Good afternoon, and welcome to the Mirrabooka Half Year financial results briefing. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. All questions will be taken via the webcast. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please enter your questions in the Ask a Question box at the bottom of the webcast window. I would now like to hand the presentations over to Mr. Mark Freeman, Managing Director of Mirrabooka. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Well, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mark Freeman, the CEO and Managing Director of Mirrabooka Investments Limited, and 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. I have joining me today on the webinar, Kieran Kennedy, the Portfolio Manager for Mirrabooka, and Stuart Low, who works alongside Kieran. Kieran managing the portfolio, Andrew Porter, our CFO, Matthew Rowe, our Company Secretary, and Geoff Driver, our General Manager of Business Development. Before we start the presentation, just a bit of housekeeping on the webinar. This briefing is based on the material available on the company's website. If you are using your computer to access the presentation via the webcast, the slides will change automatically.
Finally, please note, following the presentation, there will be time for questions and answers. You can ask a question via the webcast using the tab at the bottom of the screen. I'll now turn to chart 2, which is a disclaimer, just to say we're here to talk about the company, we're not here to give any advice. Then moving on to slide 4, just reminding everyone about Mirrabooka. W e are a listed investment company, specializing in investing in small and medium-sized companies located on both the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges. Our general definition of a small and medium-sized companies are those companies which fall outside the 50 Leaders Index. Although if we have a stock that does particularly well, they can move into the 50 Leaders, and we may continue to hold that company for some time before we exit.
We aim to provide medium to long-term investment gains through holding core investments in selected small and medium-sized companies, and provide attractive, fully franked dividends to our investors. With that, I'll pass over to Andrew Porter, our CFO, to talk through the results.
Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. H aving a look at slide 6, which are the results for the half year, and I'll run quickly through these. The profit for the half year of AUD 4.6 million was down from AUD 5.7 million in 2022. That quite often happens with Mirrabooka, where the trading and the options are a big part, can be a big part of that profit. The dividends that we receive from the companies that we invested in were actually up. T he major changes were last year, shareholders might recall, we had AUD 1.1 million in trading profit from an investment in AMP that worked rather well, and obviously, we don't have that this year.
This year, in trading, the unrealized gain is mainly from the investment in IPD Group, and also the option income was down AUD 1.4 million. Part of that is a AUD 1.6 million of current unrealized loss has been recorded. This is a temporary difference. We have to mark options to their market value as they move, and if the market goes down, the option, the loss you make on an option actually also increases because we have to account for it, as if we have to buy it back. Without getting too technical, the higher the share price goes, the more unlikely it is that the amount will be recorded at that value in the P&L. A s I said, that was temporary.
The next box down, hopefully shareholders would have seen that we've increased the dividend by AUD 0.005 from AUD 0.035 at the interim to AUD 0.04 this year. The board is conscious of the disparity between the interim and the full year ordinary dividends, and so they made a decision to increase that up by half a cent. The total portfolio return, including franking, and we'll come on to more detail on the portfolio returns later on. 10.7%, which is above the index that we use for a comparison, which is a combined ASX Small Ordinaries and MidCap 50. The shareholder return of 13.7%, that was above that portfolio return, so as we'll see on the next slide, the discount actually narrowed over the six months.
The management expense ratio, which is the cost of running the company, which is 0.56%. That's AUD 0.56 for every AUD 100 that a shareholder has invested in the company, and that's essentially flat on the year. Portfolio, bottom right-hand box, AUD 592 million, so that was up from AUD 513 million in December 2022. If we look at the next slide, which is the premium discount, we believe it's really important for shareholders when they're looking at. Sorry, just got my slides the wrong way around. If I have a look at the. Sorry, Matthew, if you go back to the other dividend, which the other slide, which was the dividends.
This we showed at the AGM, which was that Mirrabooka's had a history of paying out special dividends, which come from the realized gains it makes on its portfolio. Mirrabooka, as an LIC, has a relatively high level of turnover, and when I say relative, that's to some of the older, long-standing ones. For the type of business that it is, in the small and mid-cap sectors, it's still quite stable. Anyway, you can see over those last 10 years, AUD 0.465 of franked dividend has been paid out to shareholders as a result of that. T hat's always done with the final dividend if there are appropriate realized gains to be able to pay out. The board is very conscious of the need to continue to maintain, though, that ordinary dividend year- on- year.
If we go to that next slide, which is the premium discount. Thank you. I pointed out the shareholder performance, the shareholder performance was above the portfolio performance, which is why the discount narrowed from 5.8% to 3.4% over the six months. A lot of LICs are trading at a discount at the moment, including some, like Mirrabooka, which have not normally traded at a discount. W e think it is important for shareholders, as I was saying earlier, to be conscious of premium and discounts, so they know if they want to buy or sell shares, whether they are being able to buy or sell them at a premium or a discount to that underlying value. W ith that, I will hand over to Kieran.
Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everybody. F or those following the slides, I'm on slide 10, looking at the portfolio performance and the returns to the 31st of December 2023. O n this slide, you'll see, the Mirrabooka returns are presented in blue, versus our combined mid and small cap benchmark in orange. We're pleased to be in a position to report healthy outperformance over all time frames. Y ou will note, looking at those slides, the very significant outperformance over shorter term time frames of 6 and 1 month, 6-month and 1-year numbers, which we'll discuss the reasons for that on a subsequent slide. I guess, just, in presenting these numbers, it's important to understand that these are including the benefit of franking.
