Primary Health Properties Plc ($PHP)

So good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2026 Annual General Meeting of Primary Health Properties. This is our 30th Annual General Meeting. And apart from one during COVID, I'm delighted to say that I've been to every single one of them. My name, for those of you who don't know, me is Harry Hyman. I'm proud to be both the Founder, and also now, the Non-Executive Chair of the company, and I will be chairing the meeting. I'm delighted to confirm, all of the Board are joining me here today, Mark Davies, who's our CEO; Richard Howell, our CFO. And congratulations to him and his wife on the birth of their second child the other day. Congratulations, Richard. Ian Krieger is here, our Senior Independent Director; Ivonne Cantu is here, our Non-Executive Director and Chair of the RemCo, and the [ non-profit ]; Jonathan Davies is here as well, our Non-Executive Director, and I'll say a few more words about him in a moment. Laure Duhot, our Non-Executive Director; and Dr. Bina Rawal, another Non-Executive Director on our Board. I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to Jonathan, as this is his first PHP AGM. I'd also like to extend a welcome to those of you who were Assura shareholders and welcome you to the shareholder register of PHP. Jonathan was appointed to our Board in December last year, following the completion of the acquisition of Assura, where he was a long-standing NED and the Audit Committee Chair. Also attending today are the company's auditor, Deloitte; and our brokers, Deutsche Numis, Peel Hunt and Shore Capital. I'd also like to thank our corporate lawyers, CMS, for hosting the meeting today. And I think we can all agree it's a very convenient location, so close to the tube station. I'm delighted to welcome today shareholders joining the meeting remotely from South Africa. So welcome to you, and they're an important component of our shareholder register following our secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, a couple of years ago. Now before we start the formal meeting, could I ask you all to mute your mobile phones. And as it is now just after 10:30 and as a quorum is present, we can officially start the meeting. In a moment, I'm going to ask Mark, our CEO, to outline the company's results, and the trading update that was released at 7:00 this morning to the stock exchange. But before I do so, I think it would be appropriate for me to take this opportunity to thank you, all our shareholders, for your considerable support during the acquisition of Assura last year, which concluded at the end of October following a competition approval. This was not an easy deal for us to do, and we were very grateful to the support of Assura, and institutional shareholders and private shareholders, for backing us. It was a transformational deal in many respects and a long time in the planning. We have now created a leading GBP 6 billion healthcare real estate investment trust invested in critical social infrastructure in both the U.K. and Ireland. We're planning to deliver material financial and strategic benefit to shareholders that will accrue from the scale of the enlarged business. I'd like to thank all of my Board colleagues for their enormous commitment during calendar 2025, where we held an enormous number of additional meetings often at very short notice. And I'd also like to recognize the enormous efforts of our employees and my Executive Board colleagues working together to implement the strategy and our advisers who continue to provide ongoing support to the Board. As I said, we now have a GBP 6 billion portfolio of long lease sustainable infrastructure assets, primarily let to government tenants and leading U.K. providers benefiting from increased security, longevity, diversity of product type, geography and a mix of rent review types. We've heard this morning in the trading updates about the improving rental growth outlook, reflecting the significant increases in construction costs that we've seen in recent years, together with the historically suppressed levels of open market value rental growth in the sector. We'll hear in a bit from Mark about the implementation of our significant cost and operating synergies following the merger and the expected earnings accretion and dividend growth for the company with the combined group having one of the lowest EPRA cost ratios in the sector. As most of you know, as shareholders, we have a 29 or 30-year track record of increasing our dividend, and that is something that the Board and the executive team are purposefully going to continue to deliver -- to strive to deliver in the future. We do have work to do to reduce our loan-to-value into the target range of between 40% and 50%. And Mark will, I have no doubt, say a bit more about that. But we're very well progressed with delivering the GBP 9 million of identified cost synergies and integrating the 2 businesses, taking the best of both to deliver improved results for our shareholders. I've already mentioned our 30-year history of dividend growth. And this year, we've already declared 2 dividends, one of which has already been paid, the second of which is coming in early May, and those indicate a 7.3p per share for the year, which is a 2.9% increase. We intend, as I said, to continue with our progressive dividend policy paid quarterly. That's enough for me for the moment. I'm now going to hand over to Mark, our CEO, to say a few words on the results, the trading update and the company in general.

