Good day, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Djerriwarrh Investments' half year financial results briefing. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. You may ask questions via the webcast, or you can also press star one one on your telephone to ask a question. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. Mark Freeman, Managing Director of Djerriwarrh. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mark Freeman, the CEO and Managing Director of Djerriwarrh Investments. Welcome to this half year result briefing. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians from all the lands we are gathered on today and pay my respects to the elders, both past, present, and emerging. Joining me today on the webinar, Brett Moir, the Portfolio Manager from the investment team, Andrew Porter, our CFO, Matthew Rowe, our Company Secretary, and Jeff Driver, GM of Business Development.
Before we start the presentation, just a bit of housekeeping on this webinar. This briefing is based on the material available on the company's website. If you are using your computer to access the presentation via the webcast, the slides will change automatically. If you are accessing by phone only, the PDF of the slides with page numbers is available on the website.
Finally, please note, following the presentation, there'll be time for questions and answers. You can ask a question either via the webcast or through the operator. I also wanted to acknowledge John Paterson, who retired as chair and director of the company at the conclusion of the annual general meeting on the 13th of October, 2022.
John's deep understanding of the investment industry has been of outstanding value to the board, executives, and shareholders of Djerriwarrh Investments. The board elected Mr. Graham Goldsmith as chair with effect from the conclusion of the annual general meeting. Graham was appointed deputy chair on May 2020. He's chair of SEEK Limited, deputy chair of Gandel Foundation, and a panel member of Adara Partners.
He's also a former vice chair and former managing director of Goldman Sachs Australia and its predecessor firm at Goldman Sachs JBWere. Graham has a deep understanding of the investment industry. At this point, I'll turn to the slides, starting on page two. Just a disclaimer to say we're here to talk about the company and the activities we have been doing here.
We're not here to give any advice. Just moving to the agenda on slide three. I'll just give a brief overview of the objectives of the company. I'll pass over to Andrew Porter, who'll talk about the half year in summary. Finally, Brett Moir will talk about the results in detail, the portfolio, and some outlook comments. Just moving to slide five, just an overview of Djerriwarrh. Jerrie, as we call it, is one of the largest income-focused LICs on the market.
It was listed in 1989. Shareholders get the benefit of full transparency, which is associated with being a Listed Investment Company or an LIC, as well as the governance standards delivered by an independent board of directors. Importantly, Djerriwarrh's shareholders own the management rights of the company with no fee leakage to third parties and no additional fees.
Djerriwarrh is part of a broader group of LICs, which also includes the Australian Foundation Investment Company, AFIC, AMCIL Limited, and Mirrabooka. This supports a broader research approach and gives scale of operations. Just moving on to the next slide, the investment objectives. Djerriwarrh primarily seeks to provide an enhanced level of fully franked income that is higher than what is available from the broader market, and in this case, we use the S&P/ASX 200, and deliver it at a low cost to shareholders.
Djerriwarrh also aims to provide shareholders with attractive investment returns through the fully franked dividends and growth in capital over time. The two charts we have on that page. The left-hand side chart shows the yield, including franking on Djerriwarrh. The first one is on the net asset backing, the second bar is on the share price.
Share price yield is slightly higher than net asset backing because the share price is trading at a slight discount to the NTA. The next bar, the orange one, is the yield, including franking you would get from being in the index. You can see at the moment, the yield on Djerriwarrh is about 1.1% ahead of the index, which is in line with our targets. Finally, we have the yield that you get on a 12-month term deposit.
We're comfortable with this, the yield objectives that Djerriwarrh is providing in terms of its yield compared to the broader market. On the right, we've got the portfolio performance over 1, 5, 10, and 15 years. This is an area in part of the management that we are seeking to improve on. We're not happy with those long-term performance numbers. Just to remind shareholders, we did a reset on Djerriwarrh's strategy back in May 2020. We felt that we were paying dividends above what we'd call a sustainable level. We had a reset on that, and relooked at our option writing activities. Since that date, we're heading towards three years of performance.
We feel very comfortable that we've been increasing our dividends at an appropriate rate, that the yield against the index is appropriate. The total return, although not picked up on this chart, is also hitting our targets to that point. We are hopeful that they'll come through in the three-year numbers that we present when it comes to May, which will be that, three-year point.