Effectively, that's saying this return number is for shareholders who can access the full value of franking credits, and therefore aren't tax paying. For others, it's really a pre-tax number that they're looking at for both us and the benchmark. I mportantly, in doing that, the way that Mirrabooka presents that is only on the franking credits that we've actually paid out to shareholders. A s Andrew mentioned, we do like to have a consistency in our dividends. We keep some franking credit in reserve to ensure that we can do that. We have around three years' worth of dividend coverage in the franking account at the moment, which has not been reflected in these returns as it's yet to be paid out. Moving over to slide 11, looking at similar information, but taking the lens out to a longer term perspective.
I find this slide quite fascinating. This is looking at the returns over 10, 15, and 20 years, remembering that Mirrabooka was formed in 1999. The fascinating part for me is, I guess, finance theory says that when you're investing in smaller companies, you're taking on greater risk because you'll get greater volatility in returns and the experience those companies give you. In compensation for that, you should expect a higher return for that extra risk. I guess the reason that return can come, that higher return, we think there's two factors behind it. One being the fact that this area of the market is less researched than the large companies.
The second being, that if you find a good company in the small part of the market, you get to enjoy owning it for more years, where it's doing really outsized earnings growth, before the company starts to mature. T hat's the theory, but looking at the slide, it's interesting looking at the orange and the gray bars. T he orange bar is our mid and small cap benchmark, and the gray bar being the ASX 200, which obviously a lot of money is invested in passively, just tracking that index on the gray bar.
Interestingly, look, it's pretty similar over 10 years, those two numbers, but if you look at 15 years, you know, 9.7% return for our benchmark, 11% for the ASX 200, and over 20 years, 8.7% versus 10.3% for the benchmark. Y ou're really not getting that extra return that you should, in theory, be getting for going down to the smaller part of the market. I nterestingly, if you just isolate those numbers and look at, say 20 years, the Small Ordinaries Index, so not the small and mid, but the smalls alone, is actually less than 6%. R eally, compared to 10% for the ASX 200, yeah, that is quite a lousy return. W e think the key message for this, for Mirrabooka is, we think the theory does hold.
There is extra return available, but you need to have expertise, and you need to understand the businesses you're investing in. There's lots of ways to lose money in this area of the market, and that really does weigh down those benchmark returns. I f you can pick through the market, get to know management, and have a investment approach that really focuses on those quality companies, understanding the value of those businesses and when to transact. Y ou won't get all of it right, but we think, you know, Mirrabooka has demonstrated through its track record since it was formed, that, you know, there is really good returns available. W e think that's an important message.
I mean, obviously, the 1-, 3-, and 5-year numbers can move around quite a bit, but we think, you know, there is that extra return available for the long term, which is why, you know, we're quite motivated to keep doing this in Mirrabooka. M oving on to slide 12, I'll we'll touch now on some of the reasons behind that really outsized performance through the 2023 calendar year. For slide 12, I'll hand over to Stuart to cover off on these 2 companies.
Thanks very much, Kieran, and good afternoon, all. As Kieran mentioned, slide 12, just pointing out two recently bought winners. These are two relatively new names to the portfolio, purchased over the last couple of years and have been significant outperformers. J ust thought I'd go into them in a little bit more detail. As you can see, Gentrack and IPD Group, as mentioned, they're quite different businesses. Gentrack produces software for the utilities industry. IPD Group is a leading distributor of electrical products. E ven though they're quite different, what we did identify as a commonality of both was really strong management teams.
Something that we also thought was consistent across both was, at the time we started looking at it, they were relatively unloved, reasonably undiscovered and had a lack of broker coverage. Gentrack had been an underperformer for a couple of years. It had had some industry issues and some management turnover. A new CEO, Gary Miles, came in and was really impressive, and that really attracted us to invest in Gentrack, and it had a very undemanding valuation because of the previous issues that it had . IPD Group, a little bit different again. That came to market as an IPO in late 2021. It was sort of the height of the software little boom we had there, and I guess it came with little fanfare to the market.
Not too many people at that stage wanted a very low PE Electrical Distribution business. Once again, it had sort of two founders that had done a management buyout from Alstom about a decade earlier. A really strong management team, and we were attracted to that, once again, on a very undemanding valuation with little to no broker coverage. One thing that you'll notice on both boxes is our first purchase price in both of these is different to our average cost. As you can see, the average cost in both Gentrack and IPD Group are higher, indicating that we made subsequent purchases in both names as the stocks went higher.
This is something that, I guess when you're investing and you start to see the business work or the thesis play out, you are tempted to sell the name or take some gain. And it's something we've been trying to actively do more of, is to actually go the other way and buy more shares. As I guess, we think we're early to the story, and in many cases, these companies have a very long runway for growth. W hen they start to deliver, we wanna be actually buying more stock and getting larger positions. I n this case, this is why both companies are now quite high into our top 20 positions.
