Right. Good afternoon, fellow shareholders, and welcome to the Plato Income Maximiser Webinar on the Share Purchase Plan, together with a Market and Portfolio Update. Hopefully, it's a pretty miserable day here in Sydney, but hopefully, you're staying dry, or if you're not in Sydney, you're seeing some better weather than we are. My name is Chris Meyer. I am a director of Plato Income Maximiser, or PL8, as we'll refer to it today, where all of you are shareholders. I'm also the director of Listed Funds at Pinnacle. We do the investor relations for PL8. Many of you would know Pinnacle in that regard. I'm also joined today by Dr. Don Hamson, who doesn't need much of an introduction to many of you.
He is also a director of PL8 and also managing director of Plato, the manager of the PL8 portfolio. As I mentioned at the start, the reason why we're having this webinar is to run through the share purchase plan that gives eligible shareholders an opportunity to buy more shares in PL8 at the offer price. So we'll run through that. Before we do that, just to let you know that today's webinar will be recorded or is being recorded, and a replay will be sent to you. The slides have also been made available on the ASX under the ticker PL8. You can follow them on screen, obviously, as well, and they're also on your dashboard here on the webinar portal if you want to access them that way.
So look out for a replay from us later today, of this webinar. Just quickly on the disclaimer slide. Normally, we would, let me just get this moving. There we go. So it's, it's not something we expect you to read. It's a pretty long thing, but it is worth saying that, please just make sure that, this investment is, is appropriate for you as an investor. We don't give personal financial advice, but the Target Market Determination of the product is one that says you should be looking for income, but are prepared to take a long-term view, on markets.
You know, this portfolio does invest in shares, and so as a result, by virtue of the nature of shares, can have volatility, so investors should have a long-term profile with how they invest. So today we'll run through the share purchase plan. We'll give you reasons on why we're doing it. We'll also give you the timetable that we're gonna follow, as well as ways in which you can apply. Don, I'll then hand over to Don, and he'll give an update on the portfolio. We did something recently at the AGM, but we thought it worth giving another update here today from Don. And then at the end, we'll take some questions from you.
If you do have questions, please feel free to type them into that Q&A box at the bottom of your screen, and we'll endeavor to get to those questions at the end of the webinar. So with that, just jumping into the share purchase plan, I'm sure many of you have been through share purchase plans before. In fact, PL8 did one more or less this time last year. It's pretty much cut and paste in terms of the formula and the timetable from last year. Just as a reminder, it's an opportunity for eligible shareholders to buy more shares in PL8, up to AUD 30,000 worth in increments of AUD 2,500, at a price which is below the spot price in the market.
The new shares that we're gonna issue will be eligible to receive the distribution or the dividend that we will make in January. So it's paid in January. It's the December distribution. So those shares will rank equally with existing shares in PL8. The price at which you can buy those shares is the lower of that AUD 1.04 per share, and the AUD 1.04 being the pre-tax NTA of PL8 the day before we announced the transaction on the 20th of November, plus the franking balance per share of AUD 0.024 per share. So those two things combined give you the AUD 1.04 per share. So that's the highest you'll pay. It's the.
So it's the lower of that AUD 1.04, or if the market does fall between now and when we close the offer on the 11th of December, and the NTA falls with that market fall, then we will offer those securities at a lower price, lower than a AUD 1.04, and it'll depend on what the pre-tax NTA is on the 11th of December. So it benefits you. You're not really taking market risk, in that if the market does fall between now and the 11th of December, you will apply for your shares at a lower price than the AUD 1.04. And as we write at the bottom there, that's a pretty healthy discount to where the shares have been trading at in the market. So it is an attractive opportunity for shareholders to put more investment into PL8.
In terms of the rationale, the main rationale really is, off the back of the share purchase plan we did in 2022 last year, as well as the one in 2021 actually. We got very favorable feedback from shareholders. Most of you wrote to us and said, you enjoyed the experience. It was a great way for you to top-up your investment. You sort of encouraged us to consider doing it again. So we listened to that feedback, and that's the main reason why we're giving shareholders that opportunity. In addition, you know, as you grow the size of a listed investment company like PL8, it has two additional benefits for shareholders. One is the liquidity, meaning the traded volume of PL8 should go up as the size of PL8 increases.
