Okay, good afternoon. I'm Mark Freeman, the CEO and Managing Director of the Australian Foundation Investment Company, and welcome to this result briefing. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians from all the lands we are gathered on today and pay my respects to their elders, both past, present, and emerging. I have joining me today on the webinar, David Grace, Portfolio Manager from the investment team, Niall Lucas, also from the investment team, Andrew Porter, our CFO, Matthew Rowe, our Company Secretary, and Geoff Driver, the General Manager of Business Development. Before we start the presentation, a bit of housekeeping on the webinar. This briefing is based on the material available on the company's website. If you are using your computer to access the presentation via the webcast, the slides will change automatically.
If you are accessing by phone only, a PDF of the slides with page numbers is available on the website. Finally, please note, following the presentation, there'll be time for questions and answers. You can ask a question either via the webcast or through the operator. I will now start the presentation, and the team will then run through the remainder of the presentation before we turn to the question-and-answer session. On the slide 2, there is a disclaimer just to say we're here to talk about what we do in the company. We're not here to give any advice. On to the next slide, the agenda. I'll just give a brief overview of the objectives, then I'll pass over to Andrew Porter, our CFO, to talk about the results. David Grace and Niall Lucas will then talk about the markets portfolio activity and the outlook.
Just moving to slide five, the investment objectives. The company aims to provide shareholders with attractive investment returns through access to a growing stream of fully franked dividends and growth in capital invested. Our overall aim is to pay dividends, which over time grow faster than the rate of inflation, and to provide attractive total returns over the medium to long term. Before passing over to Andrew, I just thought I'd touch on ESG. It's clearly a big topic for all investors. At the moment, just a bit on how we think about ESG. As the heading of the slides suggests, ESG considerations are integrated into our investment frameworks. The long-term sustainability of a company's business model is a key focus of ours, and it's a key input in how we assess quality.
Environmental, social and governance issues lend themselves to an analysis of that. It's a key part of our investment process. We regularly review companies to ensure ongoing alignment with our investment frameworks. Engagement with companies is also an important part of our process. We conduct our own evaluations on the merits of any shareholding resolutions and also take input from proxy advisors, but at the end of the day, we make our own decisions. We vote on all company resolutions as part of our regular engagement with companies, and we actively engage with companies, including when we have concerns that those resolutions are not aligned with shareholder interests. With that, I'll pass over to Andrew Porter to talk through the results.
Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Slide or page 8 for those of you who are following the presentation at home. The profit for the half year at AUD 163.7 million, that's up 12.2% from the same time last year. There will be more details on the components of that in the shareholder review that will be going out with people's dividend statements. In a nutshell, the contribution from the trading portfolio is up. Profit on that was AUD 2.9 million compared to a loss last year. Of course, the major component, the dividends that we receive from companies that we invest in were up 10%. Major contributors to that were companies like Woodside, Transurban, Mainfreight in New Zealand, Santos and the banks.
That increase in profit has led in the next figure down to an increase in the interim dividend from AUD 0.10 to AUD 0.11, an increase of 10%. That's in line with previous statements about trying to align the interim and the final dividends where possible. If there is the ability to do so over time, one would expect to see the interim dividend hopefully come up closer to the final dividend. The total shareholder return at 1.1%, the shareholder return is below the portfolio return. I'll come onto that in a minute. That means that the premium that the shares trade at had come back at the end of December.
The figure on the top right-hand corner, the management expense ratio, this is how much it costs to run AFIC, and that's equivalent to AUD 0.13 for every AUD 100 that you have invested in the company. The portfolio is actually down from last year, AUD 8.5 billion at the end of December, down from AUD 9.6 billion at the same time in 2021. All things being good, you'd expect to see the MER actually increase on that. However, due to changes in remuneration policy, there was a profit from AICS, which is the company's subsidiary, which employs the people who work for AFIC and the other LICs, and that's had a short-term impact in lowering that MER to 0.13%. The portfolio return, as there, 7.1%, including franking, that is below the ASX 200 Accumulation Index.
