I'll make it 11:15 A.M., which is the time for the meeting, so let's get started. Charles, just checking online, everything ready to go? Everything ready to go. Great, because this is a hybrid meeting, both in person and online. A very warm welcome to everyone, fellow shareholders, colleagues, and guests. This is the Plato Income Maximiser 2024 annual general meeting, and many thanks to people, particularly those turning up in person, braving the rain. My name is Jonathan Trollip, and I'm Chair of the Company and chairing today's meeting. I'd like to introduce my fellow board members to the extent they need any introduction, going from left to right from my side, Chris Meyer, Lorraine Berends, who's Independent Director, Katrina Onishi, who's Independent Director, and Don Hamson, who's also with Plato Investment Management.
Calvin Kwok, the Company Secretary, is here, sitting at the back, and we have from the auditor, Scott Whiddett, Aidan Evans from Pitcher Partners, sitting down here. They're standing for the auditor, Chris Chandran, who's unavailable to make it today. But if you do have any questions on the financials, Scott and Aidan will be able to answer them, we hope. I've been informed by the Company Secretary that we have a quorum, so I now declare the meeting open. I'm advised that there are no apologies recorded prior to the commencement of this meeting. That's correct, is it, Charles? No apologies? Okay, great. The agenda for today's meeting follows pretty much previous meetings, so you're probably most of all familiar with it. I will give the Chair's address. We'll then deal with the formal business, which is the financial statements, Remuneration Report, and re-election of two directors.
Then the part which I think we're all interested in, which is the update from Don as investment manager. And after that, we will provide an opportunity for shareholders and those online to ask any questions you may have of Don in the investment management side or any of the directors in the Company side. So if I can now turn to the Chair's address, and before I do that, just to mention that I'll table the Notice of Meeting, and I propose to take the Notice of Meeting as read. My address today will cover an overview of the Company since we listed in May 2017, performance to date, dividend update, share price performance, and really a high-level comparison of how PL8 looks today as opposed to when it listed in May 2017. So if we could move to the next slide, please, Charles, the Company update.
As you'll see, we're the first and only Australian-listed investment company that pays monthly fully franked dividends. And there is another one which I think may be listing. We'll see how that one goes. We first listed in May 2017, as I mentioned, and at that stage, we had AUD 326 million funds under management. We've now got AUD 837 million. So it's a very big increase since we first listed. And that makes it one of the larger listed investment companies on the ASX. And it was established, as we said in the prospectus and have emphasized since, really designed specifically for retiree investors in mind and those in pension phase, SMSF in particular, or low-tax individuals with the intention of paying monthly fully franked dividends to shareholders.
And that's what we've been able to achieve, as we'll show you in a minute if we could move to the next slide with the performance update. The annualized portfolio performance for the period from inception in May 2017 to 30 June 2024 was 9.6% per annum total return, and that includes the benefit of franking credits. If you update that from June 2024 to 31 October 2024, the total return was 10% including per annum, including franking credits. The annualized dividend distributed, including franking credits, from inception to 30 June 2024 was 7.6% per annum and remained at 7.6% per annum through to 31 October 2024. We also measure the Company's annualized total shareholder return. And as you know, that's the change in the share price since inception adjusted for dividends paid during the period. And from inception to 30 June 2024 was 6.9%.
Updated to 31 October, that increases marginally to 7.0% per annum. The Company's share price on 31 October 2024 was AUD 1.22. I think it closed yesterday around that same price. And that's up from the issue price of AUD 1.10 when we listed, and we've paid 45.7% of dividends since inception. It is relevant to note that the TSR performance looks a bit lower, but it excludes the benefit of franking credits, which are obviously very important to shareholders. And that explains why the TSR is below the annualized portfolio performance. The dividends paid since inception, when one takes into account and adds on the benefit of franking credits to 31 October, equates to 62.5%. We could move now, please, Charles, to the dividend update.