And the second thing is, there is a marginal improvement in the expense ratio for shareholders in running the company, because we have a reasonably fixed cost base of running the company over a larger asset base from the additional capital that we raise, and that lowers the expense ratio of the company. Finally, just the rationale for including the franking balance per share in the offer price. It's something we did last year. It was favorably received again, and the reason why we've done it is because if you think about Plato, PL8 paying a fully franked dividend, the franking balance of the company is therefore an important balance sheet item in order for us to declare fully franked dividends. And so, it's in essence, the existing shareholders own that franking balance.
And so, in order not to dilute that franking balance, in case shareholders don't participate in the PL8 SPP, we wanted to make sure that everyone who is participating essentially pays the franking balance on top of the NTA to avoid the dilution of that franking balance for shareholders who may not participate in the SPP. Just a quick look back at the market price of PL8, and I think we should touch on this chart the recent price action since we announced the share purchase plan. I'm sure many of you are interested in that. We've already had some questions on the email from you on this.
So if you look over a longer period of time, which is really since the IPO of PL8 on this chart, for most of PL8's life, it has traded at a premium to its net tangible assets. More recently, over the last couple of years, that premium has actually expanded, which is a great sign of the demand from the market for the monthly fully franked dividends of PL8. I think what is worth pointing out is, and as I mentioned earlier, we did do a share purchase plan in November 2021. We did another one in December 2022, and obviously we're undertaking one now in November, December 2023. And in each time we have offered securities, there has been a near-term reaction from the market to sell down the share price. It's a pretty natural response.
If you imagine, because it's been trading at a premium to its NTA, and we're offering shares under the share purchase plan at the NTA plus the franking balance, so at a lower price. What often happens is shareholders sell down some of their shares in the market at the premium, so that they can buy back in the share purchase plan at a lower price. So while that happens, the so-called sort of overhang of sellers is out there. That does put a bit of pressure on the share price, but as we've experienced in the last couple of years, it doesn't last very long. Maybe it lasts the whole offer period, but tends to be a bit shorter than that.
We fully expect to see the PL8 share price recover as some of that near-term selling abates and sort of normal markets resumes. Without making a prediction, I would think that some of that near-term reaction we've seen, where the share price has fallen from AUD 1.25 down to AUD 1.13, some of that sell-off should inch its way back up over the next couple of weeks, would be our expectation. Then finally, just a reminder on dividends. I did mention that very last light blue line that you see on this chart is the December distribution. That will be payable to participants in the share purchase plan.
And really what this chart exhibits is a reminder, I guess, of one of the main appeals of PL8, which is that very stable and consistent monthly fully franked dividends that shareholders are receiving. And there's no reason to think that this additional capital that we will raise through the share purchase plan will put at risk that either the level of the dividend or the fully franked nature of those dividends going forward. So with that, Don, I will hand, oh, sorry, just final one on the timetable. All of this is contained in the share purchase plan booklet as well as in the announcement that we sent out on the 21st of November. You can see that timetable at the bottom there.
The offer is open, so most of you, or all of you, should have received your booklet. If you chose to receive it through the post, maybe it's still on its way, but hopefully everyone's either received an email or a physical booklet in the mail. That'll explain to you how you should apply. It should be accompanied with an application form from the registry. You don't actually need to fill out a form. You just need to make a payment via BPAY. That payment itself is sufficient for an application, and you should get a confirmation from Automic, the registry, that your payment has been made and therefore your application has been received.
We will notify the market, shortly after the 11th of December, how the SPP went, how much money we raised, and you should get your new shares on the 14th of December, as we said, in time for the record date of that December monthly dividend on the 15th of December. So all of that should be fairly self-explanatory. If you have any questions on the timetable or how to apply, you can either contact Automic, the registry, and you can see the contact details there. Or indeed, if you want, you can contact your Pinnacle distribution person. Either of us can give you a hand with that. So with that then, Don, let me hand over to you to give us a portfolio update, and I can take any questions on the SPP later on. Thanks.