David and Niall will go into some more detail on the causes and the reasons behind that later on. As I said, last figure, bottom right-hand side, AUD 8.5 billion, down from AUD 9.6 billion at this time last year. Just because I know shareholders are interested with regards to the franking balances that AFIC has. At the end of June, AFIC had just under, effectively, just under AUD 0.37 per share after payment of the final dividend. As you'd expect, if you've seen the financial figures, profit a little bit higher than that. Actually the franking credit is. You would expect to see the franking credit balance being a little higher than that. AFIC is still well reserved when it comes to franking credits. Moving on to the next slide on page 9.
That illustrates what I was talking about in terms of the premium that the shares trade at, having come down during the year from the previous due to the shareholder return, the share price return being less than the NTA return. That's what led at the time the board decided a 2.5% discount to, on the DRP or the bonus share plan/DSSP that shareholders can invest in. With that, I'll pass over to David and to Mark. Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew. Good afternoon, everybody. Moving on to slide 11. As we've included in previous presentations, the charts on the slide show long-term valuation metrics for the overall market. The chart showing the price-to-book and price-to-sales for the ASX 200 over the last 20 years. To help you understand market sentiments, particularly investor risk appetite towards the broader market. While they bounce around a fair bit, both measures indicate that the valuation of the overall market is slightly above long-term averages. While a helpful starting point, we know the operating environment today for many companies is more challenging with earnings growth harder to come by as leading economic indicators are slowing while companies are left with stubbornly high cost bases. As a reminder, we invest in quality companies over the long term.
We wanna benefit from the value that compounding returns deliver to shareholders over many years. We're not trying to pick the next inflation data nor the timing of interest rate moves. Spend our time identifying companies that can deliver meaningful earnings growth over our investment time horizon. Companies that own and operate highly strategic assets that provide a competitive advantage, driving the ability to generate free cash flow in a range of economic environments. Moving on to slide 12. The operating environment for companies remains uncertain and investor sentiment is focused short term. Investors are weighing up the probability of economic recession, what will China reopening mean for global demand, the rising debt levels of governments globally, and the rise in operating costs for many companies.
As I mentioned earlier, while we remain aware of the external operating environment, our focus remains on the fundamentals of the companies that we invest into. Which companies are able to deliver meaningful cash flow growth over the long term, companies with the opportunity to invest these cash flows to deliver superior long-term growth while maintaining strong balance sheets and being run by highly capable boards and management teams. Pie chart on the slide shows portfolio diversification as we look to build a portfolio able to perform in a variety of economic environments. Moving around the quadrants, we want a mix of growth companies holding market leadership positions, where long-term growth prospects remain strong. For example, Goodman Group, CSL, James Hardie and REA. Cyclicals with strong balance sheets favorably exposed to long-term economic growth, including resource companies, BHP and Rio Tinto.
Stalwarts being companies owning difficult-to-replicate strategic assets, well-positioned to deliver long-term earnings growth. These include the likes of Transurban, Wesfarmers, Auckland Airport and Woolworths. Finally, income stocks, companies with an attractive dividend yield, as dividends play an important role in total shareholder returns. These include the banks, Telstra, Mirvac and JB Hi-Fi. As we look to deliver our investment objectives, we want to understand the attributes of each company and what purpose they bring to the portfolio. Maintaining appropriate diversification across the four factors shown allows the portfolio to perform under various scenarios. Moving on to slide 13. The chart on the left-hand side shows the relative performance of the portfolio against the ASX 200 over various time periods. Including franking, over the last six months, the market increased 10.8%, while the portfolio delivered a return of 7.1%.
As a reminder, the returns for the portfolio are shown after tax and expenses. Tax was a meaningful drag on performance during the year as a result of the takeover of long-held investment in Sydney Airport. Longer-term performance is slightly below the performance of the market. As we highlighted earlier, the variability of the operating environment over recent years has been as volatile as we've seen for some time. As shown on the slide, portfolio performance over the last 12 months has been disappointing. The 2 largest drags on performance are as follows. Firstly, and the most significant, has been a sharp pullback in share prices of many quality companies. These include James Hardie, Reece, Mainfreight and ARB Corporation. For context, all these companies delivered exceptionally strong returns in the prior 2 years, with all having delivered positive returns over the last 3 years, inclusive of the recent pullback.
