The next presentation will be given after the formal meeting of the, i n terms of proxies and voting, proxy voting will see a private meeting shown on the screen and a private resolution being brought to the debate, and I again confirm that as Chairman, I will be held by all proxies left to my discretion in favor of all resolutions. All items of today's meeting will be decided by way of a poll, and the poll results will be announced at the conclusion. In terms of questions, I will invite questions on each resolution. If there are any questions, raise your hand and say your name or any organization represented or person, or if online, raise your hand. Online, group questions may also be submitted. As you're aware, only shareholders, valid proxy representatives, visitors, and staff speak. Once we close the agenda, shareholder presentation.
We'll wait until then. Voting exclusions. I know that Resolution One is subject to voting exclusions. These exclusions will be opened on. Now, turning to the first item of ordinary business, which is to proceed and consider the annual financial report together with the directors' and auditors' reports of the period. Are there any questions from the room or online about the directors? Yes.
Can we ask the auditor or the accountants how the unlisted investments value different ones which are screened by price and sell price on the assets? First of all, how do you value the unlisted investments? Are you taking their accounts, doing evaluation on their balance sheet, or was it some number of choices?
It's not a number of choices so for our risk assessment price, there is somewhere we are simplified for evaluations and that's the value of savings. Carbon Conscious, which is one of our most recent acquisitions, we disclose in the accounts and announcements that we've made. The midpoint of the independent expert's evaluation is by the target, not us, to report that.
So, accounts. By valuing a private company and unlisted company, net assets from their balance sheet divided by the number of shares. Is that an acceptable way to do that?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah. As I'm like, it's okay. I like the method of evaluation. We'll decide the value, the most appropriate value. And also within the natural scope survival based on the value investment that they created. The asset value falls into certain buckets. You'll talk about the assets. That would be a third bucket that we create by weighting. That is important evidence to evaluate the assets.
That's the balance sheet.
If that's meant to, yes.
You can both be.
Sorry.
Anything. A market price. You can find one, two, one.
No, it depends on the purpose and it's a little bit better so it's not one and if you're able to evaluate the use of forced labor price and as you say, balance sheet method would be a little free. It's harder to do. It's not traded so we need to look at what's available information and that is what assets are on the balance sheet as a better.
Thanks.
Are there any other questions from anyone from live? Okay. So there being no further questions, we come to the business of today's meeting, which a vote is required. I'll also hand the list of the poll. So I will be calling the poll on all resolutions with dynamic voting. All members, corporate representatives, and appointed proxies eligible to vote were given voting cards. Only those present in person at today's meeting vote. All other persons and those who request that shareholders complete their voting card must give a for against or abstain for each resolution. Once you've marked your vote, it will be collected by the returning officer. Link to see the details of the proxy votes will be displayed on the screen as the resolution is considered. Resolution One relates to the adoption of the 2024 information report.
Details of the proxy votes for resolution one are on the screen. Are there any questions or comments? Well, there being no questions or comments, I'll move to the next resolution. Oh, yes. Sorry. Because of the polling, the motion has to go. Resolution Two relates to the re-election of Jacqueline Sullivan as a Director. Details of the proxy votes for Resolution Two are on the screen. Before I ask the question, I might just have you say a few words.
Hello. Looks like I had a bit before, and I'm delighted to have the opportunity to continue to represent you on the board. Just to provide a background for those who don't know me, I'm in the financial services industry, particularly funds management since 2007. I've spent time executing laws, expanding all different asset classes, market, finance, political, global finance, and economics. I guess fundamentally that includes market distribution and financial markets. Over the last few years, I've been doing advisory work and director work like this. My role is on the LIC, and I think over the period of time I've worked as an insider to. As a director, how we can maximize value for shareholders in the SNC structure. I'm delighted to put myself in the position.
