Hello and welcome to the AMCIL Full-year Financial Results Briefing. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There'll be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. All questions will be taken via the webcast. If you'd like to ask a question at that time, please enter your question in the Ask a Question box at the bottom of the webcast window. I'd now like to hand the presentation over to Mark Freeman, Managing Director of AMCIL. Please go ahead.
Okay. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this full -year result briefing. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians from the lands we're gathered on today and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. I have joining me today on the webinar Jaye Guy and Gilbert Battistella from the investment team, Andrew Porter, our CFO, Matthew Rowe, our Company Secretary, and Geoff Driver, our 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. Finally, please note following the presentation, there'll be time for questions and answers. You can ask a question via the webcast using the tab at the bottom of the screen.
Just moving to the slide, Slide two, the disclaimer, just to say we are here to talk about what we're doing in the company, and we're not giving any advice as such. Just to kick off the presentation, I'll pass to Andrew, our CFO, to talk about the results.
Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Slide four is the relevant slide in the presentation, and we start in the top left-hand corner where we see the profit for the year was AUD 7.5 million, down slightly from AUD 7.6 million the year before. The key driver of that was the decrease in dividends that we got mainly from resource stocks. For instance, BHP alone, we received AUD 700,000 less in the year just gone, the year ended June 2024, than we did in the previous years. And many shareholders with shareholdings in BHP, Woodside, etc., would have seen the same thing. Still, we think a pretty good result. Notwithstanding that, as other companies, banks, etc., did increase their dividends. That led to the final dividend of AUD 0.025 plus a special dividend of AUD 0.005.
So when you include the interim dividend, that's AUD 0.04 all up for the year. And there was a low level of capital gains this year as we had brought forward losses from the prior year that we had to use up before we could make any taxable capital gains, which would generate franking credits. The portfolio return of 20.5%, well ahead of the market of 13.5% for the year, and we'll go into more detail on the portfolio performance later on. The management expense ratio of 0.56%, down from 0.66% the year before. That's AUD 0.56 for every AUD 100. Now, the key driver of a management expense ratio, it's the amount of costs that it takes to run the company as a percentage of the average portfolio value. So the real driver of the management expense ratio will be the movement in the portfolio.
Notwithstanding that, as we discussed at the AGM and shareholder briefings last year, the actual cost of running the company did decrease year- on- year, and a large part of that was because of the underperformance in the prior year. It meant that essentially AMCIL got a refund or got a credit note for some of those costs this year, which helped drive it down. And we went into detail about how that would work last year. So AUD 0.56, down from AUD 0.66. I would expect because of AMCIL's performance this year that the actual cost will probably increase this year, 2024, 2025. So just to reiterate, the real driver of the management expense ratio will be that portfolio performance. Slide five, the next slide, just has a look at the premium discount chart.
This is important to draw shareholders' attention to because it says, "Are you buying the underlying assets at more than they were, or are you buying the underlying assets at less than they were?" At 30th of June 2024, the NTA was AUD 1.26, share price AUD 1.10. So you were buying, if you were buying it at AUD 1.10, a 13% discount to the NTA. Now, a lot of LICs are creating deeper discounts than normal at the moment. Our suspicion is that it's part because a lot of asset managers are saying you can now get a decent yield out of fixed interest if you'll be switching out of equities or out of some of your equities into fixed interest. We suspect that is having some impact.
Overall, the market's been up about 4% so far this month, so you'd expect the AMCIL NTA also to be up about 4%, and the share price is $1.15. So what that means is you're still able to buy AMCIL shares at a pretty good discount to their underlying value. With that, I'll pass over to Mark.
Okay. Thanks, Andrew. So we move on to the longer-term performance numbers, which is slide 7. As Andrew picked up the one-year numbers, he's talked through those. Longer-term, five years, comparable to the index 10-year. We're about in line, but we show this performance based on the franking credits we've actually paid out. We still have franking credits sitting in the company. If we were to pay out all those immediately, those performance numbers for AMCIL would be higher than what you're seeing. So we tend to show a conservative view of the performance numbers on the company. We just moved to the next slide just to talk about some of the features of AMCIL. So it is a focused portfolio. The filter we put on it is we want to invest in quality companies.