I guess the other point to mention is that as mentioned at the start of the slide, very different businesses, one being a software turnaround, the other being an IPO in 2021. I think probably Kieran or I would have picked either of these businesses to be our best performers in 2022, and then followed up again in 2023. Which I guess just highlights the value of having a diversified portfolio. I think at any given stage, it's very hard for us to identify which of the particular businesses in the portfolio were outperforming in a given stage. I guess Kieran's point before, with the Small Ordinaries has been not a great index over the last couple of years.
It is very hard to try and pick the odds out of it, hence we've gone for a portfolio approach. I'll now turn back to Kieran for more detailed comments of some of the outperformance.
Thank you, Stuart. I'm now on slide 13. I guess preparing this slide, I was thinking about, you know, the strong rebound in some core holdings that we experienced through 2023. W e've certainly felt this. It's been a very volatile, you know, strangely volatile, two or three years in the market, and a lot of these companies, you sort of do ride the ups and downs and the fortunes of them. I must say, when we pulled together the slide and looked at the numbers, I had to double-check to make sure the numbers were correct. It's quite extraordinary to think that these companies, the average return for the 2022 calendar year was -38%, and then the same company's calendar year return, on average, in the 2023 year was 81%.
An extraordinary reversal of fortunes across quite a number of companies in very broad range of industries. I'm trying to, I guess, add some color to this and explain how it can be, and I mean, really, it's just a demonstration of the extraordinary swings you see in market sentiment. You know, everyone's very focused on, I guess, what's coming next in terms of the economy or the results that these companies are producing. I guess the way I'd characterize this is if our shareholders were in the position where they are on a fly on the wall in the meetings we're having with these management teams of these companies, and they listened in to the sorts of questions we're asking and the answers we were receiving about the way these businesses are being run.
I guess the strategy and their long-term objectives, you'd really be hard-pressed to sort of pick the different meetings and the share price that it attaches to them. Because there's a lot of consistency in the way these businesses have been going about their business over that two-year period, yet you see these, you know, incredible, you know, swings in the share price over the period that we've experienced. I guess the follow-on comment from this is, it does mean that for our portfolio, you know, we probably did feel there was some latent value across companies that, you know, key holdings in the portfolio we felt were being harshly treated by the share market.
It's really hard to be precise on valuation, but now looking at, you know, some of our larger holdings, it's harder to feel that obviously after the run some of these companies have had. We're still long-term investors. We don't just, you know, take this money and move it on, and try and find something else, because we find if you do that, you're diminishing the quality of what we own. I t does encourage us to just test them for, you know, extremes in valuation and to try and find some fresh ideas to find some future winners in the portfolio. T hat segues quite neatly onto slide 14, and looking at the portfolio outlook and how we've currently been investing. I guess following on from those comments on the slide before, we've probably had an absence of money added to key holdings of late.
You know, those companies are performing so well, it's hard to see real latent value. W e've been out on the hunt. We always are, but that's where the money's been skewed recently to find some relative value. The main focus we have when we're doing that is to make sure that we're not just trading away on quality. You can sort of think you see the appearance of value, but, you know, if you're buying inferior businesses, you know, some might work, but on average, they'll drag the returns of the portfolio down. W e're really focused on not doing that. Where we have found some value has been actually in some resource companies with strong growth prospects. We've labeled there Lynas Rare Earths and IGO. Lynas is the largest producer of rare earth materials outside of China.
We think that's a really strategic position. You know, those rare earth materials have a lot of uses in, I guess, the energy transition the globe is undertaking at the moment. We think that outlook's strong. IGO is a part owner of the world's largest low-cost lithium mine at Greenbushes. We think that's obviously an attractive asset. Lithium's been very challenged of late, but we think, again, the demand growth is still strong there. We think supply and demand will recalibrate, and owning, you know, a position in an asset like that, we think has really good long-term prospects. In both those cases, we have been a bit early to buying into those, so we are sitting on some unrealized loss at this point in time. W e think the important feature of both is we're not invested because we just like the thematic or the story or that commodity.
It's much more about the way we think these businesses have got a position to grow their production on a five-year basis and beyond. T hat really takes the, I guess, the challenge away from just trying to pick a commodity price, and so that's what these companies are worth. We think the production growth will really win the day in the longer term. We've also found some value in the real estate sector. Region Group is a real estate investment trust. They sort of own neighborhood shopping centers that are sort of backed by anchor tenants in the supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths. Very secure income stream. Been knocked around by interest rates rising, which has meant, you know, their relative value hasn't looked as good for some people in the market.
A lso some of the inflationary pressures have seen sort of impact their own corporate PNL through the period. We just looked at that and felt that was a really good chance to pick up some attractive income at a good point in the cycle, so that's been one to add to the portfolio. I'll come back to some new additions of some companies that might be less well known with Stuart in a moment, but just, rounding out this slide, we exited two positions, two meaningful positions in the portfolio. Santos was one we inherited from our long-standing Oil Search investment. Yeah, that's a company that's now well and truly in the 50 Leaders.