Thank you, Chris. Look, I'll just—I think maybe a tiny correction there, Chris. You did mention the December dividend will be paid in January. I think it actually should get into your bank accounts on the 29th of December, 'cause normally, PL8 dividends are received on the last business day of the month. So that's—that should be the expectation. And as Chris said, any new shares should participate in the December dividend. So I think it's a great opportunity for existing shareholders to buy some PL8 at a relatively cheap price versus history. So just looking at our investment update. I mean, to start with, the realized—you know, yield of PL8's been greater than the market.
If you look at the last twelve months, we've generated a 5.4% cash yield versus ASX 200's yield of 4.1%, and we generated a further or distributed 2.3% franking credits versus the market 1.4%. So you can see that we've generated more income. One of the reasons why it's not higher is because the fact that PL8 has actually been trading at a premium to NTA, and had it actually traded at NTA, that yield would have been, you know, 15% or so higher, which, yeah. But having said that, I think we all like it trading at a premium to NTA.
Looking at the longer term performance on the next slide, you know, PL8 has been, or the underlying investments of PL8 have been good performers or have outperformed the market since inception. Now, just to remind investors, PL8 has listed in 2017, so sort of six, just over six and a half years ago. But the underlying investment strategy of PL8 is, PL8 actually invests into the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund, and that started in September 2011. So we now have over 12 years of history of that. And the sort of the top two lines highlight the total return performance of the underlying investments of PL8 in blue versus the market, the ASX Accumulation Index, including franking credits, or some call it the tax-exempt index in gray.
You can see that we've been sort of a bit like the tortoise and the hare, that PL8's been or PL8's investments have really been a tortoise. We've slowly outperformed, and the gap is slowly increasing compared to if you just invested in say an index fund with zero fees. But of course there aren't any ETFs that charge zero fees in Australia. So we've outperformed, which I think is very important. Even though this is an income strategy, you invest into Australian equities, you expect to get at least the market return. If you're paying an active manager, you would expect to get more than the market return. The returns on this chart are after fees. So the underlying investments of PL8 have outperformed the market since inception, after fees.
And the bottom two lines, which are probably a little less clear, but again, the darker line is the investments of PL8, and the lighter line is the market. This is a cumulative income that you would have received had you invested in the underlying investments of PL8 or the market. And again, you can see that we have outperformed the market in terms of income, and we've outperformed in terms of total return. And again, I said, I think it's very important that you have dual objectives, even in an income strategy, because you know, we're long-term investors, and we expect longer-term outperformance on a total return basis. But as often, you know, many of you are retirees, you want to generate that return largely as income to fund your retirement.
So moving forward, when I go around the country, what I get back, a lot of feedback, is that people are uncertain, they're, if you like, worried about the current economic environment. Turn on the television, it's all about high inflation. You know, it's been nothing. You know, inflation is the highest for 30 years. We've now had 13 interest rate rises. The RBA has raised cash rates more than it's ever done in the past in a cycle, or only started raising cash rates or controlling the cash rate in 1990, but the current tightening cycle has been the largest ever. Clearly, we have a lot of uncertainties in Ukraine and the Middle East, and you know, that's obviously not very good. So that's causing people to be worried. We saw house prices falling in 2022.
We saw bonds, in fact, all assets basically losing value in 2022, bonds and equities. We've had a few tax changes as well. So there's a lot of uncertainty around. And it's interesting that a few of my clients say, "Well, Don, is there any good news?" And the reality is, there actually is a reasonable amount of good news. And if we look at what that good news is on the next slide, I think the most important thing is that if you look at the Australian economy, we are essentially at full employment. The unemployment rate has been bouncing around 50-year lows of 3.6%-3.7%, for the last year or so. If you want a job, you can get a job. I think that's the issue.
If you're employed, even though you might have a mortgage and interest rates have gone up, you pay your mortgage. Particularly the case is because house prices, while they fell last year, have actually turned around and generally gone up this year. If you're in positive equity mode, you're not gonna walk away from your house. So, the interesting thing about the results from all the banks recently, or three of the four Big Four banks in the last couple of weeks, and Commonwealth Bank in August, was that the level of bad debt charges within the Big Four banks is actually at very, very, yeah, very, very low levels. They are not seeing a lot of mortgage defaults. Some people are behind, but even that isn't all that high. Banks are also very willing to talk.
