Plato Income Maximiser Limited (PL8) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Right. Good morning, fellow shareholders. My name is Chris Meyer. I am a Director of PL8. It is my pleasure to welcome you this morning to the company's full year results presentation. I was flicking through the slides we put on the ASX this morning, and it just strikes me how amazingly dependable and consistent PL8 is. I had a serious case of deja vu looking through the slide presentation. I wasn't even sure we had the right period under review because it seemed very similar to the last time we spoke. So that's a good thing. Sometimes boring in investing is exactly what investors want. And hopefully, all of you listening in today appreciate the consistency that is PL8. I'm joined today by fellow a Director, Dr. Don Hamson. He's a well-known figure to many of you, and he's been called many things. But given my intro, maybe today I'll even call him Dr. Dependable. The consistency of performance of PL8 is quite encouraging. So the usual story today, we'll go through a company update, which is really the results and the dividend and the profits and so on of the company. And then we'll go through the market as Don sees it at the moment. Often, the most interesting part is the questions at the end, so we will certainly take questions from all of you, and we'll endeavor to get through them at the end. [Operator Instructions] So Don, I think you're going to do both the company and the market update. So with that introduction, I will hand over to you.

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, fellow shareholders. Not raining in Sydney, which is a good thing. We flipped over the all-important disclaimer, and now onto the results themselves. So yes, it was a good year in 2025 despite a lot of volatility. Profits for the company in terms of sort of investment returns in dollar terms was $83.6 million, which was about $17 million ahead of FY '24. So that's a good result. And total return for the portfolio -- underlying portfolio after fees was 15.5%, which is pretty healthy. That includes franking credits, but it's after fees, and it beat the benchmark by 0.4%. And remember that while it is a Plato Income Maximiser, it does actually have dual objectives to outperform the market and to provide more income along the way. And it did both of those in the FY '25 and has satisfied both those objectives since inception and have paid $0.066 monthly dividends. In terms of the NTA of the company, we started at $1.082 a share, and the portfolio performance added $0.138. The cost of running the company, which is ASX fees, fees to sort of the administrator Automic and directors' fees, et cetera, was just $0.001. So it's actually a very cost-effective company. And the management fees -- sorry, the dividends paid was $0.066. So that's the -- which leaves, sort of on the waterfall chart, ending pretax NTA of $1.153. So we went up over $0.07 for the year, which is healthy even after paying out $0.066 in dividends. So I think that's a pretty strong result for shareholders. If we now...

Don, it's probably worth mentioning, while you clear your throat there, that the NTA as of yesterday is $1.19. So it's -- the markets in the portfolio has continued to rise since the end of the financial year.