We held onto it for a little while, feeling that, you know, we weren't probably getting maximum value, but I think we've resigned ourselves to the fact that it's just challenging in these oil and gas companies to really ever get that. They always seem to, particularly Santos, always seems to look a bit cheap, so we just felt it was time to move that money back into our universe and then find another opportunity. Medibank was one, which was a really successful trade around their cyber incident going back around 18 months ago. Great company, well run, but it just doesn't really have good long-term growth prospects. For us, it's more of a mature business. We felt once that trade had played out, it was time to move on. Then in terms of trimming, we've had a number of names.
The slide, the logos you see on the slide here are just the most material of those, where we again, just as these companies have performed so well, their percentage that they make up in the portfolio rises. We just feel from a risk basis, we're just managing down those positions slightly and looking to fund some of these new things we've been buying. That's been the main thematic in the portfolio, and I'll hand to Stuart to describe those two new companies.
Thanks, Kieran. As mentioned, Telix and Lindsay are both new to the portfolio. They probably won't be as familiar to some listeners as some of our other positions. I thought I might go through them in a little bit of detail. Telix is a radiopharmaceutical company. Its main product, Illuccix, is used in the imaging and diagnosis of prostate cancer, replacing what's pretty invasive biopsy and other diagnostic techniques. The PET imaging, which is what it does, has now become the standard of care in the U.S. Telix and another major player have the market between themselves at the moment, and it's pretty staggering to see this business from an IPO in 2017 to now doing probably AUD 650 million of revenues this year is quite staggering and just goes to highlight how well management have executed there.
We think currently the share price is probably underpinned by their prostate cancer product, and we think they've got a good chance of bringing a similar product to market in imaging for kidney cancer. Beyond those imaging products, we think there is a range of therapeutics that look interesting. We don't attribute a lot of value to those at this stage, but they remain potential upside going forward. Look, I think given the nature of the industry, where you do have a lot of new products come to market, these new products are always being superseded by new and better things, means it probably won't be a huge hole in the portfolio, but we think it does look interesting in and around where it's been for the last couple of months, hence why we add the position to the portfolio.
Lindsay Australia, very different again. This is a company that's been around for many years. We've caught up with them over probably the last five or six years. Always been one that we'd like to catch up with. Kim Lindsay has built this business from nothing to a reasonable player in the logistics industry. What I guess drove us to invest was a change in the market structure. People may have seen Scotts was a large transport company that went into administration last year, probably had 10% market share, and its exit from the industry has meant a lot more rational pricing, probably less trucks on the road, and it's just made for a better structure.
On the back of Scotts exiting, we've seen Lindsay winning share, and at the same time, we've seen Kim step back. He's brought on a new CEO from a bigger business, which I think can drive forward another leg of growth. W e've added that to the portfolio. Trades on a very low multiple, but we think it can continue to win market share. I think probably this industry, sort of trucking logistics, hasn't always been a great industry, but I think we've got a lot better market structure now. I think it's, yeah, since we've stuff like Coles and Woolworths have been a large customer, these days, you really can't have bad trucks on the road anymore. There's a lot of ESG considerations and health and safety issues, which have got rid of a lot of smaller competitors, which once again has built into that better market structure.
I'll now turn back to Kieran to go through some of the top ten holdings.
Thanks, Stuart. Just moving on to slide 15. Longstanding shareholders will be familiar with this slide. We started producing this a few years ago. I really just, I guess, back up the claim that we are a long-term investor. Lots of people call themselves that, but we think this slide demonstrates really well that, you know, we do buy companies and look to compound the returns of the business for the long term, rather than being active traders and looking to make money by, you know, I guess, picking the valuation of companies. You'll see from the slide, you know, we have some positions that are beyond 10, some beyond 15 years of continuous ownership. We think that gives a really good knowledge of these businesses.
When you deal with really difficult times and volatile times in, you know, markets and economies, it does provide some really good comfort to be able to look back at the portfolio and say, "We're very familiar with the people. We understand the businesses really well, and we think they've got good long-term prospects to look through short-term noise." I guess another feature of this slide is just the way we run the portfolio. We tend to be quite spread in the way we allocate new capital to positions. We don't take aggressive initial stakes in companies thinking we've found the latest, greatest new thing. The portfolio really, the high end of the portfolio, these large weightings, you've really got to win your way there.
It tends to be the compounding of the returns after the initial investment, that sees those positions build to be the most material stakes. We think that's a good discipline because it does sort of, I guess, diffuse the mistakes you make when you, you know, see some new things that don't play out as well as you'd like, and it makes sure the capital is more invested in the companies that we know better. Interestingly, in that vein, you'll see things like Gentrack has only been owned for 1.5 years at 3% of the portfolio, and IPD Group at nearly 3% at 2 years. The companies that Stuart mentioned earlier, they've just won their way there very quickly, effectively, with some really strong returns over the last few years.
Final comment on the slide is, this is gonna be a good place for shareholders who are listening in to go back and have a look at this slide if they're interested in asking some questions, 'cause obviously, there's around 60% of the portfolio represented by these top 20 companies. We are happy to answer questions about any other companies we own or any other companies in our universe as well. J ust finishing with some outlook comments. R ecent market gains have been quite pronounced through November, December and into January. That's come about because of the view that global inflation is now abating, and we've seen the peak in interest rates.