I think the experience through COVID means that banks are much more willing to talk to people to negotiate loans. If you have a loan out there or, you know, maybe your kids or what have you, have got a loan and they're struggling, tell them to go talk to their bank, because the banks will probably look to restructure, move you to interest-only loans, those sorts of things. The other, maybe not good news, but I think it's relatively good news, is that, inflation has peaked. It peaked at 7.8%, latest read was 5.4%, so it is heading in the right direction. Maybe it's not as fast as the RBA would like, but it is definitely heading down. And interest rates are pretty close to, I think, cycle highs.
I think we're only maybe one more rate rise away from the peak in interest rates this cycle. So I think there's plenty of good news around, highlighted by the fact most people have got a job. And look, the reality is, and I know the young kids today might not like this, but I was around in 1990 when interest rates got to 17%, and that was a bit of a struggle to pay your mortgage too. Sure, house prices were a lot cheaper then, a huge amount cheaper then. But if you look at housing affordability, it's around the same levels of 1990, 'cause we had very high interest rates, but much lower house prices. Now we have 4.35% interest rates, but expensive houses.
It's about the same level of pain, I suppose, for people paying mortgages, at the moment. But what did I do? I went and got a second job to put food on the table. So, you know, the reality is people get by, they do what they have to do in these sorts of situations. It may not be nice, but the reality is, people generally pay their mortgages, so we will get through this. So I think there are good grounds for optimism. I do not think Australia will go into a recession. If we move to the next slide. Just to put that, interest rates into perspective, and this is, well, an interesting thing. This is real interest rates. So here I'm not looking at, actual nominal interest rates.
I mean, nominal interest rates at the moment are 4.35%, the cash rate. What I'm doing is I'm looking at interest rates after taking into account inflation. Now, the latest read on inflation is 5.4%. The latest and I haven't actually updated this for the very latest changes in interest rates. The latest interest rate change is 4.35% Currently, if you've got, if you're earning 4.35% in your bank account and inflation is running at 5.4%, you are actually losing more than 1%, on, in real terms. And that's what this, this chart is looking at. It's looking at the real earnings.
If you had AUD 1 million in the bank or in government bonds and, you are still earning a negative rate of return, you're actually losing money if you're in safe assets. And while I think, and I think a lot of people have forgotten that. I think a lot of people are saying, "Oh, at least I'm getting 4% or 5% now in my term deposits," 'cause term deposits might be a little higher than the 4%. But the reality is, most of them are under the inflation rate. So safe assets are still not really covering inflation. So I think that is something to think about. Whereas you look at the yield on PL8, is actually in excess of inflation. Moving to the next slide. Just a quick summary of reporting season.
It's a little old now, but it's the best read we have on the Australian economy or the Australian equity market. Yes, we've had inflation, yes, we've got rising interest rates, but if you look at the average Australian company, they actually increased dividends in the reporting season in August. In fact, they increased them by 24%. Now, the 24% is probably a little bit probably not the best indicator of the average company because, you know, you can increase your dividends by 100% or 200%, so a few large outliers actually pushed that number up. But I think probably the best measure is the median measure, which is a light blue measure on the chart on the right-hand side here.
The median company in Australia increased dividends compared to the same time last year by 4.3%. Not quite, but nearly in line with inflation. So most companies are actually doing okay. The other point I wanna make, 57% of companies increased their dividends in August. Thirteen percent paid the same as last year, and 29% reduced dividends. Of course, the one, I suppose, big thing is that the biggest company in Australia, BHP, actually did cut its dividends in August because the iron ore prices fell. The good news is, actually, iron ore prices have bounced back to over $130 a ton at the moment, which augurs well for BHP's dividend, next dividend, I believe.
So our view of the reporting season was companies are still paying pretty good dividends on average. And remember, the way we get higher income for our investors is we actively move to where the dividends are. We quite like the insurers, which had big increases in dividends. It's a bit of a sweet spot for insurers at the moment, actually. You might not, if you've got house insurance or car insurance, you might not think so, because you open up the letter or the email and prices are probably 10 or 20, or I even had a client say 30% more than last year. But as an investor in insurers. That means their revenue is going up very strongly.