Yes, we've still seen new all-time highs on the Australian market in -- early in this financial year. If we look at the return for the year, I mentioned 15.5%. That included 7.5% distributed income compared to the benchmark, 15.1%. Excess total return, as I mentioned before, is 0.4% for the year, and excess income is 3% higher than if you were just in an index fund. And of that income, we include franking in that income. We actually -- 1.2% of that excess was actually excess franking relative to the market. And you can see from an inception point of view, our return has been 10.3%, a little bit ahead of the market at 10.2%, and our income generated has been 7.6%. One of the things probably holding back the income level in the last 12 months has been the share price of PL8, which has been trading quite strongly and continues to trade quite strongly. So overall, it was a pretty good period for performance in what I would actually say was a relatively tough year for most income investors because it was led more by growth stocks than income stocks. And you might say, well, one of the best performance for the year was CBA. Well, CBA now actually has a yield of less than the market. So it is no longer a high-yielding bank. It's a low-yielding bank. And the market was actually led by low-yielding stocks, not high-yielding stocks. Just graphically, if you look at our income versus the market over the last sort of 12 months, we've added up there franking and cash, and you can see it's substantially higher than market. I mean one of the challenges at the moment is, as Chris has mentioned, I mentioned before we're at an all-time high, is that share prices are high. They're factoring in a lot of good news and lower interest rates, et cetera. But actual dollar value of dividends paid by Australian companies has fallen over the last couple of years. So the yield on the market is actually at pretty much an all-time low in modern history. It's in the franking credit era being 4.5%, if I look at a gross basis and a cash yield of only 3.4%. So that's one of the challenges is that yields are lower. And one of the reasons I think the yields are lower is because we have seen the interest rate cycle turn. We've now seen 3 interest rate cuts by the RBA. We're expecting one more interest rate cut this year. Share markets always look ahead, so they've -- they're valuing companies based on those lower interest rates, based on the fact they think that company performance will be better in the future. But the actual current yields in the market are quite low relative to history apart from that COVID year when a lot of companies cut their dividends. But if we take that out of the equation, that 4.5% gross yield is the lowest I've seen in, say, in my career running equities. So moving on. If you look at the longer-term performance, I would say this performance here is the performance of the investments of the company, but the company itself invests into the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund into a 0 fee unit class of that. And this is the longer-term performance of the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund, which dates right back to September 2011. So we're almost approaching 14 years. And you can see on this chart, the top 2 lines are the performance of that Australian Shares Income Fund after fees in blue compared to the market in gray. And you can see slowly but surely, we have outperformed the market over that time. We were quite index like, so we do actually hold a portfolio, which is fairly similar to the index, and we slowly but surely outperformed that index. Both those lines, I would say, include franking credits. So it's franking credits included in the funds returns as well as franking credits included within the index of the S&P/ASX200 Index. So you can see we performed -- outperformed over time, and that has continued since the launch of PL8 in 2017. And then we have also delivered more income. The bottom 2 lines are sort of the cumulative value of income distributed. Again, the blue line is from the Plato fund and the gray line is the market. And we have always generated more income than the market over time and have continued to do so in the last 12 months. So it's boring from the fashion that we just keep putting out that excess income. And if you look at the time series of PL8, we started -- we were listed in May. We started -- paid our first dividend in October because we had to generate some income before we could pay it out. But since then, we have a continuous history of paying monthly dividends. We did reduce those dividends in the pandemic when a lot of companies cut their dividends massively by the market -- at the market level, about a 35% decline in income in 2020, calendar 2020. And then we have increased dividends as things improved in '21. And we have paid the $0.066 a share for the last couple of years. This chart doesn't include a couple of special dividends that we have paid along the way that shareholders have benefited from as well. And of course, all these dividends have been fully franked. And lastly, looking at how the company has traded relative to the value of its underlying assets. A bit of a squidgy line here, but if the -- the dark blue line is the share price of PL8 and it's recently sort of approached around $1.40. It's been trading more recently up to around a 20% premium to the underlying assets, which are the gray line, and the light blue line is the premium. And for quite a bit of last year, probably the first half of last year, we were trading at a 10% premium to NTA. But in this calendar year, that premium has blown out to around 20%, 15% to 20%. And I'm not sure exactly why that is the case. But I think one of the reasons might be that interest rates are falling, that you'll see that if you got money in cash or money in term deposits, the term deposit rates have been falling. We've seen 3 cuts from the RBA, 75 basis points. We expect another 25 later in the year, and so -- whereas the dividends paid by PL8 did not reduce. And so I think that's one of the reasons why the share price has been so well bid of late. The other issue is that we are -- probably a question I'll get asked, but even though we are trading at a strong premium, because of capacity issues and other things, we are unlikely or we won't really contemplate doing another issue of shares. We want to make sure that we don't get too big for our boots and not satisfy our objectives. We want to continue to deliver higher income than the market and outperform. And