some structural growth exposures. I'm not going to go through this now. Rob touched on Firmus. But I think it's really good just to step back. As an example, Jared, our colleagues in Perth in the next few days, speaking and reviewing going on site in a few defense spaces, an example, just trying to understand the demand for defense spending in this country for the likes of Saunders. That's real. Rob is heading off to Canada in a few weeks again to understand hopefully, more about the demand for artificial intelligence, how is that stored, what are the effects of Firmus, also meeting a number of software businesses and then how AI may or may not affect those businesses and hopefully provide them with an opportunity. But these tailwinds in our view are real. They don't change every 3 months or every 6 months. They should stay for a number of years and over time, will benefit each and every one of those businesses. So on that note, before I take questions, we do have a dividend reinvestment plan. Many of you who are in NAC and NSC would notice that [indiscernible] dividend. If you do wish to invest in the dividend reinvestment plan, we acquire those shares on market if they're trading at a discount to NTA. If they're trading at a premium, we issue the shares. It does allow investors just a simple way to increase their shareholding over time, in a, I suppose, a hassle-free way that's relatively reoccurring. So if you do wish to do that, please go to the website there, where we explain it. We've got a form. If you have any issues, just e-mail us [email protected], and we'll help you as best we can to make that happen for you before the dates required for these dividends, we can always do it for the next one. With that, I will touch on see if there are any questions, and I'm going to stumble here and try and work out how to do it. So it was even an awful presentation or a very good presentation considering there were no questions. I have answered a few questions by e-mail already. As everyone knows, I make an effort. If anyone sends me an e-mail, I'll try and get back to you on the same day. I've replied to 3 already. If you don't want to do this on an open forum, don't hesitate to -- there is a question from Julie. I just need you to write the question. I'm not good on Zoom, Julie. So Julie, if you can write in the Q&A tab, I can -- ask you -- if not, Julie, you can just e-mail me at [email protected] and I will get back to you right away. But thank you for your time. If you do have any -- there will be a recording of this, we'll send it around, so you can watch it again. Feel free to send through those questions. And enjoy the rest of your day, and have a wonderful week. Thank you.