Thank you very much, Harry. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. I'll briefly reflect on what's been an incredibly successful year for PHP. I'll provide more detail on our trading update that we issued this morning for the first quarter of 2026, and then conclude with our outlook. The past 12 months has been a truly transformational year for our company. I'd like to thank my Board, our team, our advisers; and you, our shareholders; for your support in achieving this success with the highlight being the combination of our company PHP with Assura, which has created the U.K. market's leading healthcare REIT. The combination with Assura has significantly increased the scale, the quality, the profitability, the resilience of our business, firmly establishing PHP as the U.K.'s leading investor of critical healthcare infrastructure assets with a GBP 6 billion portfolio. Importantly, this is not just about scale. The merger has made us more profitable. It strengthened our income base, expanded our opportunity set and enhanced our ability to deliver long-term value to our shareholders. As you will have seen from this morning's statement, integration has progressed well, and we expect to be fully integrated several months ahead of schedule, and we're already seeing the tangible benefits in both performance and our cost efficiencies. Turning to our current trading. We've made a very strong start to 2026. Rental growth continues to improve during the quarter. In fact, we completed 199 rent reviews, generating an additional GBP 3 million worth of income that represents a growth of approximately 6%. And importantly, this is plus 3.4% on an annualized basis, ahead of last year and ahead of our guidance. Our contracted rent roll now stands at GBP 345 million, reflecting the size and scale and the benefits of the enlarged portfolio. And we've made excellent progress against our post-merger objectives. We're on track with a very clear plan to reduce leverage into our 40% to 50% target LTV range, bring net debt to EBITDA below 9.5x deliver the GBP 9 million worth of cost synergies that we identified and told the market at the time of the combination. And we have high confidence our objectives can be delivered ahead of schedule, and we can say that with confidence, we've already delivered GBP 7.8 million, which is 87% of the synergy target. And our primary care and private hospital JV vehicles are progressing positively, which I think reflects the resilience of our asset class, reliability of the income. We're also taking steps to further strengthen the balance sheet. The new vehicle for our private hospital portfolio will reduce gearing, provide an additional source of capital, enhance our growth and credit rating prospects. We expect to maintain a strong investment-grade credit rating. No debt maturities this year. We've got plenty of time to deliver on these important work streams. And our development pipeline remains active and, of course, disciplined with 6 schemes currently on-site across the U.K. and Ireland with more coming through in the future. We're very encouraged by the government's 10-year plan and its commitment on neighborhood health centers, which really align very closely with our strategy. We're already involved with 3 PHP assets, delivering vital, critical, healthcare infrastructure in communities around the country, and we're included in initial wave with many more to come. PHP remains committed to a progressive dividend. We recently declared a quarterly dividend of 1.825p per share, that's equivalent to 7.3p, sort of ramping up the dividend there.

It's a long time actually.

That's about a 3% increase. Of course, as Harry proudly pointed out as Founder and now our Chairman, our 30th consecutive year of dividend growth. Looking ahead, we remain confident. The enlarged group is performing well. We are delivering on our strategic objectives. Our rental growth continues to improve. Our focus remains disciplined investment, delivering long-term sustainable returns, maintaining an efficient cost base. So in summary, this has been a transformational year for PHP. We've started 2026 with strong momentum. We are in a growth sector. And the portfolio we own is resilient, it's stable, capable of delivering superior and low-risk returns. Thank you for your continued support. There's a lot more to look forward to. In the future, management are extremely focused on delivering on our priorities and strong results in the future from our sector-leading platform. Thank you very much. I'll now pass back to Harry, who will turn to the formal business of the meeting.