The other thing about insurers is they take your premium and they invest it into the bank or into cash or bonds, and they're making more interest than they did for the last, well, probably five or six, seven years. So the outlook for insurers is actually pretty good. So you know, that's some areas of or companies actually do quite well. They might actually cause inflation, but they're benefiting from inflation as well because their revenue is going up. Just to highlight, dig a little deeper into one of the stocks there, CommBank. It was a pretty good result. If you actually look at Commonwealth Bank, second largest stock in Australia, made AUD 10 billion of profit in financial year 2022-2023.
That's 6% higher than last year, so pretty much kept pace with inflation. It increased its final dividend by 14%. So even though its profits only went up by 6%, it actually increased its dividend. And this is something we sort of predicted because Commonwealth Bank has plenty of franking credits, and the only way that Commonwealth Bank can now pass those franking, franking credits onto shareholders is to pay bigger dividends. And so we saw CommBank's payout ratio actually increase because it paid out more of its profits than it did last year in dividends. But look at that bad debt number, 12 basis points. Bugger all, really. I mean, very low number. And the other thing about the Commonwealth Bank is 75% of the loans it makes to individuals and companies are actually funded by deposits.
So it's largely, doesn't have to go to the capital markets to raise, raise funds. So overall, a pretty good result for CommBank, and it was a pretty good result from the other banks which reported the last two or three weeks. They, basically increased dividends as well and had very low bad debts. Another standout in the last sort of, well, I think standout in terms of yield, is Woodside. Now, energy prices have fallen a little bit, but if you actually look at Woodside, paid a interim dividends at December year-end company of $0.80, fully franked. It's currently trading on a, on a yield of, gross yield, because we always include franking, of over 12%. And, you know, as buy and hold investment, you can get 12% income off. That's pretty good.
So, you know, we quite like some of the energy stocks and coal stocks. Even though oil and coal prices have come off a bit this year, we still think they look pretty cheap and paying very good dividends. So if we just move to the next screen, I mean, one of the, I think raison d'être of Plato was, I know a lot of investors love the banks and used to love Telstra, as, you know, the high-yielding stocks in Australian market. And when we launched Plato, Telstra was one of the top dividend payers, top seven, in fact, I think it was top five dividend payers in Australia.
Unfortunately, Telstra cut its dividend almost in half about five years ago and fell out of the top half a dozen stocks in terms of dividends. It has more recently increased its dividends slightly, but still nowhere near what it was paying five, six years ago. It just highlights, I think, the risk of just having a buy and hold strategy and buying, you know, two or three of the highest yielding stocks in Australia. Because you actually think bank profits this year were huge. I think they were about AUD 40 billion, sorry, AUD 30 billion across the Big Four, and that sets a new high in terms of record dividends for the banks. But you know what? It's only just exceeded the level of profits in 2017.
For the last six years, bank profits have been falling because of royal commissions, because of AUSTRAC fines for Westpac and CommBank. It's only this year that they've actually got back to where they were six years ago. It's good that they've got back there, but it just highlights the risk. And Australia is incredibly concentrated between four big banks, two or three iron ore miners, and what used to be Telstra, but it's no longer in that top six or seven. So when you buy into PL8, you're buying into a portfolio that invests in about 80-90 stocks. A very well-diversified portfolio, and that's how we generate our yield, and by actively trading that strategy.
So just moving forward, I really wanted to almost finish on this slide because I think everyone wants to say: Well, what's the outlook? You know, how do you feel about the future? So I am fairly bullish. I think there are positive signs. But clearly, you know, we're not out of the woods yet in terms of interest rate rises, et cetera. So but rather than to give you my views, I'm gonna give you here on this chart, the views of, of our, part of our process. So we actively buy stocks to generate income. We actively trade stocks to buy to expect to get dividends and franking credits from companies.
On this chart, I've plotted one of, one of the factors that we look at or one of the inputs into our process, and this is, we've developed a model, a statistical model, that tries to calculate the probability that a company will pay the next dividend. And if you think about this, it's, it's really the, it's the probability that the company. In fact, it's the probability that the company will cut the next dividend, so the probability of the company cutting its next dividend. Now, if a company has a 100% chance of cutting its next dividend, that's bad. If it's 0% chance of cutting its next dividend, that's good. So on this chart, high is bad and low is good.