That graph that you see on your screen here and on your screens at home shows the monthly dividends that we've been paying since shortly after we were listed. We do have paid a monthly dividend, which is really the primary objective of the Company. The chart shows that since April 2022, which is a period of a little over two and a half years, the monthly dividend has remained stable at 0.55% per share per month. That really reflects a very stable environment for overall dividends on the ASX and the continued ability of the Plato Management Team to keep outperforming the market's level of dividends. Don will go into that in more detail a little bit later. This chart does not show a special dividend we paid of AUD 0.03 in May 2019.
That was based on a concern that there could be a change of government, which could then change the dividend franking position. So we thought it prudent in the best interest of shareholders to pay that AUD 0.03 dividend, and in May 2022, we paid a special birthday dividend of AUD 0.0055 per share to mark the Company's fifth birthday, but those are not shown on that slide. If we could move now to looking at growth and income, so again, that's a bar chart which shows the growth and distributed dividends over the term of this Company. The pre-tax NTA, which is shown by the dark blue bars, is slightly higher over this period, driven by the relatively low returns from the Australian shares over that period.
The dividend distributed and related franking credits are the light blue bars, and they're the primary driver of the returns which shareholders have received over the period, and it does highlight the importance of income and dividends and franking in generating total shareholder returns. One of the metrics one looks at for listed investment companies is how they're trading compared to NTA, and if we look at this next chart, it shows the pre-tax NTA of the Company, and that's the dark blue line, and the light blue is the share price, and very pleasingly, Plato has pretty much consistently traded at a premium to its NTA. Those who follow LICs closely will know that that is not the usual position at the moment.
I think it's fair to say that the majority of LICs are trading at a discount to NTA, and some of them at a very material discount to NTA. So it's very pleasing that through the efforts of the Company and the manager and Pinnacle Distribution team keeping shareholders informed, we're trading at a premium which has stabilized at about 10% since we did the SPP capital raising, the last one in November 2023. You don't want the premium to be too high, but you would rather be at a premium than at a discount. If we could just finally look at the, in terms of the Company overview, the next slide, please, Charles, which shows the, it's a high-level overview of the Company. As I mentioned, our net assets have gone from 326 million to 837 million. That's well over doubled.
With the number of shareholders we have has increased from just over 5,500 initially to 12,500 now. The liquidity, which measures the amount of trading done on a daily or monthly basis in this case, the Company has increased, and very roughly speaking, there's about AUD 1 million of trades a day in PL8, which is our ASX ticker, and also, very pleasingly, as scale has increased, the annual running costs, and that excludes the management fee, which is 80 basis points, but that has decreased from 18 basis points per annum to 10 basis points per annum, so I think it's hopefully shareholders would agree that it's a pretty well-run Company, well-managed, and returned to shareholders what we were set out to do initially in May 2017. This, by the way, was released to the ASX earlier today, so you may need to take notes.
It's on the website and on the ASX information platform. So that ends the Chair's address. If there are questions, feel free to ask at the end when Don has given his presentation. I'll now move to the formal business of the meeting, which are three items: the 2024 financial statements, the Remuneration Report, and the re-election of two directors. Just a bit of housekeeping. Shareholders here should have an admission card in yellow. I see people have those. If you are not a shareholder, you might have a blue card. And if you're just here out of interest, you would have a red card. And apparently, red card visitors are not allowed to ask questions, which I find a bit bizarre, but anyway. And I presume you've got the correct cards. If you haven't, the representatives from Automic are here and can help.
Shareholders voting online must have logged into the Automic Investor Portal, and details of that were provided in the notice of meeting. For those who are online, you are very welcome to ask questions. You just type your question in the Q&A box displayed at the bottom of the Zoom screen, and if you are wanting to ask questions, you're online, just unmute yourself and provide either your shareholder reference number or holder identification number, and you'll receive the prompt to unmute yourself and then feel free to ask your questions. As I mentioned, at the end of the presentation by Don, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions of the board and of the manager. As noted in the meeting, resolutions will be decided by poll, and I'll now declare the poll open.