Well, thank you very much, Mark. We will have an opportunity to deal with your questions in just a couple of moments time. But I now turn to the formal business of the meeting being the resolution set out in the notice of meeting. This notice was sent to shareholders on the 26th of March of this year. The notice together with the company's Annual Report and financial statements for the year ended 31st of December '25 have been placed on our website. Accordingly, the requisite notice of the meeting has been given, and we will take the notice as read unless there are any objections. Does anyone object? It's a very long notice. So hopefully, we can move straight on. Thank you. The notice is taken as read. Before we move to the voting on the resolutions, I propose that we now have an opportunity to hear from you, our shareholders, if you have any questions that are relevant to the business of the meeting or to PHP in general. When you ask your question, would you mind telling us your name and stating whether you're a shareholder, proxy or corporate representative. If you are a proxy or a corporate representative, please give us the name of the shareholding that you are representing. I'm going to start with questions from shareholders joining on the telephone. Are there any questions from our friends in South Africa or other people attending?

No.

Okay. So we now have the opportunity for questions in the room. Yes, please.

[ Vic Charron ] private shareholder. Thanks for the update, and thank you for taking over Assura. I was very beat that you managed to do, appreciate your work that went into it. I have 2 questions, if I may. The first one is about your joint ventures, bringing in other investors. How are these joint ventures going to be set up? Who will be in control? Is it a share-based system or what? So if you do have a sort of disagreement, who decides? So that's the first question. Do you want the second one?

Yes, let's get them both.

The second one picks up on what Mark was saying about the neighborhood health service seems a good way to go. How involved are we in these, because there are certain parts of the country which desperately need some urgent land for it. So is this company sort of going around spotting the sites? Or are we sitting back waiting for someone else to do it?

Mark, do you want to handle those?

Yes, if I may. Thank you, Vic. Thanks for your questions. Thanks for your kind remarks and your support. On the -- joint venture side, I'll handle that in 2 parts, if I may. So we have an established joint venture with USS, who are a large superannuation fund, about GBP 77 billion of assets under management. They manage money on behalf of university teachers and professors. They are a very credible party to be working with, they have, importantly, to point out, a low cost of capital, because of the money that they manage. And we have an established joint venture with them, which today is around about GBP 200 million worth of assets under management. And we've announced with our results a few weeks ago, which we reannounced again this morning, the progress that we've made to inject further assets into that joint venture over the next few weeks. I would point out that the way we think about joint ventures, we like the prospect of doing a 50:50 JV, and I will pick up on your other questions around control and potential disagreement or perhaps we could do an 80:20 joint venture. So on this occasion, we inherited this joint venture through the Assura transaction. We're very happy with it. We own a 20% stake in that vehicle. It has a very precise strategy as to the assets that it seeks to target from an investment perspective. And we own 20%, we are the manager. We are the asset manager, the property manager, the development manager, we receive fees as a consequence of doing that good work for the joint venture. So we get a higher return of capital. We had a Board meeting with USS only this week on Monday. We like the relationship, it works very well. They're very institutional, very professional, straightforward. And as you may have seen from our recent results presentations, one of the reasons why we're saying a bit more about development is that because USS target a 7% return, we can create new neighbor health centers, new facilities at a yield as low as 4.5%. We know we can deliver at least 2.5% growth on those assets. So USS are getting a 7% plus return all day long, very low risk, and they really like that. And importantly, for us, where they're selling important rental evidence on those new schemes that we can then use to level up across the rest of our portfolio. In terms of control, clearly, with an 80% holding, they'll always have the final say. In terms of the day-to-day control that sits with us as a trusted asset manager and property manager of the JV. If there's a disagreement, and God forbid that never happens, all members of the Board have good experience of doing joint ventures, sometimes in other companies. Relationship is always very, very important, as you can imagine. But the legal agreements, the framework of the JV is set up to protect all parties in the unlikely event that there were to be any disagreement. That's our joint venture for primary care with a specific mandate and a specific target for the investment case that sits around it. We've said again this morning, we're making good progress on the establishment of a new vehicle and this will be for our private hospital portfolio. Through the Assura transaction, we now own around GBP 700 million of private hospital assets. We like the assets. They are delivering a good return, as you can see from this morning's announcement. And we know we can say with confidence, we expect that to continue. We haven't announced yet the structure of that vehicle. We could -- what we can say with confidence is that we will hold a stake no higher than 50%. So we have a choice, we could hold the 20% stake in the vehicle, which is very aligned with what we have with USS or we could hold a stake of up to 50%. But we haven't decided on that yet, and we'll make further announcements on that in due course. Is that a -- good enough answer to your first question? So on the second question, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, I'm sure you'll find many companies that you invest in that are not too happy with some of the decision-making and the policies of this incumbent government. Clearly, when the government came in, it made the NHS its #1 priority. So when Rachel Reeves is raising taxes, higher taxes, the majority of that money is actually going into the NHS. 10-year plan is very good for our company because one of the 3 pillars of that plan is to move more services into primary care, and we now own 14% of all primary care real estate in the U.K. So we've got great market share. We've announced that we've got 3 of these new neighborhood health centers, we've got 11% of the initial tranche. We should get 14% or more of the 250 that get announced in due course. No, we're not sitting around. I got the 3 schemes that we're doing. I was in Shepperton and in [ Lancashire ] a couple of weeks ago, which is one of them. I drove to St. Helens. For those who know, it's a rugby league town in the Northwest of England, and I going to Blackpool on the 10th of June. So I'm visiting all of those 3 sites, trying to establish how we work together with government, with the NHS to create these, I think, amazing new facilities that will expand, be improved, refurbished. We will generate more income, I'm sure, at good return levels. And then, of course, the social impact in these communities is enormous, because often we are alongside government prioritizing more deprived communities. Do you want to say anything else?