Moving on to the next slide, we always show how the share price is sitting against what we call fair value NTA. You can see the share price is currently trading at a discount to that NTA. We provide this information every month, so investors, either buyers or sellers, have a clear understanding of where fair value sits on the stock. With that, I'll pass over to Andrew Porter, our CFO, to talk through the results. Just initially, I'm very pleased with the dividend increase we've been able to provide shareholders through this result. Andrew.
Thank you, Mark. If we move on to the slide. This is just a review of the six months in summary. The profit, as you can see, just under AUD 22 million, up 10% from last year. That figure does include an amount from the unrealized gain or loss on the open options positions. We don't know what that position's gonna be 'cause those options haven't been closed out or exercised yet. Although for accounting reasons we have to disclose that, we tend to focus, and the board focuses, on the operating result, which is AUD 21.3 million. That was up just under 18% from 2021.
As Mark has alluded to, that enabled the board to increase the interim dividend from AUD 0.0675, where it was at the interim in 2021, to AUD 0.0725, enabling Djerriwarrh to maintain its objective of paying a yield above that from the S&P/ASX 200. I'm sure many shareholders are aware, of course, that dividend has been paid on an increased number of shares following the Share Purchase Plan. Brett will be going into more detail on the components of the profit and the various increases later on. Included in that are dividend increases from holdings such as BHP, Woodside, Transurban, and Mainfreight. As I said, Brett will go into more detail on that later on.
That dividend yield, Mark's already mentioned 6.7%, that's 1.1% above the S&P/ASX 200. The management expense ratio is a figure that we often look at, and that is 0.36%. That's down on last year. That's AUD 0.36 for every AUD 1.00 that, or AUD 100, I apologize, that we have invested in Djerriwarrh. I say we, obviously we're all shareholders here as well. The average portfolio was marginally down, but the main reason why expenses were down was 'cause Djerriwarrh's expenses include its share of the AICS profit. AICS is where most of the expenses, staff, rent, IT, et cetera, sit. Because of write-backs and incentives, that profit was up this year on last year.
Overall, the MER below that of last year. Finally, the portfolio return is 6.2% including franking. Just to note, those are for the six-month figures. The figures that Mark has looked at were for one year and longer. Again, we'll go into the key reasons for the differential and the underperformance later. With that, I'll hand over to Brett.
Thanks, Andrew, good afternoon, everybody. Starting with slide 11, where we look at the results in a bit more detail. The aim here on slide 11 is to give our investors more detail on the key drivers of Djerriwarrh's profits and dividend. What we've presented here is a summarized version of our profit and loss statement, focusing on our net operating results, which I'll run through now. The two key drivers of Djerriwarrh's operating income are the dividend and distribution income that we receive from the companies we own in our investment portfolio, along with the option income that we earn from our option-writing activities.
As slide 11 shows, the dividend and distribution income was AUD 18.4 million for the first half of financial year 2023, which was an increase of 22% over the first half financial year 2022. Option income was also up 7% to AUD 8.4 million. These two items, when combined with a small amount of other income, saw our operating income increase 18% to AUD 26.9 million. In terms of expenses, finance costs rose considerably on the back of higher interest rates and were up 132% to AUD 1.6 million. Administration costs are well contained, as Andrew mentioned, down 10% to AUD 1.5 million. Tax expense rose as a result of our higher operating profit, up 8% to AUD two and a half million dollars.
All up, this produced a net operating result of AUD 21.3 million for the half, which was an increase of 18%. Looking at the result on a per share basis, which of course, takes into account the additional shares issued under the recent Share Purchase Plan, the net operating result was up 10% to AUD 0.0842 per share. On the back of this, the dividend was up just over 7% to AUD 0.0725 per share. Hopefully this breakdown gives investors some more detail on the drivers of Djerriwarrh's increased profit and dividends. On the next two slides, we go into further detail on our two key income drivers.
On slide 12, we'll look at the first key driver, which is our dividend and distribution income. What we've done here is show how the first half of financial year 2023 compares to the first half results of the last five years. As we can see in the left-hand chart, the AUD 18.4 million recorded for this result is a strong recovery from the pandemic-affected first half 2021 and 2022, being driven by the increases in dividends from companies like BHP, the banks, and Transurban, but also other portfolio holdings such as Wesfarmers, Carsales, Mainfreight, and Equity Trustees. At AUD 18.4 million, our dividend and distribution income is also now just above the levels that we recorded in first half of 2019 and 2020.