Very simply, as I'm sure you're well aware, when you vote, you vote either for, against, or abstain. All valid proxies received have been recorded, and these will be reported to the ASX after the meeting. I will also display the proxies on the screen as we go. The first item of meeting is just to consider the financial statements and the Directors' Report as at 30 June 2024. There's no vote on this, but the auditors are available if anybody has any questions. I'll open it up to the floor and online. If anybody has any questions of the audited accounts or the auditors of the financial statements, feel free to ask them now. Yes, sir.
I want to congratulate you on running a very good company. A couple of things that I really liked, that graph that showed you all the payments over the years. My little granddaughter is 70 years old, and I told her when she first wanted to buy shares, she should buy Plato because you get your dividend every month. It's fully franked, and they only buy good quality shares like BHP and banks, etc. But my question is, by the way, I bought the shares I forget how long ago, but not long after I bought them, you gave this wonderful offer of you could buy AUD 30,000 worth at AUD 1.11, which I did, and I made about AUD 4,500. But my question is, are you thinking of doing another offer of the AUD 30,000?
That's a very good question. Thank you very much for the positive feedback, and it's really a team effort, but it's Don and his management team who've done a fantastic job. So from our point of view as independent directors, it's a pleasure to work with them. We have done capital raisings in the last three years, one placement and two SPPs. We've hit the pause button at the moment. That's not to say that we won't, but we're just digesting what we raised. Last year was incredibly well received, and we had a huge uptake. Chris, the number was AUD 130 million. And we're very conscious that the benefit to shareholders, that the franking is critical.
And so when we do an SPP, we need to ensure that when the new shareholders come in, the new shares are issued, that we have sufficient franking credits to be able to continue to pay fully franked dividends. So we will certainly be looking at SPPs going forward, but there's nothing on the agenda at the current time. Okay. Any other questions on the financials? But thank you very much for your observation and your question. We'll move now to the formal business, which requires a vote. And the first item is the adoption of the Remuneration Report. I'm sure everybody's very familiar with this. That shows the remuneration paid to directors and associated parties and key management personnel.
It's a chance for shareholders to vote if they're particularly dissatisfied and you get 25% against you and you've got a strike against you, and that's not good. Does anybody have any questions on the Remuneration Report? We might just show the proxies on there, which looks like we're not going to get a strike against us, but that's very good. Charles, any questions online on the Remuneration Report? Okay. Thank you very much. We now move to the next item, which is the re-election of directors, and the constitution and the ASX listing rules require one-third of directors to retire by rotation and put themselves up for re-election. The first person up for re-election is me, so I'll hand over to Lorraine for the conflict of interest.
So just to add my welcome to everyone as well. It's great to see a number of people in the room, and welcome to everyone online as well. So the explanatory statement with the notice of meeting gave some details on Jonathan, our esteemed Chair, who's done a wonderful job since the IPO, but maybe I'll let Jonathan talk about why he thinks he should be re-elected.
Thanks very much, Lorraine. I think it's summed up in the question or the observation there that working with Plato Investment Management has just been absolutely fantastic. We listed in May 2017. We spent a lot of time on the prospectus, working out how it was going to interact with the fund that they had and the units and so on and how it would all go. And you look at it and you look at your objectives and you say, well, are they going to achieve this monthly dividend?
Looks pretty ambitious, fully franked dividends, and they've achieved everything. And it's just been an absolute pleasure to work with them and to see, I think, generally very satisfied shareholders. I've been involved in other companies where shareholders haven't been that satisfied and asked some hard questions. So I'm very happy to continue serving if you would choose to re-elect me. Thank you.
Thank you, Jonathan. So are there any questions in relation to this resolution? And you can see the proxies on the screen. So I think Jonathan's pretty safe, but if everyone could please vote now, and I'll hand the chair back to Jonathan. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Lorraine. And I'd be interested to know who the 2.3% were who voted against me, particularly when we look at the next lot of proxies. Okay. So we'll move now to the next resolution, which is the re-election of Katrina Onishi, who's also up for re-election. And Katrina, I might get you to say some words. And again, we're really honored to have Katrina serving on our board since inception.
Thank you, Jonathan, and good morning, everyone. Yes, I joined the board of PL8 at the time of the IPO back in May 2017, so I think it's been over seven years now, and it's been a great honor and privilege to serve as your director in that time and to be associated with Plato Investment Management and Don in particular. It's been, I think, a wonderful investment strategy and product and company that has, over that time, I think, as the previous shareholder commented, that it has delivered consistently on its investment objectives, and that is to provide a fully franked income stream to its shareholders.
As a self-funded superannuant myself and with close family members who are retirees living on the old age pension, trying to supplement their income out of their meager savings, who are shareholders in PL8, I can very much appreciate the importance of that monthly dividend payment when it arrives in the bank account. I know my mother in particular really values that, and she keeps me on my toes, keeps asking me when you're going to increase the dividend. But also, as a former fund manager, I know how sometimes difficult, but important it is to continue to try and deliver on your investment objectives, particularly over an extended period of time.
And I think earlier in the presentation, when Jonathan pointed to the fact that PL8's portfolio has continued to deliver a total return of 10% per annum over that period, I think that's a very, very credible performance. To be able to deliver that over a long period of time is a great achievement. So, as I said, it's been a great honor and a privilege to be one of your directors over the last seven years. And I offer myself a re-election. I'd be honored if you would support me for another few years. So thank you very much.
Thank you, Katrina. We'll have a look at the proxies. So far, fewer people against Katrina than against me. So you're way more popular. And obviously, these results will be announced to the ASX later today. That completes the formal voting. So please, would you cast your resolution, your votes on the resolutions, and Automic will come around and collect them. If you're online, please select confirm to complete your voting once you've cast your vote for each resolution.
And once that has happened and we've collected all the forms, thank you very much. Sure, nobody's raised their hand online saying they need more time, do they? Okay, great. I can declare that the poll closed. So the results of the poll will be announced to the ASX later today. And that concludes the formal business of the meeting. So I'll hand over to Don for the Investment Management update. Thank you.
Thanks, Jonathan, and welcome shareholders and everyone else. So I'll be pretty quick and look at the investment outlook. And I know one of the questions that Katrina asked was, when are we going to increase dividends? And I will address that. We've already talked about it, but the current running yield of PL8 is about 5.5% cash yield. That compares to if you're in an index fund with no fees, you'd get 3.7%. And the franking credit yield at the moment is another 2.4% on top of that. So that gives you 7.7% as the current sort of running yield on PL8 at the moment. Franking yield on the market is only 1.2%. So we're getting double the franking credits that you get if you just had an index fund, and you'd have to have no fees on that as well because these are after fees.
I suppose that's one of the problems with the Australian market at the moment is that it is with the lowest yields. Look at the market, the S&P/ASX 200. A 3.7% cash yield is virtually the lowest yield I've seen apart from that pandemic year in 2020 when a lot of companies cut their dividends. And the 1.2% franking is also as low as I've seen it. The yield of the market is now quite low. Part of the good news is, why is the yield of the market low? Because share prices have gone up a long way, and certainly stocks like Commonwealth Bank are now at all-time highs, but they haven't increased their dividends very much. In fact, some companies like BHP, the very biggest company in Australia, or was the biggest, actually, CBA is now bigger, has actually cut its dividends.
For the last two years, now we increased our dividends in 2022, and the market's dividend peaked in 2022 and has actually gone backwards a little bit. So that's the problem we face is that the Australian market's paying a little less dividends than it did two years ago. Partly that's because of rising interest rates, partly because of falling commodity prices. We expect interest rates will come down next year. We think the economy will start to grow again more strongly, and hopefully that will increase dividends across the market. And depending on the day, iron ore prices are up one day and down the next, but hopefully we'll see some more strength in some of the commodity prices. We go to the next slide. Just from a long-term perspective, and this is a very long-term perspective because this is the underlying investments of PL8.