No. Thank you very much for that question and grateful reply. There's another question here. Yes, please.

I'd like to know a little bit more about your --

Would you like to tell us your name?

Yes, [ Rosita Sharon ] Shareholder. Shareholder through [ Harveys ]. I'd like to know a little bit more about the type of private health facilities. Are you building the sort of hospitals that One Health use or the sort of ones that are private/NHS like Cora Health, which is in London.

Okay. Well, One Health are using existing hospital capacity, and their new hub is going to focus on state procedures, yes. Absolutely. Do you want to pick up that, Mark?

Yes. So we've got a -- I think a really nice portfolio of around GBP 700 million, around 30 private hospitals in the U.K. We've got a private clinic exposure in Ireland as well. In fact, our most recent acquisition was a private clinic.

And it's purely private.

Private, yes. But if we --

Sorry to interrupt, but some of the existing ones do overspill from NHS, particularly the rest.

Yes. So there's a really good slide in our investor presentation deck that we can send you, which sets out all the portfolio metrics for our private hospital portfolio. What we like to say when we engage with shareholders, and we've just done a 4-week roadshow on this, is what we like about our portfolio is we don't have any sort of concentration risk to any one particular operator. So if you look at the operators in our portfolio, we've got all the leading private hospital operators. We've got HCA. We've got Ramsay, and we've got Circle, we've got Nuffield, we've got Spire. We've got pretty much and we've got Laya as well in Ireland. We've got all the leading operators of private hospitals in the U.K. and now in Ireland. So we are well diversified. You made a specific comment particularly about building private hospitals. Nobody has been building private hospitals for many, many years. We are currently developing a new scheme with Ramsay in Peterborough. There's another slide in our deck, which sets out all the operators that we work with and the amount of income that they generate from the NHS, particularly Ramsay, sometimes over 80% of their income comes from the government looking to reduce its waiting list. So we like being in the sector. The rental growth that we've achieved in this short period of ownership is close to 4%. Assura have been investing in private hospitals for almost 10 years. We've retained that team. We retain that expertise, and it's a sector that we would like to remain invested in. But we feel, given our strategy, the capital structure that Harry and I talked about earlier, we feel the best place for those assets is in a new vehicle, and we will retain an economic stake in that vehicle going forward.

Okay. Other questions, please?