the problem with funds managers is sometimes they get too greedy. They get too big for their own boots, and it becomes harder as you get -- run more money. So I think we're very satisfied with the size of PL8, and we want to continue to deliver higher income than the market and outperform. I'm now going to turn to the market update. But before I do, I'll just remind a lot of shareholders that our target client -- I'm not saying that everyone is retired, but generally, our target client base are retirees who want to receive regular income from their investments and live off those investments. And I think the good news for retirees is that the government hasn't changed things of late. And at the moment, it is indexed with inflation, but the first $2 million of your -- when you're in pension phase super, your current transfer balance cap as of the 1st of July this year is $2 million. So if you retired this year, you can transfer up to $2 million. If you have $2 million in your superannuation into your super -- in your pension account and it's tax-free and you get a full refund of franking. And I think that's why a lot of retirees love fully franked dividends, and they love regular income. And there's nothing more regular than paying monthly fully franked dividends. And I suppose our philosophy generally is if we can deliver enough income for your shareholders to live off, they don't have to start selling shares or selling assets to fund their retirement, and that reduces longevity risk. I've just highlighted on this chart a fully franked dividend might be -- you might receive a $1 cash dividend from a BHP or a Westpac or whatever it might be. But if it's fully franked, it's actually worth over $1.40. And I think that's why when you get the franking credit refund from the government, I think that's why pensioners, retirees love franking credits. And we're very upset when the ALP were looking to get rid of frank credits 2 elections ago. I think the good news is that they're not really talking about reducing the value of franking credits, potentially what looks like they're going to tax super at 30% for balances over $3 million, but they're not looking to get rid of franking credits at the moment. And we hope they won't. So I'm going to update not on last year because last year has happened but more on, I suppose, the results seasons of last year of other companies. We've gone through our own results. But we've just -- today is the last day of the August reporting season. We compiled some numbers very quickly yesterday based on information up to yesterday, companies reporting yesterday, of the companies that we follow. Of those companies, about $34 billion in dividends were declared. And the good news, I suppose, from the chart there is that the average dividend increase of the companies we follow is 26% positive, and that looks like a pretty good number. The dividends increased by 26%. I would say the problem with an average is that something like a Beach Energy, which increased dividends by 200% or Evolution, gold miners, the gold miners have benefited from strong gold prices, Evolution increased dividends by 160%, they tend to skew that number and that pulls the average up. And they're small companies. So it sort of is a bit misleading, I think, in terms of a typical company, which is why we have in light blue on the chart the median dividend increase. So if you'll rank all companies from best to worst and you took the one in the middle, the median company, the one right in the middle, the more typical company actually increased dividends by over 5%, which is more than inflation. So we think that's not a bad result. Now if you're a glass half empty person, you might focus on the last gray little bar, which is actually small and negative. It's minus 2%. And that's the dollar value of dividends, did actually fall again, and this has been quite common for the last couple of years, is the dollar value of dividends has been going down, even though the typical or average company has been increasing dividends. And the reason for that is if you look at the companies that have cut their dividends such as Fortescue, BHP, Rio, Woodside, they're big companies and very big companies in the case of BHP. And they're a large part of our index. And so when BHP reduces dividends by 16%, Fortescue by 33% and Rio Tinto 15%, all basically due to lower iron ore prices, then that's going to reduce the dollar value of dividends. But the typical company is actually doing okay. And so I think the results season is not bad, been quite volatile. But typically, most companies have increased their -- 64% of companies have increased their dividends, so more increasing than decreasing. And those that are decreasing are largely due, to some extent, factors outside their control because BHP or -- and Woodside, they can't control commodity prices. They can't control the price of iron ore. They can't control the price of oil and gas. And those have been falling for the last couple of years. We move on quickly to just a few -- and I won't go through these in details, and there's probably much more information on these charts than ever. But Commonwealth Bank, it was actually a pretty good result, but the reality is it increased earnings. Cash NPAT was over $10 billion, which is a lot of money, but it was only up 4% from last year. So it's growing, but it's not growing all that well. And with Commonwealth Bank trading on a PE of something like 27 or 28, it's hardly a strong growth stock. And so it does look a bit overvalued to us. It increased its payout ratio. Payout ratio is now close to 80%. I mean the good news is it actually has plenty of franking credit, so it was able to increase its final dividend by -- in line with its earnings. But other than that, pretty good results, well-run bank, good management, very low bad debt, actually fell again. The bad debts were only 7 basis points. So it's well capitalized. It has the ability to return capital. It's been buying back some of its shares as well as increasing dividends. So it's a good well-run bank, but I think it does look a bit on the expensive side. We still rotate in and out of it, but we've been a little bit underweight over the last 12 months. Luckily, we've been able to pick other stocks that have outperformed. I think one of the interesting charts, which we've shown for a number of years now, is the Commonwealth Bank's sort of spending data. They are the biggest bank in Australia. They have the largest credit card and debit card book, and they're able to cut