We think, you know, there is now more prospect that we do get quite a benign outcome, and the soft landing that people have been talking about looks more likely than it was. W e think if there's any deviation from that, there's two directions that could go in. One is that inflation does hang around a bit more. It's obviously peaked and it's falling, but, you know, that last bit to get back down into the twos is a bit harder for central banks to achieve, and if that's the case and interest rates remain a little bit higher, we think that's probably a headwind to where current markets are currently being priced.
The second way that things could be still a bit rosy is if, you know, the economy and corporate earnings do take a bit of a dip, as a lagged impact of all the interest rate hikes we've had. We're not trying to pick either of those things, but we do think the market's probably taking a bit of a glass-half-full approach at the moment, and, and probably risks out of the downside rather than the upside, if there are any. Having said all of that, we do take a long-term perspective, and I guess we're far more interested with the meetings we're having with companies to talk about, you know, why they're winning market share in their industries and why they can continue to do so. And we're really encouraged with what we're seeing on that front from our portfolio at the moment.
For the comments earlier around what we're doing with the portfolio, we are testing valuations and I guess not really adding to core positions because they've had a pretty strong run, and just looking for good quality opportunities that might come along. I n doing that, we really wanna make sure we do preserve the quality of the portfolio, and make sure that we've got the best portfolio to navigate whatever comes our way next. J ust finally, I just mentioned we did have a meeting with one of the companies in the portfolio earlier today, Pinnacle Investments. I guess they're a little bit closer to the fundraising in equity markets than we are. We're out investing or I guess allocating the capital that we have to positions in the market.
Pinnacle are often in fundraising mode, and now they were remarking that it's been sort of a two-year drought in terms of retail equity flows into the market. W e do find that interesting, given, you know, valuations are fairly full across the market. I f we do see some of that retail money chasing returns on, you know, I guess what they've seen over the last few months, it could create a bit of a headache for us and make the valuation equation even more challenging. W ith that, we'll close there and throw the line open to some Q&A.
Thanks, Kieran. J ust a reminder, if you wanna ask a question, just the box at the bottom of the webpage. T he first question is about providing an update on the investment in Beamtree Holdings, and does Beamtree pay a dividend? I'll hand over to Stuart on that one.
Thanks, Geoff. Beamtree position in the portfolio, just for listeners, this is very much a microcap company, one of the smallest in the portfolio. It provides software to the pathology and the hospital industries. This is really quite a high-growth company. It's sort of doing 25%-30% revenue growth, so they are reinvesting quite a lot into their product and distribution. I t's only on the cusp of creating free cash flow and profits in next financial year. I t's not quite at the position that it would be paying a dividend, but given the nature and the size of the business, it's got a global opportunity.
A lot of its software is used all around the world. We think, and agree with management, that the better use of the cash is to continue to reinvest and build their product out, build their distribution out, and I guess capture what's a very large global opportunity. I do think in the next couple of years, they've got a target of doing AUD 60 million in recurring revenues, they are very sticky annuity revenues. If it can deliver that, it should be quite a profitable, high-margin business. T hen look, they'll have to make that decision, what they do with that cash, later on. A s yet, I guess the growth opportunity means that there's probably better uses of the cash inside the company than paying a dividend.
Thanks, Stuart. Next question is about Domino's Pizza. Given the negative market update it provided, Domino's debt is worrying. How does Mirrabooka continue to think about this stock?
Yeah, look, so, as I mentioned earlier, we certainly don't get them all right, and this certainly fits in the category of one that's been really disappointing for us over the last few years. We do still hold a position, but we have reduced it before the latest downgrade, so at higher prices than we're seeing in the market at the moment. R eally, the reason for doing that does hit on the question, really, that point about the debt. We just felt that, w e don't think the debt's a position where, you know, it really puts a lot of risk on the future of this company in an outright sense.
It's more to do with the fact that they, to sort of turn their fortunes around, we feel they need to reinvest some profit, you know, back in making the franchisees more healthy and, and I guess, more willing to drive the business forward. W hen you've got a corporate balance sheet that's quite full with debt, that makes that even harder. T hat, we felt was confounding us a bit and making it a riskier turnaround from where they are. W e've done that. We feel now, since the most recent update, I guess, the disappointing elements of that were France and Japan, which, you know, are pretty meaningful regions for the company. They look like they're really struggling in those markets.
Their competitive positions aren't as strong there, and they're trying a lot of things to get better traction, but to date, they're not getting as good results in those markets. T hat's, that is a worry. W e do feel now we're at the point where there's a lot of bad news now. We think, we look at the way the brokers cover the stock and the forecast they have for it. It felt like it was pretty optimistic all the way down. We feel now they're getting more realistic. W hile we have a lot of concern, we're not allocating fresh capital to the position.
We feel that if you were to sell it now, based on all the negatives we're seeing, you could well look back in three or four years and say, "That was the worst time to sell this company." I t's now a more modest position, so we are hanging in there with it.
Thanks, Kieran. Question about what are our plans to offer a share purchase plan?