If you look back over the last 20-odd years, we've been able to calculate this probability, and not surprisingly, the two worst times for dividends were in the GFC, and this, when we look at all the companies we follow and we sort of average them up, which is what we do on this chart, the average probability of a dividend cut got to 40% in the middle of the GFC. And then it set a new high in March/April of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, when we were all worrying about what was going to happen. Will companies pay dividends or not? APRA actually told the banks and insurers not to.
It set a new all-time high of over 45%, and that's a big cut in dividends, and we did see a big cut in 2020. But if you look at that model, it rapidly fell to, in fact, below average in 2021. But what has happened over the last 18 months, as interest rates have risen, we see the likelihood of a dividend cut has also risen, but it hasn't risen a lot. And I think this is, the point I'm trying to make is: yes, things are a bit more uncertain than they were 18 months ago. The probability of dividend cuts at the market level are slightly higher than they were 18 months ago, but not much higher. They're slightly above the long-term average of around 20% cut, but things aren't that bad, and that's the issue.
We still think the outlook for dividends is pretty good. Don't want to say it's fantastic, but we think it's still pretty good and, you know, if iron ore prices keep up where they are, we think BHP will likely increase dividends this year, which will be very important. So, to us, we still expect to be able to deliver the same amount of income we have this year out of PL8. Yeah, our probability at our model that looks at dividend cuts is only slightly above average. We still see there'll be good dividends from the banks, some of the energy stocks and the insurers, which I talked about. I think there's some good in dividends coming from those, but it's a space where you want to have an active manager who can move to where the dividends are.
You don't want to just be a, I think, a buy and hold strategy. So I think, this you know, the SPP that we're doing now is a great opportunity for existing shareholders, it's only for existing shareholders, to buy PL8 at a price around, you know, just above NTA, because we are including the franking credits, but at a price that's much cheaper than it has been trading over the last, well, to be honest, couple of years. So, yeah, I think now, hand back to you, Chris, and we can have, you know, see if there are any questions from, shareholders.
Amazing. Thanks, Don, and we've already got 10 questions, so thanks everyone for your engagement. We did promise to try and keep this to 30 minutes, but we're already out of time, so we'll try and do rapid-fire Q&A. And I'm sure there'll be more questions coming in as we go. So I'm going to do these in order that they came in, just to be fair. Rod asks, "For those of us heavily invested in PL8 over the last few years, the announcement has led to a significant fall in the share price, even a loss. Question one, do you expect the share to return to a premium?" I mean, Rod, the
I did explain this a little bit in my opening remarks, and maybe this question happened before that, but, just to take stock, you know, the share is trading at about AUD 1.12 at the moment. The NTA last reported as a dollar, just under AUD 1.02, so it's still at a 10% premium to the NTA. It has not moved to a discount, which seemed implied a little bit in your question. Obviously, it's down from the premium that it was at. It was at a 20% premium when we announced the transaction. It's now at a 10% premium. So yes, there has been a fall in the share price, which has created a reduction in the premium. As I explained in my opening remarks, I think that is a temporary phenomenon, the sell-off.
It's caused by some market participants who would sell at the higher price in the market in order to reinvest at the lower price in the SPP. But obviously you can only do that for a couple of weeks now during the SPP offer period. Once that's out the way, without making a prediction, we would anticipate a recovery in the PL8 share price, because that is our experience of what has happened in the last two years when we have undertaken the same exercise. Michael asks, "Why the need to raise money?" I mean, Don, do you want to take that or, I'm happy to take it.
Yeah, well, going around the country, I go and meet shareholders around the country, and the feedback that I frequently get is that people would like more of PL8, but they don't want to pay a 20%, 15%-20% premium. So I think it's just responding to shareholder demand. And I think, you know, you look at. Share prices are a function of supply and demand. The supply of PL8 is generally fixed. We only. You know, we've done a couple of issues where we slightly increased the supply, but the demand, with the fact that it's trading at a premium to NTA, suggests that demand is greater than supply. So we're just really trying to balance that up. It's a once-off issue, and I agree with Chris.
I think, you know, post the completion of this deal, as we've seen in the last couple of years, I think the premium will probably go, increase back to closer to where it was, pre the announcement of this deal.
Don, Jeff asks an interesting question here. He says, "PL8 market cap is about AUD 700 million." I think maybe he's also referring to the net assets, given that's what's, I guess, under our control, not so much the market cap. But what is the max size you would consider closing PL8 and opening PL9? So that's a question from Jeff.
Well, we have no, no PL9 in the offering. There is, look, there is a finite amount of money that we would run in PL8, and we only probably have a few hundred million more of capacity that we would offer. And, and, you know, so this may be the last SPP we ever do. Because the fund also issues, and again, that fund may have, has finite capacity. So, you know, I doubt whether we'll get it to AUD 1 billion because we just do not have that capacity. And I think as shareholders, you should see that as good news in that, you know, we're not gonna go and raise, and raise, raise, raise capacity every year, or, you know, just because there's extra demand.
We are very focused on how much we can run in the strategy. It's a high turnover strategy. We wanna make sure we can deliver on the objectives to beat the market and to deliver more income. And I think one of the problems with some fund managers is they become greedy, and they just keep issuing and raising more capital and end up being index fund, and we certainly do not wanna be an index fund. So, yeah, there's only a couple of hundred million of capacity left.
Okay, question four is anonymous, but: "Hi, can I make multiple payments to my BPAY reference number?" The answer is yes. If you have the same account or the same BPAY reference number and you stagger your payments, as long as it's there before the offer closes, those numbers will be aggregated into one total demand from you for that particular account. Obviously, if you have multiple accounts, then you would need to use the BPAY reference number for those separate accounts. Question five from B.
You can only subscribe for AUD 30,000 worth. So you can't put AUD 30,000 plus another AUD 30,000. The max you can get is AUD 30,000.
That's right. Yeah. Okay, question five: "The SPP looks well structured. Number one, are all PL8 directors taking up their SPP in full?" I mean, Don, we can't speak for the other directors of PL8, although I think their form in prior raises is that they have participated, but as I said, we can't speak for them. But I think you should expect Don and I to follow our SPP rights, as it were.
I've already put my BPAY payment through. It's not, as in, I've set it for a future date, but I haven't. So I haven't actually paid the money yet, but I'll be paying it before the due date. And just a point, if you set it for a future date, you will not get a reply from Automic until after your money hits your account. So, 'cause they're not gonna know that you've made the—you've put a BPAY in for a future date. Your bank will know, but they won't know. But yeah, I'm subscribing for my full AUD 30,000 worth.
Okay, and the second part of this question was: "What are your feelings about the amount of PL8 dividend payments over the next year or so?" I mean, I think, Don, you kinda answered that in your prepared remarks, but we don't feel like there's much change to the current level of dividends required.
Yeah, look, I suppose, as directors, we can't really, guarantee or flag future dividends, but, the outlook looks good for us. And the other thing, and this is the benefit of PL8, is that it is a listed company, it has retained earnings, and as Chris mentioned, also has a franking account balance. And has about nine months worth of dividends in that franking account balance. So we actually have a healthy amount of dividends, and remember that we're always collecting dividends from the companies we invest in as we go through the year. So, you know, at this stage, I'm pretty comfortable with the dividends that PL8 are co-paying out, but I can't make any further comment.
Okay, Peter asks, "What's been the cause of the fall in the share price?" So, Peter, hopefully we've answered your question before. Question seven is: "When do we, and how do we get a copy of the recording of this and the slides?" As I said, we will send something to you via email later today. If we don't have your email address, we'll also pop it up on the PL8 website, both the slides and the recording, so you can grab it there. Question eight: "Automic advised me I can't get a recording of the AGM." That would be correct. I think if you please wouldn't mind just referring to the chairman's script and the AGM presentation, which are on the ASX. Don and I were at that AGM. Trust me, there's nothing there that you haven't heard from Don today.
So, other than.
The presentation I gave today was exactly the same as, It was only a week ago. It's exactly the same as what I presented last week, so the investment update hasn't changed over the last week.
Okay, Gatana asks question nine: "Apologies if this was asked previously. What is the run rate of current dividends for PL eight post the SPP?" I think the answer Don gave is, you know, comfort with the level of dividends, and, and I think you should expect no change because of the SPP, is the answer to that one. Question ten, clarify.