Yes. My name is [ Phil Clark ], and I'm a shareholder, both PHP and Assura, and I was happy with both. First of all, many, many congratulations for this extraordinary deal, well done. It's great for the U.K. It's great for the shareholders. And most of all but how impressed I am that you actually kept the ship going whilst doing all this work. I know it's a monumental personal experience doing this sort of thing. And at least now we know why Mr. Harry was looking tired. So first question -- I've got 2 questions, please. Yes, the loan to value down to 40% to 50%. Can that all be done with this one new JV -- [indiscernible] into this JV? Can that all be done with this one transaction? Or do you need to do more as well? And can I just flag in the moment of concern that as you push off these things into JVs, you're actually starting to give away value just to get the LTV down. And I know that's strongly desirable, but is there anything you can say about us being patient about how you get there, so that we don't give too much away. So that's the first question. And the second question is to -- it's great we've got all this NHS backed income, it's really good. But now we're twice the size we were a little bit -- is there any -- you did mention that you completed 199 rent reviews, it's all great that you're doing them at a time. But isn't there a risk that the NHS might notice us perhaps come back and try to do some sort of overarching deal. Is there any risk there? Or is it just the whole thing --

Do you want to relieve me?

So dealing with the second -- your second question first, I think the NHS is perfectly aware of. And indeed, on our side, we would like and welcomes the combination actually, because eventually, it will lead to a lower cost of capital for us as a business, which we'll be able to pass on in better value for money for the National Health Service. The NHS is not awash with spare capital or cash. And so we have always fulfilled a very useful exercise for the NHS. We have been talking or people in the team have been talking to the NHS about doing more things on an index-linked basis, which would make the speed of the reviews faster and remove the onerous administrative burden of doing so many rent reviews. We are making progress on that, but it's a slow burn. So in fact, nothing personally, I think it would be a great idea if we could move more of our portfolio on to index-linked and not have to go through the very cumbersome, slow and difficult process on open market values, but that's certainly not down to me or the team. It's down to a willing party on the other side. So Howell, over to you for the first question.

Thanks Mark. If I just finish up on that, the second point. Sad to say, Phil, that Wes Streeting is an Arsenal fan. So you're a big leagues fan. And I actually met him at an event last week. We're a partner with government. We're a partner with the NHS. And with 14% market share in primary care at a time where the government 10-year plan is to move more clinical services into primary care. We are working alongside one another. What we like to point out when we're given the opportunity is that the space that we provide to the NHS, to communities all around the U.K. and Ireland is affordable space. It's specialist by nature. There's not many companies that can do what we do with the expertise that we have, the knowledge, the skills, the relationships that we've built over many, many years. But importantly, not only is the rent affordable at GBP 20 a square foot or GBP 207 a square meter and compares very favorably to other sectors, including the office sector and many others. So we like to point that out. But more importantly, according to the government's own research, we save the money by getting patients out of hospitals into primary care. So we think about it as a partnership approach. As Harry rightly pointed out, we welcome the prospect of doing an overarching portfolio type deal. We are pursuing some opportunities currently of that nature. And if we can continue getting new deals away with inflation-linked leases, which we're now seeing, that's hugely positive for the future prospects of the business. As you know, Phil, we've got a policy, it's a very disciplined that 80% to 90% of our income is stake backed. We're currently below that when we've completed our strategic objectives, particularly around the private hospital transaction that will get us back to where the policy suggests. So that's on the second point. On your first point, loan-to-value, I mean it's not just the loan-to-value that we focus on the 40% to 50%. It's also the net debt to EBITDA, because that's what Fitch will look very, very closely at the time that we engage with them later this year, possibly early next to not just reinstate the credit rating, because we have a strong credit rating of BBB plus in the group currently. We want to retain that credit rating, obviously. And to do that effectively, we get through -- I don't think we'll do it in one step. I think it's a 2 to 3-step process. There's the USS JV, there's assets going in there already, but there's more to do. The private hospital transaction is a significant lever. And whether we hold a 50% stake or a 20% stake or somewhere in between will determine how quickly we get to the gearing targets. We feel confident about the prospects of future valuation growth. That might be an unusual thing to be saying in this turbulent environment, but we know we're delivering rental growth. We think our valuation yields are stable even in this climate. We're a very resilient asset class. So it's possibly 2 or 3 steps before we get there, but we can do all of that this year, and I think we can do most of it in the summer. So look forward to future announcements. We've got results in July, not that far off. So we expect to be able to say as much as we can in the few weeks' time. And we're confident you can see that from the statement this morning, we're making the right progress. And then you did make a point about giving away value. We totally get that. We totally get that. One of the reasons why we're confident about the private hospital transaction, for example, is that we know that the partners that we're talking to because they tell us and we see their models and we compare them with our own, and deliver double-digit returns, and that's hugely attractive. However, we do benefit from asset management fees, development fees, other fees potentially, and we can grow the platform. And it's an alternative source of capital. Often the best deals come along when market conditions are not receptive. And we can build a business of size and scale in a capital-light way alongside the public company, which is now -- well, we're not quite FTSE 100, but we're not far off. So I do get the point, and we think about that, too. But I think it's about a balance getting the capital structure right and the future growth strategy as well.