Oh, well, as share purchase plans are always on the agenda, they're a great way to grow capital. The primary reason why we do that, because as we make the company bigger, it reduces the MER for shareholders, so it's good for shareholders. Although, we are very conscious that, there's always a risk of the company becoming too big, because we wanna be able to take positions, and some of the companies are quite small, we invest in, and if you're too large, it's very difficult to get a meaningful stake. W e need to always balance off the size of the company and our ability to create outperformance. Yet, we understand that making the company bigger reduces the MER. So with that, it's always on the agenda. We've probably got a neutral view on it at the moment.
We do like to do these when we see opportunities in the market, and as Kieran touched on earlier, we probably see valuations pretty full at this point. However, it's always something that's under the consideration of the board.
Thanks, Mark. Kieran, a question here about PEXA Group.
Yeah, look, so thanks, Geoff. This has been another one that's been disappointing for us in the last few years since we bought it at the IPO. We still have really good conviction in the quality of that Australian asset. If anything, we think the value of that for the long run has increased since the IPO, because we just haven't seen the competitive threat really emerge at the rate that people were worried it would. The U.K. growth market has taken longer to get traction than we and the market thought. That's not particularly surprising. Now, these markets can be really hard to unlock. It's a different jurisdiction. There's lots of stakeholders to convince the merits of what they're doing over there.
I think the thing that's added pressure to that, though, is it's been a far more capital-intensive way to sort of unlock that market, not that they have yet, but to try and unlock that market than we foresaw. They've had to do some acquisitions to get the strategic position they feel they need. T hey've been spending some money on some data assets in the Australian market, which really haven't borne fruit yet. A ll of that is weighing very heavily on that core Australian asset that we own. W e're patient with that Australian asset, but I guess losing some patience with the way it's all coming together at the moment. W e'd really like to see those losses reined in a bit, and some traction come from those investments that have already been made in those new growth areas. We are holding on to our full position.
Thanks, Kieran. M oving on to the better news, better stories within the portfolio, Gentrack and IPD Group. Do you view them as, long-term holdings, or have you sold any?
The answer to that is probably in between. I guess we probably go through two phases of realizing significant gains on positions. The first is where we sort of say to ourselves Yeah, the business is still going very well. We're trying to compound the returns, but we get to a point where we look at the percentage weighting we have in the portfolio and just ask ourselves, you know, what do we think of that in the context of the robustness of the business? Are we going to allow that to keep appreciating if this company keeps going on a really good run? Or do we feel it's getting to a level where we think that's a really full weighting for what the company is?
We've just sort of entered that mode for both of them in recent times, and so effectively, what we're saying to ourselves is, we're not selling them down. You know, if they keep running, you know, new people keep finding them and the shares keep rerating, we'll just take a little bit off the top just to keep that weighting at around the same level, which is a bit of a risk management approach that we take. It means that in both cases, we've sold less than 10% of the shares we bought. It's in the single digits. We then, the next phase we look at is, you know, if companies sort of run, and we start to see a few things change in the investment thesis, that's when we look to sell them down, but we certainly haven't seen any of that in either of these today.
Thanks, Kieran. Question about Nanosonics after their recent trading update, which was negative for the share price.
Yeah, look, it's interesting. This came a day after, I think it was the day after or the day before the Domino's one. I t certainly, you know, meant the summer holiday had come to an end. That was a clear signal of that and coming into something with these two. It's quite a contrast, though, to the Domino's one. Domino's got a lot going on in its business. You know, there was a difficult to get clarity on what the particular issues were. We think that Nanosonics is far more straightforward, and that the market's just wary of some maturity and slowing of growth. We think that's got more to do actually with this company having been, you know, grossly overpriced a number of years ago, but fairly fully valued for the last seven or eight years. And now we think expectations are far more realistic.
The answer to the other part of the question is, this is one that not, not heroically, not in an aggressive way, but this is one we did go in and buy a few shares after that downgrade, and we'll be very interested to catch up with them in February.
Thanks, Kieran. A comment about Port of Tauranga, given that I think we bought some shares around AUD 6, it's way below that now.
Yeah, look, this is a great asset in New Zealand. It's strategically positioned in terms of the vessels it can receive. We think it's something we can own in the portfolio for a very long period of time, but it's been overpriced as well. W e watched it for many years, thought we'd like to own it, couldn't get there on valuation, and we're now in the phase where that valuation has unwound, and we've been building up a position slowly. We think we could have a lot more for the quality of the asset, but we still think the value is more fair than compelling. Y eah, it's one we, we hope it actually falls adversely because we'll get the chance to buy some more.
Question about how about publishing NTA announcements weekly as opposed to monthly?
Yeah, look, that's come up a couple of times, but I must admit, we don't get a lot of queries about this. I guess one of the issues is it actually takes a lot of work for the team to produce an NTA, and we'd be taking on a fair bit of cost if we tried to move to a weekly or fortnightly. The other thing is we're, you know, we are a long-term investor, and we think once a month is, gives investors a pretty good feel for what the NTA is. O bviously, we publish our top stocks, so it's not difficult to work out where the portfolio would sit in terms of its last published NTA. W e're pretty happy staying with the monthly at this point. Thanks, Mark.
A comment about how comfortable are you still with IDP Education?