up spending. This is data analysis and sort of using a little bit of AI, but they can work out what you're spending money on. And that spending data highlights that, I think, the good news there is that, across the board, people are spending more on discretionary items, discretionary items like going out and eating out, going on holidays, buying sort of TVs, those sorts of things, which you don't necessarily need. But across all age groups in the sort of April to June period of this year, which is after the first interest rate cut, we saw increased spending on discretionary items by younger people as well as older people. For the last couple of years, older people have been spending more, people over 55, but younger people have been doing it a bit tough. They felt the real blowtorch of rising rents and rising interest rates. And so they had been -- in some cases, younger people actually been spending less on discretionary items than they had been in the previous year. And you can see that's actually turned around in April to June of this year. So those interest rate cuts are probably already biting. We've had another one since these results are out. So I think that augurs well for a lot of the domestic-orientated stocks within Australia, particularly some of the retailers. And highlighting that was JB Hi-Fi, which we thought was a very good result. The market's initial reaction was negative, but it did bounce back. Earnings were up 5%. It's supposed to be problems with discretionary items, discretionary spending, but they increased their earnings. They paid $1.05 final dividend. And on top of that, which we love is $1 special dividend fully franked. We like that. And their sales have continued to be strong in the first -- so in July, they released their July sales numbers. Harvey Norman is actually a similar sort of company, has announced its results this morning. And their actual early July sales are actually up 9.9%, so even better than JB Hi-Fi. So that's indicating that the discretionary spending seems to be continuing to increase even in this financial year, which augurs well for the next one. Plus, the only negative for JB Hi-Fi was the CEO resigned or retired, I should say, but that was expected, largely expected. Telstra was a pretty good result, increased its dividends a little bit. Its mobile business is doing very well. Good free cash flow, and so I think it's a reasonable result, nothing stellar but not bad. But it's one of the stocks that we've liked for the last while and paying a good solid dividend. If we move on to the insurers, we've liked the insurers for a number of years. They've had the tailwinds up until recently of higher interest rates and a little better periods for claims. Suncorp has actually finalized the sale of its bank. And so if you adjust for that, it actually was not a bad cash earnings, and dividends were pretty strong. So I think that was a pretty good result. QBE, we think, was a good result. Unfortunately, they did announce a little bit of a disappointing sort of outlook in terms of their gross written premiums, which is sort of their revenue was not going to grow as fast as the market thought. So actually, they were sold off heavily on the day. But you actually look at the results for '25 or the first half of '25 consider December end company, actually, to our view, was very strong. So we still think they're not bad and paying okay dividends. And of course, there's always a few, I think, laggards. Actually, we've got one here, which was slightly disappointing, I suppose, which is BHP. But really, it was all to do with iron ore prices going down. Stand out -- actually copper was a strong result within BHP, but they still make most of their products from iron ore. And they're spending on Jansen. So their payout ratio was pretty low. But it was an okay result from BHP. We expected a cut in dividends, but it's just highlighting that Australia is very Australian. It's very resource focused. And then some of the real laggards that we weren't in that had cut their dividends, Accent and Whitehaven had very big cuts, not as bad from Aurizon. But for something like its business, you don't expect any cuts in dividends, but it cut it by 11%. So these are a few of the stocks that we avoided because we expected them to have high likelihood of cutting their dividends. Another one, which we probably should mention was Domino's Pizza, which had quite a large cut of its dividends and also one that we're not in and a bit of a shocking result this week. And everybody is also -- I suppose, at the end of the day, it's looking forward rather than back. And I just want to conclude on this slide, which is if we -- part of our process, we do actively trade stocks, and we go and buy them for a few months to get their dividends. Part of the protection to avoid the Aurizons and the Domino's Pizzas of the world is we do actually forecast the likelihood of the stock will cut its dividend. It comes up with a probability. A high probability is bad. If a stock has a very high probability of cutting its dividends, you probably don't want to be there. So on this chart, high is bad; low is good. Here, rather than looking -- it's all done -- all this probability of dividend cuts done at the individual stock level. But on this chart, we aggregate up all the individual stock probabilities of cuts to form a market-wide picture of the dividend outlook. And the latest read on that is basically about average. There's a straight line there, is the long-term average. About 20%, 22% of companies cut their dividends each year in Australia. That's a pretty high number because we are very cyclical. Like resource stocks are quite cyclical and depend on commodity prices. So in a typical year, you see about 22%. The last number on that there is about 23%, so it's basically about average. And so we think the outlook for dividends is okay. It's about average, and we're cautiously optimistic. We think interest rate cuts here should be good for the Australian economy. Tariffs have led to a lot of volatility earlier in the year, but the reality is they don't have great impacts on Australia. So we're fairly optimistic that dividends will start to increase over the next 12 months. From a positive point of view, iron ore prices seem to have stabilized around $100 a tonne. So hopefully, we won't see that fall too much more. So we are cautiously optimistic about the outlook for dividends. But I've probably said enough, and I'll now hand over to Chris to see if there are any questions from the audience.

Great. Thanks, Dr. Dependable. It's always good to get an update from you. It's also great to see there's 95 of us online, so it's wonderful on a Friday to see such engagement from the shareholder base of PL8. As I've said, now it's question time. So we're going to move to your questions. [Operator Instructions] [ Ian ] asks the first question, and maybe, Don, I can take that one to give you a bit of a break. He asked if the full year dividend statements for PL8 are available for shareholders. And if so, he's going to terminate his monthly paper statements. The answer, in fact, I spoke with [ Todd Kirby ], who's the CFO of the company, yesterday, and he says today, I think, is the day those annual dividend statements should be available through Automic, the registry. And so that should provide you with enough information to prepare your tax returns. And obviously, it would be great if shareholders use those annual tax statements rather than get paid for monthly statements, both for the environment but also for the cost of the company. It does cost us to send out those monthly statements. So if you don't need them and you can rely on the annual one, then obviously, all the better. [ Ash ] then, Don, I don't know if you want to take this one or I'm happy to, is he asks about the profit reserve to retain the level of dividend payments. Do you want to answer that, Don or...

Yes. Well, we're both directors of the company, so we could probably both put an answer on that. But yes, we do maintain a profit reserve, and we have quite a healthy profit reserve if you look at our financial statements. The -- probably the one more binding factor on ability to pay dividends is our franking credits because we receive franking credits from the dividends that we receive from other companies, although some of those dividends are not fully franked and some may actually be unfranked. But -- so the franking credit is probably more binding, and we do have a franking account balance with a few months there. But remember, the company is always receiving dividends over time. But look, this is something that the directors have to consider, is how does that look relative to what we're seeing in the marketplace. And so our aim is to try and maintain a constant level of dividends. But in the past, when we saw that -- which is in COVID and we saw that we had a very strong view that there would be a big decline in market dividends, which did actually eventuate, our directors took the conservative approach to reduce dividends. So look, this is something that we look at. We want to try and maintain stable dividends. I think people always like to be able to know what they're going to get each month. But that's the aim, is to try and have stable dividends. But we have to look at what we're getting. And I've mentioned before, the one challenge in the Australian market today is that the dividend yield on the market is lower than it has been throughout history. And the dollar value of dividends has been lower -- is lower. And that's one of the reasons why the yield is lower. It is a case of share prices being lower. So it's something that our directors look at every time we meet. I don't know whether you want to add any more, Chris, to that.

No, I think it's probably quite a good segue, Don, into if franking is the sort of binding constraint to some extent on the company's ability to pay a higher dividend, how can you generate additional franking? And I think there was a question around like maybe dividends and franking is -- our dividend payout ratios at companies, is there wiggle room there to increase them? Or does it really require the economy to sort of get better and therefore, earnings to get better in order for the dividend across the market to improve?

Yes.

Which of those 2, Don, would you say is the economic growth what you're thinking is going to drive dividends? Or is the increase in payout ratio something companies can pull as a lever without economic growth kicking in?

Well, I think you got to take that on a company-by-company basis. So for instance, Commonwealth Bank is now pretty much at the top end of its payout ratio, so it probably doesn't have any ability to increase its dividend payout ratio. On the other hand, BHP and some of the miners are actually -- have -- are towards the bottom end of their payout ratio. And so they do have the ability to increase their dividends. However, BHP has committed quite a bit of capital investment over the next couple of years, so it's unlikely, I think, in the short term to increase dividend payout ratio. I mean the reality is, over time, you would hope that earnings grow. They have over the last 45 since history. Over the long term, earnings have increased at the market level. So -- and if you look at a long-term trend, I think we're still on that increasing earnings. It's just we had a -- and if you look at the history, there was a fantastic dividends increases in '21 and '22 after that big fall in '20. Dividends bounced back almost entirely in '21. And in '22, we saw super profits from the resources companies with iron ore prices at high levels and oil price at high levels. So we're probably above trend in '22. We've had a couple of years pushing us back towards probably that trend line, and now we're probably at or slightly below that long-term trend. So my hope is that earnings will increase. And I think interest rate cuts in Australia should help out because GDP growth has been very, very weak in Australia. We've avoided a recession, but we're nudging along at very low growth rates. And in fact, some economists would argue on a GDP adjusted for population like per head, we're actually going backwards. So hopefully, we'll see earnings increases probably more likely to pull us out, but I think payout ratio is increasing. The problem, of course, is that our resources sector is beholden to commodity prices, and that's not something that any of us have a good crystal ball or any control of.

Got it. Don, [ Sally ] asks, why is there a difference in the NTA between PL8 and the managed fund. I mean I could probably answer that. I mean it's PL8 is a fund of fund. So PL8 owns units in the underlying fund, and so there will be a very tight correlation between the NTA of PL8 and the underlying fund. But the value of PL8 was set at IPO at a different price to the price of the fund. And so therefore, the sort of starting point is different between the 2, which is why the unit prices or the NTA of both won't be the same, but there will obviously be a very tight correlation between the 2. Essentially, you're owning the same thing by owning PL8. [ Peter ] asks, choosing between PL8 and WAM's copycat PL8, WMX, what's the argument in favor of PL8 or WAM? And then he also asks Betashares as a copycat fund. Maybe, Don, I'll take -- I'll have a first crack at that. You can always chip in there. But I think the WAM one has bonds in it, so that's very different to start with. That would probably be the main reason why I think PL8 is a more pure if you are looking for equity market exposure and income. PL8 gives you that. The WAM one does not. And then on Betashares, I haven't actually looked closely at that one. I think it's the more recent listing that you're talking about. But remember, most of the Betashares product is sort of on autopilot. It's something called smart beta or factor-based investing. And PL8 is actively managed by the Plato team. I think as Don would probably attest to and has attested to with their track record, it's much more difficult in dividend land to create that smooth distribution and the performance ahead of the market if you're on autopilot than it is if you have a team looking for opportunities and consistently moving out -- in and out of dividend positions. Don, I don't know if you have anything to add there.

No, I think you've covered it pretty well. I don't really -- I haven't also studied what the Betashares fund is. But I think you pointed out that the WAM strategy is, I think, 40% bonds and cash type holdings, so it's a different animal. It's not 100% equity exposure. I mean I think one of the reasons they launched that was to take some of the money from hybrid. So it's probably targeting a little bit more like a hybrid, which is more a fixed income type product with franking.

Don, do you want to have a go at [ Lawrence's ] question here? PL8 trades at such a big premium, much higher than other LICs. Is it not more conservative to invest in the unlisted fund if there is a market correction?

Well, I'm not allowed to give financial advice. So I can't really comment on whether it's more conservative or not. What I would say, and Chris has already said it, I mean, PL8 invests into the managed fund. So you're going to get the same investments whether you go in PL8 or the fund. The -- you're correct in that there was a big premium between the value of the underlying assets or the NTA. So PL8 is trading at a price, which is much higher than that. Now if you're a value investor and you're going to get the same thing, but you can get it cheaper in another vehicle, then that's definitely the case. And I don't exactly know why it's trading at such a big premium. My hypothesis, which I've already mentioned in the presentation, was that I believe the expectation of lower interest rates has meant that people are going to get less on their term deposits and their cash at bank. If I look at the income from PL8, it's substantially higher. And so I think there's some switching. And we haven't increased the supply of PL8, so we're not doing an issue. There's more buyers than sellers, the price goes up. And that's my speculation as to why it's doing it. I think some of those other LICs are also trading pretty -- I think the WAM is trading at a premium as well.

