Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 35th annual general meeting of Djerriwarrh Investments. As many of you know, my name is John Paterson, and I'm Chairman of your company. The company secretary has confirmed that a quorum is present, and I'll now open the meeting. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians from all the lands we're gathered on today and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. We're all very pleased to be able to meet physically again with our shareholders after a three-year gap due to the COVID protocols. Unfortunately, the weather this time has intervened, and I would thank you all for making the effort of coming out in pretty wet weather and which, as I understand, will deteriorate as the day goes on. May I introduce the people on the stage with me?
To my left, we have our General Manager of Business Development and Investor Relations, Geoffrey Driver.
Good morning.
Company Secretary, Matthew Rowe.
Good morning.
We have our Managing Director, Mark Freeman.
Good morning.
My fellow non-executive directors, Kathryn Fagg.
Good morning.
Graham Goldsmith.
Good morning.
Geoffrey Roberts.
Morning, everyone.
Alice Williams.
Good morning.
Karen Wood.
Good morning.
We also have our Chief Financial Officer, Andrew Porter.
Good morning.
Non-Executive Director Bruce Brook is joining us via telephone due to a long-standing commitment. In due course, we'll be hearing from the Portfolio Manager, Brett McNeill, and the Investment Analyst, Nikki Sun. We are also joined by other members of the investment team in the front row of the audience. I will also take this opportunity to introduce Nadia Carlin, partner with the company's auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, who is available to answer questions today on the audit and the preparation and content of the auditor's report at the end of the presentation. Nadia has been our audit engagement partner for five years, and as per legal requirements, this is her last AGM as our engagement partner. We thank her for assistance over the five-year period and welcome her replacement, Kate Logan, who's also present here today. Today's meeting is being held as a hybrid meeting.
Today's presentation has been released to the ASX and made available on the company's website. I remind shareholders using the online platform that while questions can be submitted at any time, I'll not address them until the relevant time in the meeting. To ask a question, select the Q&A icon. Type your question into the text box, and once you've finished typing, please hit the Send button. Please also note that your questions may be moderated, or if we receive multiple questions on one topic, amalgamated together. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There's no need to hit a Submit or Enter button, as the vote is automatically recorded. You'll receive a vote confirmation notification on your screen. I now declare voting open on all items of business, and I'll give you a warning before I move to close voting.
Before we move to the business of the meeting, I'd like to provide some additional comments. In July this year, Geoffrey Roberts was appointed to your board. Jeff will make some comments later, prior to the resolution number five, the vote on his appointment to the board. I'll add, however, that we believe his long experience as a CFO in two major listed companies and his broad exposure in the past and ongoing to several industries relevant to our portfolio will add considerable value in board and investment committee discussions into the future. In July, I advised the board that I intended to retire from my roles as chairman and director of Djerriwarrh at the end of this AGM. The board decided to appoint Graham Goldsmith as the next chairman.
Graham is up for election and so, too, will make some comments prior to resolution 3, the vote on his reappointment. He will, I gather, also make some other brief comments just prior to the end of the meeting. The board has a high degree of confidence in Graham and believes he will prove to be an able chairman. Global equity markets have entered a period of high volatility. The volatility stems from rising interest rates, sharp increase in inflation, a view that many economies will slip into recession, and lingering uncertainties relating to the war in Ukraine. The normalization of interest rates shouldn't have been a surprise. It was going to occur sometime, but after 14 years of stimulatory monetary policy post the GFC, we've been lulled into a view that it would happen slowly and may have continued to be deferred. The sharp rise in inflation was less obvious.
Its causes were many. COVID supply disruptions, sharp rises in oil and gas fees, food prices globally stemming from the Ukraine war, insurance premiums affected by high weather, catastrophe claims, et cetera. However, in the case of oil and gas prices, half a decade of underinvestment made markets much more vulnerable to a supply shock. I've seen a number of broker predictions that have inflation back down in the 3%-4% range in the next 12-18 months' time. I personally would have concerns that this may be too optimistic. Few market commentators have experienced such an acceleration in inflation. Your chairman started his career in the 1970s, and so I've experienced this phenomenon before, and so I'll make a few brief observations. The most damaging phase is the acceleration of inflation, which raises lots of unanswered questions. What level will the inflation plateau at?
Will businesses be able to recoup cost increases quickly? What are the implications for interest rates and as a consequence, asset valuations? At the moment, these are all unknowns. Once inflation stabilizes at higher levels, strong businesses that have low debt levels, strong market positions, an ability to raise prices, and capable boards and executives will come to the fore. We believe your portfolio contains many of these characteristics. Good quality equities at that point will provide the best protection against the corrosive effects of inflation. Moving on to the business of the meeting, I'll take the notice of meeting as read. With regards to the minutes of the 34 th annual general meeting, they've been signed as a correct record and are available to shareholders for inspection today.
First agenda item is the consideration of the financial statements and reports for the year ended of June 30th, 2022. We'll do this via a presentation after which I'll ask shareholders to comment or to raise any questions, either about the presentation or of the auditors if they have any questions about the audit. I will now pass you to our Managing Director, Mark Freeman.
Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. It's good to see some people out in these challenging weather conditions. It's really pleasing that we can actually do an AGM. Having contact with our shareholders is a very important part of not our process, but our culture. It's important that all of us here understand who our shareholders are, what they're looking for from their investments, and so I'm certainly very pleased that we can be back doing AGMs and making ourselves accountable to you. I would encourage you all, either throughout the presentation or afterwards to talk to anyone, our directors, the investment team, myself, about any issues or concerns or other topics you wanna talk about, in regard to the portfolio or markets.
Just starting with the first slide, just a disclaimer to say we're here to talk about the company, and we'll move on to the next slide. Just the agenda, I'll just give a bit of an overview, then pass on to our CFO, Andrew Porter, who'll talk about the financial year in summary. Brett McNeill and Nikki Sun will then talk about the portfolio and markets, and finally, Brett will give an outlook comment. Just moving on to the overview of the company. Djerriwarrh's one of the largest income-focused LICs, and that's a very important part to note. I think our primary objective is really around generating franking dividends for our shareholders. We do consider total return, but we understand the importance of dividends to our investors. We listed on the ASX in 1989.
The shareholders get the benefit of full transparency of being a LIC, or listed investment company, as well as the governance standards that come with that. Djerriwarrh shareholders own the management rights, so there's no external fund manager as such. As such, there's no fee leakage and there's no performance fees that come attached with that. For those that don't know, Djerriwarrh's part of a broader group of LICs, which includes the Australian Foundation Investment Company, AFIC, AMCIL and Mirrabooka. As such, the investment team covers all four investment companies, and we get the benefits of scale that come with that. With that, we thought we'd put up here are the photos of the investment team. I think they're all here today. You've got experienced people looking over the fund.
Once again, please take the opportunity to introduce yourselves and talk to the members. Just looking at the objectives. As I stated, we're looking to provide an enhanced level of income that's higher than what you would get from the broader market. We seek to do that at a low cost with no performance fees to shareholders. We also are targeting total returns that are attractive, and there is a component of dividends plus growth and capital. Just a couple of charts here which I wanted to spend a little bit of time on. On the left, this is showing what the yield you get from Djerriwarrh when you include franking, which is around 7%. The index is around 6%.
We're targeting sort of around 1, or at least 1% better than the index, in terms of yield. On the right-hand side, we've got the total returns. It is a little bit disappointing that we probably haven't quite met the mark we wanted to on total returns. I think we found the last five or six years with extremely low interest rates was quite a challenging time for Djerriwarrh. The option premium is an important part of the process, and when we had ultra-low interest rates and low volatility, we struggled to get the sort of premium that we used to get. That period of low interest rates was tough for us, and I think we're probably finding our way a little bit.
We tried to sustain the dividend, and that meant we perhaps lifted the coverage too much on the portfolio in terms of options. We're probably having to write some calls closer to the money. These all restricted our capital growth and therefore our total returns. A couple of years ago, we had Brett join us, and the board did a review on the Djerriwarrh settings, and a lot of work was done looking back through history and when perhaps Djerriwarrh was performing a little bit better. One of the main things we did was we looked at our income, and we felt that we weren't. Well, the dividends we were paying out were really unsustainable.
We did cut the dividend, but as a result, we have pulled our option coverage back to more sustainable levels and back to levels that we were doing, probably in the first 20 years of Djerriwarrh's life. It meant we can get better total returns, so we're still generating a nice premium yield to the market. What I'm tracking the performance since we had that strategy reset, which is about 2.5 years ago or two years ago, and I'm comfortable with the performance we're seeing to date on that and starting to look more like the numbers we used to get from Djerriwarrh. Once again, some disappointing numbers on total return, but I'm confident that we're sort of back on track. Particularly, interest rates do make a lot of investing challenging.
One thing it is good for is the price we sell or the price we get it for our options, and we've certainly seen that lift up. It makes it easier for us to manage our positions and makes it easier to get income in. That movement is in our favor. Just the final slide from me before I pass over to Andrew Porter. Just wanted to highlight again, we show this at all our LIC meetings, where the share price is sitting against the NTA or what I would call fair value. So on the right-hand side, you can see it's Djerriwarrh's share price is just at a small discount. I would call that around fair value. We still get some questions about the share price performance over sort of five- 10 years.
You can see on the left-hand side, Djerriwarrh had a long period where the share price was trading a long way north of fair value. We used to show these charts regularly. We used to say we didn't think that was right. We weren't sure why the market was doing this, but what it has done it has perhaps created some poor investment returns for some shareholders who bought in at large premiums. I guess where we sit at the moment, we're more comfortable with the share price being around fair value or the NTA, which we publish every month. For those that are interested in any LICs, I encourage them to always watch the monthly NTA numbers that are put out and think about that in relation to where the share price is.
Finally, just before I pass over to Andrew, certainly on behalf of staff, I want to thank John for his guidance and stewardship over his time, not just as Chair, but as a Director. I mean, he's been a huge supporter or support to myself and the team. We'll miss him. He'll be around a bit longer because he's still Chairman of AFIC, and he has an office up with this. Personally, I just want to pass on my thanks to him. Andrew.
Thank you, Mark, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I echo the comments already made both with regards to the Chairman and the fact that it is very good to be meeting with shareholders face-to-face again, despite the atrocious weather. I'm sure you can probably hear me even without the microphone. And hopefully, those joining online will also benefit from this morning's meeting. I'll quickly run through the figures. Just to reiterate, I'm very happy to take any questions either after the presentation or after the formal part of the meeting over a coffee. The profit figure, which is the first figure that you see there in the top left-hand corner, includes any gain or loss on options that we have written but have not expired, been closed out or exercised. Okay, thank you very much.
As I said, that profit figure, which is in the top left-hand corner, is incomplete. We don't know what the final profit on those options will be. That's why the board looks at the net operating result as its key profit measure. That's the second figure there. As you can see, this is up 29% in the year to AUD 40.4 million. However, both this year's figure and last year's figure include amounts that were outside what the directors would consider the usual course of business.
AUD 6.5 million in a merger dividend from the BHP Petroleum Woodside merger this year, where we received Woodside shares but have to account for these as a dividend, and the demerger of Endeavour Group from Woolworths in the previous year, which was a AUD 6.3 million accounting adjustment, where we had to treat the Endeavour shares that we received as a dividend. The good thing about being an accountant is the accounting standards always come up with new things for you to think about and to do and to confuse shareholders with. What this means is that the result that the directors look at in determining the dividend was AUD 38 million in 2022, up from AUD 24.3 million in 2021.
To put it in perhaps more easily understandable context or relevant context, AUD 0.143 per share versus AUD 0.109 per share in 2021. Those are the key profit metrics. They're important when one looks at the next set of figures, which are the dividends paid for the year. As you can see, the dividends for both 2022 and 2021 were in line with those earnings figures and in line with the policies that Mark's been outlining. The board will also look at what the franked or gross yield is on the ASX 200 when making dividend decisions, as Mark has outlined, and he's been through those latest figures. We often get asked what the franking reserves are.
As per the annual report, after payment of the final dividend, Djerriwarrh had effectively enough franking to pay an additional twenty-four and a half cents worth of franked dividend. There is a buffer there which the board can utilize when necessary. The MER or management expense ratio remained constant at 0.45%, which is the figure that you see in the top right-hand corner. Which is a pleasing result, given the value of the portfolio that you can see in the last figure there, fell down to AUD 783 million at the end of 2022 from AUD 840 million the year before. Just a reminder that the MER is a percentage of the expenses as a proportion of the average portfolio over the year.
If the portfolio was to decline during the year, this year, let's say, and expenses remain constant, that MER would increase even though the expenses have not. Just again, because I think it's important to emphasize what Mark has already been through, all of the staff that work for Djerriwarrh are employed by a company that is owned by AFIC and Djerriwarrh. Any surplus that AICS makes flows back to Djerriwarrh. The net expenses are simply what it costs to run the company with no profit margin being paid to an external organization. Mark has also looked at more updated portfolio return figures. Without further ado, let me hand over to Brett, who will go into some more detail as to the components that make up Djerriwarrh's profit and returns. Brett?
Thank you, Andrew, and good morning, everybody. In the portfolio update section of this presentation, what I look to do is hopefully aim to give you a better understanding of the investment approach that we use, as well as some insights into the current portfolio, including any recent changes that we've made to the portfolio. What I want to do is run through this investment approach with reference to Djerriwarrh's two key objectives. As Mark mentioned, Djerriwarrh has two key objectives. The first is to deliver an enhanced income to shareholders. This comes through in Djerriwarrh's dividend yield compared to the market's dividend yield. There are two key drivers of this enhanced income objective. The first being the level of option income that we generate, and the second being the dividend income that we receive from our portfolio holdings.
The second key objective of Djerriwarrh is to deliver attractive investment returns over the long term. This should come through in our total return, both in an absolute sense and also relative to market. As you can tell from Mark's comments, that's something that we're firmly focused on improving and delivering. The key driver of our ability to generate attractive investment returns over the long term is really our portfolio construction process, namely our focus on quality companies, getting the balance right between income and growth, and maintaining a portfolio that's well diversified across stocks and sectors. Starting with option income being the first of the two key drivers of Djerriwarrh's enhanced income objective. Our approach with the option income part of the objective is that we write options against our portfolio holdings, which enables us to generate additional income.
This additional income is a key component of our enhanced income. To do this, we predominantly write call options against many of the portfolio holdings, with some put options used selectively given their different risk reward profile. Call option coverage is a metric that we often use when we're referring to the option strategy, and simply call option coverage means the percentage of the portfolio by value that we've written call options against. The level of call option coverage is a key determinant of the amount of option income that we can generate in any given year. In managing the trade-off between short-term income and long-term growth, and generating the amount of option income that we need for that enhanced income yield, we typically set the call option coverage at between 30%-40%.
At any given time, the call option coverage is determined in response to market conditions and also our investment process and our view on bottom up stock valuations and analysis. In doing that, daily active management of the option portfolio is a crucial part of the process. The chart on the right-hand side here shows the actual results we've received, we've achieved with regards to the option income over the last two financial years. With AUD 12.1 million of option income in financial year 2021 and AUD 12.5 million in financial year 2022, this equated to about 1.5% of the portfolio value when calculated on a yield basis. At this level, in this setting, that's consistent with us achieving our overall income objective for Djerriwarrh.
Looking now at more of a top-down view of how the option portfolio has been managed against some of the key market events and impacts over the last 12 months. The green line on this chart is the ASX 200 index, so the market level. Above this green line, we've noted some of the key market events and impacts of the last 12 Months. Below the line, we've noted some of the key moves that we've made to our option portfolio. If we start at the left-hand side of the chart, so 12 months ago when the market was at a level of about 7,200, we began the period with call option coverage in the portfolio at 30%.
We subsequently increased the call option coverage basically over that next month in response to the market's rise, and then with inflationary pressures building and the market largely tracking sideways for the next month or two, we're able to close out a lot of our call option positions early, which enables us to lock in option income. Move forward to late February, and the invasion of Ukraine saw energy prices spike. In response to this over the next month, with share prices of a lot of resource companies increasing significantly, we started to selectively write call options against these companies, in particular, Woodside and BHP.
Later on in the period, we had the RBA putting through the first cash rate increase in Australia since 2010, and then subsequently we saw the U.S. Fed put through three consecutive 0.75% rate increases. We used the subsequent market sell-off again to close out a lot of our call option positions early. This again allowed us to lock in a significant amount of option income. Hopefully, this top-down view and discussion gives a bit of an overview on how we've managed the option portfolio over the last 12 months, particularly the ability that we have to lock in option income early in response to market conditions and using that daily active management that we do. Turning now to dividend income, which is the second key driver of Djerriwarrh's enhanced income objective.
The approach for us, in generating dividend income is to construct a portfolio of companies with the right mix of income and growth, which will enable us to generate a level of dividend income that can deliver an attractive enhanced income yield, as well as growth in fully franked dividends. The key factors for us in doing this are to have an investment process that focuses primarily on owning high-quality companies for the long term. In particular, we're looking for companies that have a clear competitive advantage, often through owning unique assets. We want to back aligned management, often through founder-led businesses. We want to invest in companies that maintain strong balance sheets through the cycle. The portfolio needs to be well-diversified across stocks and sectors, and we need to get the balance right between short-term income and long-term growth.
Just as we did on the option income slide, the right-hand side here shows the actual dividend income that we've achieved over the last two financial years. The large jump from financial year 2021-20 22 was really a result of dividends rebounding post the COVID impact. When we look at it on a yield basis, the portfolio dividend income yield that we achieved was about in line with the market dividend yield. This setting again is consistent with us achieving our overall objective for Djerriwarrh with the enhanced income when we add this dividend income to the option income, delivering the enhanced income yield. Looking now at some company dividends in more detail. Overall, dividends were a really positive feature of the most recent company profit reporting season we thought, which saw dividends meet our expectations.
The reason it was a big positive is because there was a lot of nervous, nervousness heading into reporting season given all the impacts in the economy from inflation and the like. The positive trend for dividends was true for companies such as Coles and also for companies that are more focused on delivering long-term growth such as CSL. The charts I've got here show the actual dividends declared and paid for each of these companies over the last three financial years and the market expectations for our current financial year being financial year 2023. As we can see in the case of Coles, there's modest but solid growth expected in its dividend for this financial year. This would be a really pleasing result given its defensive exposure and its high dividend yield that it's currently offering of about 4% pre-franking.
In the case of CSL, the market is expecting more of a return to the strong growth in earnings and dividends that the company's been able to deliver over the long term. Looking now at banks and resources. The major banks such as Westpac, we think are well-positioned to continue their dividend recovery. Westpac's dividend, as expected by the market for this financial year, and we'll get more insight into this when they report their next profit result, in November, looks set for good dividend growth again. We think the growth will start to plateau off given that the banks have had a good recovery from COVID, but also that they've set their payout ratios at more sustainable levels from here. In the case of BHP, the market is expecting a decline in its total dividends for this financial year.
It's more of a return to normal levels after the supersized dividends that they delivered in financial year 2022, and it still will offer a very compelling dividend yield based on market forecasts for financial year 2023. Even with a further decline in 2024, we see a dividend yield of around sort of 5%-7% depending on where it settles. Still an attractive level. Hopefully, this section on dividends gives a flavor of how we want to set the portfolio to achieve our required level of dividend income, as well as the recent performance and current market expectations for dividend payments for four of our large portfolio holdings, being Coles, CSL, Westpac and BHP. Turning now to portfolio construction overall, which we think is the key driver of us delivering on the second goal of attractive investment returns over the long term.
Our approach here is to construct a well diversified portfolio of high quality companies across different sectors and with the appropriate balance of income and growth, so that we can deliver on our objectives across a variety of market conditions. We've listed some of the key portfolio statistics on the left-hand side of this slide. As of the end of September, the portfolio was valued at AUD 812 million. We held 49 stocks. The call option coverage was 29%, so just below the bottom end of our typical 30%-40% range, which reflects some of the moves that I talked about in the option coverage section, particularly how we've closed out a lot of positions recently to lock in profit.
You can also see that the put option coverage sits at about 2% as a result of selectively writing some put options over the last two months. The net tangible asset backing per share for the company was AUD 2.81 at the end of September. On the right-hand slide, we detail our top 20 holdings for the portfolio. We've talked about a number of these, such as CSL, Coles, BHP and Westpac. The holdings, top 20 holdings also include blue chips such as Commonwealth Bank, Woolworths. We've got some income stocks in particular, like Transurban and Mirvac, and companies primarily in there for growth like Carsales and Mainfreight. Slide 23 gives an update on some of the recent changes that we've made in the portfolio over the last three months since June balance date. There was some small sales.
We sold a bit of our Iress holding a couple of months ago, and then we also sold out of InvoCare and Sonic Healthcare. As a result of writing call options, we were exercised and hence sold stock in the companies listed in the option exercises column being Amcor, Atlas Arteria, Brambles, NAB and Ramsay Health Care. It was the proceeds from these sales and option exercises that we used in conjunction with the money that we raised in the share purchase plan to make a number of purchases for the portfolio, which are listed on the right-hand side. The goal here was to invest in a number of high quality companies with that mix of income and growth to meet our objectives. We were able to buy these companies in the last few months at what we think are quite attractive long-term valuations.
We'll now touch on two of the companies that we've bought recently to give a bit more detail, being Reece, which we primarily have been buying for the growth it brings to the portfolio, and SCA Property Group, which we primarily own for income. A bit more detail on Reece. Market cap of just over AUD 9 billion. Forecast dividend yield of 1.8% for this year. Hence it's in the portfolio mostly for growth in capital, but also growth in income. It's a market leader. It's Australia's dominant plumbing trade and bathroom business. A highly successful business model that they are in the process of expanding now in the U.S., where there's a huge long-term growth opportunity. But importantly, the company is doing it in a very disciplined and patient manner, which is very encouraging.
Reece has delivered excellent long-term financial performance, and I think the chart on the right-hand side is evidence of this being their net profit after tax that they've delivered over the last 16 years has been terrific, profit growth growing fourfold over that time. Investing in Reece means that we're backing an aligned management team and board, predominantly the Wilson family, and the company's maintained a strong balance sheet at all times. These factors make Reece a key long-term growth investment for Djerriwarrh. At this point, I'd normally pass to Olga. She can't be here today because she's on maternity leave, so she's at home with her newborn son. Instead, we've got Nikki presenting today, which will be great. Nikki's been with the business for almost two years in the investment team and has had a particular focus on real estate companies and ESG research.
She'll talk about SCA Property Group and then ESG. I'll pass to Nikki.
Thanks, Brett. In addition to growth stocks, investing in companies that provide income through dividends is critical to the construction of our portfolio. One of our key holdings is SCA Property Group, who owns neighborhood shopping centers in residential locations that continue to benefit from customers shopping local for everyday needs. We think earnings will be resilient over the long term, particularly due to their long-term leases, coupled with the fact that the majority of their income is derived from stores that are non-discretionary in nature, such as your Woolworths, your Coles, food, pharmacy and healthcare. As rent collecting vehicles, real estate investment trusts such as SCA Property Group receive relatively stable streams of income that gets passed on to investors in the form of dividends.
The graph on the right shows the dividend growth that management has delivered over long term, notwithstanding the temporary COVID impacted dividends that were more resilient than peers. SCA Property Group is a key holding with a relatively resilient earnings outlook, a strong balance sheet, and an attractive dividend yield of over 6%. Sorry about that. Thank you. Moving on to the incorporation of environmental, social, and governance factors in our process. As long-term investors, the sustainability of any business model is important to our definition of quality and the returns we can expect to receive. ESG matters are not the complete picture, but are one of the inputs that form part of our investment considerations. We look to invest in quality companies where prospects remain strong over our long-term horizon. When an ESG issue arises, our approach typically isn't to divest.
Instead, we prefer to remain invested to influence a positive outcome, and we do that through engagement with the management and board and voting on all company resolutions. As an example, selling Santos or Woodside doesn't reduce the demand for oil and gas. Our long-term view is that there will eventually be an alternative greener fuel source. However, we think that in the short term, there are opportunities for companies like Santos to benefit from the demand from LNG. We acknowledge Santos and Woodside are large carbon emitters. However, both companies have targets that we will be holding them against and will also be tracking and paying particular attention to their shorter term targets. In addition, Santos is working to reduce their emissions through carbon capture and storage, which will play a part in limiting global warming.
We manage our current holding by writing call options against these companies and continue to assess our thesis. Moving on to our next example, where we received Endeavour Group stock from Woolworths demerger of Endeavour Group. We believe that the gambling business is exposed to long-term earnings risk from the growing population of people who may no longer use pokie machines, and the risk of regulation being introduced around gambling due to the perceived societal harm it can cause. Due to our concerns around the sustainability of earnings from those factors, we decided to sell Endeavour Group after earning good dividend and option income. In essence, ESG factors are an important component of our assessment of companies, which we proactively manage through buying, selling and writing call options. I'll now pass to Brett to discuss our outlook.
Thanks, Nikki. We've listed on slide 28 some of the key factors that are currently impacting investment markets, namely inflation, interest rates, equity market volatility and geopolitical events. With inflation high, we need to make sure that we invest in companies with good pricing power and particularly competitive advantage. Stocks in the portfolio like CSL, Cochlear, ResMed, also Transurban, BWP Trust and Port of Tauranga. Interest rates going up means interest costs are going up for companies. Balance sheets are crucial, as they always are. Companies in the Djerriwarrh portfolio like ARB, JB Hi-Fi, Equity Trustees and Goodman Group all have strong balance sheets, which is pleasing.
The equity market volatility means we need to try and look through a lot of the short-term noise when it comes to focusing on the investment portfolio and focus on long-term quality and valuations, which is what we have hopefully been doing with our recent share purchases. At the same time, equity market volatility is a positive thing for our option activity. Higher volatility means higher premiums, which means higher premium income for us, and that feeds through to the management of the option portfolio. In the case of geopolitical events, it's really just about making sure that we always maintain a well-diversified portfolio across stocks and sectors. Unsurprisingly, despite all this backdrop and all the headlines and the market noise, the key focus for us is those two key drivers of Djerriwarrh's enhanced income objective being our option income and our dividend income.
In the case of our option income, the option portfolio now is in good shape. Call option coverage at about 29% along with higher equity market volatility means that we're tracking quite well for option income so far in financial year 2023, albeit it's early days. We're only three and a bit months into the financial year, but so far we're tracking well. In the case of dividend income, it's a similar story. It's in good shape. We're also well-placed here. Dividends were in line with our expectations during the recent profit reporting season, which was a good start. We see across the board, in particular in our portfolio, most of our holdings, you look at them, very good balance sheets and also sustainable payout ratios.
Both of those are extremely important factors for dividends, if you enter a period of economic softness. While we'll see some companies have a reduction likely in financial year 2023 in their dividend like BHP, we've got growth expected by the market in other companies like the ones we ran through CSL, Coles and Westpac, but also a number of other companies, some of which are still recovering from the COVID impact, like Transurban and potentially Auckland Airport. Against this backdrop, we definitely remain confident in the quality and diversification of our investment portfolio, and we really think that was enhanced by the recent purchases that we made after investing the share purchase plan proceeds and some of the sale proceeds recently.
With that in mind, irrespective of any short-term factors, we think with the current portfolio settings, particularly things like the option income yield and the dividend yield objectives and the call option coverage, mean that Djerriwarrh is well set to achieve its long-term objectives. With that, before I pass back to John, I would like to echo some of the thoughts from this morning and on behalf of the investment team, say a sincere thank you to our chairman, in particular for his leadership, guidance, insights, and most of all, support. Thank you very much, John.
Right. Thank you. I'd now like to invite questions from shareholders, and we might start with those in the room and then move to the internet after that. For those in the room, we have microphones available, and if shareholders could state their name when addressing the meeting and ask all questions through the chair, that would be appreciated. Now we've got a question up here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm the chief executive of Kingfisher Capital Partners. We have had clients invested in Djerriwarrh shares for many decades since, you know, the very big sort of beginnings. I'm holding proxies in my hand that represents the fifth-largest shareholder group in the company. There are others that I couldn't manage to rustle up, but that's a fairly good sample, and there's a good cross-section of our clients that are represented by me today. Like you, we prefer to remain invested in companies and to influence positive outcomes. The company's performance has been dismal. On
You know, I looked at the most recent quarterly commentary that you released, down 12.3% versus the market down 6.2 on five years underperform, 10 years underperform, and 15 years underperform. What I don't understand is, we're paying 0.45% and we're doing these covered call option writing, which seems to shred shareholder value, and cause underperformance. The company keeps pointing over to Paul, but it's robbing Peter to pay Paul with income. Inflation's now 6% or 6.1 or 2% at of June 30th. It's like, as you identified earlier, it's likely to be a persistent problem.
I'm very concerned for shareholders that you know there needs to be sufficient embedded capital appreciation to offset the effects of inflation on our investment, and it's not satisfactory to continue with the covered call writing. I'd call on the company to have a major review of the covered call writing activity and get an independent consultant in to come up with recommendations. It might be that it's no longer appropriate to continue with it because it's really not providing the sorts of returns that it once did many years ago when Djerriwarrh were trading at a premium. I've never understood a premium, and I've never paid a premium for investment company shares, so I'm with you on that. Inflation is a problem. I think the company needs to rethink it.
I don't understand why the company's got a AUD 150 million dollar debt facility drawn to AUD 80 million or AUD 89 million at balance date. It magnifies poor returns, and the returns are certainly poor from what I can see. I don't understand that at all. The interest rate environment is rising, which threatens our company. I know the level of gearing is not threatening from a solvency point of view, but it's just not prudent. You know, it says in the annual report, "Oh, you know, we jump on opportunities and we do this and that," yet the returns are still poor. Long-term returns are still poor.
I must say I was shocked, and I'm probably gonna slightly drift into another area, but I was slightly shocked to read your annual report from front to back, and then it referred me to the AFIC annual report to really get the truth on Djerriwarrh and how lousy its performance has been. I quote from the AFIC annual report, "Djerriwarrh Investments' performance was below its benchmark in all periods tested, with the exception of its portfolio over one year." I found it incredible that there wasn't a full exploration of that in the annual report. We're a limited company. We're not some sort of captive of some other group. I really felt it was very deficient, the remuneration section, and I also found the two commentaries as follows extremely confusing.
I've been in the industry not quite as long as you, but since the mid-1980s, and I know inflation too. The outlook for Djerriwarrh dividends and distribution income for the 2022-2023 financial year remains uncertain, and we expect to be in the best position to assess this post the Australian reporting season. That's page 10. Then I get to page 11. Irrespective of market conditions over the next 12 months, we believe that the current portfolio settings and positioning should enable Djerriwarrh to achieve its objectives of delivering an enhanced fully franked income above the market and an attractive total return over the long term. I just couldn't reconcile in my mind what the company was telling me because I thought I was reading the AFIC annual report, and I had to check the cover to make sure I was reading the same one.
You know, I think the company should have a major review of its option activities. Its 0.45 is too high, and if it can't make it on its own, it should find a kindred spirit that's a traditional investment company that's got a MER of 0.1, save the shareholders, point, you know, whatever it is, 80, 75% of the fees, and merge with someone else and, where we got, you know, more option stability and certainty and some kind of hedge against inflation. I guess there's really no question, but I seek the board's undertaking, particularly under Mr. Goldsmith, because I understand, Chairman, it's your last day, and thank you for your service. Under Mr.
Goldsmith, I seek the board's commitment that they will have a good hard look, and I understand that was perhaps done two years ago when there was the major dividend reset where we all had to get off AUD 0.20 a share or whatever it was and settle for a lot less. I just don't think it works.
Right. Well, thank you very much. I'll address a few of the things, and then I might pass some of the discussion on the performance to Mark, and he can address that. We too have been disappointed by the underperformance against the NTA figures, and I think you can probably look at that in sort of three periods. If you have a look at the period that Djerriwarrh has been in existence, the returns are pretty similar to the index. There was a period, which I think started around about 2013, 2014, where we underperformed, and Mark will address some of the learnings from that period. It was clearly the period where interest rates went very low, which affected our ability to earn option income.
It affected the ability, when you get low premiums, you have to write options nearer to the market price, so you have a greater risk of losing upside potential. Mark will talk to you about the fact that May of a bit over two years ago we had a strategy session, which we have each year, and we made some major changes then. It related to getting a more sustainable income stream that's superior to the market. It related to getting a lower level of option coverage, which allowed us potentially to capture more of the upside in capital terms. We have had that review, and we do think that the option trading we're doing is now much more adaptable to different environments and is producing better results.
I'll pass to Mark on the performance figures.
Yeah. I mean, John's covered a lot of points, but I mean, there's no question we struggled when interest rates fell to next to zero. For those that don't know, we sell call options. The value of those options, though, the way they're priced in the market, are very dependent on volatility and interest rates. When volatility is low and interest rates are low, the price of the options goes down and sometimes goes down a lot during that period. We were keen to sustain the dividend. We knew how important dividends were to shareholders. However, in pursuit of high dividends, what we ended up doing is sacrificing total returns. What we did is to try and keep up the option income because we weren't getting much anymore.
We increased our coverage. I think it got to about 55%, which was really astray from what had worked over the previous 20 years and worked well. As John pointed out, we're writing calls a lot closer to the share price. We were missing out on a lot of capital growth. We were earning a lot of income, paying out good dividends during the period. In fact, when you looked at the yield during that period, the gap in the yield between what Djerriwarrh paying and the market was huge. But the sacrifice we're making was total returns and the balance was wrong. We did our own review.
This is, you know, when you're dealing with options, we do have a lot of in-house expertise at these, as Bill said, the challenge that we're dealing with was very low interest rates. We did that review a couple of years ago. We looked at it and we sort of said, "Well, hang on. The yield we're paying out against the market is just too high and it's costing us too much in total return." That's why we cut the dividend to what we see is a more sustainable level, a level where if our income grows, we can pay out higher dividends, as has been the case. Option coverage, which is back to more of what we used to do, which is around that sort of 35%.
The settings feel a lot more like they did probably for the first 20 years when I was involved with Djerriwarrh and the performance was good. As we've been pointing out, because of interest rates bouncing back up and volatility picking up, we're now getting really good premium. It makes it easier to manage our positions. It makes it easier to undertake strategies. Yes, interest rates are higher than what they were three or four years ago, but they are more aligned with what they were in the first 20 years that I was involved with Djerriwarrh. I'm not uncomfortable about that. I think this environment actually gives us an opportunity to buy good stocks at better prices, better option premium. Makes it easier to manage those positions.
We can get good income by sustaining coverage at around 35%. I'm pleased with the performance since we had that strategy day, which is what I'm tracking. Even though the one-year isn't very good. On a two-year basis, the first year we made that adjustment, the performance was excellent. This year was tougher because of quality stocks have gone out of favor. But I'm still comfortable that we're on the right track. To me, the tough years is what's occurred. Going forward, I'm very comfortable. I think the history of Djerriwarrh: Djerriwarrh has always been a product that has been about writing call options and having a little bit of debt. The debt is around 10%.
If I look at the Djerriwarrh back to 1994, that really hasn't changed, and it worked well for a very long period of time. I think what we need to do is just hold the course, and be consistent with what we looked at back at the strategy day, which realigns with the Djerriwarrh of old, when it was a good performer.
Can I throw a couple of other things? Just one thing on the one-year basis. One of the major things that's been a drag on us is being underweight resources and energy. There's two elements in that. One, we obviously don't own the sort of lithium explorers, developers and that. They're not our style of investment. The other big one that changed that was BHP, by buying back their DLC shares in the UK and through the Woodside divestment, effectively changed the weightings in the index significantly. We're not an index fund. We didn't up our BHP weighting to reflect what had happened in the index. We've got a very good holding in BHP anyway. That was a one-off that we think will wash through, that won't be a recurring element.
The other thing you did mention was the remuneration report. Clearly, Djerriwarrh doesn't actually employ our workforce. It's employed by our shared services company, AICS, which is 75% owned by AFIC, 25 by Djerriwarrh. We obviously have a remuneration report, but the main focus of the executive remuneration is in the fairly detailed AFIC remuneration report. I think the most important thing I'd say about it, above the base level of salary that our executives get, the incentives are primarily driven by one, three, five, and 10-year performance, which is very aligned with our shareholders. If we don't perform, the executives just don't get any significant incentives. There is an alignment there.
There are five metrics that are relevant to Djerriwarrh that are used. The first three in terms of growth in dividend over the shorter term, the management expense ratio, which we've discussed, and the dividend yield are also what the board and the remuneration committee consider relevant to Djerriwarrh shareholders. The other two, I quite agree, in terms of the investment performance, did not meet the metrics, and therefore nothing was paid out under those.
Now, have we got any other questions in here? Oh.
I have one here and then come back to you.
Thanks. Murray Natoli. Look, I heard when you talked about environmental things, about carbon capture and storage. I mean, does that really work? I mean-
Look, it's these early stage developments, but I think the point we're trying to make really about that is it's the intent. When we're looking at Australian oil and gas companies, when we look at those companies on a global perspective, we think they're investable companies. There's been a lot of arguments, or certainly were a couple of years ago, about, you know, you shouldn't be in petroleum companies because of their emissions. Now, I think what the market's saying is that gas is an important part of a movement to more renewable energy sources. We need it. Now, on the global scale, we think Santos and Woodside, relative to global companies, what we wanna see them is to.
Yes, they are petroleum companies, but are they seeking to improve their environmental footprint? However, that is, and clearly that's one area they're exploring. Now, there's no one saying it's gonna happen overnight or it's gonna be a huge success. We wanna see them at least actively looking at ways of reducing their carbon footprint and for them to take it seriously. That may or may not be a component of that, but they're certainly something that they are pursuing.
Well, intent's good, but I'm looking for results and hopefully.
Oh, no, absolutely. I think we all are.
Our view is that these two Australian companies are taking their responsibilities very seriously on a global scale. If we throw out companies like Woodside and Santos, where are we gonna get our oil and gas from, which we still need? I suggest some of the alternatives that are out there on a global perspective are far worse in terms of ESG issues than those two companies. I think we had another question over here.
Just a bit confused about this AICS. I moved to the AFIC annual report because I was referred there from the Djerriwarrh annual report, sort of incorporated by reference. It said the following. I was a bit confused. "The remuneration report is required to show salary and incentives that the group executives receives. It does not accurately reflect the actual cost to AFIC shareholders of the remuneration. This is because the other companies, the executives provide services to Djerriwarrh, Mirrabooka, and AMCIL. Collectively, the LICs pay a proportion of these costs. The total remuneration shown in the table four is AUD 3.7 million," blah, blah.
It goes on to say, "Therefore, only 54% is paid by AFIC, or AUD 2 million will be borne by AFIC shareholders." I'm just trying to work out, like AFIC's quite a large company compared to Djerriwarrh, and Djerriwarrh's been a really poor performer. I'm just trying to work out how that all works. They're crowing about only paying 54% of the bill, and it just seemed a bit. It just didn't seem to reconcile in my mind at all. It was a bit concerning, frankly.
Well, look, there's a number of steps in how we assess the allocation of those costs. I might pass to Andrew, and he can sort of talk through the elements that are in there as to how we share that up.
Thank you, John. I would say it's not so much a matter of crowing, but simply trying to explain to shareholders the proportion of costs that are borne. It's a simple factual statement. The costs for the executives are included in the expenses line for Djerriwarrh because they pay a fee to AICS, and that is netted off against their share of any surplus that AICS makes, as we explained. What happens, briefly is that AICS itself prepares a budget for itself and then analyzes what the costs are for servicing each of the four LICs, and those costs and the budget for the year then go to each of the boards that are approved. The portion of AICS cost that is borne by Djerriwarrh, Mirrabooka, and AMCIL is shown in their expenses.
I'm happy to go through it again if you wish in more detail after the meeting.
I think one other point I'd make is if you can you know there is a function of scale in terms of LICs. The bigger the scale as long as you're not paying profit fees out you should get lower MER. If you assess each of our four companies against peer groups they are all competitive very competitive against other peer groups. We would argue that there's not a misallocation that's unfairly treating the three smaller groups vis-à-vis AFIC. We've got another question over here.
Chairman, thanks for taking my question. My name is Lyle Knight. In July of this year, shareholders were invited by the directors to take up a share purchase plan. At the time, I noticed that the NTA was higher than the share price, so the shares were trading at a discount. Yet the share purchase plan was offered to shareholders at a 2.5% discount. Is this prudent as I believe the result of that, the share purchase plan was that only 20% of shareholders took up the offer, so 80% didn't take up the offer. Surely at that sort of discount, those 80% of shareholders would have had their shareholding diluted.
I'll just address several aspects of an SPP. When we undertake one of these, we clearly try to ensure that, if we can, any dilution is minimized. We try to make sure that the funds raised are raised in an environment where we can productively earn a good return on them too, so that there's no dilution coming through in the income streams. There is always a difficult thing that these are done over a period of time, so you can't fine-tune the price to a price on a day. There has to be a little bit of a buffer there.
There is an enduring long-term benefit out of an SPP, and that is the fact that increasing the size of the company reduces the MER given for a given level of market level. That is an enduring benefit that'll flow through. Yes, we are conscious of the fact that there is potentially dilution. If you were to get the ideal environment. The ideal environment would be if we were trading at a 10% premium to NTA, and you could issue the shares at NTA or above. We can't control those things. It's not something. You know, we're conscious that we always look at whether we should be doing this. It's not something AFIC's done regularly, so it hasn't been something that has had a large impact on the group over time.
Yeah. I think my assessment would be it'd be the dilution impact would be minimal. I'm just trying to do the numbers in my head. I've got to land it on something that's rough, but someone from the investment team probably doing the calculations as well. Perhaps they can come up to you at the end and just tell you what it was worth in terms of actual dollars and cents. I think we'll probably find that on that amount of raising it's very small. It's minimal. I'll get someone to come up to you afterwards anyway.
Final question, Mr. Chairman from me, so I don't want to bore everyone. The 150 million dollar facility that you've got available, I mean, you compare to a benchmark, that, you know, you say doesn't pay fees and doesn't pay tax and stuff like that. Well, the benchmark you compare to can't write covered call options, hasn't got AUD 150 million to borrow either. I'm not sure whether it's, you know, a good comparison. Just moving on from that, with the AUD 150 million, what do you do with it? Like, what does the company do with it? Because the company's returns are so poor, and they're certainly not being enhanced by it. Well, perhaps they are. They're going from really poor to just poor. I'm just wondering what you do with the money.
It's drawn to AUD 89 million at the moment in a rising interest rate environment. I'd just like to get an example from perhaps through you, Chairman, Mr. Freeman, about an example of where you've spent AUD 20 million or AUD 50 million or whatever you've done to do something in the portfolio. Do you draw it down before you get the money for the SPP? I don't know. You know,
by borrowing?
Well, I'll cover a few points there. The AUD 150 million is obviously the maximum. We're usually nowhere near that. We'd be probably normally in that AUD 50-80 or 90 million range if we were borrowing. The rest is just a buffer to if you get into an environment where you get a lot of attractive placements from companies and things, and you want to move quickly to take them. We have been in an environment where the borrowing costs on those have been exceedingly low. The income alone that we've been earning above that borrowing cost has been quite significant. But it does give us the flexibility. When you run an option portfolio, sometimes you get a spike in the market.
You look as though you're going to lose a whole lot of stock. You can move to anticipate that before the stock is called away. It gives us a degree of flexibility. We think it adds value. We haven't actually. I don't know that we can specifically quantify that. Mark, you might make some comments.
Yeah. I mean, Brett might give a couple of examples. Two is that, you know, we've only got drawn, we're drawn, so gearing is about 10%, and we think that's roughly the right amount for us, but it does flex. I think probably since Brett's been involved, there's probably periods where we've been exercised on a lot of calls because the markets are high. That can peel back to sort of 5% or 6%. Then when markets fall, we can sort of then use a bit of that. But we don't see ourselves as a fund that's gonna be highly geared. We think 10% is very manageable, and we don't see ourselves moving a lot from that. But if you can buy, if you can get dips in markets, then buy stocks.
Well, that's when you should be applying a bit of gearing when asset prices are low. Interest rates, yes, they are higher, but as I stated, we've always run Djerriwarrh with a bit of gearing. If you get our buy prices right, in this environment, we're also seeing our borrowing costs are higher, but also the premium we get on options is a lot higher as well.
There's a natural hedge.
Yeah, there's a natural hedge. If you can get dividends and the franking credits and great option premium, there's an excess of income over your cost of debt, and that's positive. If you can do that and assume that you buy well, then we think it can add value. It has in the past. I don't see why we couldn't continue under this sort of, I guess, reset we did two years ago.
Yeah. A couple of practical examples. To your point, we do draw down on the debt facility to invest in the case of before share purchase plan proceeds were achieved and the received. The reason to do that is to invest in the stocks we want to buy, but before they go ex-dividend. That was the case with the timing of the recent share purchase plan. There were stocks that went ex-dividend towards the start of reporting season before we got the proceeds. We draw down on the debt, invest then, and then pay it down with the SPP proceeds. More recently, because we are more fully, close to fully invested with gearing at about 10%, we can still use the debt facilities to invest where we see value.
In the last week, for instance, we drew down on a further small part of our debt facility to buy Wesfarmers shares at around AUD 44 where we see value, the income growth, and the quality. That's a recent example of how we do it.
Right. As time's moving on, we might just move to any,
Just quickly, there's one.
So-sorry.
We'll move to the internet questions that we may have.
Thank you. My name is Heather. I have three questions. Can I ask the three? Okay. The first one is, the current federal government stance and talking again about getting rid of franking credits. What do you think is going to happen? If the federal government says, "Yes, we're gonna scratch the credits," how do we get paid?
I'll probably give you the answer to that. I'll probably not be able to remember all three of the questions, but I'll get Andrew to touch on that. I think our view is so far, that was quite a specific legislation targeting a specific issue. The intent is not to be broad-based. However, we are watching it like a hawk. We've been part of a group that did a submission to make sure whatever they put in place, the wording around it clearly targets the issue they have, and it doesn't become more broad-based. There's a couple of other elements to it, but I'll get Andrew to comment further on.
Oh, that's it in essence. The legislation was intended to specifically address a particular fairly minor issue. It's been poorly worded, and we have been part of a submission to point that out. To take a step back, to make it retrospective is never a good idea for tax legislation anyway. We are certainly of the opinion, frankly, that if you've made profits that have been taxed, you should be able to distribute them as franking credit, full stop. This particular legislation which designed and should be worded to, where the sole and dominant purpose is to do something, where the sole and dominant purpose is to do something that is artificial and contrived, they need to tighten that up. Mark's point is absolutely valid.
I'm sure most shareholders remember that back in 2018 when the specter of franking credits was raised, we were very much on the front foot, and we believe me, we will continue to be so if it looks like that's in danger.
We were part of, at that point, an inquiry, and I had to present to that. We understand that franking credits are a very important part of investors' returns. We agree with the system. We think it should be maintained. It's an important part of self-managed super, which is again, an important part of the total financial system. If we get any sense that there's any attempt to change that, we will. You will hear from us and Canberra will hear from us. This was a significant election issue, and people's voices were put forward, and they were heard. We certainly made our views very loud and clear on that.
It was a significant issue, a significant election issue, and I think it's important that the system is sustained, so we're watching it.
I'd just note that even with the current loose legislation, it wouldn't affect what Djerriwarrh does or what it pays out, but it is a question about the wider ecosystem. There is a track record in this regard, which is why we need to keep watching it.
The Labor people just doesn't seem to wanna go away.
That's why I'll be careful what I say, but as I said, with a track record, we are absolutely watching it.
If it was brought in that they wanted to scrap the franking credits, how would we, the shareholders, get paid? How would you pay it?
No, well, this legislation, as I said, it's quite specific that if you've got a normal record of share purchase plans and DRPs and paying dividends, you won't be impacted by this. This particular piece of legislation won't impact what Djerriwarrh does. I agree with you, without trying to scare people, if, and it's a big if, this legislation doesn't do it, they were to try and attack the franking system again, there would be an outcry, there would be an uproar, and we would be manning the barricades.
Oh, well, I might come too. My second question is: Why did you get out of APA and Orica?
Yeah, sure. I can take that. Part of normal portfolio management, APA in particular, more around long-term concerns that the business is quite mature, particularly as the economy goes through the energy transition. We're also a bit put off by some of the strategy changes, particularly their intent to go into the U.S., which is a hugely competitive market. They've since backtracked on that, which has caused a change in the CEO. Some of the other strategic moves, such as trying to bid for listed utilities companies, was a bit kind of at odds with what used to be a terrific portfolio that delivered great returns. We just don't think those returns will be as good in the future as they have in the past. Things change, and we're better off investing in.
We found better quality investments in that space that can deliver good yield that'll grow over time. That was APA. Orica has been a poor investment over the long term, and it wasn't offering the portfolio income or growth. The decision was made to cut that in favor of investing in some of the other stocks that we showed on the slides. There was a similar reason really with two of the recent sales, like InvoCare and Sonic Healthcare, similar reasons as well, not offering the portfolio great income or growth, and our investment conviction had fallen away on those two stocks. They were the main reasons there.
My final question is: why do you lump all the constitution changes under one item in the resolution? Sometimes I just don't want to vote all yes or all no for each of the resolutions. I've noticed this with other companies. Today with this company, I'll be voting yes, as in I'm happy with all the resolution changes for the constitution. In other companies, I'll say, "Oh, I don't want that," but I have no ability, it's just one vote. Doesn't matter how many constitutional changes there are, it's just one vote to cover it all.
Well, I might.
Often, I don't wanna do that.
I might hand this to Matthew, but I think basically this is sort of a form of housekeeping, of adapting to minor changes that have occurred in the regulatory environment.
Exactly right, John, and thank you. I'm glad you're happy with the changes. It's more of an administrative cleanup of the constitution; hence we've done it as one resolution. I take your point for other companies, they do it, but I think in terms of streamlining the AGM, to actually go through every part of the constitution could be quite laborious for that process.
Surely, I can't be the only one who says I don't like that constitutional change.
I suppose the facility of voting against it, I suppose, is there for those shareholders that have problems with it, I suppose.
If there's just one, for example, that I don't like.
Yeah
out of six, then I've got no option. If I don't want to change, I'm going to vote no, which means no to all the changes. I could be happy with five out of six.
I
Yeah.
I think if these were significant changes in the nature of the company, we would have them as separate issues, but they aren't significant changes, so that's why we've bundled them up together. I think we've had a fair bit of time with questions, so we now move.
Do you want any online questions?
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, that's all right.
Sorry.
It's okay. I'll cover these quickly. I guess we've already had some comments about like capital growth over the medium to long term, which is one of the questions. That's been addressed, I believe. Another question is: How do we increase dividend payments to increase dividend yield? I'll pass that to Mark initially or
Yes. I think we touched on some of that. The reset we had was to try and get it to a more sustainable level of dividend, but one that was still comfortably higher than what you'd get from the market. Then if we get growth in dividends and premium, we can grow the dividends. Yep, answers the question. Is our in-
Management and Board.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
We're focused on the companies we're in, that they can grow profits, grow dividends, and that we can sustain the work the team's doing on options then to grow dividends. That's what we're looking forward going forward ourselves, so.
There's another comment here, John, about why do we always, and I guess it's a trend in the industry, why we always produce a report, the yield as a grossed-up yield for you, assuming an investor can fully utilize the franking credits. It is something that's sort of common across the industry.
Yeah, well.
And, and-
Look, I guess Djerriwarrh came out of that sense of, well, there was a lot of investors out there that really understood the value of not just dividends, but the franking credits that are attached with them. You know, in the earlier days, we were showing our performance against the market, but we were producing way more franking credits than what you could get from the index. We were finding a lot of our investors were holding Djerriwarrh shares in superannuation type structures where they could get a lot of the franking back. We just wanted to demonstrate really on a pre-tax, more on a pre-tax basis, the value that Djerriwarrh had against being in a group of companies that you'd get from the index.
I think it just highlighted the complete value in Djerriwarrh against the market.
Yeah.
I think also we have a look at our share register.
Yeah
over time it has changed. It has a very significant component that is identifiably superannuation money that can utilize those franking credits. The grossed up return is relevant.
Also a lot of retirees too, John, that can use that, the fully franked. Last question I've got here I'll put to Brett. Brett, in terms of the position of banks within the portfolio, apart from CBA and Macquarie, the other share prices haven't moved much over the last few years. Would JBWere consider reducing National Australia Bank, Westpac and ANZ within the portfolio? Thanks.
Yeah.
No, not at the moment, we're not considering that. We think the quality of those banks in particular has improved the last three years post the Royal Commission. They've sold businesses that arguably they should never have been in in the first place, particularly the wealth and advice businesses. That's come at a hit to revenue income and dividends, but that's behind them. Capital positions have strengthened predominantly because of the regulator's standards, so they're at very strong capital positions now and that's a really good thing to have if we do head into a bad debt cycle.
The dividend payout ratios are sustainable, and so that combined with the simpler business models, and then you've got a few other things that'll likely work in their favor, I would say the next six- 12 months, which is the impact of higher interest rates improving their margins. We saw that yesterday in the Bank of Queensland results. We don't own Bank of Queensland. Being a smaller regional bank that doesn't make great returns, we don't think, so we prefer to invest in the ones you mentioned. Bank of Queensland yesterday made some positive comments about the impact of those interest rate increases on their margins and the stock went up significantly and it flowed through to the banks that we hold, in particular Westpac and ANZ. NAB, ANZ and Westpac all report their profit results next month.
I think the trend for those results, the commentary and the market sentiment towards them is pretty good. We're certainly not looking at reducing now. We've been a buyer of those banks actually in the last few months. Longer term, there's definitely competitive challenges for them. It's a very competitive industry. It's easier for customers to switch
Home loan products in particular now, which is something that works the other way for bank margins, but they're a great source of income, particularly fully franked income, so we're happy with the holdings now.
Thanks, Brett.
It is when we were looking at a couple of transactions yesterday compared to what we were getting in the last five years on option premium. When you add up the dividend yield, then you add up the franking credits you get from bank stocks, and then you overlay option premium, which is now substantially higher now than what we used to get. A bank going nowhere turns into a great investment when you add up those three components because the yield you get through those three is very, very attractive. This is where you can turn something that looks a bit average into something that looks really attractive even by going sideways.
The market for us in terms of stocks like buy-writes, or what we call buy-writes, but having stock and calls against banks, they look really attractive now, even if they go sideways. That's a big step change from where they were a few years ago.
Right. Thanks, Mark. Now, you'll have the opportunity to chat or ask other questions after we've finished the meeting, but we'll now move to the formal resolutions. 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 will 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 Computershare will oversee the conduct of the poll. Firstly, if there is any person present in the room who believes they're entitled to vote but hasn't registered to vote, would you please seek assistance from our share registry, Computershare. For those in the room, on the reverse of your blue admission card is your voting paper instructions.
I'll now go through the procedures for filling out the voting papers.
Green.
Sorry?
Green.
It's green. In respect of any open votes a proxyholder 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. Please ensure you print your name where indicated and sign the voting paper. When you've finished filling in your voting paper, please lodge it in the ballot boxes that will be available at the end of the meeting. 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.
As detailed in the report, Djerriwarrh has no employees and has a relationship with AICS, an associated entity of Djerriwarrh, which provides the company with administration and investment services. The financial details of that relationship are set out in the accounts. As such, the remuneration report concentrates on non-executive director fees. Non-executive directors do not receive any performance-based incentives and just receive a flat fee for service as a director. If you have any questions on this item, please submit them now if you've not already done so. Are there any questions in the meeting on the rem report? Bearing in mind we've already covered a bit of it at an earlier stage.
No questions.
I'll now show the proxies received in respect of this resolution, which are now shown on screen. I remind shareholders and proxies who have yet to lodge their votes via the app, do so now while the voting is still open. Third agenda item is the resolution to elect, to re-elect Graham Goldsmith. Graham was re-elected by shareholders at the 2019 AGM and so 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. Graham, would you care to say a few words before I put the motion?
Thank you very much, John. Ladies and gentlemen, I was humbled originally to be asked to be part of the director team at Djerriwarrh, and I'm pleased to place myself up for re-election today by you, my fellow shareholders. My clear focus as a director and fellow shareholder is to ensure that in every matter that we control, that the interests of shareholders are in the forefront of each decision, and that Djerriwarrh should generate the returns that you expect from your investment. That will be the subject of constant review. How and why can I make a contribution to the board's deliberations? In my career, prior to becoming a board member, as a team member at J.B. Were and then Goldman Sachs, I was being exposed to numerous boards and companies across a wide range of industries.