Thanks, Geoff. IDP Education, just for all the listeners, is business produces high-stakes English language testing and the global leader in student placements. It's come back quite a bit over the last probably 12 months. A range of issues that were sort of outside the company's control, but just points to the nature of the industries they're in, where they had previously a monopoly on a range of Canadian students doing English language testing. That's now been opened up to a broader panel of providers. That impacted the share price quite a bit, fell probably 30% after that news. Then more recently, we've had both in Australia and Canada some tightening of policies in regards to student immigration, so sort of slowing those numbers in Canada and imposing some quotas.
Once again, these are kind of industry issues as opposed to specific company issues. The company has continued to execute really well. We think it's probably the number one player in its space. It has a huge global opportunity and very well managed. W e think we have to appreciate that it is prone to issues beyond its control, especially something reasonably political. W e think they're short-term issues, and over the next five to ten years, they'll continue to build market share. W e do think sort of the growth in English language testing and placing foreign students into Australia, Canada, U.K., and the U.S. is a really long-term tailwind. Y eah, we think that will be core holding for us for a while, despite some of these more recent issues.
Thanks, Stuart. A broader question here about our thoughts about opportunities in the artificial intelligence thematic.
Yeah. Thanks, Geoff. T his is an interesting one because I think if we'd been asked this last year, we probably would have said, or six months ago, we probably would have said, "Just be aware of some of the hype around this." I guess looking at some recent numbers coming out of, you know, these large companies in the U.S., you're just seeing the reality of the spend is happening. A t the moment, we're not seeing a lot of little companies that are purely plays on artificial intelligence listed in the Australian market as an investment opportunity, but I'd expect we probably will. There'll be some IPOs, and I think this thematic will be something that will be behind some of those.
Interestingly, there's always different ways to get exposure, and we're in the fortunate position where we think we've got a great exposure in our largest position in the portfolio, being Macquarie Technology. This is a bit of the picks and shovels approach, really, where, you know, I guess all this artificial intelligence spend sees very significant lift in the computing power needed, which is all housed in data centers. T hey've had a frustrating experience where they had significant delays on their Macquarie Park expansion. The company been tearing their hair out on that. Stuart and I were just talking about this earlier today and saying it might have actually been for the better. We think construction costs are coming down, and the need for space in these data centers is probably greater than it's ever been.
You know, the pricing and the ability to fill that, probably looks really good over the next few years.
Thanks, Kieran. Company here is Mader Group, a holding for Mirrabooka.
No, Mader Group's not. This is a mining services business out of Western Australia, named after the founder. This is an area of the market we don't have, haven't historically had significant exposure to. It tends to be quite cyclical, and we feel sort of hard to sustain a really enduring competitive advantage in these companies. W hat we know of the company, we do admire the founder, and we think that's certainly one of the better caliber companies in that space, but not one we own in the portfolio.
Thanks, Kieran. Thoughts on EVT and cinemas and skiing?
Yeah. T hey've also got movies in there, of course, as well, EVT. Look, we just think it's a really well-run business. We think Jane Hastings is an exceptional CEO. She's had to deal with a lot in her time in the role with, you know, COVID and all the impacts that had on the business, the inflation she's seen since. W e think, you know, the initiatives she's put in place haven't really been demonstrated yet in the operating profits of the company. T he other thing we're compelled by is the strategic value in the land that they own, the property on the balance sheet. We think that's a really good anchor point when, you know, the earnings do move around a bit, which they do, because they're pretty discretionary items that they're sort of selling to the market.
We think that value of the property is a great anchor point, and we've been able to buy it well because of it.
Thanks, Kieran. Board question here about how does the board decide whether to declare a special dividend?
What we have income sources through the dividends on the stocks that we hold as investments, and generally that gets passed through to shareholders as dividends. I guess along the journey, we do take profits or capital gains. If we sell or reduce our holdings, where there is a gain, that we do have to pay tax on that, which generates a franking credit, and those reserves build up over time. W e always like the fact that when we have downturns in the market, we can draw on those reserves and to ensure a more consistent dividend to shareholders.
We've built up quite a bank of these reserves over time, to such an extent that we'd feel comfortable paying out some of those reserves on a more consistent basis, and they form really the backbone of our special dividends. W hile we continue to produce strong capital gains, there'll be a pool of franking credits, and therefore the ability to keep paying out special dividends. If capital gains stop at some point, then that might prove to be more challenging. However, there's quite a considerable bank of franking credits sitting with the company at the moment. C ertainly we have not paid out anywhere near franking credits that we have available for shareholders at this point.
Thanks, Mark. Comment on our views on retail stocks, Breville, Temple & Webster, and what about Lovisa?
Look, so our view on retail stocks in terms of the way we look at them for the portfolio is that it's quite mixed fortunes in this space. You really wanna be in the market leaders. Retailers that are sort of also-rans, it's really hard work. There's a high failure rate in this part of the market. Y ou wanna have something that's got a competitive advantage that can endure, and the ability to grow and win market share. We think in both Breville and Temple & Webster, we've got that in spades, and we think they've been incredibly volatile share prices over the last few years, but they, you know, they're really delivering on strategies, you know, where they're thinking three, four, five years beyond the current year and executing really well. They'll be volatile, but great stocks for the portfolio.
Thanks, Kieran. Do we feel REA is still a much better valuation proposition than Domain?