Just, just to highlight, the December dividend has already been announced. That's not gonna change. So if you participate in the SPP, you will get that AUD 0.0055 a share dividend, fully franked, at the end of December.
Okay, question ten is: "Clarify the use of the SPP funds", Don.
They will be invested into the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund, and, you know, 'cause that's the way that PL8 generates its income. So we won't be changing the investment strategy at all. We'll just be investing more into that fund to generate more income for investors or more total income, obviously, with more shares around.
Okay, question eleven. Trish asks, "Can a investor in the unlisted fund participate in the SPP?" Unfortunately, unless you're a shareholder in PL8, you, you're not eligible to participate in the SPP. But, you know, Plato thanks you for your investment anyway. But if you do wanna participate in the PL8 SPP, you would need to be a shareholder in PL8 on the record date, which has already passed us. Question twelve: "Are you able to provide any insights as to why PL8 has been trading at a premium?" I think we did cover that, but Don, I mean, it's really, w e have a lot of investors who love the monthly, fully franked, stable dividend and the track record of Plato's ability to deliver that income. I think it's quite rare.
There's not that many LICs that are able to generate that level of income, and there's none that are able to generate it on a monthly basis. So, it's quite a scarce opportunity to invest in PL8, which I think has driven more demand than supply, which is why we're trading at a premium. Question 13: "Can I put AUD 30,000 additional shares in each separate entity?" I think we answered that earlier. I think the general rule is if you're a beneficiary of, y ou can only apply for the maximum of AUD 30,000 if you, per beneficiary, basically. So if you're the beneficiary in your own name and your super fund and a trust, I think that's still capped at the AUD 30,000.
Yeah. Well, but maybe I can give my own. The advice that I've been given is that but I maybe correct myself when I said I'm applying. I am applying as on behalf of my superannuation self-managed super fund. I'm not applying in my personal capacity because of my. The advice I've been given is I can only apply once, so for a total of 30,000 shares across my different entities. I have a direct holding in my name in a super fund, and I'm only applying once for AUD 30,000 worth of SPP for my superannuation self-managed super fund.
Okay, and then the final question here, before we close the night is: "How's the uptake so far? Are you looking for a scale back?" I don't think it's appropriate for us to provide an uptake so far, except to say that we've had, I think there's 300 people on this call. We've had lots of interest and inbound inquiries. It's ticking over very nicely, so that's, I think, all we should probably say. It is a listed company, so we wouldn't wanna give any sort of unnecessary signaling there. And in terms of scale back, there's no, there's no intention, I think, to scale back. The maximum the company can raise is, I think, well above what, the math would suggest if you just multiply out the number of shareholders in PL8 times AUD 30,000.
So even if everyone applied for AUD 30,000, we still wouldn't hit the maximum. So, and we realize that people who apply want those shares, so you should assume that if you apply, whatever you apply for is what you will receive, under the SPP.
Yeah. Well, technically, Chris, I think as a manager, we may not wanna have. If everybody, 100% of shareholders in, did apply, maybe we would wanna scale back because we only have a couple of AUD 100 million of capacity. I think with about, what? 10,000 shareholders, that would be AUD 300 million if everybody put AUD 30,000 in. But, look, based on past experience, we wouldn't expect anywhere near, you know, 100%, maybe at best I think last year we had about 41% or 42%. And most, on an average, I think the people applied for about AUD 20,000. So if it's similar to last year, this, it should be fine.
But if 100% of people applied for AUD 30,000, we may have to do some scale back, but I very much doubt that 100% of investors will be
Applying.
You know, seeking to SPP.
Yep, fair point. Good. Okay, well, apologies we ran a little bit over there, but, as usual with PL8, we do love the engagement from shareholders, so we did wanna do justice to all the questions that came through. Don, thanks again for your time and your insights there on the portfolio and the market. And, to shareholders who've listened in and to those listening in, in the replay, again, if you have any issues with applying, you know, both Automic and ourselves at Pinnacle are here to help. Just reach out to us and we'll make sure we give you a hand. And, with that, we'll say goodbye and thanks for your time.
Thanks, everyone.