On a yield basis, we show in the right-hand chart how the dividend and distribution income we've received looks when measured as a yield of our portfolio value, and that's the green bars on the right-hand chart. We measure that against the dividend yield of the broader share market, being the S&P/ASX 200, as shown in the blue bars. As we can see here, for this result, the first half financial year 2023, Djerriwarrh's dividend and distribution income yield was slightly above the dividend yield of the share market, an outcome which is broadly consistent that we've seen over the half year results for the last five years. Moving on to the second key driver of Djerriwarrh's operating income on slide 13, which is our option income.
Again, we show the five-year trend of the first half results, and the trend for the option income is clearly positive. As we can see in the left-hand side chart, the AUD 8.4 million of income for first half 2023 is the highest that we've had in this five-year time period, and it's up significantly on the level from the first half 2019. Again, measuring it in terms of a yield on our portfolio value on the right-hand side of slide 13, we can see that this equated to an option income yield of 2%.
This is the highest first half result in terms of an option income yield that we've had for the last five years. Reflecting on it's probably a bit better than what we thought we could achieve when we did a full review and reset of our options strategy, as Mark mentioned, about two and a half years ago. That covers some of the results in detail, particularly focusing on the dividend income and option income that we've achieved. We'll turn now to the portfolio update section of the presentation. In this section, we give the usual detail on the portfolio, such as our option activity, our portfolio changes, and a summary of the overall portfolio. Today I wanna start by covering portfolio performance up front, especially given our disappointing investment performance over the last 12 months.
We cover this on slide 15. As we showed earlier, Djerriwarrh's income objective has been achieved for the period, but it's the growth objective that hasn't been achieved, given our investment performance has been significantly below the index over the last 12 months. While during this time we've had some winners from our holdings, such as Westpac and IAG, what we wanted to focus here on is the stocks that have contributed the majority of the portfolio's underperformance relative to the index. The first three companies shown here on slide 15 are James Hardie, ARB, and Mainfreight, and we consider each of these three companies as high-quality growth stocks. These were significantly derated by the market over the 12 months to December 2022.
As shown here, with the total return for each stock, James Hardie down 52%, ARB down 50%, and Mainfreight down 27%. Reflecting on this, the mistakes and lessons that we got from these stocks were, firstly, not writing more call options in ARB and Mainfreight, took near the high share prices that they achieved during this period. In the case of James Hardie, we started adding to our position too early, and hence bought stock as it continued to fall. As we sit here today, though, we remain holders of all three companies, given our confidence that we have maintained in the management teams, balance sheets, and the long-term growth prospects of each of these three companies. We've actually been buying some more ARB recently.
The next two stocks listed in the table here are BHP and Woodside Energy, these were stocks that we own less of compared to their index weight, hence the underweight position, as we've classified it here. Both BHP and Woodside were material detractors from relative performance over this period, given their strong 12-month total returns, which we can see in the table, BHP, a 12-month total return of 38% and Woodside 79%. Again, reflecting on the mistakes and the lessons, I think in the case of BHP, we actually bought the stock at good prices, either side of getting exercised in the stock, the mistake was not buying even more given that we were subsequently exercised on further amounts of stock, given the share price performed exceptionally strongly in the back half of last year.
In the case of Woodside, we simply didn't own enough of the company post the merger with BHP Petroleum and before the spike that we saw in oil and gas prices that occurred after Russia's invasion of the Ukraine early in 2022. Again, as we sit here today, our position in the stocks is that we've had some further option exercises in resource stocks such as BHP, and while we'll continue to look to buy back into these companies, we'll only wanna do so at prices that we think represent attractive long-term value. That remains our key focus there. Moving on to our option strategy, which is covered on slide 16. As a reminder, we write options against selected portfolio holdings in order to generate additional income, and this is a key component of Djerriwarrh's overall enhanced yield strategy.
The chart on slide 16 aims to give, hopefully, a better understanding of how we've managed the options portfolio over the period being the 6 months to December 2022, and we do that by plotting the performance of the broader share market, which is the S&P/ASX 200 Price Index, and we've added some commentary on the key moves in our option portfolio over the period. Talking through this, we began the first half of financial 2023, so back on the first of July, with call option coverage of 28%, as shown at the left-hand side of slide 16. Our call option coverage was subsequently increased to 34%, as we saw really good share price increases across a lot of our holdings. We were happy to write further call options against them.
After this, the market fell quite heavily during September, which was a positive thing for that position because it enabled us to close out many of our call option positions, taking our call option coverage back to 29% and locking in a lot of profits early. At this point in time, so end of September, early October, we also began writing put options in a number of companies that we judged to be high quality and good value. This positioning, having higher call option coverage and having a number of put option positions, worked in our favor between the start of October to mid-December, as the lower level of call option coverage and the higher than normal amount of put options performed very well during the subsequent strong market performance.
During the month of December, we were exercised on a significant amount of stock, particularly BHP, given the share price strengths that occurred there, along with a number of other companies, and our call option coverage finished the period at 35%, as we can see here on the chart. Moving to slide 17, we've summarized the key portfolio changes over the period. As you can see, we were active sellers of our holdings in Atlas Arteria, InvoCare, and Sonic Healthcare, and as such, we no longer own these companies in the portfolio. We also actively reduced our position in Iress, but we still maintain a holding in that company.
There are a number of option exercises in the period, as I touched on in the previous slide, talking about our option strategy. These option exercises, often combined with some active selling, saw us exit our entire positions in two companies, being Amcor and Brambles. The option exercises also led to us having reduced holdings in companies such as BHP, Commonwealth Bank, NAB, Westpac, and Ramsay Health Care. On the other side of the ledger, as we can see in the purchases, we partly replaced the option exercises that occurred in BHP and CBA, and these were pleasingly done by purchasing at share prices that were well below the sale prices from the option exercises.
We also added to our holdings in a number of stocks, including Region Group, which was formerly known as SCA Property Group, Goodman Group, Macquarie, Reece, JB Hi-Fi, Westpac, and Equity Trustees. We added one new stock to the portfolio during the period, being Port of Tauranga. This company, Port of Tauranga, owns New Zealand's dominant port, and we rate it as a high-quality, unique infrastructure asset that we think has excellent long-term growth prospects. Finishing the portfolio section on slide 18, we provide a snapshot of our portfolio as at the end of December 2022. Portfolio comprises 48 stocks now with a total value of AUD 830 million. Call option coverage finished the period at 35%. Put option coverage consists of only one position with a value less than 1% of the portfolio.
NTA backing was AUD 3.03, represents the underlying net value of the total Djerriwarrh portfolio. We also show the top 20 holdings on slide 18 being represented there with CSL, Westpac, BHP, and Commonwealth Bank, the largest holdings in the portfolio. Moving now to our outlook slide, which is slide number 20. Beginning with our views on dividends, we've got a largely positive view on company dividends for the next six months. This is based on our assessment of company outlook statements, balance sheets, and what we see as sustainable payout ratios across the board in the current, in our current portfolio holdings. Two key important sectors for dividends are always resources and banks, given their large contribution to dividend income in the Australian market.
I think couple of the key themes here is that the iron ore price has been really strong recently, but we still think over the long term it trends lower. This is likely to be a headwind to BHP and Rio's dividends. Of course, the timing of this is uncertain. In terms of the banks, we think they're very well-positioned in terms of provisioning levels and also their balance sheets in terms of the surplus capital that they hold. They enter the year in a really good position. We do note that we haven't yet seen the full impact of higher interest costs on borrowers. This will be something that we'll be watching very closely over this year. In terms of our option income, the options portfolio is in good shape.
We have good amount of option premium income already written, but we also have the scope to write additional premium income over the remainder of this financial year. The Djerriwarrh strategy continues to be based on our belief that owning a diversified portfolio of high-quality companies can produce an attractive level of income and capital growth over the long term. As such, we remain confident that the current portfolio settings should enable Djerriwarrh to achieve its long-term objectives. With that, I'll thank you for your attention, and I'll pass back to Jeff to run the question and answer session.
All right, thanks, Brett. Good afternoon, everyone. Just to remind participants, coming in by the web, you can ask a question by Ask a Question tab at the right top side of the webcast window, or press star one one if you wanna ask a question on the phone. Brett, I have a question here. Why did you exit Sonic Healthcare?
Sure. Thanks, Geoff, and thanks for the question. Sonic was quite a small position in the portfolio last year. We'd been exercised on some options, but we hadn't replaced the stock by buying back in, and the stock had sort of tracked sideways mostly. It's a good quality company, and it's been a long investment for us, but we lacked a bit of conviction. The dividend yield was okay, but not compelling. The growth profile as well looked okay, but not compelling for the next few years, particularly how much they benefited during the pandemic. For us, it was a question really when portfolio positions get to this size as to whether we get bigger or get out. It was a bit of.