These are all high quality companies, well-positioned to deliver strong long-term returns to shareholders. As a low turnover, tax-aware investor, we elected to hold on to the majority of our holdings in these quality businesses. The fundamentals of these companies are unchanged, and following a period of overvaluation, we now consider valuations to be reasonable and have recently added to our positions in James Hardie and Reece. Secondly, as the chart on the right-hand side shows, the best performing sectors in 2022 were energy and utilities. Ultimately, the strong performance was reflective of supply chain challenges for energy following Russia's conflict in the Ukraine. We do have some exposure to these sectors in the portfolio, albeit it's only small.
These sectors are notoriously cyclical. As long-term investors, we see better opportunities to capture consistent earnings growth where we stand to benefit from the value of compounding returns. In a market that was down 1% for the year, the chart on the right-hand side shows a huge dispersion of returns between the best and worst sectors, with energy up 49% and information technology down almost 34%. Valuations in the IT sector reached extreme levels last year to a point where risk was being mispriced. While many of these companies have disruptive technology, the market is now starting to appreciate the level of investment required as they attempt to achieve scale. Moving on to slide 14. Slide 14 shows the long-term performance of an investment in Reece, Australia and New Zealand's leading plumbing distribution business.
We're using Reece as an example of the strong returns that can be achieved by maintaining long-term investment in quality companies. Pre-dividends over 20 years, Reece has delivered an annualized share price return of 13.7%, materially outperforming the ASX 200 return of 4.5% per annum. Despite excellent long-term performance, Reece has been a material drag on portfolio performance over the last 12 months. Share price fell 48% last year. This followed a strong one-up in the prior two years. Despite recognizing that Reece was overvalued, we elected to hold on to the majority of our holding as we see the long-term prospects for the company remaining highly attractive. Reece has a dominant market position in Australia and New Zealand, operating out of more than 600 stores, and has the investment attributes we look for.
Market leadership in its core market generates strong free cash flow and maintains heavy investment in the business, both in product and technology, improving ease of doing business for their customers. It has a strong balance sheet and has a strong management team and board with a long history of successful capital allocation. Reece entered the U.S. market in 2018 and has spent the last 4 years defining its competitive advantage. We visited the U.S. operation a few months ago, gaining a deep understanding of the long-term opportunity for the company. Reece has a current network of 200 stores in the U.S., with ambitions to make this far larger over time. Importantly, the company strategy is aligned with our investment thesis.
The growth in the U.S. will be patient and steady, raises a long history of excellent financial discipline while taking advantage of value accretive opportunities as they arise. Moving on to slide 15. Similar to the Reece example, many companies held within the portfolio have displayed an excellent long-term track record of financial discipline while delivering significant value for long-term shareholders. Slide 15 outlines 10 companies that have delivered strong sales growth over many years. All of these companies hold a market leadership position, all have strong balance sheets, and all are run by excellent management teams and boards. The strong sales growth has been delivered over many market cycles, highlighting that well-managed quality companies with market leadership positions deliver strong shareholder value over the long term.
While over time, valuations of these companies have swung between fair value, undervalued, and overvalued, all have maintained a strong profile of delivering shareholder value. All of these companies own and operate highly strategic assets, have a defined competitive advantage, generate meaningful free cash flow, and have a long track record of excellent financial discipline, delivering strong shareholder returns. We believe long-term opportunities for all these companies remain strong. At this point, I'll hand over to Nga, just to talk through recent portfolio transactions.
Thanks, Dave. Just over to slide 17. Slide 17 shows our recent transactions. The companies listed on the left-hand side show stocks we have trimmed or exited during the period. We trimmed our position in Ramsay Health Care after the company received a bid from KKR. The bid subsequently fell away, resulting in share price weakness. However, we remain comfortable with our smaller holding. We trimmed our position in Carsales, Amcor, and NEXTDC to manage the size of those positions in the portfolio. In the case of Temple & Webster, with the share prices of many quality companies falling, we saw more attractive opportunities to reallocate that capital. The decision to exit Orica and Reliance reflects our view that the long-term prospects for these companies will be increasingly challenged as competitive intensity increases.
On the far right-hand side, we show existing holdings that we have added to in the last 12 months. We use share price weakness to buy quality companies when we see value presenting. Short-term share price weakness gave us the opportunity to add to our holdings in BHP, Mirvac, Goodman Group, Santos, SEEK, Woolworths, ARB, Macquarie Group, and Reece. We added to our position in Equity Trustees via an entitlement offer to fund the acquisition of Australian Executor Trustees. We consider all these companies to be high-quality companies. They generate significant free cash flow. They are run by strong management teams and have strong balance sheets able to fund future growth. In the new purchases column, we added one new stock, Breville. Breville is a well-known small kitchen appliance business.