Index weightings don't necessarily drive the size of our holdings. There's strong alignment of interest. There's a low management cost of AMCIL compared to other sort of what we call higher-conviction funds. There's no performance fees, and there's significant equity ownership by directors and staff in AMCIL. So for the directors and staff, it's in our interest to see AMCIL perform over the long term. We still try and keep our portfolio turnover relatively low. We know a lot of other more actively managed funds in the market can churn their portfolios a lot. Being a high-conviction fund, there's always going to be some turnover, but we never want it to be excessive because that just generates tax at the end of the day. In AMCIL, we are focused on a particular framework we're working towards, which is on the next slide, slide nine.
This is the filter we put on our stocks, which we would say is a very true reflection of our or the team's investment process, which is to look for businesses that have unique assets that are hard to replicate. Or another way of talking about that is companies that have an industry leadership position or a developing one, a sustainable competitive advantage. We're aware of companies where external factors can impact the business. Balance sheet is really important, so we don't want to own companies that have too much debt. We prefer companies that have consistent earning streams, and the people running the business is critical.
So we want companies that are run by really good management teams, and we have a strong bias towards what we call owner-driver businesses or ownership alignment or founder-led companies where the people that started the running, started the business, are running the company. We get a great success with many of those businesses, and if you look through AMCIL's portfolio, we're full of owner-driver companies, which we're really pleased about. So when you put those factors together, what that means is you're taking a view on sustainable competitive advantage. Companies that have that generally make higher return on capital, which means you generate more cash to reinvest in the business to drive growth. This enables you to capture opportunities and then ultimately leads to shareholder value through growing profits.
Ultimately, what we're trying to do is set up a framework that helps us understand which companies have the best chance to grow earnings, profits and earnings, because ultimately share prices follow earnings per share. Then we look to buy such companies when we see value, and if companies fail on any of these characteristics, we are usually sellers, and then often we will exit the business. Moving on to the next slide, which is about diversification, you can see it is a diversified portfolio across sectors, and there's quite an even balance between what I call the really large-cap stocks, greater than AUD 50 billion, more than mid-cap type stocks, which is AUD 5 billion-AUD 15 billion, which is 24%, then another 37% in stocks that are smaller than that again. We're happy to have small, mid, or large-cap stocks. They're all available to us.
It's where we see the best opportunity, and the way we structure the portfolio, we'll tend to be more precise in which larger-cap stocks we want. So sometimes the weighting is larger in those, but we tend to have less of them. And when you get into the smaller-cap stocks, we tend to have more diversification there because what you're trying to do is capture the future winners, and therefore the position sizes tend to be smaller in nature. And so pick the eyes out of the large caps and have a better spread in the smaller companies that have the characteristics that our experience tells us is most likely will lead to a good business for the long term. So just moving on to some of the recent activity overall, some of the stocks we've exited: we've exited Santos and Computershare.
Computershare, we basically had put in there a little while ago more as a trade, and we've made some profits, so we moved on. The stock has continued to trade up, but that was its purpose. Santos, at the margin, we're starting to see, I think, some better buying opportunities in Woodside. Altium was a takeover. So those that have been listening to these webinars the past 18 months will remember us putting this in. This is, Altium was a stock that lined up really well against the framework, so we bought it, and probably no surprise that there was a significant takeover bid, so that proved to be a very successful investment. ASX is a company that we decided to step away from. It still has a lot of the characteristics we look for in terms of its market position.
There seems to be a number of issues the company's dealing with. We want to see those issues go away before we go back into the stock. And IPD Group was another owner-driver stock. It was a small position we had, and we'd made some money out of it, so we moved on, but nothing, no real concerns about the business as such. It's still interesting for us, but it was a small holding that we moved away from. And then some of the stocks we've reduced, you can see NAB, Commonwealth Bank. Banks have been incredibly strong in the market, and we're starting to struggle with the valuation metrics. The P/Es businesses are trading on are extreme when you look through history. So if we see extreme pricing, we're happy to take some money out of those businesses. Likewise with Wesfarmers.