There was some selling from some of the management team at the company, and that almost swayed our decision more than anything. We decided to exit the position, but, you know, it remains a good quality company, so it's always on the watchlist for the future.
Thanks, Brett. I've got a question here. What do you think will be the main themes likely to arise in the upcoming reporting season for the Australian companies?
Yeah, it'll be another important one, given just how volatile economies have been over the last few years with consumers, you know, households having the benefit from a lot of easing, you know, a lot of extra spending, being in a great position, and you can see it in, for instance, the banks' bad and doubtful debt levels, which are at record lows. We really take the view that that won't last forever. We're looking for any signs that that might be turning. I think an early indication is that results will be pretty good, at least as they're reported to 31st of December 2022. We, I mean, we saw that this week with JB Hi-Fi giving a really strong update in terms of their sales, profit margins and profits.
The strength of the consumer, at least as far as a business like JB Hi-Fi is concerned, has continued, looks to have continued to the end of the year, but we're just not sure whether it'll last forever. The mechanism of higher interest rates takes time to feed through to households, along with all the other cost of living pressures.
We probably won't see that until maybe mid-calendar year at the earliest. In reporting season, we'll be looking for any signs that that might have started to turn a little bit, but overall, we think results will be pretty good. We'll also be looking at factors such as what the high debt costs have done to companies' financials, and whether that's been properly factored in by the market. They'll be the key issues, Geof.
Thanks, Brett. We're in an environment of rising interest rates. How does that impact the writing of options within Djerriwarrh? How do you sort of look to manage that position?
Yeah. Overall, it should be a positive all else being equal. Interest rates are one of the inputs into option premium pricing, and all else being equal, higher interest rates should equal higher option premiums. We haven't seen a huge amount of that yet. Again, it probably takes a bit of time to filter through, but it should be a positive for our level of option premiums that we can achieve by writing call and put options across the portfolio.
A question for. Perhaps I'll pass this to Mark. In terms of the dividend, the increased dividend we had for this half, what does that mean in terms of the potentially the second half dividend?
Well, you know, obviously the increase in earnings drove the increase in dividends, then it's more of a view about what happens in the second half. Obviously, we don't make predictions about those, certainly elements, but Brett said earlier in the slides, we're broadly positive on the dividend outlook at this point. You know, if we see continued growth in the earnings on the companies we invest in, then the intention is for that to flow through through dividends to our shareholders. But as Brett pointed out, I mean, much of the income that is generated by investing in the market is coming from the likes of Fortescue, BHP, Rio, and the resource sector and the banks. Where they go with their dividends is a big driver of our income and therefore our shareholders' income going forward.
All right. Thanks, Mark. Andrew, we get asked this question quite regularly. What's the dividend cover within JRO in terms of the franking credit balance?
I think I would describe it as healthy at the moment. It's, it has increased due to the level of income that we have received. We're still not getting any franking credits from realized gains. I would say the figure is probably slightly better than it was this time, at the end of July, at the end of June, sorry, in the annual report when we last disclosed that figure.
I'll just check with our operator. Is there any questions via the phone? Just remind participants on the phone, you press star one one if you wanna ask a question on the phone. Operator, is there any questions on the phone?
There are currently no questions on the phone. Please continue.
Brett, in terms of the upcoming reporting season, I mean, you've talked about the banks or any other particular areas you're looking to? People will be watching closely.
Yeah.
in terms of the sectors or stocks within the portfolio.
Consumer, as we've spoken about, I think will be a key focus. It gives a good window into the health of the economy, the impact of Reserve Bank of Australia's interest rate increases. That'll absolutely be a key focus. I think some of the property trusts, like we've been, you know, we've added to the portfolio over the last couple of years, particularly Region Property Group and Mirvac Property Group, as well as a longer term holding like Bunnings Warehouse Property Trust.
We think they're well-positioned in an environment where asset values might decline because of the higher interest rates. The reason why we've picked these companies is because of their strong balance sheets, their conservative valuations, and the quality earnings. We think they should be well-placed, but that'll definitely be a key focus as well. Yeah, there's a few areas of focus.