I was an analyst and an institutional investor, advisor, and then a corporate advisor and an observer of management teams, boards, and governments. I've seen high-performing groups and seen many decisions that have generated excellent shareholder returns, and equally, decisions which have not, including around domestic strategy and business structure and offshore expansion or withdrawal. I bring these perspectives to our investment committee and board deliberations to support your investment team in their stock selection. Currently, in the listed company environment, I'm also chair of SEEK Limited, and so I'm exposed directly to matters such as the use of technology, cybersecurity, and international expansion. I also sit on the investment committees at a large foundation and a number of family groups, giving me additional broad exposure to market insights.
As you have heard earlier, my fellow directors have asked me to take on the role of chair following this AGM after the retirement of John, assuming that I'm reelected. My commitment to them and to you is to do the job to the best of my ability and to ensure the interests of and returns to our shareholders are at the forefront of our thinking and actions as a board. Thank you for this opportunity to make these comments, and I'd appreciate your support in my reelection.
Thank you, Graham. I'll now show the proxies received in respect of this resolution, which are on the screen. There were no questions asked prior to the meeting concerning the resolution. If you have any questions on this item now, please submit them via online or raise your hand if you're in the room. No questions. The fourth agenda item is the resolution to reelect Karen Wood. Karen was reelected by shareholders at the 2019 AGM, and so standing for reelection by shareholders today. In accordance with Rule 46 of the company's constitution, she retires from the board of directors and, being eligible, offers herself for reelection. Karen, would you like to say a few words before I put the motion?
Many thanks, John, and I'm grateful to have this opportunity to do just that. It's been my privilege and indeed my pleasure to serve on the board of Djerriwarrh since 2016. Excuse me. I come to the role with experience of many years in large, publicly listed natural resource companies. First as an executive and more recently as a non-executive director. That experience includes work in governance, in people, in remuneration systems, sustainability, risk, and public affairs. Since early 2019, I have chaired the board of South32 Limited. It's a company that you will recall was separated from BHP in 2015. In fact, some of you probably still have shares in South32 following that separation.
That's a company that owns assets here in Australia, but in many other parts of the world, South Africa, Mozambique, Chile, Brazil, the USA, Colombia, and produces a range of commodities, alumina, aluminum, copper, zinc, silver, lead, metallurgical coal, nickel, and manganese. While it is a natural resources company with a large part of its operation overseas, it does confront many, if not all, of the issues that Djerriwarrh thinks about as it invests in its companies. Issues like some of the things we've been talking about this morning. How companies meet their greenhouse gas emissions targets without impacting the viability of the company or indeed, in South32's case, without impacting the ability of the company to continue to produce resources that are absolutely critical in a low carbon world. We've heard a bit about that. Nikki spoke about the focus on ESG.
We had the question about carbon capture and storage. As we think in South32 and Djerriwarrh thinks about its investments, it's thinking about what the decarbonization strategies are across its portfolio. While certainly at South32, we would say things like CCS, things like hydrogen for that matter, will come, they won't come overnight. There needs to be a constant focus on the sorts of fuel sources that will provide that transition and therefore it's something I think that we're all confronted with. We're also confronted with some of the things John spoke about earlier, managing huge cost volatility that we're seeing right around the world and how to manage that. Some of the things on the social agenda, the plethora of issues that all companies now are required to take a position on and be very transparent about.
Things like human rights, things like modern slavery, things like inclusion and diversity, and of course, protecting cultural heritage. In all of these challenges, what I've come to understand as being of fundamental importance is for companies to have a clearly stated purpose, a strategy that links to that purpose, and a culture that reflects the right values and supports the delivery of that strategy. A culture set from the top, as you would expect. That's an understanding, that I think is shared by all of your directors at Djerriwarrh and one that steers not just how Djerriwarrh conducts its business, but how it informs the investment decisions it makes on a day-to-day basis.
Beyond my work at Djerriwarrh and South32, I serve on a number of not-for-profit boards, including the State Library Victoria just over the road here in Melbourne, the Robert Salzer Foundation, and a number of other smaller entities that are committed to community work. As I said at the outset, it has been both a privilege and a pleasure to serve you in this role, and I thank you for your support to date.
Thank you, Karen. I'll now show the proxies received in respect of this resolution, and those are on the screen now. There were no questions asked prior to the meeting. Are there any questions now on the resolution?
No questions.
All right. The fifth item is the resolution to elect Geoffrey Roberts. Mr. Roberts was appointed to the board in July 2022, and so is seeking election by shareholders for the first time. In accordance with Rule 45 of the company's constitution, he retires from the board of directors and, being eligible, offers himself for election. Geoff, would you like to say a few words?
Thank you, Chairman, and good morning, everyone. I was honored to be asked to become part of the director team at Djerriwarrh, and pleased to put myself up for re-election today by you, my fellow shareholders. In my professional career as a listed CFO, I presented on numerous occasions to the Djerriwarrh investment team, and I look forward to making a contribution, if I am elected, to its continued progress. I'd like to comment on three reasons why I think I can make a contribution. Firstly, through my prior career as a Deloitte partner for 15 years, I've been exposed to numerous boards and management teams across a wide range of industries with an initial focus on the financial services industry. I've seen some great decisions that have generated very strong returns and others that have not, particularly around global expansion.
Secondly, I've been a listed chief financial officer for 13 years at two high-growth global companies, AXA and SEEK Limited. Both companies have been very successful. Being the CFO through this high growth and also through the uncertain times of the GFC and COVID provide learnings in how to position for high growth, but also how to respond to challenging times. Finally, in my professional, corporate, and board roles, I've been involved in a wide range of industries, including financial services, technology, professional services, retail, sports and entertainment, medical research, and other not-for-profit entities. I remain a non-executive director of JB Hi-Fi, the MCC that runs the MCG, and Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. This variety of roles and industries I hope bring a broad range of perspectives to your board's deliberations and to support your excellent investment team.
Thank you for this opportunity to make these comments, and I would appreciate your support in electing me to the board.
Thank you, Geoff. I'll now show the proxies in respect of this resolution, and those are now on the screen. There were no questions asked prior to the meeting. Are there any questions on this resolution now? Thank you. The sixth agenda item is the special resolution concerning the amendments to the constitution. It's proposed that the company's constitution be amended to reflect the changes in law, regulation, and market practice since the constitution was last updated. A marked-up copy of the constitution showing the proposed changes has been made available on the company's website, and copies have been made available for inspection at the company's registered office. A copy of the constitution is also available at this meeting.
I move that for purposes of Section 136(2) of the Corporations Act and for all other purposes, the constitution of the company be amended as set out in the document made available on the website and signed by me as chairman for the purposes of identification with effect from the close of this meeting. I'll now show the proxies in regard to this resolution. There were no questions asked prior to this meeting, and we've obviously covered one in regard to this meeting already. Are there any other questions now? All right. Nothing online. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the discussion of the items of business. In a couple of minutes, I'll close the voting system. Please ensure that you've cast your vote on all resolutions. For those in the room, may I now ask that you complete your voting card.
Computershare staff will collect your voting card at the end of the meeting. I would like to thank shareholders for your continued support and for the interest you've shown in the affairs of the company by your attendance in person or virtually. Shareholders are reminded that the team will be holding shareholder meetings in Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane, and Sydney during the second half of October. I understand at this point Graham Goldsmith would like to make a couple of comments.
Thanks very much, John. As you've heard today, this is John's last meeting as a Djerriwarrh director and Chair. He's been a director since 2002, became Deputy Chair in 2009, and Chairman in 2013. On behalf of your board and all our shareholders, I want to place on record our deep thanks to John for his invaluable contribution to board deliberations over 20 years. He's brought perspectives gained over a distinguished career in the investment markets to our discussions, and he's led with passion and integrity during his period as Chairman. John, we formally thank you and wish you well in your retirement or whatever things hold for you next, and we look forward to your continued interest as a significant shareholder in Djerriwarrh.
Thank you, Graham. Those are very kind comments. I've found it a great honor to working for the interest of the shareholders, and it's been very interesting. As an ongoing significant shareholder, I might be sitting on the other side asking questions next time round. Online voting is now closed, and these votes will be released as soon as practical to the ASX later today. But again, thank you for all braving the weather to come here today. I think we have some refreshments outside and maybe a few more questions. Thank you.