Now, PL8 actually invests into the existing Plato Australian Shares Income Fund, and that started in September 2011. So it actually has a 13-year track record, or just over 13 years now. And you can see that it's a slow and steady ride. The blue line at the top, the wiggly line there is the total return after fees, but including franking credits of the strategy that PL8 invests in. And the gray line is the market with no fees, but including franking credits. And you see we've slowly but surely outperformed that market over the longer term. But I think most importantly, the bottom two lines show the distributed income, if you like, that we've paid out.
The top darker line at the bottom is essentially PL8's investment strategy has delivered a lot more income, including franking, than if you were just in the market, which is the gray line, and so we have now a very long-term history of delivering that consistent income. We go to the next slide. Everyone's talking about what's happening. Just a bit of a wrap-up of August. Some of you might have actually heard the webinar we presented, but just as a sort of a further update. If you look at what happened in the August reporting season this year, and this sort of highlights the fact that we're AUD 35.1 billion worth of dividends declared by the companies that we follow. That was AUD 300 million, so about 1% less than the amount of dividends that were paid or declared in the same time last year.
Dividend levels at a dollar value of dividends paid in the Australian market are actually slightly lower than they were last year. Last year, they were slightly lower than they were in 2022. That's the challenge we face in terms of being able to increase dividends is we need to see bigger dividends from the companies that we invest in. If they keep paying lower dividends, such as BHP, then it makes it very difficult for us to increase our dividends because it's the companies that we invest in that we get the dividends. There were some bright lights, though. In fact, the typical or average company did increase its dividends, but they're much smaller companies. The average dividend increase in August was about 7% compared to 7% compared to the previous year, previous August.
The median, which is if you rank all stocks from best to worst dividends, the one right in the middle increased its dividends by 5%, which beat inflation. So the typical company actually did okay, but there were a few, some of the big resource stocks, BHP, Woodside, some of the medium-ranked resource stocks, such as Mineral Resources, the lithium stocks all cut their dividends. But some of the brighter lights were, for instance, in the insurance sector. We've been saying insurance looks pretty attractive for us. Now, I know you probably don't think so when you open your latest insurance premium and you see it's 10% or 15% higher than it was last year, maybe even more. But if you own shares in that company, you're actually benefiting from their increased profits and their increased dividends.
We saw some very good dividends from the likes of Insurance Australia or increases from Insurance Australia Group and QBE and Suncorp for that matter. Some of the utilities, but again, you're seeing it in your utility, your energy bills, your electricity bills, but the likes of Origin and AGL, their profits are bouncing back, but that's because electricity prices are going up. Again, if you own some of those companies, you've got a bit of a hedge. You're benefiting from them. I mentioned the negatives were mainly in the resource sector, but there were stocks like Tabcorp and Magellan that we've been calling out as dividend traps for a number of years that cut their dividends significantly. Moving on more recently, next slide, Westpac announced its results, as did NAB and ANZ recently in the last couple of weeks.
That was a pretty good result from Westpac, a 9% increase in their cash impact from last year. They increased their dividends by 5.6%. The problem is, like CBA and most of the banks, their share prices have rallied 20% or 30% or 40%, and their dividends are only up 5.6%. The dividend yield's going down. I'm sure you are happy to see the market going up and seeing the capital growth and seeing PL8's share prices in 2023 today. Westpac did pay a special dividend earlier in the year, but they didn't pay one this time around. We include the special dividend. It's actually trading on a yield of about 7.3%, including that franking, which has come down a little bit because banks typically were, a few years ago, were paying 8% or 9% yields. Now they're paying sort of 6% or 7%.
Commonwealth Bank's actually only around 5%. So its share prices rallied so strongly. But the good news on banks is that the net interest margins are holding up, and they've got excess capital. So they're returning capital to shareholders. So their balance sheets are very strong. And despite a lot of negativity in the press about people not being able to pay their mortgages, etc., if we saw it in the Commonwealth Bank result as well earlier in the year, the level of bad debts amongst the big banks is actually very, very small, only four basis points, which is sort of almost a historic low. So their earnings are high quality, but they're not growing strongly, which is why the dividend's not growing strongly. But hopefully, as the economy starts to grow, people start to borrow more money.
As interest rates fall next year, which we expect, we should see those profits starting to increase. We look to the, and CBA results are very similar to Westpac they announced there. What we're seeing from an economic point of view, and I've taken a slide from the CBA result in August. CBA is the biggest bank in Australia, has the biggest credit card book. And if you look in the middle column there, there's some spending numbers. They split spending on credit cards into spending on essential items such as electricity, petrol, food, and sort of food groceries from Woolies. People are spending 3% or 4% more than they did last year. That's just because that's the inflation rate is around that level. And most groups are spending the same amount of money.
But if you look at discretionary spending, which is, as I said, discretionary, it's like spending on going out for dinner, going to the movies, travel, etc. This is where you see what I call a bifurcation of the economy. If you can read it, the older people over 55s and certainly over 65s are actually feeling pretty good. They're spending quite a bit more than they did last year. I think partly because share prices are up, house prices are up, term deposit rates are still pretty good. You're getting fairly decent income from your PL8 and other investments in the share market. So I think retirees and who've paid off their mortgages, etc., hopefully are feeling pretty good and still spending.
But at the other end, at the top there, young people under 35, so the 20-24-year-olds in particular, but also the 25-34-year-olds facing increased rents. If they've got a mortgage, they're certainly facing increased repayments, etc. And they are cut back dramatically because this is in nominal terms. In real terms, they're probably spending 5% less than they did last year. So there are certainly patches of the economy, younger people that are doing it tough. So hopefully, if we see interest rates come down, we see rental increases abate, that we'll see those younger people spending more and the economy growing stronger next year. Next slide, please.
Interestingly, despite that, some of the consumer discretionary, well, discretionary spending being a bit slow for younger people, quite a few of the stocks that we've owned, and one of them has been JB Hi-Fi, had pretty good results. And JB Hi-Fi and Super Retail Group, they're two discretionary retailers, bucked the trend and not only had better than expected sales, but they both paid special dividends. And we love getting special dividends because they're fully franked, and that enables us, that certainly helps us to pay our dividends, get those specials. So we're always on the lookout for those. And if we just go to the next slide, I need to explain this slide, but it's a bit of a, it tells us where, it's a number from our process which gives us a bit of an idea of where the market's going and certainly where dividends are going.
So we actively trade our portfolio. We buy stocks, get their dividends, and we might only own them for two or three months to get JB Hi-Fi's dividend or Super Retail Group, etc. Part of our process is we want to make sure that we buy stock. We generally buy stock before it announces its dividends. So we're taking on the risk that a company might have a poor result. So we do our homework, but we also have a belts and braces approach. We have developed a statistical model to try and forecast companies that might cut their dividends because we don't want to own those. We want to buy stocks with good, strong dividends, and so we've built this model using history, and we calculate the likelihood a company will cut its next dividend.
And this comes out for every company that pays a dividend in Australia, and it's a percentage from 0% to 100%. But in this case, a high percentage, 100%, is actually bad. If you have a 100% chance of cutting your dividend, you probably don't want to be there. So that's a lithium stock or what have you. So a high number is bad, and a low number is good. This is actually not an individual, we do it on the individual stocks, but we average it across all the stocks we follow, and that's the number here is like an average of all the stocks we follow. So it gives us a bit of a, and it's a number, it's not my opinion, but it's a number from our process that says this is what the outlook is at the moment.
The very last point of that thing is basically sitting on the flat line, the long-term average. So the outlook for dividends to us looks about normal, about okay. We expect a reasonable dividend period next year. If you look back over the last couple of years, it's actually been a bit above average, and that's probably explaining why dividends are flatlined for the last two years. If we go back just four and a half years ago, this thing hit the all-time high, and remember, high is bad on this chart. Four and a half years ago was the start of the pandemic. It was March, April 2020 when we were all pressured to banks to not pay dividends and the insurers. We all didn't know what was going to happen, etc.
And this slide very quickly picked up that negativity and hit its highest point, which was about 45%. And we saw very big dividend cuts in 2020, but then we saw big rebounds in 2021 and 2022. But then for the last two years, we've seen dividends flat. Hopefully, now that that line is starting to come down, we'll see dividends start to increase next year. The next slide is a bit of a spaghetti chart, but it's the same number, but it's split out by sector. And all it's saying is that, well, remember, high is bad. The energy sector, surprisingly, is the sector with the most likelihood of cutting its dividends next year. That is because oil prices, despite tensions in the Middle East, oil prices are actually falling.
Part of it is due to the fact that the biggest exporter of oil these days is the U.S. The U.S. generates a huge amount of oil, and Trump is very pro-oil, and so I think that will continue. Oil prices are actually pretty soft, even though we have a lot of tension in the Middle East. I mean, Gaza and Israel don't actually produce much oil, so it's not really affecting that. The next most critical area is sort of materials, so there's still some negativity around commodity stocks.
On the flip side, the areas with the least likelihood of cutting their dividends are IT and healthcare, but they tend to be low-yielding sectors, so it's not surprising. But what it's saying is a bit of a mixed bag, but this is part of our process is to go where the dividends are best. We're very active, and we go where we see the best likelihood for dividends. So that's pretty much all I'm going to say. I'm very happy to take questions. I'll hand back to you, Jonathan.
I'll stay here. We can ask. I might not answer. I've been reading about APA shares. Apparently, they're at about a 10-year low, and the reason for that is a superannuation company sold off on the market AUD 500 million worth of APA shares, which apparently tended to depress the market because of this huge volume of shares and the bias to take up. But they started to rise again now. They pay a very good dividend. We knew about that.
But look, I'll sit on the fence on that one, but that is a pretty good deal. Any questions?
Yan coal. Question is, are in Yan coal? Yanc oal.
We're not in Yan coal, but look, we do invest in coal stocks if we like the outlook. The coal prices have obviously come down a bit, but if you go back two years ago, we loved the coal stocks. But they're not as, because they were paying massive dividends, fully franked, etc. It's a bit tougher now because that energy sector includes coal, and so energy prices have been falling. But I think there'll still be some good money made out of some of those sectors, but it's doing it tough at the moment.
The previous, sorry, I was pointing. We've moved on from the slide, but the slide, the previous slide had the riskier sector in terms of dividend outlook was the energy sector, which infrastructure, look, the problem with infrastructure is in toll roads and other things is that they tend to pay quite, or don't pay franking credits in most cases, or very small franking credits. So that, and many of them, when you look at them and just on their cash yield with no franking, they don't look as attractive. I know a lot of people say, "Oh, they're great," but I don't think they're as attractive to our process. And a lot of people say they're safe, but we had COVID highlighted that even toll roads weren't that safe when people were all staying home and not driving. So it's not that attractive a sector for us.
I noticed sort of that next year you're hoping that the interest rates will come down. I understood that interest rates come down, they're coming back and doing it well. That's one of the reasons why they're lower. And yet you're saying that you still think it's all going to go okay.
Well, there are two reasons why they're lower interest rates. First one, I mean, the reason they rose, they increased interest rates was because of inflation. And the trigger for actually cutting interest rates is inflation has come down. The headline number is actually already in the 2%-3% band, but if you take out the electricity credits that come from governments, it's slightly above 3%, so it's still sort of outside their band. So one of the main reasons the RBA will cut rates is actually because inflation has fallen, but it's also the case that the economy is quite soft. So yes, one of the reasons they'll cut interest, the other reason is that it's like they don't want to kill the, or they shouldn't want to kill the economy. It's not all about inflation.
But markets tend to look ahead, and we've actually already seen, and one of the reasons I think share prices have risen this year is they're looking ahead for those interest rate cuts because it tends to be good for the economy. And so markets are always looking forward, but it'll certainly be better for everybody, I think, when interest rates fall. Or maybe not retirees because you won't get as much interest in your term deposits, but certainly for younger people who are finding it tough at the moment, they will see a benefit of lower interest rates.