I think, more broadly that the economies have held up reasonably well so far, in the face of high interest rates and the inflationary impact on costs of general living. However, we've sort of been noting though that employment's still been very strong. Probably one of the concerns we have probably more going forward is, you know, you are seeing some areas of the economy starting to cut their labor force. In particular, it started with technology companies, particularly overseas. You're seeing a little bit coming through in investment banks, some coming through in the housing exposed businesses.
That's, that's an area that perhaps we would start to get a bit more concerned if we saw more job cuts coming through. That that would perhaps be the sort of lagged impact of higher costs, higher interest rates coming through. The markets have been, you know, pretty strong-. Over recent times. It's probably surprised us a little bit. We're probably coming at it a bit more on the cautious side, about where things are going, perhaps over a 12-month view.
Thanks, Mark. Brett. I have a question here, which is probably a lead on or follow on, I should say, from that particular comment: Do you see a recession in 2023?
Yeah, look, we don't try and predict these sort of economic outcomes. You know, I sort of learnt a long time ago, our focus needs to be what are the really good companies and where we see value, and to keep trying to add to our portfolio of good quality stocks when we see opportunities, which usually comes when we have a bit of bad news in markets or on a stock. Trying to pick where economies are going, it's a very tough thing to do. I think there's a saying that economists have picked the end of the last three recessions.
That's right.
It's very hard to do that. You know, there are some that are forecasting, perhaps we might go into recession, but we try not to get too bogged down in those views and really use, I guess, that sort of noise in the market to have assessment of, you know, where we should be adding to stocks.
Sure.
Our focus needs to be on what are the good companies. The good companies get through difficult times better. They have the better ability to sort of manage their cost base, grow their top line, and ride through whatever the economy brings to them.
Thanks, Mark. I've got a question here, Brett, on CSL. I mean, how do you see CSL in the next year or two?
I think they're very well-placed. We're really confident as a holder of CSL in the portfolio. Very high quality company. We think excellent long-term growth prospects, the demand for IG products. They've suffered from low plasma collection rates for the last few years, but that was really just a result of the pandemic. With economies out of lockdown, particularly in the U.S., I think things will pick up there.
They've made a big acquisition in Vifor Pharma, so management have to deliver on that. The company's track record in this space of acquisitions is excellent. We have faith in them there. It's the key holding in the portfolio. It's in the portfolio for growth, seeing growth in capital and growth in income, given its premium rating means that it's a low dividend yielding stock. For a company of this quality, its performance has just been, you know, okay the last few years. We think it's set up really well for the long term.
Thanks, Brett. I've got a question here, Mark, which talks about. Given the such structure similarity, I should say, at what point would consideration be given to merge Djerriwarrh and AFIC? They are very different in terms of their structures and, sorry, in terms of their investment objectives.
Well, I mean, we obviously, we run four investment companies, and each have a different strategy, and it all depends on, I guess, individuals' risk reward and what they're looking to get out of an investment. In that regard, Djerriwarrh is different to AFIC. Djerriwarrh, we're targeting a yield that's significantly higher than the market. That may restrict our total return at some point. However, that suits a certain profile of investor.
We tend to find a lot of our investors have Djerriwarrh in their self-managed super fund, and yield and the franking credits that come with that, sort of a portion of that portfolio is very important. That's what we're offering with Djerriwarrh, is trying to convert, when you invest in equity markets, you want capital and dividend.
What we're trying to say is we wanna change the components that you get from the market and make it more about the dividend and franking. As a consequence, less about the capital growth, and that's a product that suits a segment of the market. AFIC, we're looking for a bias more towards that total return. We run two other funds, one called Mirrabooka and one called AMCIL. Mirrabooka, for example, is only focused on small and mid-cap stocks. That's a different risk profile, but out of that, if you're prepared to take more risk, then you'd hope to get higher returns. There's a product that suits different needs of individuals. At, you know, at this point, we're happy to run those four companies as they are.
Yeah, I think that's right, Mark. I think in terms of the shareholder base and the type of investors more attracted to Djerriwarrh is certainly those in self-managed super funds and retirement, pre-retirement phase.
Yeah. Looking at the income. Yeah.
Certainly what we hear back from the shareholders in Djerriwarrh versus, potentially AFIC. I've got a question about a discount to NTA. Djerriwarrh's obviously trading at a small discount at the moment. Although the market's gone up since the start of the year, the discount's probably increased slightly since then. Sort of what do you think sort of driving that, or how do we rectify that in some way?
Yeah. Well, look, we can't control the share price. All we can do is sort of educate the market on where the NTA is at the end of each month. Certainly when you do have larger market moves, and it's been strong this month. You know, we don't put out our NTA until, I guess early into the next month, and that's when you often can get an adjustment, particularly when you've had a strong market.
Yep.
That's... That could be involved. Beyond that, look, we've seen, you know, each of our four LICs go through periods where they can have premiums, where they can have discounts, and sometimes it's actually hard to work out why at any point in time. Look, all we can do is really say, "Here it is," and let the market decide where it should sit. You know, we're transparent about our position. Our preference is that all of them trade around fair value, so that's fair for everyone, buyers and sellers. At the end of the day, we can't control that.
That's right. I think the other thing too is in terms of we talk about performance and the increase in dividend, I think over time that track record starts to permeate back through the market. Hopefully that allows the share price to get a little bit more, Sorry, the shares to have a little bit more demand in the market than they currently have at this point in time. With that, we don't appear to have any more questions. Just to remind shareholders, we're doing the roadshows in March, late March, around each of the capital cities. Having said all that, looks like we got one more question on the phone. We'll make this the last question.
Desmond, can you put the question through from the phone, please?
Sure. There'll be one moment for the last questions. It comes from Jeff Thomson from Longboard. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Jeff Thomson speaking. I was just wanting to follow up on this. For a decade, Djerriwarrh traded at a premium to the NTA. In more recent years, it's been trading at a discount. I know you've addressed that just recently, Mark, but I wondered why you couldn't have a buyback of shares. I'm not suggesting you go on the market, you know, with a heavy buyback, but just to support. I would've thought when they're trading at these discounts, it might be one of the best investments you could make to buy back your own shares.
Yeah. No, look, it's a good question. Well, we actually do have.
Facility
A facility in place to buy back shares. Probably , our preference is the market sorts itself out. You know, buyers at the moment have a chance to get in at a discount, and we like to give them the opportunity. We would probably be we saw a larger discount, I'm not gonna put a number on that. If we saw a larger discount appear, that would potentially be a catalyst for us to go back in and consider buying stock. We have done it in one of our LICs before when a large discount opened up. We still want to give the market the opportunity to, I guess, be part of that opportunity as such. Yeah, look, it's something we talk about and we think about.
As I said, the facility is in place, you know, our preference is to probably do it when we see a bigger discount appear and probably just try and educate the market more on an ongoing basis of what our NTA is and produce a track record. As I said, you know, we're comfortable with. Since we had the strategy reset around our dividends, Brett touched on the performance over the last 12 months, but if we have a look at when we did our strategy reset, the sort of 18 months after that were very strong, and this year's been tougher. Overall, over that period, we're comfortable with the performance. I think if we keep delivering on that, hopefully that will close that gap.
It's like one of these things that if you're a buyer of stock, you actually like to see a discount. If you see a discount, it's not good for those that wanna sell. If you're an ongoing shareholder, you're gonna get your dividends as such. It depends whether you're a buyer or seller.
Yeah, no, I think, so I guess kinda say since the strategy reset, it's kinda interesting how prior to that you had this, massive, premium above the NTA. Now I think you're on the right track, and I, you know, wanna just sort of thank you for that. Like you say, Mark, it's an opportunity to purchase ourself if we wish to do that. Yeah. No, keep up the good work. It's appreciated, and, look forward to sorta catching up in March.
No, appreciate your comments. For those that don't know, just remind everyone, we traded at a really large premium because essentially we were paying out a dividend that was unsustainable and people were simply looking at the yield and buying us off that yield. You know, we got to a point where we thought that the strategy we had in place was producing fantastic yield, but it was restricting our capital growth.
Hence, the reason why we had a bit of a strategy reset and say, "Well, we're actually comfortable. If we can do just over 1% more than the market in terms of yield, that's a great outcome." Hopefully that'll enable us to achieve better total returns over time. Since that date we've been achieving that. But I appreciate the comments. Okay.
Well, with that, thank you everyone for participating in the call. It's important that, you know, we are held accountable to the performance and this is an opportunity for shareholders to hear about what's happening in the company and more, most importantly, to ask questions. We will be doing another round of shareholder meetings in March.
Shareholder meetings, yes, March.
In March around the country. Obviously we'll be doing another one of these calls in July.
After the results.
... after the result. With that, thank you for your participation. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.