Thank you for those answers. Any other questions? We will be hanging around as a Board to answer questions after the formal part of the meeting. We have a more general chat, but there's another question there, yes, please.

[ Kirk ] small shareholder. But some people who are in the loop, so to speak, it does seem odd that you've been able to successfully maintain a much larger company, we should have been running efficiently and making a profit, perhaps they were paying too large a dividend. Why do you think you can run their assets better than they could do?

I think it's a question of style of management. I think Assura were trading profitably, and I don't think they've commendably built up their portfolios to a significant level. We had a difference in management philosophy and different style. And perhaps you can see that with the speed at which our team has moved to make the synergy savings that we talked about in our offer document. But our job is not to knock other people. Our job is to crack on and build the best from the excellent portfolio that we inherited. Mark, would you like to?

Yes. Thank you, Chris. Just one sort of, I guess, minor point that you mentioned a larger business. I mean the business were roughly of equal size pre-combination. We had about GBP 2.8 billion of assets and Assura portfolio was just over GBP 3 billion. So the businesses are actually quite similar. Yes, you can talk about efficiencies, cost ratios, PHP has always had a very strong track record in all of that. We've been very cost conscious, very, very cost efficient. In terms of dividends, as a REIT, as I'm sure you're aware, Assura would have been obligated, in fact, really required to be paying out 90% or more of its earnings. So in some ways, there was little flexibility in their dividend policy, but there's nothing that we've seen from all the diligence and now we've owned the business for many months that would raise any concerns. We've been actually pleasantly surprised with the quality of the people we've retained, the quality of the portfolio, the upside potential, not just from a rental growth perspective, across the board. And I think and finally, why do we think we could run it better? I think we can run it differently. The companies have historically had different cultures. Happy to explain what that means. But when we put the two together, we definitely get the best of both. And PHP's track record in asset management is undeniable, and it has delivered phenomenal long-term success. The shorter side of the business that we've retained, particularly around development, private hospitals and other areas gives me great confidence about the team and the platform going forward.

Yes, please.

[indiscernible] shareholders. Thank you for your [indiscernible] because I'm still young, so I want to ask a question like in 40 years time. So our U.K. rent values are very low. So do you think you are going -- in future, you are going to expand our business to Europe or if the American jet company want to take over us, so what should we do, because we want to keep these forever?

Will we still be going in 40 years? It may not be me. I hope it is you. Where to start on that question. So when we moved into Ireland in 2016, I think, from memory. We did so for 2 reasons. One, the yields were attractive, but also euro interest rates were lower. So the gap on new business was much more significantly favorable, and that's still true today. U.K. interest rates for lots of reasons are not very attractive. Inflation is really slightly ahead again. And there's a question on the fiscal rectitude of the British government. Those concerns don't seem to worry the euro market quite as much. So Irish business is still more profitable for us than British business. And we still have work to do on getting starting rents up within the U.K. portfolio. But U.K. is our core business, and we have looked at other European territories. But at the moment, we have no plans to go there, but we keep it under constant review. And as to overseas interest, obviously, the American market is very, very different from ours as a healthcare market. But we're keen -- that's why we put a lot of effort into our share price, so that we don't become vulnerable to a takeover. Would you like to add anything?

No, I think that's a very good response. We do get asked that, well, maybe not the 40-year question too often, but the second part of your question, certainly, if you look at the healthcare REITs in the U.S., which you're referring too, they've been really successful. They are sort of the wealth towers of this world. Not that long ago, we had a market cap, not that widely different to our own of around $10 billion. Every time I look, they've gone up another $10 billion. So I think they're about $150 billion market cap now. It's a different market. And they are active in the U.K. They're active in Europe.

So -- but they're also more active in elderly care.

Elderly care, yes.

And elderly care for us has got more exposure to the operator type risk, which is something that we don't have on the U.K. primary care business where the government pays the rent kind of irrespective of the quality of the care that's being delivered by the GPs in Britain and Ireland. So that attractiveness of the income stream with nonoperator risk is a very significant benefit for us.

Yes. I think there's plenty of investors we've met in the last few weeks that would love the prospect of PHP being another sort of turbocharged wealth tower type healthcare REIT in the market that we're in, yes, it's a growth sector. I was very keen to point that out, but it's a different market, as Harry mentioned. And then with the U.S. theme, of course, we were successful acquiring Assura, and we were competing with U.S. private equity. On this occasion, 2 huge global infrastructure funds in KKR and Stonepeak. And if you look at inflows across the globe right now, most people are experiencing outflows. But these infrastructure funds are getting more and more money coming in. So that money doesn't go away. It clearly likes our asset class because it tried to buy Assura. We were successful. And if the share price is behaving, I'm sure they'll continue to look at us. But yes, we're just focused on doing what we're doing. We've got a number of priorities right now, and we've got plenty to do.

A couple of questions. On LTV, you mentioned it's over 50% -- 60%. When are you able to say when you plan to bring it down to below 50%? And also something about the debt maturity profile over the next few years? Because I noticed the 10-year gilt rate is nearly -- it reached 5%?

Yes, it is.

So, I don't know how these going to impact the debt maturities profile over the next few years. And the second question is you mentioned the cost savings from the combined group, I think, GBP 7.8 million so far. Just a bit of color on how you managed to achieve that?

Yes, I can do that, and you already helped out with the LTV, as we're doing that. So the first question was when we completed the Assura transaction last year. We said that we would -- I mean, that leverage was signed first at the time. We told the market that's where we were heading. We told the market we had a very clear plan. And we told the market we would delever back in line with our policies by the end of this year -- end of this year being our financial year, which happens to be the calendar year. I'm quietly confident we can do that sooner. There's the USS transaction that we've already announced. The private hospital transaction which is hopefully kind of get announced shortly, and we're making good progress on that. And if we do those 2 key steps, we continue getting rental growth, which will be positive from a valuation perspective. Those 3 factors will bring our loan-to-value down together with our net debt EBITDA. So I think on timing, I think we can do everything that we need to do this year, which is what we said at the time of the combination. On maturity, there's a maturity chart set out in our presentation. We've got no maturities this year. There's some maturity next year that which we can extend for another 2 years. So we've got plenty of time. One of the -- I think, significant economic benefits of this transaction, which was actually a key attraction to KKR and Stonepeak by the way, as well is that Assura has done a very good job on the liability side of its balance sheet and it issued over GBP 900 million of unsecured listed bonds. They have pretty long maturity. Importantly for us, very low coupons, and we've retained those bonds, which are with us long in the future. Did you want to say anything else about that?

Yes. I think it's important to note that the vast majority of PHP's debt is fixed or hedged out for long periods of time. The only variable rate debt we have is GBP 1 billion bridging facility put in place to acquire Assura and the majority of that will get repaid when we complete the disposals into joint ventures, which we already discussed. So we have very limited exposure to bond rates in the short term. Obviously, as debt does fall due for maturity, we will have to look at where rates are at that time. But we have lots of other options in terms of raising debt. And very important thing to note is the credit market has been very supportive of PHP throughout its history and is exceptionally supportive for us doing the transaction. And we hope to make some further announcements with our half year results, before that around the synergies we started to see coming through the cost of finance for the enlarged scale of the business.