We've still got a big holding in Wesfarmers. We still do have a holding in CBA and NAB as well. But again, the multiples are looking very pricey, and Netwealth, Rio Tinto, Reece, and CSL, we just took a little bit out on valuation metrics, but still big stocks in the portfolio. And then businesses we've added on the other side of reducing NAB and CBA, they produce great franked dividends for us, and we've put some money into Telstra, which we think is more fairly valued. It gives us franked dividends, and Woodside we've been gradually stepping into. Again, that's going to produce good franked dividends. So just trying to go where we see a bit more value in the companies that generate yield for us. We've seen ongoing weakness in IDP, so we've continued to add little bits to that.
Woolworths had been through a period of quite negative news. Again, if you looked at these results probably 12 months ago, we've quite significantly reduced our Woolworths in the high 38, around $38. It looked really expensive. Then it's been through a period of really bad news. The stock got down to sort of 31, 32, so we went the other way and added some back. Then there's some of our smaller stocks. These are owner-driver businesses. Objective Corporation went through a period where it was sold off. There was a large seller in the market that wanted to get out. That was a great opportunity for us to add to that one. Macquarie Technology Group, sorry, they had a capital raising to support development of a data center at a very attractive price, so we're happy to go into that.
Min Resources, we've been picking up bits and pieces along the way. So those last three stocks are all owner-driver or founder-led businesses that we're happy to buy when we see value. And then to the new stocks, as I said, we touched on Telstra. Jaye will talk about that shortly. Then Tech One, Block, Redox, and PWR. Again, Gilbert and Jaye will talk to those shortly. And then we've taken a small position in NEXTDC because we think their growth in data centers is interesting, but it's only a very small position. And likewise, SEEK, we think people are staying away from the market to anticipate a cyclical downturn, so taking a very small position there. We'd only build up those two stocks if we saw better value in the market.
Just moving on to a few slides, just talking through some of those acquisitions, and I think we'll start with to talk about Tech One and Block.
Sure. Thank you, Mark. Starting with Technology One. Technology One is an ERP software provider specializing in the local government and higher education verticals in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. Customers use Tech One software to run their businesses. As a result of Tech One's strong customer relationships, they have sustained a world-class customer retention rate of 99% per annum over the past 10 years. These existing customers also tend to increase their spending with Tech One over time, which is driven by customers increasing breadth of adoption of Tech One's products and modules. The customer base is highly economically resilient, with over 90% of revenues recurring, which allows Tech One to continue to grow throughout the economic cycle. Block is a fintech conglomerate.
The key assets are Cash App, which is a peer-to-peer money transfer app with 57 million U.S. customers. Square, which is an integrated payment offering consisting of payment terminals, software, and financial services used primarily by small businesses. And Afterpay, which they acquired at the wrong point in the cycle, but is now a small component of the total Block business. We initiated a position in Block as we were observing Block winning market share in the large markets that they serve, combined with improving cost discipline, which is driving a material improvement in earnings. Block also has a large net cash position and is led by owner-driver CEO Jack Dorsey. Given the higher risk profile of this investment, it is the smaller position in the portfolio. On the next slide, PWR Holdings. PWR Holdings designs and manufactures advanced cooling solutions used in high-performance automotive and industrial applications.
With its grassroots in motorsports, PWR are expanding by applying their advanced cooling IP and expertise to the aerospace and defense markets. The key characteristics we are attracted to in PWR are the owner-driver CEO Kees Weel, strong margins, a high return on equity, net cash balance sheet, significant R&D investment, and unique IP in advanced cooling technology. I'll pass over Jaye to talk on Redox now.
Thanks, Gilbert. So continuing on Slide 13, we highlight Redox here. It's not necessarily a household name, but there will be some connection to the everyday items that you buy, say, in the supermarket. So essentially what Redox does is they're a leading distributor of chemicals and ingredients. They have a really strong market position in Australia and a growing presence in the United States. They act as an important link between suppliers of chemicals and ingredients and purchasers such as manufacturing companies that make products we use in our day-to-day lives, such as shampoo. The company was established in 1965, and the founding family remains heavily involved in the business following the IPO in mid-2023. They have a significant presence on the management team and board and are aligned with us as shareholders with a substantial shareholding in the business.
Raimond, the CEO of Redox, started in the business as an 18-year-old, so obviously has a lot of experience in the industry and space. They have a strong track record of growth, so over the last 30 years, they've grown sales at a 12% compound annual growth rate. We see leverage on the balance sheet. The company pays a solid dividend yield and generates an attractive return on capital. Moving on to Slide 14, as Mark highlighted, we've also initiated and added to positions in larger companies where we see value. We've provided charts on these slides that highlight our purchasing activity in those two companies. So Telstra, many on the call will be familiar with the company. They're a leading telecommunications provider in Australia. We think they're well placed to benefit from the increased use of data and society's increasing requirements to be digitally connected.
We think Telstra is well positioned to deliver sustainable earnings growth and attractive, growing, fully franked dividend. Management have a well-considered plan to improve returns over the coming years, and the nature of Telstra's business means that the company generates defensive, fairly predictable cash flows, and they also have a solid balance sheet. Moving on to Woodside, during the period we added to that position. This gives us further exposure to a globally unique portfolio of hard-to-replace, high-quality liquefied natural gas and oil assets. These low-cost assets underpin strong free cash flows into the future, which we believe are underappreciated by the market.
Additionally, Woodside also has a strong balance sheet, which gives the company optionality, which was recently evidenced by a recently announced acquisition of New York Stock Exchange-listed Tellurian for book value, which improves the company's production profile and increases their exposure to LNG. As Mark noted, the company also pays an attractive dividend yield. I'll now pass back to Mark, who will talk through the outlook section.
Okay, thanks, Jaye and Gilbert. So just moving to the outlook, we've started with the portfolio, and this is the same template we've used the last couple of meetings, just in terms of how we think about the companies that we hold. We do have a significant range of growth companies, and I touched on that some of these are smaller companies, so we are more inclined to hold more of them. As I said, we want to give ourselves a better opportunity to capture structural compounding winners when we do that. And then we have more of our stalwart businesses and then income companies. So starting with income companies, as I said earlier, the banks look quite expensive to us. They provide great frank dividends, but in terms of sourcing frank dividends, we're seeing better value in Telstra and Woodside at these prices.
Stalwart companies, these are businesses that we're happy to hold for the long term, so these are companies which we think have got privileged positions in their markets in which they operate. And then growth stocks. And so I'll try and pick out the founder-led businesses, and I may not get them all, but it is interesting, our focus here on those companies, if you look through this chart, Macquarie Technology, Netwealth, ARB, Reece, Breville has those characteristics through the current CEO, and Technology One is essentially a second-generation founder-led business. Goodman Group, Beamtree has the characteristics Temple & Webster is, WiseTech, Min Resources, Gentrack has the type of characteristics due to the CEO's position. Netwealth, Mainfreight, Objective, PWR, ResMed, EGL, Xero is essentially what's probably third generation now, and Block is as well.
So there's a lot of companies that have that characteristic, and as I said, we think this improves our chance of success in investing. So if we move to the outlook comments, our view here is the markets, I was going to say in the U.S., but now here in Australia, have reacted very positively to the prospects of interest rates being cut. So even today in the Australian market, inflationary figures and some softer retail sales numbers, the market's getting excited that there won't be more interest rate increases. They might be flat, and that sent the market through the roof. But I think the market sometimes forgets the reason for that is because there are areas of softness in the economy, and that eventually does impact profits. Sentiment around China has also been weak, and that's been a big impact on commodity markets as well.
So we see the market trading at all-time highs, which we don't have any problem with. Markets go up in the long term. Resources have been lagging. Our only note of caution, though, is valuations appear very high. So if you look at price to sales, price to book or PE of the Australian market and the U.S. market, we're at the, what I'd call, upper levels, so through one standard deviation. Sometimes there are reasons for that. Either profits are at a low point and they're about to pick up. We don't think we're at that point. Maybe the structure of the market's different. There's more tech stocks that are higher returning and better. Perhaps there are some things in that, but overall, when we see these sort of levels, we just have a tone of caution.
So therefore, despite the strong performance in the portfolio, we actually have a nice allocation to cash at this point. So if we go into reporting season, we actually do get some opportunities. We have the ability to move on that. So we've got good stock, we've got some cash, and we've still delivered the performance. So just to go back to what we look for, when we look through our portfolio, we always want to be able to say we are holding good companies that have aligned management teams, the ability to grow earnings over the long term, and have strong and resilient balance sheets. And so that ends the formal presentation. Now we'd like to open it up for questions.
Yeah, so Mark, I'll sort of try and facilitate the questions. So again, just to remind people, there's a chance to actually ask questions of the team.
So the first one I've got here is, I think you probably touched on this, but as CBA is at a historic high, would AMCIL replace it with Macquarie Group within the portfolio?
Yeah, so I mean, the PE on CBA is way beyond anything I've ever seen in my entire career. So as we've said, it makes sense that we've been trimming that position. We think it's a great company. It's a standout business. It makes good return on equity, but there's a price for everything. And we look at the dividend yield, it's now about 3.3% fully franked. If you add the franking credits, you might get 4.5%. So you need some pretty good earnings growth for it to be a sound investment from here. That may happen, but we are pretty cautious. So it's become quite a small stock in the portfolio.
Macquarie is already a large position. Always have to buy more if the price is right, but it is quite a solid position, and that's probably why it hasn't appeared in the buying list this time around. We've just seen other things to put money into. So we're hopeful that Macquarie can continue to perform in the long run because we've got a lot in it.
Macquarie's actually larger in the portfolio than CBA.
Oh, that's substantially higher. Yeah.
The largest question, I think Andrew would probably cover this, but is the sizeable reduction in the management expense ratio likely to be permanent, or is it just due to factors specific to this year?
I would expect the actual costs, so in dollar terms, to be slightly up this year for the reasons that I went through. But the actual ratio itself, as we discussed, will be dependent upon how the portfolio does. If the portfolio increases more than the rate of increase in the dollar cost, then the MER would come down. But obviously, vice versa, if it doesn't grow by as much.
Okay, thanks, Andrew. Commentary comment here. Some companies claim that private credit investments have equity-like returns. What is AMCIL's assessment of the investment opportunity in this area?
Yeah, well, yeah, we're an equity investor. That's our core strength. That's what we do. We're not credit analysts. That's really a different field. It requires a different skill set and a different way of looking at a company. And we would certainly never put ourselves out as to be an expert on credit. So therefore, it's not for us. There are much better managers out there, people interested in investing in funds that specialize in private equity. I get the point, though. There is some private credit that can get returns like equity or better, but that's all an outcome of risk. The more risk you take on private equity, you'd expect to get a better return. And likewise, equity, a high-risk equity, you want a high return. A low-risk equity, you might expect a lower return. But it's just not our area of expertise, so.
Question here. I think this is about us investing in gold stocks, but with improving gold price, will gold companies not have improved earnings?
Well, they certainly will. We did look at one gold stock a little while ago. We always found gold price hard to predict. In fact, when you look back through history, if you're interested in gold, the best way to make money is buying gold, not by buying the equities. But it doesn't mean they go up when commodity prices go up. I guess the way we've structured our portfolio, it's more about putting money in businesses that we can more readily see a reason why they can grow their profits over time. For me, the gold companies, it's you're really taking a view on the gold price. We just find that really hard to do. So it's something that we haven't done as yet.
Question here about, can we discuss individual company weight limits? So I guess where do you feel uncomfortable in terms of weighting within the portfolio for any particular one company? The AMCIL dividend policy and level of retained franking credits that we have that are available.
Yeah, I'll touch on the first weight, and then I'll pass over to Andrew on our franking balance. Look, we don't have a formal limit, but our biggest stock at the moment is CSL. It's about 8.8% of the portfolio. We think there's some value there, but the index position is probably around 7%, high six. So we look at the weightings from an absolute level, but also relative to the index level, because that tells us how our portfolio is positioned against the benchmark. I'd probably say that CSL position is probably a little bit high at this point because we think the stock has been undervalued. So I would say that's pushing more of our upper limit. I think we've had times when we've had 10% in a stock, but that was probably more the exception than the rule.
So even at CSL at 8.9% is probably a little bit more than what we'd like. We'd probably like a bit more spread. So Andrew, with Andrew on the franking.
In terms of dividend policy, the board will determine the dividend from year to year. I don't think that they would say they have a particular dividend policy as such. In terms of the franking credits, after we pay the final dividend that we announced and the special dividend, essentially we'll have just over AUD 0.04 per share worth of franked dividend in reserve. The company has enough reserves to pay just over one full year's worth of ordinary dividends.
Yeah.
And I guess in the context of the dividend policy you commented on, we certainly appreciate the shareholders like fully franked dividends, and we're obviously keen to get those out as best we can. Andrew, I'll buzz with you. You mentioned that AMCIL had to bring forward capital losses, which reduced tax payable this year. Was there any one position that caused the realized capital losses?
Last year that was done last year, we don't specify the capital gains tax position for any particular investment. But what I can say is in 2022/23, and I'll let shareholders draw their own conclusions, the largest sales were in Iress and PEXA Group, which we both sold out of last in the 2022/2023 year.
Okay. Thanks. Question here about Mineral Resources. Given it's so exposed to lithium and iron ore, both with falling prices, what attracts you to them?
Thanks, Jess. So Mineral Resources, there's a number of characteristics that we find attractive. So the business is founded by Chris Ellison, who currently leads the business. He has a significant equity holding in the business, so he's aligned with us as shareholders. The company has a few divisions. They have a mining services division, which has got a fantastic track record of growing volumes and have customers such as the large major mining companies. They also have an iron ore division, lithium, and an emerging energy division. We are conscious that they are exposed to lithium and iron ore prices, which are out of their control. But we think that they are growing production through their assets, which we think are good quality assets at the right point of the cost curve. So we're not purely relying on resource prices for them to generate earnings growth.
They can do this through growing production sensibly. We think that probably the mining services business, the earnings profile of that business is probably not as well understood as it should be by the market, and that provides a kind of good consistent earnings growth for the business. Keeping that in mind, given commodity prices are out of the company's control, we have kept that in mind in how we've positioned or how much of the stock that we've bought. It's a bit of a smaller position for the portfolio, and we definitely keep that, I guess, cyclical nature of the business in mind in the future.
Yeah, I think probably the other thing to add is our holding's around 0.7%. So it is one of those smaller positions. And given the nature of the business, it's probably never going to be a business we take a really large holding in. But with those characteristics, it's enough for us to say we don't mind having a bit of shareholders' money alongside those founder-led companies like we see in Min Resources. And we're also significantly underweight BHP as well from an iron ore perspective.
Question here about Realestate.com or REA Group, I should call it now. How do you assess the potential of REA's India business currently in loss-making coming to valuation for REA?
Yeah, look, it's really difficult to say what is the valuation. I actually went on a tour. They did an analyst tour of their business. So I went across to New Delhi last year, I think it was. And yeah, that was very worthwhile. They're currently battling out with two other major players for leadership position. And that's where the company's really trying to push the business is to try and pull away from their competitors. That's the strategy. That's always the strategy with these online businesses is you do tend to incur some losses, but it's important to try and get to the number one position. And then once you get to the number one position, you start to get all the rewards from having that large market position. And ultimately, some of them can start to get better pricing and make better returns.
So we've seen that play out with REA in Australia, see Car sales the same overseas. So that's their position. India is a very, very large market, but clearly it's more undeveloped. I think REA would probably say, well, maybe it looks a bit like Australia 15 years ago. They do have a good position, and it's not something they want to give away. So I think with the growth in that market, I think it's a good option for the business. And if it is successful, who knows what it's worth in the long term. But it doesn't add a lot in terms of the way we think about immediate value on the business, but it does add a bit in terms of how we think about holding that stock on a 10-year view. And if that certainly starts to play out, it'll add a lot of value eventually.
Thanks, Mark. So the question here, acknowledging the fact that we introduced interim dividend a couple of years ago now, the question really relates to, is it possible to even up the interim and final payments somewhat?
Yeah, well, look, I'd probably say there's an intent there, but it might take a bit of time. But we do recognize that we do get that question across all our LICs about that some shareholders prefer more even split. So all I can say at this point, probably look at something that we're conscious of, and we try and work towards that.
Okay, thanks, Mark. Question here, how do you invest in your new overseas investment? I think that might relate more to.
Yeah, look, I think probably when we've been talking about one of our other funds, AFIC, we've talked about that we've got a bit of an international portfolio in that. We don't invest in that through AMCIL. But you never say never that it's one thing that could be open to us. When I say could, is that we've got an investment team looking in international stocks. At what point do we say, well, if we're getting a high conviction call out of that team, could it go into the AMCIL portfolio? And certainly, there's a few stocks there in the portfolio that I know pretty well and that actually would have worked very well in this portfolio. So these were, again, founder-led, owner-driver type companies that seem to have a special niche, lots of opportunity to grow market share. They've got to keep doing what they're doing.
I can see a couple of stocks that they've held that would fit AMCIL. So it could be something that we contemplate and think about at some point and would be another point of difference for AMCIL. But we'd really need conviction on that. But I think it's something really we should be thinking about.
Thanks, Mark. So, question here about: is there any interest in the coal stocks given some of them are offering attractive dividends?
Yeah, well, you can see that. But I guess when we put coal stocks through our filter and our frameworks, it really struggles. And we've got to be true to our process, and that means that we don't get everything. And so if we want dividend yield, we look more like Telstra or Woodside in this case. So yeah, it probably just fails on some of our frameworks, but that's more of a function of our frameworks, but we need to stick to that.
Yeah, thanks, Mark. Question here on HMC Capital, which is an ASX-listed alternative asset manager. It seems to have the characteristics that we're speaking about, but I guess we're not big investors in other asset managers at the end of the day. I'll hand it to you.
No, no, no. I think we're trying to pick companies ourselves. I'd probably say that maybe that's a company that individuals can look at themselves. But you never say never if they're really good at what they're doing. But it's not something that's been on our radar so far, but I'm very happy to go away and have a look at it.
Question: this one relates to probably someone we know more interested in other stocks in the healthcare sector, which may seem attractive to you.
Yeah, look, we've got a pretty good exposure there, and I think one of the better quality stocks like Cochlear, Fisher & Paykel, which we love, but very high valuations. So they're not huge positions. As I said, CSL, we've seen some value in. That's a big stock in the portfolio. And ResMed's been on a bit of a roller coaster ride, but we still think that one looks okay. And the rest, look, we do look at Sonic. We've been looking at Ramsay. We don't own them at the moment. But I think both of those have some issues that they're dealing with. And our bias is towards what I call cleaner stories. So we're looking for perhaps points where they become cleaner, but that's our focus.
Yeah, and we have a range of opportunities available to us outside the sector as well. So I mean.
Yeah, that's right. We never want to sort of have too much in the one sector. We want to be diversified. So we've got a good exposure to healthcare more broadly.
What are your thoughts on the position of the various analysts that small caps are generally undervalued and due for improved P/E rating versus large caps?
Yeah, look, I hear that commentary. I think it's different for you've heard a lot of that out of the U.S. But when the U.S. talks about that small caps are undervalued, they're small caps there. They probably like our large caps here. And so these are very large established companies that are rated as small caps in the U.S. But good businesses, sound businesses, and you have seen the P/Es drop off in those. When you're talking about small caps in the Australian market, it's a very different story. And these are often businesses that have more challenges, that are trying to grow. You get a lot of resource stocks within the small cap area, a lot of emerging businesses that may not be profitable. And so I can see that the P/Es have dropped off.
I suspect there probably is some value in some of them, but you've got to be pretty careful about which ones you go into. Our small caps are very different to US small caps.
Thanks, Mark. So it's sort of questions. If you've got any questions, please put them through now. But we're sort of coming towards the end of the ones we have in front of us. In light of the comment on international stock, would AMCIL be interested in Berkshire Hathaway?
Oh, well, look, again, you never say never. I think it'd have to be a pricing and valuation and all the things we think about backing the people. So if you were to go in the stock now, one of the things you'd be thinking about is who's going to be running the business. We're a long-term investor. That's our intent. So you have to be thinking about the next five to 10 years as the story plays out. Do we see value? So certainly, it's got some characteristics we really like. If it was at the right price and we're happy with who was going to be running that company in the longer term, then yeah, it's possible.
Okay. Question here about what are we doing? I guess, what are you planning? What are we doing really to reduce the discount that the share price is trying to?
Yeah, look, that's frustrating for us. We think over the year, the performance has been sound. We're increasing dividends. We think for an actively managed fund, the MER is very low, no performance fees. We try and be transparent. You can see the stocks we've got. And as Andrew's pointing out, the share price around AUD 1.15, you can see what the market's done and add that to AUD 1.26. There's a very, very large discount. So it seems like people are happy to pay. If you go into an ETF, you're paying the market value, yet we're at this large discount. But I guess some might say that provides opportunity. We have seen there is longer-term cyclicality to share price premiums or discounts. We've had periods where it had a premium. So this is a period where it had a discount.
And for a number of factors Andrew's touched on, we do introduce some of the shareholders we traditionally had are happy to be more fixed interest. We've seen in the past when markets are hot, people want to pick the eyes out of the market and perhaps are less interested in LICs. So there's probably a few we think over the last 10 years, there's been a lot of LICs come onto the market. Some of them haven't been very good. So there's probably some reasons that all come together and creating a bit of weakness. But maybe it's opportunity for others. But I think we just have to keep talking to the markets.
We're doing a lot of presentations to brokers and financial advisors to get them interested. A lot of that going on as well.
Yeah, so we're doing a lot of that just to get the story out there.
Yeah. Would we ever consider Soul Patts as an investment?
Yeah, sure. I mean, we know the people pretty well. We know that they're long-term investors and their approach. It would probably come back to value at the end of the day. Last time we looked at it, it looked a bit expensive to us, but it wouldn't be a stock that would be off our list as such.
Okay, thanks, Mark. Look, I think I'll wrap it up with him. I don't have any questions, but I'll put one comment at the end. As a foundation shareholder, we're very keen to see a small exposure suitable to overseas stocks. The ASX is getting more restricted with business exposures. More companies are taking over and delisted. The overseas exposure may affect income, but long-term, this may be outweighed.
Yeah, well, look, that's a great summary. I mean, exactly the way I think about it is sometimes it does feel like the Australian market's being a little bit crowded. And having some involvement in the international portfolio, the team run it, but I can see the stocks. You do come across some and you go, yeah, there's something special about that company. That probably would be a good candidate. Yes, you don't get the same dividends, but in AMCIL, we're more about total returns and growth. I mean, we can always pay some dividends out of capital gains. So I think that's a point well made, and that probably aligns with our way of thinking.
No, Mark, or any more questions? So we'll wrap it up there.
Okay, well, thank you, everyone, for listening. I guess the next point of contact, our meeting, is in October. That will be webcast. Again, we'll be giving an update on the portfolio and our performance and how we're going. Obviously, probably next week, we'll be publishing our NTA.
The other NTA, yes.
Yes, for the end of July. So I would encourage everyone to have a look out for that and see where the share price is in relation to the NTA. And very happy to have taken some good questions through this process. So thank you again, everyone.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.