Are there any questions? Okay. Resolution Three relates to the ratification of appointment of Pitcher Partners Sydney as the Auditor . Details of the proxy votes are shown on the screen. Is there any questions or comments? I'll move to the final resolution. Resolution Four relates to the approval of the additional 10% placement capacity. This is basically always put up. We've never used it. But are there any questions or we've got the voting for this? Are there any questions or comments for Resolution Four? Okay. Well, that concludes the formal items of business for today's meeting. Please complete your voting cards and wait for it to be collected. Some of the people will be around to collect those voting cards. Okay. So that concludes the formal items. Hold on. Okay. That concludes the formal items of business for today's meeting. I thank you for your attendance today.
I've completed the formal meeting procedures and now we'll provide the best presentation on the proxy for your company. After the presentation, there will be five minutes for questions with shareholders and those attending, as well as online attendees. Please note for the online attendees to submit. You can submit your questions through the Q&A function. Again, I would ask to say, [audio distortion]. That concludes the formal meeting. Thank you. Now I'll turn to the shareholder presentation. So in terms of the disclaimer, very important information. As I always say to you, really what we're saying here is take it with a grain of salt. We have some things that make sense for you. We have our own peculiar risks and odds. In terms of SNC, once again, I will describe SNC shares as an opportunity to have a sustainable dividend yield and a discount to NTA.
As at the closing price on 18th of November, the yield was about 7.1% and the discount 16.9%. Prior to us going ex-dividend, the discount was just 10%. It seems our shares are very sought after the discount. I can assure you next year we'll see some. We have some shares, which means that all things being equal if you maintain the dividend level, if the directors maintain the dividend, you obviously need to. Buying SNC shares today means that you're buying discounted or you should see as itself you're effectively getting a discounted sense of the portfolio remains as supportive and continue to demonstrate specific sectors in the company. For urgent solutions to work for me, which is clearly doing it top of the moment and the majority of that investment is very small.
The portfolio is again characterized by certain opportunities where there have been board management changes that have led in our experience to significantly improved operational performance. On the next page is just a series of charts that we've been showing you each year. On the left-hand side is the dividend since inception, AUD 0.60 of dividends, nearly AUD 0.24 of premium per share. The scatter plot shows you our placing in the NTA, universal Aussie equity LICs, and you can see that sort of middle of the packish and certainly trading at a higher yield than average LICs, and yet we're trading at a reasonably large discount. SNC's performance over the last year has been 28%. It's up 6%. And we've comfortably outperformed LICs. On the next slide is just a snapshot of what is the real. And we've got both.
Sorry, Gab. Just.
Oh, sorry.
Because Theo had the.
Yeah. Is that better?
I think so.
Sorry. At the moment, all I can gather is questions about sound . Some apologies. What we're showing in the next slide is the win-loss ratio of our investments over the last 12 months. 65% of our portfolio has been a positive return. To a few things. What I've described on the right-hand side are the top three contributors. First being Nuix, which we have seen outperform for the last 12 months. A2B, which we own, also Coventry, which has a spectacular result and just on the downside. We've only highlighted two specific companies, Karoon and COG Financial. All the other contributors to that, five or less cents to NTA there. We're generally pleased with the way that's shaping up.
We have had some performances which are supporting in terms of shareholders' performances, particularly from an operational perspective, which is what we focus on. We're very pleased with the way things are going. Turning to the next slide, we have some commentary about our portfolio composition. The companies that we'll talk about in today's presentation represent about 54% of the portfolio. I've listed them on the right-hand side by weight as at the 31st of October. These companies in our mind provide exposure to a number of different themes and sectors. SME Financial Services with COG. The SME space will be the inside analysts. Generally strong performance sector at the moment. With the portfolio as it stands today, we're exposed to industry rationalization, consolidation, particularly COG and Coventry. It provides exposure to infrastructure resources and agriculture.
Again, sectors that we've been more robust than other parts of the economy, and we've been exposed to these for a number of years. So this is not a new development or something. These sectors made sense to enter into these sectors. These are typically investments that have been made five to six years. We've got unique technologies, Spectra Systems and Nuix, and strategic and operational turnarounds occurring all the way in Fleetwood, Coventry, Magellan, Midway. Capital management opportunities about also Midway, which is now subject to takeover of Spectra Systems, Fleetwood, Magellan, Karoon, and Coventry. The last four are all in the future. Taking five minutes at the moment. Six businesses. And all are operating in what we consider a situation. If I turn to the next slide, about Nuix. So Nuix, as you might know, was a market darling. It's on the slide here in 2020.