Following a number of years of strong profit and share price performance, recent share price weakness gave us the opportunity to initiate a position in the stock. We've long admired Jim Clayton, Breville's CEO, and his strategy to take the brand offshore whilst building a more enduring platform for the brand. The company invests in R&D and in design innovation, has an experienced management team and a strong balance sheet. In the following slides, we'll focus on a few portfolio companies in more detail, highlighting why we consider them to be good long-term investments for the AFIC portfolio. On slide 18, we start with Wesfarmers. Wesfarmers is a conglomerate that operates a number of large, well-known retail brands, including Bunnings Warehouse, Officeworks, Kmart and Target. Wesfarmers also has a number of other businesses that operate in various industries, including chemicals, energy, industrial, safety and health.
I'd like to turn briefly to Bunnings Warehouse, Australia's leading DIY hardware re-retailer. Bunnings is one of the best retailers in the world and is the key driver of earnings growth at Wesfarmers at over 60% of group earnings. It also generates the highest return on capital employed in the company. The business has a long runway of growth through store network expansion. They continue to focus on strengthening the DIY customer offering, expanding data and digital capabilities, and targeting the trade customer whilst maintaining cost discipline. At the group level, we like that Wesfarmers looks to establish new businesses and invest in existing operations to provide a good return to shareholders in the long term. Examples of this include the development of the Mount Holland lithium project, the establishment of the health division, and their investment in the OneD igital platform.
The company also has a strong balance sheet and a highly regarded management team. Over onto slide 19. Auckland Airport owns a high-quality, dominant airport infrastructure asset in Auckland. The freehold nature of Auckland Airport and its large undeveloped land bank set it apart from other infrastructure assets. We think international passenger numbers will continue to recover post-COVID. It is currently at over 75% of 2019 levels, and airport profitability should broadly recover in line with passenger numbers. China announcing the reopening of its borders should also help drive this recovery. The balance sheet is solid with ample capacity for future CapEx needs, and the management team is highly experienced. Over onto slide 20, PEXA. PEXA is a relatively newer company to the portfolio, having listed in 2021.
PEXA is Australia's leading digital property settlements platform, allowing Australians to settle property transactions online rather than having to physically exchange paper documents. PEXA handles over 80% of all property transfers and over 90% of all refinancing transactions nationally. Its competitive advantage lies in it being a first mover in building the connections between 6 land titles offices, 5 state revenue offices, the Reserve Bank, financial institutions, and conveyancing and law practitioners in Australia. The U.K. market represents a key growth opportunity for PEXA, with an estimated market opportunity 2 and a half times the size of the Australian market. PEXA again has first mover advantage in the U.K. and is leveraging their proven track record in Australia in establishing a similar platform.
Management are making good progress in the UK and we're optimistic about the long-term opportunity ahead, which will take time to execute. At this point, I'd like to hand back to Dave for some outlook comments.
Thanks, Nga. Moving on to slide 22. We've highlighted in the presentation today that economic conditions and the operating environment for companies remains uncertain. The effects of inflation and high living costs are placing pressure on parts of the economy. In this environment, investor sentiment is short term, waiting to determine the impact to company earnings from the challenging operating environments. In actively managing the portfolio, we look to identify quality companies, hold them in a meaningful way, and look to own over the long term to benefit from the power that compounding returns can deliver to shareholders. Portfolio remains invested in well-managed, high-quality companies that own and operate highly strategic assets while maintaining strong balance sheets. At this point, I'll now hand back to Geoff to coordinate the Q&A.
Thanks, David. Just to remind participants, you can ask a question via the Ask a Question tab at the top right-hand side of the webcast window, or you can press star 11 for a question on the phone. The first question, which I'll pass to Mark, perhaps. AFIC seems to be underperforming the ASX in the short and long term. Why shouldn't I just invest in an ASX 200 ETF instead?
Yeah, thanks, Geoff. Well, as you can see on the previous chart, we're just a little bit behind the index. Clearly our intent is to beat the index. We're certainly working hard and focused on doing that and would like to see our performance improve going forward. I guess having said that, just a couple of factors I would say is that we are comparing ourselves with the index. The index is pre-tax, pre-cost. I guess as an investor, you can't actually get to the index in ETF. We'll have certainly costs being taken out of it. It's also pre-tax. We're post-tax. We've actually.
develop quite a bit of capital gains at the moment. We've got quite a lot of franking credit sitting on the balance sheet that we haven't paid out.
They're not on the balance sheet, that's franking credits aren't, of course, on the balance sheet. That's part of the issue.
We've got quite a lot of franking credits, and until the point we pay those out, it's a drag on our performance. I guess a couple of other factors is, you know, AFIC's had a much more stable dividend profile than being in the index, and we know our shareholders appreciate that steadiness through the fully franked dividends we pay out over the long term. The volatility of our returns tends to be lower than the index, and obviously through the LIC structure, it's a transparency. It gives to investors as well. Yes, I reiterate, you know, our intent is still to beat the index over the long term.
Thanks, Mark. The question here about what investments does AFIC has been lithium production? David?
Thanks, Geoff. Look, we do like the lithium thematic, but at the moment, there are no pure play lithium producers in the portfolio. The thinking or the logic behind that is really just our caution around current valuation levels. The lithium price is now trading significantly above cost of production, in fact, many multiples of the cost of production. With lithium as a mineral being widely available, we see that as a large incentive for new supply to come to the market. It's a sector that we continue to watch, but our interest levels really would be at lower prices where we feel that the risk/reward is more balanced than what it is currently.
Thanks, David. question about our holdings in Woodside and Santos. The question is, I'll read the question directly. How can we be assured you won't get the green bug and start offloading Woodside? noting that you increased your Santos position, which is good, and also referencing the fact that we're under BHP, was that a large contributor to the underperformance of the portfolio?
Sure. First of all, I'll just touch on, I guess, our view around the LNG or the energy market. Our exposures are through Santos and Woodside, and quite rightly, we did add to our Santos position, having seen the share price fall quite materially during the period. Look, we view both of those companies as largely to be producers of LNG, and in our mind, that's a critical transition fuel as we do move towards energy coming from more renewable sources. In that regard, we see demand remaining high for some period of time while that transition takes place. We remain pretty comfortable to hold both of those companies, believing that they'll both generate quite material cash flows as that transition occurs.
In regards to BHP, we were around index weight initially and with an upweighting in the index, having seen the collapse of the DLC structure out of the U.K. The index weight increased quite materially in that period, that was about a 4%-5% increase in index weighting. While we did buy quite a substantial amount of BHP during the period, it wasn't enough to get us back to an overweight position. While it was a drag on performance in the context of the things that I mentioned during the presentation, it wasn't material.
Just another thing to add just on the Woodside and Santos. That transition fuel piece is obviously really important, but we want these companies to improve on their ESG capabilities, and certainly, they put out a ton of information on how they're looking to do that. That's what we're looking for, is our companies to continuously improve their ESG position, and that helps us sort of sustain any investment in them.
Thanks, Mark. Just on, this is a related question, I guess, in some ways. Given our portfolio focus, regarding climate change, do you think the portfolio reflects ESG in this, in the structure of the portfolio in terms of climate change?
Yes. I guess just ESG more broadly, as opposed to any particular element of that. We're certainly very focused on ESG, and it's one of the considerations that we take into mind with any investment we make or to hold on to any investment. Just reiterating that our process is very much looking at the long-term performance of the investments that we make. ESG factors are critical in terms of the company being able to deliver consistent earnings growth over the long term. It's certainly one of the key criteria that we look for, as is many other things that really just affect the company's ability to be able to deliver strong share price performance over a long-term horizon.
Just, to follow up, Geoff, we have looked at the portfolio in terms of how it compares to the index.
In terms of carbon intensity.
...in terms of carbon intensity, and it's well below the index. It is something we will continue to track going forward. As I said, we want all our companies to continuously improve on ESG factors.
Thanks, Mark. David, has there been an increase in international exposure in the portfolio, and is there still a plan to spin off the international LIC?
We've added a bit more to the portfolio. We do have the capability to add a bit more, but just to remind investors, we said we're gonna keep it between 1% to 1.5% of the overall portfolio, so a very small overall position. Obviously, we wanna develop a longer-term track record, which is consistent to our approach. The portfolio performance, we've been over the 6 months, it was a very pleasing 6 months. The pathway we see on that is, gives us a lot of comfort. It's just that longer-term track record we wanna see first before we think about bringing it to the market as a product.
Yep. Thanks, Mark. With regarding Reece's recent performance, why did the stock fall 48%, which seems extreme? Was it due to the U.S. strategy, or did Reece have to move into the U.S. for growth of earnings? Similar to PEXA, do they need to move into larger economies to achieve earnings growth?
Yeah. On Reece, there's a chart we put into the slide there on slide 14, just shows the 20-year performance of Reece. Over 19 years, Reece has been an outstanding investment for the portfolio. Over the last 12 months, it's been a really poor investment. The anomaly really is the run up that the share price had in the prior 2 years, so in 2020 and 2021, where the valuation of the stock got to quite excessive levels. At that point in time, we elected to trim some of our holding, but we held on to the majority. Reece is a highly liquid stock.
We still see the opportunities for this business to be quite significant, both within the Australian and New Zealand market, where it is the clear market leader in plumbing distribution. Nara and myself went over to the US a couple of months ago and spent the best part of the day with the US operations team and got a really firm understanding of exactly how they see the opportunity to grow within that market. We came away really encouraged about the patient approach that they're taking, as well as the opportunity that the company sees in front of them. It was really just valuation or an overvaluation that led to the pullback. At current levels, we feel really positive that it now more reasonably reflects the long-term prospects for this company.
In fact, we have actually added to our position in recent times.
You know, in that regard, the business performance is really tracking to targeting. In fact, it's probably done better out of the U.S. than the market had thought. This is one of those situations where the share price doesn't reflect what's going on in the business. It's really been a very steady performance out of Reece, but the share market has taken the price on a rollercoaster ride that doesn't reflect the underlying business.
Thanks, Mark and David. Couple of related questions, I guess. What, if any, exposure do we have in OZ Minerals, and what do we think about stock Mineral Resources?
Oz Minerals, we don't have any exposure to the actual share Oz Minerals. Within the resources sector, our two largest positions are Rio and BHP, which have done very well, obviously, share price-wise in recent months. Both of them operate low-cost Tier 1 assets, with a long mine life, where we feel really comfortable about the opportunities for those businesses going forward. Certainly when we see a pullback in the iron ore price, given their low-cost nature, they're still able to generate meaningful cash flow at a low point in the cycle. We've been really encouraged over recent years just about the improved balance sheet positioning in both of those companies. Min Resources, the largest driver or largest contributor earnings today is around the lithium business, which is a really highly strategic asset.
It's one of the ones of the lithium sector that we're most focused on in terms of a potential investment. As I answered earlier to one of the questions, was just around the lithium sector and the overvaluation where we're just cautious about paying too high a price for that, where we feel that the risk outweighs the reward. At a more reasonable valuation, we'd certainly be interested in Min Resources, but also others within that sector.
Thanks, David. Andrew, I'll throw this one to you. Are the proposed government changes to the treatment of franking credits likely to affect APRA and more generally impact the market?
Thank you, Geoff. In short, the answer is no, they shouldn't. Just to remind shareholders, there have been 2 recently announced changes. The first one was to make it harder for companies essentially to exploit a loophole and issue shares in order that they may pay a dividend which they can then frank. As we explained at the AGM and shareholder meetings, we think that legislation could have been better worded and should have been better worded. We passed those comments on to government and to The Treasury. It was designed for a very narrow loophole, normally in private companies. I think it'd be very difficult to draw a bow that would include the companies that we invest in. As you said, it was poorly worded and there is ground for improvement on that.
The other piece of legislation was to deny franking to effectively off-market buybacks, which some companies, particularly BHP and Rio, for instance, have used to distribute. Hesitant to use the word streaming, but to distribute those excess franking credits. That was always a bit of an anomaly. The alternative could have been to reduce the maximum discount that you can do on that, but I can understand the government's need to do that. It may lead to companies paying out more special dividends with those franking credits, which would be good for us. We'll just have to wait and see. That legislation will probably impact the larger superannuation funds more. My overall comment, to badly misquote somebody, is the price of franking credits is eternal vigilance.
We do need to ensure that governments do not tinker with the franking credit system at the expense of ordinary shareholders. We'll continue to watch and observe that and make representations as necessary.
Thanks, Andrew. Well, in the presentation, we focused on some of the success stories. Were there any poor investments you exited or reduced during the period? What were the lessons learned from this particular time in the market?
Thanks for the question. In terms of things that we exited during the period, which is poor, was we didn't sell Orica at the highest level, we sold out of that one too early. Really our thinking there was that you've seen a real spike in the ammonium nitrate price, and that's really linked back to Russia's invasion of Ukraine has taken a lot of supply out of the market. We saw a sharp acceleration in the AN price, which has led to positive earnings backdrop for Orica. We felt that that got to levels that were unsustainable, but we certainly got out too early, and that the share prices continued to go higher post our selling.
The other 2 that have been disappointing for us have been stocks that were held prior to the period that did underperform, and they were 2 smaller quality companies in the likes of FINEOS and Temple & Webster. These are both in the technology space. We mentioned that the information technology sector fell quite materially over the last 12 months, and these 2 companies weren't immune to that. They were held during the period, and they've subsequently had a better time of it in the last 2 months. Certainly over the last 12 months, they were a drag on portfolio performance.
Thanks, Dave. I've got a question here about, is there any pressure from shareholders in regards to environmental, social, and governance issues, ESG factors, as we referred to them earlier on, or to divest from certain industries?
Well, probably just be upfront that, certainly on the social area, we've stated that we've never invested in pure play gambling stocks, and we've made that very clear to the market and to our shareholders. That's a social position we've taken, and we continue to take that one. I guess on other areas where there's broadly concern. Look, we get away with a few questions at our shareholder meetings. I wouldn't say we aren't updated with comments, but obviously we're very keen to put out into the market our views. We commented more generally on the gas sector and the oil and gas and knowing that Santos and Woodside are more about gas in terms of the future and, but their importance to the overall transition in fuels.
Again, I would just reiterate that it's about seeing all these businesses improve on ESG factors, and it's about how we assess the long-term, I guess, the investment opportunity in companies when you incorporate issues they may have around ESG, and do they stack up as a sound investment for our shareholders.
Thanks, Mark. We'll circle back to the international. Again, a couple of questions here. I think we've answered the question about whether we're looking to establish a separate AFIC LLC for international shares, which you touched on earlier on. It's about the track record and being comfortable that we can actually take to the market in an effective and positive way. A related question here: Does AFIC have a plan to add more overseas exposures given the recent sell-down in the U.S. high-tech quality stocks such as, Alphabet, Microsoft?
Yeah. Well, we did do, as I said, we did add a bit more to the portfolio during the period. We're constantly... Well, not constantly. When we see opportunities for some repositioning, where we see value, we do that, and obviously there was a big sell-off in tech, and we'll continue to do that. I mean, the objective is to stay with quality companies, and where we see opportunities in the market to perhaps trim some stocks that look really expensive, and if we see some better opportunities elsewhere, we'll move within those sectors. We still wanna stay low turnover. In that regard, it's the intent is to have a similar approach to AFIC, sticking with the quality and then looking for value within those, that area of the market.
Thanks, Mark. Just a reminder, if you wanna ask a question via the phone, star one one, for a question via the phone. I've got a question here about, do we hold Worley and, is it fairly priced?
We don't own Worley, and our reason for not owning it is just around valuation. We feel that the valuation is pretty full for the operating environment that the company is exposed to. We do like that long-term thematic just around renewable energy and the increased demand for Worley or engineering services that they can get exposure to. We feel that the market has probably rerated it too highly in the short term, and it's a long-term thematic that will play out. We do watch it quite closely, but at this point in time, we have no exposure.
All right. Thanks, David. Just a reminder, you can ask a question via the web. We don't appear to have any further questions via the phone or any questions via the phone, and we don't appear to have any further questions via the web. I'll hand it back to Mark to wrap up the meeting.
Okay. Thank you everyone for your participation. It's really important that we do these updates, so we need to be accountable to our shareholders about what we're doing and questions are a critical part of that. Obviously, we'll be doing shareholder information meetings in March around the capital cities, mainly in the capital cities. If shareholders want to meet with us and ask questions in person, please attend those meetings. Obviously, we'll be doing another briefing like this, in July to talk through our full year results. With that, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Good day.