On the cost savings point, I think you asked where is that coming from. So of the GBP 9 million, 60% of that is people related, and we've now pretty much delivered all of that. We've managed to do it as quickly as we have. Through taking over Assura, all of the Board has left or departed the combined business with the exception of Jonathan that we're delighted to have retained on the PHP Board, a bit of the Exco. I think Assura had 8 on Exco. We had 4 combined with 5. That's done. As you can imagine, higher cost in any business tends to be at the higher end, the Board and the Exco and the senior leadership team.

Sorry, Exco?

Executive Committee runs the business day in, day out. And then of the other 40%, that's not people related, 20% of that is professional fees, and we're making progress -- good progress on that. A lot of that sort of duplication advisers, et cetera. Some of that will come through later in the year, but we've made good progress. And then the final 20% around property costs, smaller offices, because we don't need all of the offices that the 2 businesses had when run independently. So there's some savings there and then other savings in direct property costs. So great progress and proud to be able to update the market with 87% of the way through. We only got management control of the business in November, because we had to wait for the CMA, as Harry said in his opening remarks, to finish their work. So I think we're in a good place.

Okay. I think at this point, we will move to the formal proceedings. And as I said, we will all be around for a short while afterwards, if you got something you didn't want to ask in the full glare of public. So off we go. In line with best practice and as stated in the notice of Annual General Meeting, all the resolutions set out in the notice will be decided on a poll, which means that shareholders have one vote for every share held in the company. Accordingly, as Chair, I'm now calling for a poll to be taken on all resolutions put to the meeting, and appointing our registrars Equiniti as the poll scrutineer. If you have already voted by proxy, then you don't need to complete the poll card. Your vote will be taken into account automatically. If you have voted by proxy and wish to change your vote, you can complete the poll card and your new voting instructions will be taken into account. Those of you entitled to vote will already have been given a poll card at registration. If you don't have a poll card or if you need additional poll cards or a pen, please raise your hand now and Equiniti will come and assist you. And we are -- we have one for you, please. So we will explain that you need to complete the poll card by inserting your full name and address in block capitals and inserting the name of your corporate representative if that applies. Please indicate on the poll card how you wish to cast your vote in respect of each resolution by putting a cross in one of the boxes for, against or withheld. Please note that a vote withheld is not a vote in law and will not be counted in the total votes. If you wish to vote only some of your shares on a particular resolution, then the poll scrutineer will explain to you how to complete your card. Please ensure that you sign the poll card and provide it to the registrars. So I now propose formally that each of the resolutions set out in the Notice of Meeting and also on the poll card is put to the meeting each as separate resolutions. Resolutions 18 to 21 are special resolutions and require 75% of the votes cast to be passed. All other resolutions are ordinary resolutions requiring just a simple majority. The full text of each of the resolutions and the explanatory notes are set out in the Notice of Meeting. So I now declare the poll formally open. And here are the votes that have been received already. So it's almost unanimous for most of the resolutions for, as a few that are sort of around the 90% level. So we've got overwhelming support for those resolutions. The poll will close 10 minutes after the end of the meeting. And if you have any questions, as I said, please speak to the registrar's representative who will be in the room. Many shareholders have already sent a proxy to the company appointing me to vote on their behalf. I'll therefore vote these shares in accordance with the instructions given. Just to be clear again, shareholders who have already lodged their proxies do not need to complete a poll card. Sorry, it was that early to share the votes, there we are. As you can see, we have overwhelming support for all of the resolutions. So thank you to everyone who is a shareholder who voted. If you're attending in person, these votes will be added to the figures that are shown, and we will be announcing the final results as soon as practical via RNS in the U.K. and SENS for the JSE. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the formal business of the 2026 AGM. Thank you for your attendance, excellent questions, and I now declare the meeting closed. Feel free to join us for refreshments, tea, coffee or water in the adjoining room, we'll be around to answer further questions. And thanks very much to those attending in South Africa. We hope to see you in person soon. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. End of the meeting.

Thank you. This does concludes today's meeting. You may now disconnect.