It develops and sells software that's used for investigative analytics. So it's used by ASIC, law firms around the world, regulators, as well as security agencies. The IPO in April 2020 was AUD 5.731. Its shares hit an all-time high of AUD 11.16 in January. Needless to say, we were not investors in that phase, but we were avid readers of what Nuix was up to because it was basically the expected to be today. At the beginning, it was because the share price was going up. But soon positive things, including simply by a downgrade in their earnings or prospective forecasts, which effectively and eventually led to a downshift, soon followed by scandals. It was basically just trader exits, class actions and regulatory investigations. So trading Nuix was basically covered in the news hard and fast in uncertain terms.
Like a lot of investments that a lot of investors look at and some that they can't. We tend to be attracted to things that are falling times and Nuix was there. And as we did our research on Nuix, we identified an opportunity to buy into the company sufficiently large. Nuix was very much the hot product they provided was solid. It was well regarded by its customers and its integrators. And had there been or should there be board management changes, things like there was certainly a lot of talk around the analyst team. We started accumulating shares and on the chart you can see we started in June of 2021. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We tend to buy low and sell high. And as we accumulated shares, we funnily enough rapidly became a top 20 shareholder.
At one point, things like that, top 10, zooming up and down. Our losses were less. Our holding of shares was fallen. But what happened was that rather than having to engage ourselves, the company began to do things we would otherwise push for in selling. So with Nuix, although we were then thinking, expecting that we wouldn't grow that across the campaign to push for some of the changes that we felt needed, to their credit, Nuix actually did things themselves. So we didn't have to lift a finger. That suits me fine. It's worked. And we still got the benefits, I think, from a business perspective. Nuix today has still got some warts on it. It needs to settle some actions and some regulatory inquiries. But we believe that it is well and truly put those things behind it and launched product.
As you can see, the share price has recovered quite substantially and is certainly substantially above what we paid, which was an average AUD 1.30 for each share. The ride is still a little bit wild. We have been selling shares pretty consistently for the last 18 months or so. So we've reduced our holding. Even though we've done that, we still managed to book some healthy returns on that investment. I can't tell you how long I'll hold for, but at some point, I would expect there'd be some public activity in Nuix because being a fairly simple product, ASX is a bit of my dad's thing that has a very long future. Most of the Nuix's competitors are part of the IPO and based in the U.S. I suspect there is a point in which it's interesting to take the target.
No guarantees, but at the end of the day, we're very good. Just explain that somehow. Turning to Spectra Systems. I won't spend too much time on this one. We've talked about it in previous general meetings and shared presentations. But Spectra is a U.S.-based technology firm that is listed on the London Stock Exchange or the main exchange, which is the second board. Its core business is the authentication and cleaning banknotes with central banks as its major customers. The company has never explicitly disclosed who their customers are, but Campbell and I, as I've said before, have applied our incredible powers of deduction to conclude that two of its largest customers are the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank. It also creates, using the same technology also used in products such as coffee pods, perfume and tobacco packaging and it also provides software for gaming security
It's quite an interesting piece of products. One of the questions that we get repeatedly in terms of Spectra is why would you invest in a company? It's a business involving banknotes when everyone has a banknote to go and pay. That's a particularly hot topic in Australia right now. We've got some debate over the use of cash in some industries. Going back a few steps, over the years, we've made some of the most profitable investments in what investors describe as dead or dying industries. The reason it becomes a profitable investment is that the market tends to overreact and overestimate the speed at which a business goes out of business.