Don, I would just add, there's quite a lot of bank hybrid money that's out there that's maturing and running off. Many of you probably know the bank hybrid market is no longer going to issue new securities. And so that money that's investing in bank hybrids is looking for fully franked income and PL8 is one of the few that pays monthly fully franked income. Maybe, Don, the last question here -- actually, we got a couple more, is from [ Ash ]. LICs are now reporting -- some LICs are reporting their franking reserve and their profit reserve as a multiplier of the current dividend. Is this something PL8 might consider? It's a good question, [ Ash ]. And actually, for everyone on the line, we do actually do that. So if you look at the quarterly dividend announcements of PL8, where we announced the next 3 months' worth of dividends, you will actually see we do in that announcement state what the current level of franking is. And I'll just go to that now. As of the end of June, when we did our last dividend announcement, we said that the franking account balance was $9 million, which was equivalent to a fully franked dividend of $0.028 per share at the current tax rate. So if you just look at those quarterly dividend announcements, you will see that detail. And then [ Lynn ], I'm not sure if this is directed at me or you, Don, but it says, can you please promise me that Don will never retire. Dr. Dependable must not retire. So...

Well, it's interesting that -- I don't think I'll work forever, but even Warren Buffett retired but into his 90s. I'm not sure I'm going to be working until I'm in my 90s. But I would say that this -- what we do, our income strategies are targeted for retirees. So I do read a lot about retirement. One of the things I've read in the last 12 months was 10 points to know about retiring. And point #10 was don't retire. And I like what I do. And you got to keep yourself active. So I'm -- there's only so much golf you can play or what have you, and I'm not a great golfer anyway. So I do like what I do. So I have no intentions of retiring anytime soon. But sometimes you find that there is a time when you've got to hang up the boots, but I'm not planning anything in the short to medium term.

Also I have the luxury of sitting next to the Plato business at Pinnacle, and it's not just Don. So Don, I don't know if you -- Pete Gardner, I think many of you have met, and Don has been building his team. So Don, I don't know if you want to do a quick business update on...

I know I'm probably the face -- the income face of Plato, but I do a lot of traveling, a lot of talking and marketing to clients. And Pete Gardner is -- and myself run that fund. We created the fund 14 years ago. Pete was a co-founder of Plato. He's got a PhD just like me. And he's -- you're in excellent hands if I was to retire or fall under a bus or whatever it might be. Not that I want to intend to do either. And -- but Plato itself has 15 people; on average, about 23 years investment experience. We have 4 PhDs in the team. Some of you may have heard of Dr. Dave Allen. He's great member -- addition to the team who we hired about 7 years ago, and we've got some other very good staff members there. So there's no I in team. Plato has a very strong process. And it's quite a disciplined process, and we've refined it over the years. So it's -- and I think this is -- maybe it goes back to the other question about competitors. We've been doing this for 14 years. So it's -- we're very experienced at doing it. Some of the Johnny-come-latelies don't have that sort of track record. So hopefully, they will succeed, but we've been doing this for a long time, and we know how to move around. And we've gone through the pandemic, and that was a pretty interesting time for income strategies. We weren't running this in the GFC, but we're actually -- well, we were incubating, but we were actually developing the IP, I suppose, during that GFC period and -- so I think you should be rest assured that there's a strong team at Plato.

It's probably also just worth finishing up that the PL8 Board, who hasn't been on these calls but you've seen at the AGMs, are also the same Board that's been there since IPO. So Jonathan, Lorraine and Katrina. Dividends are an important part of PL8, and they ultimately determine the dividend. So having that consistency and continuity is also -- and they're also not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. So more consistency and dependability from Dr. Don. So we'll leave it at that. Thanks for your questions. Don, thanks for your insights. And to our shareholders online, thank you for your time on a Friday to listen into what we had to say. Hopefully, you're happy with your PL8 investments, and we plan on doing just as much of what you've received in the past in the future.

Thank you, everyone.