Look, that's an interesting question. REA, we feel, you know, really quite full, the valuation at the moment, but we also feel that, I guess, the advantage they have over Domain is as great as it's ever been, and it's always been quite significant. We think it's a far better proposition. I think it's probably fair to say that Domain can, at times, suffer from that a bit, where people feel like they've got the leader, and they don't need to look at the other one. We probably do fall into that camp a little bit. But we think over time, REA has been a really good investment, so we don't really feel we need to double down on the exposure with Domain as well.
Thanks, Kieran. Do we have any thoughts on 4D Medical?
Yeah, 4D Medical. It actually was a very small holding for a period of time. We participated in the IPO, which was, I think, 2020 or 2021, during the COVID period, and they built a very interesting piece of technology which allowed, I guess, to look at the lung function in 3D, as opposed to just, you know, historical X-ray. W e thought that was a really interesting global proposition. The shares went sort of spectacularly well quite early, so we thought that was well above probably fair value at the time, so we took a profit. It has remained on our watchlist for quite a while, and we've just been watching it develop a bit of position and just mature into you know, going from what was a really interesting product and concept into a more sustainable business.
I t's still on our watchlist. We haven't got a position at the moment, but we did think it was a really interesting technology.
A question back to Domino's, any thoughts about potential change in the CEO and how that would change your view on the company?
Yeah, look, I think, I suppose the first comment I'd make on that is, Don's been, you know, a fantastic value creator until the most recent sort of innings of the company. y ou know, I guess if the company were to contemplate that or Don was to contemplate that, they'd wanna think through that quite carefully and really be thinking about whether, for structural reasons, you know, over the long term, that's a necessary change. O bviously, that's for their board to decide. w e do think in our experience, it's just important not to get too carried away with cyclical pressures and cyclical concerns in a company and make structural decisions. I think that'd be the only comment I'd make about that at the moment.
Okay. W e're getting towards the end of the session, and the numbers are starting to drop off. Well, this is probably the last two or three questions, I think. I s Cleanaway on the right track, views on increasing exposure to waste management through Cleanaway?
Yeah, look, we think it is on the right track. We think it's well run. I think the longer we've owned this, the more we've appreciated just how challenging the industry it operates in. It's definitely the market leader. We think there's definitely improving conditions in the waste market, in that people are more aware of the need to recycle and to value add from waste, and governments are more aware of it, rather than just shipping things off to Third World countries and letting them deal with the problem. W e think those conditions are good for improved results coming out of this industry, but there's just so much that goes on day to day.
You know, the latest thing they're challenged with is, you know, some of the lithium batteries catching fires in their facilities, and it's just, it's just a hard business to really extract that, you know, margin out of. I t is one we are keeping a little bit of an eye on. We probably wanna see a little bit more in the next result or two in terms of profit improvement, but that's not a comment on management not executing. We think they're doing a pretty good job.
A question here about, how do we see the potential impact on ARB from the proposed vehicle efficiency standards, which may have implications for, I guess, utilities and four-wheel drives?
Yeah, look, that's a headline I've seen in recent days. I guess it's something we'd have to watch. I mean, I think at the end of the day, you know, these vehicles are very popular in the Australian market, from both a recreational point of view and also industry. ARB are a leader in fitting them out. You do get different policies raised from time to time. We'd sort of like to see how this settles down, and obviously, you know, the vehicle manufacturers themselves adapt when things change. W e don't think it's a, you know, an issue that's going to significantly impact ARB for the long term.
Comment a bit, what has made rare earths attractive to the fund at this current moment?
Look, I think it's really got to do with the quality of the business and its valuation. Y ou know, we don't sort of say, "We like rare earths, let's go and find a rare earths company." It's more to say, "This company we're looking at happens to be, you know, the global leader in the Western world at producing rare earths, which is not easy to do, and its valuation is now at a point where we think there's long-term upside." T hat's the sort of comment around why at this particular moment.
Okay, I'll make this the last question. Some of our companies are moving to paying dividends to monthly or quarterly. What are Mirrabooka's thoughts on this?
We're comfortable with twice a year at this point. You know, we have to remember that we're collecting income from the companies we invest in, and that they form the half and then full year results, and then we strike a dividend based on those outcomes. T o move to a period less than that is pretty time consuming, takes on a lot of resources.
There's also a cost to paying it, which would be-
Yep.
Fairly considerable if you're paying it monthly.
You also have to pay the share register-
Yep.
- a fee for doing that, which would absorb some of that. Y eah, so we think for a cost efficiency for our shareholders, twice a year is an effective way to do it, so we're not looking at changing that.
Well, with that, Mark, I'll hand back to you to close the meeting.
Okay. Well, thank you everyone for attending this, and we know these briefings are really important for our shareholders. It gives you a great opportunity to ask questions of the team. Just remind everyone, throughout the balance of this year, we're doing shareholder information meetings around the country, in every major city in March. I f you want to hear more about the company and meet the team, please come along. It's your company. Otherwise, we'll be doing another one of these webinars in July for the full year result. Then obviously, we'll have the AGM, which we webcast in October. T here's sort of four key points over the year for you to listen to an update on Mirrabooka. Many thanks for your attending, and hopefully we'll see you at the March shareholder meetings.
Thank you. That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation.