Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, that's loud. Can you all hear me? I can certainly hear myself, which is unusual. Welcome to the 30th Annual General Meeting of AMCIL Limited. The Company Secretary has confirmed that a quorum is present, and I will now open the meeting. Thirty years, I think there are some shareholders present that can remember 30 years ago. It's a significant moment in the history of the company. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians of all the lands on which we're gathered today, and I pay respects to elders, past, present, and emerging. My name's Rupert Myer, Chair of your company. May I introduce the people on stage with me? We have our Managing Director, Mark Freeman.
Good morning, everyone.
My fellow Non-Executive Directors, Roger Brown.
Morning.
Mike Hirst.
Morning.
Jon Webster.
Good morning.
Non-Executive Director, Paula Dwyer, is joining us via telephone due to a longstanding commitment today. We also have our Company Secretary, Matthew Rowe.
Morning.
Our Chief Financial Officer, Andrew Porter, and our General Manager of Business and Development and Investor Relations, Geoffrey Driver.
Good morning.
In due course, we'll be hearing from Mark Freeman and the investment analysts, Jaye Guy and Gilbert Battistella. We're also joined by other members of the investment team in the front row of the audience here today. Turning around and there we are. I'll take this opportunity to introduce as well Kate Logan, Partner of the company's auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and her colleague, Christine Meier, no relation, different spelling, who is available to answer questions today on the audit and preparation and content of the auditor's report at the end of the presentation. Today's meeting is being held as a hybrid meeting. Today's presentation has already been released to the ASX and has been made available on the company's website. I remind shareholders using the online platform that whilst questions may be submitted at any time, I will not address them until the relevant time in the meeting.
To ask a question, and this is just for the online attendees, click on the Ask a Question button at the top or bottom of your screen. If you have not entered your shareholder number or proxy number, you will be required to provide these details before you can proceed. Once your shareholder or proxy number has been verified, you can choose to ask your question in writing or orally. If you require further guidance, please click on the virtual meeting online guide link on your screen. Please also note that your questions may be moderated or if we receive multiple questions on one topic, amalgamated together. To cast your vote, click on the Get a Voting Card button on your screen. Where prompted, please provide your shareholder or proxy number and follow the prompts.
Once verified, a voting card will be issued and you will be able to lodge your votes. Click Submit Vote at the bottom of the voting card to lodge your votes. If you have multiple holdings, you will need to obtain a voting card for each holding. Shareholders, authorized representatives, and appointed proxies in attendance here in Melbourne would have been issued a yellow card to vote on each resolution. If you are eligible to vote and you have not received a yellow card or have any questions on voting at all, please see a representative of the share registry, MUFG Corporate Markets, in the foyer. I now declare the voting open on all items of business. I will give you a warning before I move to close voting. Moving on to the business of the meeting, I will take the notice of meeting as read.
With regards to the minutes of the 29th Annual General Meeting, they've been signed as a correct record and are available to shareholders for inspection today. The first agenda item is the consideration of the financial statements and reports for the year ended 30th of June 2025. We will do this shortly via presentation, after which I will ask shareholders, invite shareholders to comment or to raise any questions either about the presentation or of the auditors if they have any questions about the audit. Mark and the investment team will discuss the portfolio in their presentation. I do, however, want to make a couple of introductory remarks. The 12-month performance, largely driven by the last nine months, is disappointing to your Board, to the management, and investment team. This reversal of performance differs markedly from where AMCIL was only nine months ago.
The numbers were very different at the end of December 2024 when the portfolio was well ahead of the index. Throughout this period, the Board and Investment Committee have been very active in testing and challenging the investment team. We remain strongly of the view that the model is still valid, recognizing that from time to time there will be periods of greater volatility in returns for AMCIL, given its style of investment exposure across companies of different scales and industries. We are long-term value investors and we have been operating in a strong momentum market for the recent period. We were pleased to pay a special dividend with the final dividend this year.
The special dividend reflects part distribution of the significant amount of realized capital gains and franking credits generated from the trimming of the holdings in Wesfarmers and holdings in the major banks, including the complete disposal of AMCIL's interest in Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which impacted relative portfolio performance as valuations for these companies became very stretched. Given the active management of AMCIL's portfolio, the company can generate a significant amount of realized capital gains and franking credits from year to year. These can be used to supplement underlying earnings to support dividend payments. In addition, realized gains can be used for the payment of special dividends, which is a significant benefit to shareholders. Over the last five years, we've distributed an additional AUD 0.07 in dividends as special dividends are shown on the chart.
The other issue I wanted to cover in my opening remarks is the persistence of the share price discount to the net asset backing, which is frustrating for all of us. Discounts appear to be a feature of the market, with many listed investment companies trading at larger than normal discounts. Some used to trade at premiums, as you know. There are probably a number of factors driving this, but the main ones we think would be the market momentum, where LICs often get left behind in terms of share price performance until there is a reset or greater volatility in the market. Higher interest rates also offer a reasonable return on income products at this point, meaning less demand for LICs. This may change in the future.
While performance is ultimately the thing that will attract investors, AMCIL traded at a discount, albeit less, six months ago when performance was relatively very strong. We have recently engaged additional expertise to increase our business development and marketing efforts across the four LICs, with an increased focus on independent financial advisors who are relatively new to the LIC sector, along with brokers who have traditionally been our main focus. We're gaining some traction, but this will take time, and there have already been a couple of valuable conversations already this morning about some other avenues that we might pursue with some of the industry superannuation firms. We've also bought back shares to neutralize the DRPs. This has helped a bit, but it's not ultimately a long-term solution.
In looking at the long-term performance of the share price, the 15-year share price return, including franking, was 10.8%, just ahead of the index of 10.7%. The one and three-year numbers, the shorter-term numbers, are well below given the current discount. With those introductory remarks, and happy to return to some of those in Q&A, I'll now pass you on to our Managing Director, Mark Freeman, to start this morning's presentation. Thank you.
Thanks, Rupert, and good morning, everyone. As usual, we'll start with a disclaimer just to say we're here to talk about what the company's doing. We're not giving any advice as such. Moving on to the agenda, I'll give an introductory comment on AMCIL, what it's about, so you have a good sense of what we're trying to achieve. I'll pass over to our CFO, Andrew Porter, who will talk through the financial results. I'll come back and talk through most of the rest of the slides with the help of Jay and Gilbert. If we just go to the first proposition in terms of what we're about in AMCIL, the intent is to be a more focused portfolio, looking to invest in quality companies, and I'll come to that shortly, and to have a good spread of holdings across small, mid, and large-sized companies.
There is an alignment of interest with AMCIL because of comparatively low management costs we have for AMCIL. There is no external manager. There are no performance fees going to other third parties, and there's very strong equity ownership in AMCIL from the staff and directors. We want to keep the turnover relatively low because we want to be tax-effective, and we do want to stick with that long-term investment approach, sticking with companies for the long term, but we'll come to shortly that does create some volatility, particularly in the markets we are in at the moment. If we just move to our approach, what we're focusing on is high-quality companies, so our bias will always be more towards industrial companies. We need to test our businesses over the long run.
Companies that tend to produce better profits and therefore better share price outcomes are ones that have unique assets or a leadership position in the sector that they're in or a developing one. Companies that have a sustainable competitive advantage over the long term. External factors, we call them outside influence, can have a significant impact, and we continue to see that time and time again that when an external party can have an impact on a company, it can be very significant in terms of the downside. Balance sheets are really important, and we'll touch on this later. Companies that get into trouble, it's amazing how many times debt is the cause of it, so we want to steer away from companies that have high debt.
We prefer companies that have more consistent earning streams, and management is always critical, and there are a lot of companies that AMCIL holds that we would call founder-led businesses. When you have all these factors together, they drive long-term sustainable competitive advantage. We can see that through the return on equity or return on capital, so companies that have a high return on equity tend to perform better. They generate better EPS growth. They get a better chance to reinvest in their business, which supports gaining market share, and that delivers long-term growth in profits and therefore share price creation. Importantly, though, we are sticking with quality a bit. You still have to be a value investor within quality. Just buying stocks in a market usually won't deliver you outperformance. What do we mean by value?
If you're looking to invest in an emerging quality business, you've got to be early to the story. That's when you're buying value. If you're in more established businesses, the best thing is to look for temporary price dislocations and act on those in a significant way. They tend to give you the best results for generating value. If you're going to do activity in the portfolio, it has to create value. We can see, particularly again in the markets we're in, we seem to be seeing more examples of extreme pricing, and we are happy to reduce or exit positions when they're extreme. Sometimes we do that and they keep going up, but we are happy to exit stocks that we think no longer fit our valuation frameworks. With that, I will pass over to Andrew to talk about the financial results.
Thank you, Mark, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen here and online. As is traditional, I will run through some of the key financial metrics briefly, and then I'll hand back to Mark to go through the portfolio and investment performance. As you can see in the box on the top left-hand corner, profit was down from AUD 7.5 million in 2024 to AUD 6.7 million this year. As we had expected, the dividend income that we received was down, largely due to the reduction in the bank stocks, and Mark will touch on this later, which had been a large part of the dividend that AMCIL had received in prior years. Reductions in options and trading income were made up by increased interest income, with the increase in rates and increase in the cash balance that AMCIL had.
Costs also increased, largely due to the refund received from AICS during the year for underperformance in the prior year, being considerably less than the previous year when performance had not been very good. I hope that's all clear. There will be a test on this at the end of the AGM. You will have seen the performance figures so far this year, and the refund that AMCIL will be receiving this year, i.e. 2025-2026, because of that underperformance last year, will be substantially higher, not only than last year, but also than the year before, which, all other things being equal, will reduce the costs for the current year, this year that we're in now. However, that's it for the profit. A large part of the dividend that AMCIL pays, as Rupert touched on, comes from realized gains.
AMCIL generated over AUD 20 million in realized gains last year, so the board was able to declare an increased special dividend, bringing the total dividends paid this year to AUD 0.065, up from AUD 0.04 last year. AUD 0.045 of this dividend was sourced directly from the realized gains, so this will mean that shareholders who pay tax, either as individuals or super funds, can claim a tax deduction. Speaking to shareholders earlier on, I know that many of you are very conscious of this, but I do recommend that if you use an accountant, make sure that they're also aware of it when doing your tax returns, some are not. Mark and the team will go through the portfolio and investment performance, so I'll jump to the MER, or management expense ratio, which is the box on the bottom right. This is a measurement of the cost of running the company.
It is expressed as a percentage of the costs incurred over the average portfolio for the year, so 0.56%, and is equivalent therefore to AUD 0.56 per year for every AUD 100 invested. Even though the costs, as discussed, have increased, so has the portfolio, so that the MER has remained constant over the year. One of the benefits of having an LIC structure is the ability to create reserves and thus support the dividend when appropriate, which an ETF trust structure cannot. Although we think that the positives of the structure outweigh the negatives, the main negative is the fact that shares can trade at a premium or discount to the value of the portfolio, as Rupert has alluded to and as you can see on this slide.
Rupert's addressed the issue and the steps being taken in respect of it, so I won't repeat them here other than to say it remains an issue for both Board and management. As ever, I will be here to answer questions either at the end of the presentation or after that over coffee, so with that, I'll hand back to Mark.
Okay, thanks, Andrew. We'll just move on to some slides, looking at the market condition at the moment. Clearly, there's considerable geopolitical risk in the world. We're facing record high share market valuations at the same time. So far, consumer spending has been quite resilient. Central banks have moved more towards an easing bias, that's cutting rates, and tariffs are creating a lot of uncertainty. I would call it chaos, but we really haven't seen that come through in economic figures as yet. I would anticipate they eventually will do. With all that going on in the world, if we jump to the next slide, it is extraordinary that when you look at the valuation of equity markets, here the chart on the left is the PE, so the price earnings, when you look at the entire market, which is the ASX 200.
We've got a chart here that goes back 20 years, and if you went back further, you'd have a similar trend where this is the highest PE we've been on in 20 years. The other way of thinking about it is record low dividend yields, and that suggests a market that is very, very highly valued at this point. One thing you know for sure, when you see these events, they can often go longer and further than what you think before you get some reversion, but that's where we sit at the moment. A number of things could happen from here. The market could keep going up. Maybe we're underestimating the profit growth of the companies that are in the market. If they have a very strong profit growth performance, then that PE can decline.
Markets can go sideways for a long period of time, so eventually the PE declines, or obviously you can get retracements in markets. It does make us very cautious where we stand at the moment. AMCIL does have quite a big cash position, which has been dragging on performance, amongst other things. We are quite conservatively positioned in AMCIL. If you look at the next chart, you can pick up the U.S. market. This is the S&P 500. It looks even more extreme in terms of the PE and the yield. I think there are some grounds for the U.S. trading at higher PEs than it used to. The key factor there is return on equity. If you look at the return on equity, the Australian market's been very flat. It hasn't moved much at about 11%-12%. The U.S.
market, as more and more tech stocks have become a bigger part of the S&P 500, they're companies that produce very high return on equity, very high growth. There are reasons for that to be a high PE, but it still looks somewhat extreme to me. We are cautious given all the uncertainties that are going on in the world and taking a more cautious stance within the portfolio. If you move to the performance, one year's been clearly very tough, but that was after the two previous calendar years, 2023-2024, where it was extremely strong. Obviously, the one year has dragged down then the three and five-year numbers, and we'll come to some analysis on that. Over the 10, and then Rupert pointed out 15 years, we're still ahead.
If we dig into just what's happened in one year, it's really a handful of stocks and some movements in the market that have created, I guess, the portfolio just to go up a bit after two very strong years when the rest of the market was going up. We've had a couple of large positions, and we'll go into more detail on these. Big positions in the portfolio that have sort of stagnated in price, such as Macquarie , Mainfreight, and CSL, but we're still very happy with those businesses. We're not going to jump at shadows. We still like them. We think they're looking at really good value. We're going to maintain our positions there. A couple of cyclical stocks that are facing a downturn, Hardie and Reece, they've had an impact. We've got about 1% in banks when the index is 23%-24%.
We're very underweight banks, and we'll come to that shortly. They've continued to go up, but I continue to have a view they look too expensive. Unfortunately, we haven't had gold. Unfortunately, my training and background was gold. Other people can do that. It's hard to pick. We were staying with good industrial companies that we can get our head around, but it has dragged in the short term. That's really most of the reasons why the portfolio has sort of flattened out. A few large positions that have sort of gone sideways and down and not having exposure to banks and gold. None of that is of great concern to me from here, as we'll come to shortly. If we dig a bit more into those, I've probably touched on some of those with these points. The pullback in CSL has been dramatic.
Macquarie Technology and Mainfreight, we'll talk again to those shortly. Very happy with those. They're more shorter-term moves. The cyclical headwinds in the U.S., which has quickly gone into a bit of a downturn, but we still think in the long term, the stocks we have exposure to are okay. The extraordinary run in banks and as I touched on, gold. If we dig into a couple of those stocks, I'll get Gilbert and Jaye to come up and give some further insights on some of those.
Thank you, Mark. By way of introduction, my name is Jaye, and I work in the investment team here at AMCIL. On the following slides, Gilbert and I will provide further detail on several of AMCIL's key holdings that have recently weighed on our performance, as Mark outlined. I will talk to CSL and Mainfreight, and Gilbert will talk to Macquarie Technology and AUB . CSL is a name that many in the room will be familiar with. It's been held in the portfolio for a long time, I think over 14 years now. The company develops therapies to treat chronic diseases, which are long-lasting, cannot generally be cured, and require ongoing management.
The share price, as you can see on the chart on the screen on the left in red, has come under pressure for kind of two key factors, and it reflects slowing earnings growth outlook and concerns about the regulatory and political backdrop in the United States. In what has been a strong period for the share market, CSL has well and truly fallen out of favor with investors. We believe the fundamentals of the business remain attractive. CSL has a strong market position in an industry where volume growth remains at mid to high single-digit levels. While it may take some time for the market to rebuild confidence in CSL and the management team, we think they are well positioned to deliver attractive earnings growth, and the share price is now trading at a significant discount to the market.
We do have a slide a little later on in the deck, which Mark will talk to, which shows the relative valuation between Commonwealth Bank of Australia and CSL, and on that chart, you'll see that CSL has moved from trading to a significant premium to the market to a discount. We also believe that the balance sheet is in good shape with relatively low levels of debt. For now, we'll retain this holding. Mainfreight is one we've spoken about in previous presentations. It's a global logistics company, and they provide transport, warehousing, air and ocean freight services, and has also been a longstanding holding for AMCIL. We believe Mainfreight has a distinct competitive advantage, operating in a more complex value-added services, supported by their service-led culture, which we think is a very unique culture, and their extensive branch network.
As a result, they've been very successful in winning market share, and they've built significant businesses in Australia and New Zealand from scratch. The company has a strong long-term track record of growing earnings, but what we observed during COVID is that freight volumes increased significantly, which pushed earnings to levels which, with the benefit of hindsight, were unsustainable, at least temporarily. In addition, we also saw the valuation multiple increase significantly. We did trim some of our holding during this period, but it wasn't enough. In hindsight, we could have trimmed the position a bit more, but we were balancing that short-term revision in earnings against our positive long-term view of the business. We've also seen since then the earnings have normalized from that unsustainably high level, and that has weighed on the share price.
In addition, the New Zealand economy has been quite weak, but we view this as a short-term cyclical headwind of the business that it'll trade through, and pleasingly, the company has been winning customers through this period, which is a key indicator that we look for. From here, we think Mainfreight's well positioned to grow their earnings, and the valuation multiple has returned to a much more reasonable level. We note as well that management has continued to invest prudently in their network and now have latent capacity to grow into, which we think will be a tailwind for earnings. The company's founder-led, the management team are very closely aligned with shareholders, and the balance sheet is net cash with a lot of property on the balance sheet. With that, I'll now pass on to Gilbert to talk through Macquarie Technology and AUB . Thank you for listening.
Thanks, Jaye, and good morning, everyone. Macquarie Technology and AUB are two of the larger positions in the AMCIL portfolio and have underperformed over the past year, but remain core long-term holdings with strong long-term growth prospects. Macquarie Technology's underperformance has been driven by an absence of near-term catalysts and its recent removal from the ASX 200 index. It is a provider of data center, cloud, cybersecurity, and telecom services. Their data center expansion to triple their capacity at their IC3 Super West site is 12 months away from completing and remains on time and on budget. This capacity is becoming available at a good time where the contracting environment is very strong with U.S. hyperscalers, the big tech companies looking to procure capacity, and the region where Macquarie Technology's capacity is becoming available is tightly supplied at the moment.
This positions the company very well to earn strong returns on the project and lock in that pricing with long-term contracts. Macquarie Technology is well-funded to deliver on these growth plans, and importantly for our process, we have strong alignment with the Chudleigh brothers who own over 40% of the company. AUB , the stock has been weak due to the soft Australian new vehicle sales and market concerns around the tariff impact given their Thailand-based manufacturing. AUB is a manufacturer and distributor of 4x4 accessories with a strong Australian brand and growing global presence. The balance sheet is strong, management team are backable with the founder still on the board, and they're progressing their U.S. expansion in a thoughtful and financially disciplined manner. There are early signs that the four-wheel parts acquisition is going well in the U.S.A.
with potential to accelerate growth through pulling AUB branded products through the acquired store network. We are attracted to the quality of the business and the long-term runway with that U.S. opportunity. Thanks, I'll hand back to Mark.
Thanks, Gilbert. There are four stocks that have sort of drifted in the market, but we just believe that the business is business as usual, great companies, very strong balance sheets, great opportunities. Our bias is to stick with them and ride the ups and downs because we still think each of those will be substantially bigger companies moving forward. We've had some downturn from two of our sort of more cyclical stocks, Hardie and Reece. We've just tracked there, the share price does follow the housing starts. They are cyclical in nature. Reece, we'd actually sold about 40% of our holding with the run-up it had had, that peak on the right. We still retain a holding in the company, but it is smaller. They've got some challenges in the U.S. to grow. They've still got a great business in Australia.
The balance sheet is strong, so at the moment our bias is to stick with it. We sort of think they're going through probably just about the worst you could get in terms of their conditions in the U.S. We think the U.S. footprint has good value, so we think the stock price has fallen too much. Hardie, unfortunately, this has been a cracking business. It is cyclical, but in each case there's an upward trend to them, so that means the underlying businesses are growing. Unfortunately, Hardie did a transaction recently. They did a debt-funded acquisition right at the top, the worst thing you could possibly do. As a result, we did reduce our holding quite significantly, but kept a smaller position. As I touched on earlier, balance sheets can be quite detrimental to companies, so our first reaction was to make it substantially smaller.
They still have a great position within fiber cement. The business they bought is involved with decking. We do believe that putting the two businesses together will give them great opportunities to cross-sell products. I'd be keen to buy more when we see the cycle starting to improve, or in particular, the balance sheet metrics start to improve. Those would be the turning points we'd look for to actually be adding it back. At the moment, we're running with just a much smaller position. As we touched on also at the start, the banks have been big movers. On the left, you can see Commonwealth Bank. The yellow bar is its earnings per share. You can see it's had moderate growth in earnings per share, but despite moderate growth, the share price, which is the black line, has been an unbelievable performer.
On the flip side, on the right side, you can see CSL's earnings per share, and the last two bars on the right are what the market's forecasting, so much stronger growth, but its share price has fallen substantially. You pick that up in the next chart, which shows Commonwealth Bank. This is the PE multiple. You can see the PE multiple, even though it's had modest earnings growth, the PE has gone from around 15 times two years ago to about 26 times, and CSL has gone from in the high 30s down to around 17 times. We've got CSL. We don't have CBA . We think they're both great companies. In the short term, that's impacted our performance, but in the long term, we think that's the right way to be positioned at this point.
If CBA were to fall substantially, I'd be very happy to buy it back because, as I said, it is a great company, but that has spilled over into the broader banking sector. If you go to the next chart, we did have some NAB. We've now exited that. You can see the long-term PE of that on the top right. We've still got a small holding in Westpac, but we've written call options over the entire holding. Quite unbelievable. If you've been watching banks, I mean, I've been watching them for over 30 years, and this is a 20-year chart, but if you go back another 10, 20 years before that, you would see that they probably traded at lower PEs. To see the extreme movement over the last really two years has been quite extraordinary. Really, it's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen.
I never saw that I'd see the day that CBA trades at a PE nearly 30 times. The other sector, if we move to the next chart, is the amazing performance of gold. If you look again, this goes back to 1975. If you took this chart back further, you'd see a long period of very stagnant growth in value, and it's just exploded in the last couple of years. There's a lot of uncertainty about the fiscal position of the U.S., what the government and what Trump is doing there, uncertainty over geopolitical issues. It's now the most talked-about sector with traders, and we say that often prices run to very much extremes. It's dragged on our performance and not having gold stocks, but where we see this chart now, who knows where it's going in the short term, but it looks pretty extreme at the moment.
We continue to have some good winners coming into the portfolio. In talking about what has performed well over the last 12 months, it's interesting when you look through this list. These businesses, they're pretty much all founder-led companies. They've all got strong balance sheets. They've all got strong earnings potential, and we continue to like the story. Some of the ones we added more recently, we added Sigma, and I think we've touched on this at previous meetings. We took a position before the ACCC decision. It fitted our frameworks perfectly, and as I said, the way you buy value is being early to the story, so we did that. My only self-criticism there, we just didn't buy enough. Technology One, again, we bought that when we thought that represented fair value, lined up well against our frameworks. Hindsight, we should have bought more. Life360 has been an interesting one.
It's another founder-led company. No debt. Earnings are growing strongly. They do the tracking device on your mobile phone. That's been a great stock for us. EVT has too. In fact, all those stocks have been great, and we continue to look for those stocks. My only probably hindsight is that when we find those, we probably need to go a lot harder in buying to make up for other movements in the market that we don't want to participate in. I'm pleased that we continue to capture opportunities, but probably a bit of a lesson there is to be more meaningful. It's amazing how many times things that line up well against our tech sheet turn out to be great long-term winners. As we move on, just some of the more recent activities I touched on, we have now exited NAB because of the extreme pricing.
Beamtree was only a small position. It was more of an early-stage company that we decided to move on. Some of the trimming, I touched on Hardie, Amcor, we're a bit concerned about their last update, and really the rest has been trimming some stocks that have run really hard. Wesfarmers is an interesting one because we think again it's an amazing business, but the PE chart of that looks similar to the banks. It's nearly 40 times, and we've been gradually reducing that. If you look to the right, we bought some more EVT. Woolworths is now the supermarket that is out of favor, and we are thinking that there's some hidden value in that company. It's amazing how Woolworths and Coles trade positions over time. Coles is the one that's doing well.
Woolworths isn't, but we're looking for value, and we think it's got a good footprint, and we've been adding to that. We've added a bit more to PEXA. It's one we were in, then we're out of it. Now we've sort of taken a position back because they won their first essentially client in the U.K. to do a property exchange product that they run here in Australia, which they dominate the market for. Having that first win, we thought this is a bit of a turning point. Let's make a start. We've taken a new stock in the portfolio, Nanosonics. It's a small position. Again, it's net cash. It's got a long runway of growth. They've got a couple of products there. Their core product is a sterilization product that's in hospitals all around the world. The U.S.
is a big market, and they're just releasing a second product at the moment, which should set up a period of profit growth going forward. We think the management's good, it's been a bit out of favor. We're now seeing some value, and we took a position there. We continue to do activity on the portfolio around high-quality companies. If we look at the portfolio overall, these are our largest positions, and we wanted to show that we are a longer-term investor. Highlighting that if you are a long-term investor on a very focused portfolio, you can have periods where they drift. We think these are outstanding businesses that we hold. We go to the next slide, which is pretty much every stock we hold. I was talking to a few shareholders this morning. It's amazing how many of the companies we've positioned in the market overall.
When I talked earlier before about being cautious, a lot of people being gold, the way we've been more cautious is we're holding a fair bit of cash at this point. The other test I run through is what's the balance sheet. It's amazing how many stocks that are in the AMCIL portfolio have no debt. I think that's going to be very important going forward. Just on to the outlook. Sorry, now we've got one more slide. Thinking about our characteristics, going back and what we're looking for, 32% of the portfolio have businesses that are founder-led or have those characteristics. 85% of the portfolio has earnings that are growing faster than the market. 70% of the portfolio are businesses that have a higher return on capital than the market. 47%, sorry, 47 companies at the moment with nearly 8% cash.
Nearly half the stocks in the portfolio have cash on their balance sheet. We're sort of sticking to what we told you about three years ago, that our focus was going to be to stick with the quality companies and be more of a long-term investor. Now onto the outlook. Yes, we've touched on that. Markets are trading at extreme highs, which makes us cautious. We're seeing a lot of speculative activity, which makes us cautious, whether it's Bitcoin or businesses listing in the U.S. that say they do anything to do with Bitcoin whatsoever are going crazy. Gold and small mining stocks are going crazy. I'm worried about the explosion of the private debt markets. I think there are hidden issues there. There's a lot of what I'd call speculative behavior, and these are all reflective of when markets look very peaky, and that makes me nervous.
Hence the focus on high-quality companies and more cash. We think our portfolio is well positioned to be in businesses that can grow profits over the long term, and ultimately share price will follow profits. With that, I'll pass back to Rupert.
Thank you, Mark, and thank you, Gilbert, and thank you, Jay, for that presentation. I realized in my introductory remarks in welcoming everyone, I didn't particularly acknowledge and welcome everyone who's physically here today. I know some online just can't make it, but it really is terrific to have a number of people in the room with us who've particularly come to join us. There is, of course, the time for informal discussion after the meeting with everyone present. Please remember that that opportunity will present itself. We'll now deal with any questions on the financial statements and reports for the year ended 30 June 2025. I'd like to invite questions from shareholders. For those in the room, we have microphones available. If shareholders could please state their name when addressing the meeting and ask all questions through the Chair, that would be appreciated.
I explained to those of you online how to ask questions before. I think I gather we've got a couple of questions which have come through online, but I might go to the room first. While you're thinking of something, perhaps Geoff, if we could deal with any of the questions that have come through online.
Thanks, Rupert, the Australian Shareholders Association holds proxy for 13 shareholders, from 13 shareholders, I should say. We think AMCIL continues to hold hybrid AGM meetings to maximize participation for shareholders. The first question is, the ASA notes that AMCIL is the worst performer among the four LICs associated with AFIC over the one and five years. Its share price trades the largest discount of all four, yet it is the most actively managed of all four. Is it time for the board to review AMCIL's investment mandate?
Thank you for that question from the ASA, and thank you for the observations on the hybrid meeting. We think that is something that we will continue with because we like the opportunity to interact directly with shareholders. On the comment that's made, I think it's a question that's been asked on a fairly regular basis as to whether or not it makes sense to have a smaller focused portfolio within the stable. Our view is that it does. We believe the investment thesis, as I mentioned in my earlier remarks, is intact.
The nature of the value approach that we take is out of favor at a momentum time in the market, but the ability to invest in stocks in equal proportion from different parts of the index, which is kind of sort of a best ideas fund within the group, in our view, continues to make a good deal of sense. However, it is a matter that we continue to review from time to time, and we thank the ASA for bringing that to our attention again.
Second question from the ASA, Rupert. The ASA notes that there are more than three transaction trades on average per investment committee meeting. Does the Board Investment Committee approve these trades in advance or merely rubber stamp them afterward?
Thank you again. Look, rubber stamp is a pretty tough expression. I mean, it implies something, I suppose, that is robotic and repetitive and somehow that insufficient care is given. That is absolutely not the case. The board meets regularly. The investment committee meets and approves every transaction after a rigorous presentation and analysis by the members of the committee. When there's a new stock that's entering the portfolio, a full presentation is given to all aspects of that holding, what that company does. The issue of having an investment team and then having the board tell the investment team what to do, to me, and I think to many of us, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, given that we then want to hold the investment team accountable for what they do.
The sense of governance that I've described, I think, is the appropriate one for a listed investment company that operates within this space. I might go to questions in the room at this point. If not, are there any other?
I have some more, yes. I heard that AFIC is preparing to establish a separate global investment company in the near future. Will AMCIL shareholders be able to participate in this IPO?
Mark, I might get you to handle that. It's not an AMCIL specialist matter.
I was at the AFIC AGM yesterday, and the comments I heard, obviously I'm involved with AFIC too, that AFIC has a small position in the portfolio. They stated about 1.5% is in a portfolio of international stocks, and that's been running for about four years, I think, with a view that maybe it could turn into an LIC at some point. It's a project that's really internal at this point. There's been no other information given out about what something may look like and when it may happen. That's really all the information that's out there at the moment on that particular project.
I guess the other comment we made there, Mark, was that preparatory work has been done in terms of potentially getting new listed investment companies.
Yeah, that was the information that came out. There had been some prep work, but also that they'd be patient with it and look for the right window of opportunity.
I might just add my own perspective on that and the perspective of the board. We have discussed from time to time about whether we would have an international stock or some international stocks within AMCIL because we recognize that there are important industries that we can't get exposure to exclusively within the Australian market. That is a matter that continues to be under review, but it's quite possible that in 12 months' time we may have an international stock there. We obviously have New Zealand stocks there, but I'm really meaning something beyond Australasia.
Investing in private credit markets is in vogue. What is AMCIL's management view on this trend? Can the newly minted ASX SOL, which is Soul , offer an exposure to private credit markets?
They do some investing in that area, but our view on it, I think you've got to be, there are a lot of probably, I think there's some more unsophisticated players. It's become a bit of a hot market, so you really have to know what you're doing in that sector. As far as Soul go, I mean, clearly they've got a great long-term track record of running in businesses. You let that track record stand on itself. Beyond that, it's not something that we would look to get exposure to in AMCIL. It would only potentially be through something like that, but you'd really have to know the manager really well and really understand their risk frameworks and the way they're going about it.
I think I'd add to that that there is a problem to solve for here in that very large parts of the economy now are controlled by private companies, private enterprises that smaller investors can't get set in and have exposure to. I think that is a matter not necessarily for AMCIL to solve, but it would be good to try and find a way to provide opportunities or more opportunities than exist presently for smaller shareholders to get access to some of those transactions that we read about in the newspapers just about every day.
This is an area of the market that clearly the banks don't want to do business in. That potentially could tell you something. If you're really good at what you do, it does mean you can make great returns. I just don't think that sector's been properly tested in a downturn, and I would be really worried about, I think there'll be some that come through it really well and they'll make you good returns, but I would be worried that there'll be some out there that won't turn out so good.
Has AMCIL explored the military defense sector as an investment thematic?
I guess that military defense sector, I guess that is an example of an entire sector where there isn't an opportunity for much direct investment through the ASX. There are some examples, but I think it's been the view of the board, and I think Mark might make a comment from the management perspective that that is an area that requires deep expertise around trends in military hardware and other forms of defense expenditure. We haven't, I guess, looked at that as a separate standalone theme within the overall investment strategy of AMCIL.
I'd just say that's not an area that we've done any work on or focused on at this point for AMCIL.
I do not have any questions.
No other online questions. Does anyone in the room have a question to ask? If not, there will be an opportunity to, as we gather for a cup of tea, and I think there's been some baking going on, so there'll be something to eat as well after the meeting is over. Please stay and let's talk informally. We now move to the formal resolutions of the meeting. Your Directors' recommendations are set out in the notice of meeting. I can confirm that where undirected proxies have been given to me as Chairman, I'll vote them in line with the Board's recommendations on each agenda item. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. Representatives of MUFG Corporate Markets will oversee the conduct of the poll.
Firstly, if there is any person present in the room who believes they are entitled to vote but has not yet registered to vote, would you please seek assistance from our share registry, MUFG Corporate Markets? I'll now go through the procedures for filling in the voting papers. In respect of any open votes a proxy holder may be entitled to cast, you need to mark a box beside each resolution to indicate how you wish to cast your open votes. Shareholders also need to mark a box beside each resolution to indicate how you wish to cast your votes. When you have finished filling in your voting paper, please lodge it in the ballot boxes that will be available at the end of the meeting.
I'm pretty sure everyone in the room is familiar with some of those procedures, but if there are any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Those will be able to give you the answers very quickly. The second agenda item is the resolution to adopt the remuneration report. This is required by the Corporations Act to be considered by shareholders annually and is an advisory resolution only. The remuneration report can be found in the company's 2025 annual report. As administration, management, and investment services are provided by Australian Investment Company Services Limited, the details of this relationship can be found in the annual report. The remuneration report is only concerned with non-executive Directors' fees. I will now show the proxies received in respect of this resolution, which are now shown on the screen in front of you and behind me.
There were no questions asked prior to the meeting concerning this resolution. If you have any questions on this item, please submit them now via the online portal or raise your hand if you're in the room. Geoff, any questions online? Would anyone like to ask a question on this item? If not, would you complete your ballot, your voting form on that item? The third item of business is the resolution to re-elect Michael Hirst. Mike was re-elected as a Director by shareholders at the 2022 Annual General Meeting. He is standing for re-election by shareholders today. In accordance with Rule 46 of the company's constitution, he retires from the Board of Directors and, being eligible, offers himself for re-election. Mike, would you like to come and occupy this space and say a few words? Thank you.
Thank you, Rupert. Pardon me. Look, I'm very grateful to have been given the opportunity over the last six years to participate in the operation of the company. Five years of those, I've been Chair of the Audit Committee. Over that time, I believe I've made a contribution through my deep knowledge of financial markets, both in terms of investing and also accessing capital through those markets for companies I've been involved with. I've had a long time in governance. I sat on my first external board, I hate to say it, in 1986, and I've pretty much been involved in director roles as well as executive roles through that period.
Importantly, given where the world is at the moment with the geopolitical environment being different and also with the way markets are operating, I've seen a number of different economic cycles over that period and one or two many financial crises that I'd rather mention. I do believe that the company's approach to investing in quality companies will win out over time. If you have a think about examination of quality companies over a long period, it really is those companies that are well-run, have strong balance sheets, have learning positions in their markets that win out over time. That is certainly what underpins the investment process we go through at AMCIL. Finally, if you see fit to support me with another term, I'll continue to work hard for the company, and I'll be very appreciative of that opportunity. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Mike, and thank you for those comments and insights. From my own perspective, and I think the perspective of Mike's colleagues, he makes a really outstanding contribution to the Board, and of course, as Chairman of the Audit Committee, he's a very active member of the Investment Committee and a go-to person on a number of matters, which is just great to have him there. I should say, Mike, you're incredibly responsive to texts and emails at different hours of the day and night, so thank you. I sometimes think there must be two of you, or even more, but thank you very much. I'll now show the proxies received in respect of this resolution, which are now shown on the screen. There were no questions asked prior to the meeting concerning the resolution. Are there any questions from the floor here in the room?
If there are none, please fill out your voting forms as previously directed. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our discussion on the items of business. In a couple of minutes, I will close the meeting. For those participating online, please ensure that you have cast your votes on all resolutions and clicked on submit votes at the bottom of your voting card. You will have five minutes from the close of the meeting to finalize and submit your voting card. For those in the room, may I now ask that you complete your voting card. Staff from the share registry will collect your voting card at the end of the meeting. I'd like to thank shareholders for your continued support and for the interest that you've shown in the affairs of your company by your attendance, both personally and virtually this morning.
Shareholders are reminded that the team will be holding a webinar following the release of the half-yearly results in January and also holding shareholder meetings in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane, and Sydney during March of 2026 next year. I also invite shareholders, when they do wish to contact the company for any reason, to have a discussion. We welcome those opportunities, so please direct any inquiries directly to Mark or to me through Geoff or through Mark. We'd be very happy to sit down quietly and talk about any aspect of the company from time to time. The results of these votes will be released to the ASX later today, and therefore, at this moment, I now declare the meeting closed and invite you all to join us in the adjoining room where I'm expecting to see our morning tea has been served. Thank you very much.