And we've found that if we do our analysis carefully, we can invest in things where being paid twice the amount of dividend yield the next day that actually ends up aiding and supplying for many years to come. That said, cash in Australia. Australia is one of the countries in the developed world that's experienced the greatest reduction in the use of cash, particularly. It seemed to be very maturely adopted by the rest of the U.S. developed economies. But we're an outlier across the rest of the world. The developed world is even further behind. So whatever you might think about the use of cash in your own daily lives, we're very comfortable that the investment case for Spectra and the use of their technology is likely to continue for quite some time to come. And certainly enough time to invest in healthy investment.
Spectra's financial characteristics are highly attractive. They've got very high revenue growth. I apologize for a mistake, so it should be in 24 numbers. There's quite a lot of embedded growth in existing contracts, so what happens is when Spectra wins a contract with a central bank, they tend to offer first a preliminary stage of product, and once that hurdle is met, once they've been able to deliver that product successfully to the client, the client tends to follow on for any business, so that's why we describe it as embedded growth, so even though the growth may not be reflected in each contract, the experience we observe, the experience that Spectra has demonstrated is that they continue to get business from those clients.
At the moment, they're in the process of waiting on tenders for some banknote services in the Middle East, which if they're successful, and typically what happens is central banks like to have supply for these products. The Reserve Bank of Australia is one unique where we have a single supply. Used to be Bank of Australia, was owned by the Reserve Bank. It spun off a few years ago. Perhaps I was there near the same time as the Securency scandal involved in that company. But most other countries around the world like to have two or three suppliers for their national services. So Spectra is one of those countries that they're looking for. What they've done recently has been to not only pay dividends and other financial products, but also make some acquisitions.
Most recent acquisition is a company called Cartor, which specializes in the supply of polymer substrates, polymer banknotes, similar to the ones we have in Australia, and Cartor was a client of, or Spectra was a client of Cartor, and the opportunity came for Spectra to buy Cartor. They paid from memory, I think it was GBP 14 million. No, 12, yeah, GBP 10 million, and amongst other things, they own a machine that makes a substrate that costs GBP 14 million a year, as well as the existing contracts and staff, so it was quite a steep purchase for Spectra, and Chamberlain and Corrigan, they were the CEO, and were discussing what further acquisitions might look like in Spectra's business.
What became clear is that they see the opportunity to further vertically integrate their business, where effectively they acquired suppliers that they buy from to increase their profitability. If you thought, well, that makes sense, then Cartor would certainly so far look like a very steep purchase. If I turn the page to Carbon Conscious. So Carbon Conscious is a company that we recently completed the acquisition. It's an investor we've had exposure to for nearly seven years. We tried a couple of times without success to buy them previously, but we didn't give up. We ended up having a bit more offering the first time around. Frankly, the first time around, we missed a fair amount. I think they jumped into our arms. They didn't get the credit for the first time. But we're super happy with the acquisition.
Carbon Conscious manages large-scale carbon projects, basically to support Western Australia, totaling around 17,000 hectares. They generate carbon credits. For the time being, those carbon credits are handed over to Origin Energy and BP under a number of Carbon Plantation Agreements ( CPAs). Those are effectively in place till 2025 and 2027. BHP have the right to extend to 2020 to 2030. So I'll always say that's a bit confusing. During the contracting period, most of the ACCUs are attributable to BP and Origin. We receive a few thousand credits a year ourselves. From time to time, we'll sell them. We recently tried to sell a few of them and decided to hold off because we decided we'd get a better price on them. Instead of bundling up roughly 2,500 ACCUs, we would get a better price on them.
So in April, we're likely to sell those 5,000 contracts. And if you look at the chart on the side, which is the ACCU spot price, you can see that with the benefit of the concept that I've seen before, at least. Furthermore, most of the ACCU that we have are highly recommended. It's like quality ACCU because they are generally new plantings. So they're not these avoided deforestation ACCU, which will probably draw criticism where someone says, "Oh, I'll see those trees on the side of the hill at 45-degree angle. I'm not going to cut them down or anything." But the system allows for those people to get some ACCU. What we've observed is that despite the spot price being very fat, the buyers of ACCU are now simply discerning, and they pre-empt for what we see as high-quality ACCU .
Carbon Conscious has a record of selling its ACCUs for around 10 to 15 or 18 spot price over the years. Certainly, the deals we received a few weeks ago, this second-time parcel, were at around AUD 18 million. We're expecting Carbon Conscious to pay a dividend. Carbon Conscious has a 30 September year-end. It's in the process of preparing its final accounts. Once those accounts are almost finalized and audited, they'll pay a dividend. As one of the directors, I'm a large shareholder in SNC, I'll certainly support a large dividend. There's about AUD 2.3 million cash within the Carbon Conscious shares. So we're very pleased with that investment so far. We're only a few years into it, but it's going to soon be spent. I'll turn to Fleetwood, which is one of our large investments. Most of you will know about Fleetwood.
It has three business units, Building Solutions, which is Australia's largest modular builder. Community Solutions, which owns Searipple and accommodation buildings, and also manages Searipple , but as well manages Osprey. The third business, which is a small business, is RV Solutions. That's parts and accessories and services to the recreational vehicle market . Now, Fleetwood is a company where there's been quite a bit of change over the past five years, notably a change of chairman and interim CEO. The new CEO didn't have the most auspicious start to restructure the company because of COVID. So Bruce basically spent easily the first, I think, nine or 10 months of his tenure unable to travel to Western Australia where this large part of the business, and therefore restructuring and turnaround operation was, I think, dramatically affected by that delay.
The legacy issues that were left by the previous board of management are largely now in the rearview mirror. Building Solutions has become a much different business in that it is focused on standardized, repeatable work . We believe it has a better quality of order book than it has ever had. It's implemented a national procurement strategy, whereas previously it was very much factory by factory within its own procurement. There's also a consolidation of design and estimations, where previously each state factory had its own way of designing things, procuring things, pricing things. Now everything's become standardized, and the benefits have flowed through. There are some state governments that have taken to manufactured housing, which is building solutions for what they face. Queensland is probably at the forefront of that at the moment.
Victoria and Queensland are also in the forefront in terms of schooling, using a modular structure for schools. New South Wales is at a point where we think they've got to come to grips with their procurement policy, and should they change that or is it even better for Fleetwood? Now, that's included in the business of New South Wales, but we will describe it as attractive as those in New Zealand. I think better for longer, but those two examples are probably going to be New South Wales for longer. Community Solutions, which Osprey is fully occupied, it's Fleetwood's managed by the Western Australian state government to manage that asset. But Searipple and Karratha is still the solutions business. That's been from the influx and very strong demand for accommodation in and around Karratha recently. Current contracts at Searipple have occupancy at 72%.
That is contracted for the next couple of years. And we believe that it will go to full occupancy at some point in that time. Once it gets to full occupancy, free cash will generate a significant amount. The board has announced an off-market buyback in addition to the activities. Off-market buybacks would be useful for a number of perspectives, not only as being a good buying back of shares in the company in the country, which benefits remaining shareholders in the business of Fleetwood. But it's also a good way of signaling that it's a business shares value. On the right-hand side, we've got a good financial summary. And you can see that with a market capitalization around AUD 185.5 million, the enterprise value adjusting for both cash and property that's on the balance sheet is AUD 146.1 million. So we think Fleetwood is a hidden opportunity.
Certainly, it has a nice downward follow. And yeah, so you know everyone seems to be right side here. Okay, apologies for that. Moving on to Coventry Group, two businesses there, Trade Distribution and Fluid Systems. Trade Distribution is where they distribute fasteners and other industrial products through brands such as Konnect, Artia, and Nubco. Fluid Systems specializes in the delivery and installation of hydraulic, lubrication, fire suppression, and other systems and products. So basically, working with all the big yellow equipment you see on the construction sites. Coventry has been a long time in our portfolio. Basically, we moved the chair for the long-serving executive chair of Coventry just over 10 years ago. And it took quite a while to turn things around. But in the last seven years, they've demonstrated that turnaround by operating financial performance since the new management joined in 2017.
The turnaround accelerated in 2024, where finally we began to see some operating leverage days where revenues grow without costs growing as much, which then means that benefits come through the bottom line. Earnings began to grow faster than revenue. It operates in highly fragmented markets. I think they released a presentation for their AGM last week, I think it was. In both Trade Distribution and Fluid Systems, respectively their businesses represent around 2% of the market. Which means that there's significant opportunities to grow into those markets and consolidate. Those opportunities exist both for acquisition. Coventry is one of the few companies around where we've been able to make acquisitions. Very few other companies out there do acquisitions and do well. A lot of them do it, but they're still valued. Coventry have a good rate of return on their value creating acquisitions.
And at the AGM, they also have managed to grow the Trade Distribution business by greenfield expansion. Now, what's interesting with Coventry is that the Chairman here, Cathie, used to be CEO Reece. Reece, for those of you that know Reece, is probably one of the best businesses around Australia. They do plumbing services. They've got a national hub for green. And there's basically a buyer store connection. It's Reece people who think the. And I think what we're seeing now, that they've stabilized the position and demonstrated that they can actually run businesses. There's a plan to evolve that greenfield expansion that will sort of take some years. In their presentation, they provided a snapshot of the economics of new store rollout. And they look certainly very attractive. Coventry can do even half of what they're proposing they do over five years in these channels.
We'll be very pleased with that strategy. Turning to Midway. Midway has been in the portfolio about three, four years. We bought it when it looked like it had quite a few problems. The company went quite a way to making changes itself, making changes, board changes in management. Loss-making assets have been sold or shut down. The big catalyst a few years ago was when Midway sold its forestry assets and excess land, which basically allowed them to turn around. They're now focused on growing their natural business, which is basically farm forests for their generation. They've got funding from or an investment from MEAG, which is a subsidiary of Munich Re, where I think they're up to $300 million, $250 million dollar funding to buy land and plant for personal power generation.
They've also got a project up in Tiwi Islands, which they're raising money at the moment. They recently announced the Grain Strategy, which has been long-awaited for quite a lot of houses. It relieves Midway of the burden of taking a shipload of residuals on board. That's been one of the millstones around Midway's neck for quite a number of years. From our perspective, this year in Reece, for those of you who bought through anyone else you'll know that Andy was the director of Spectra, which is, so Andy's somewhat well known to us. Again, ticking all the boxes as to why Andy joined the board. But we're very pleased with what the board have done at Midway. Now, last week, a spanner was thrown in the works when River Capital announced their takeover bid.
That is whereby another shareholder has proposed to take over Midway at AUD 1.19 per share, including the payment of up to AUD 0.31 of fully franked dividends and possibly AUD 0.07 of unfranked dividend. Now, the share price went from AUD 0.79 all the way up to back in that. This is just not long enough for Midway to pay a special dividend to the shareholders, which again led to a rapid share price for them to go straight back down to AUD 0.78. Very frustrating, but we understand that markets do not necessarily see value when it is staring in the face. But it also illustrates that when that happens too long, there is often going to be some of those differences in the stakes. We have not decided what the most likely situation.
First of all, for us, we'll look to realize very carefully and see if we can release companies' assets sometime early next year. But I just reiterate, and we've said this quite some time, that this is the sort of thing. That is when you get significant value discrepancies. Sometimes public markets are simply either unwilling, incapable, or both. One of the key things we've found to do here with Sandon Capital is to take a bunch of shares in Midway, as I've seen in recent months better off. Even though we haven't sold, there's still not quite the liquidity necessary. It's certainly a good warning for the investors, despite what has been for a number of years, a very frustrating share price performance.
But as I said before, in respect of this and other companies, we really do try to see through the noise of the market, which is, don't accept the 10 cents on the dollar, which I focus on in this event and similar places like this. Turning to Karoon, which is one of our most recent public campaigns. Karoon is an oil and gas producer with offshore operations in the U.S., specifically the Gulf of Mexico and in Brazil, and it's called the Santos Basin. In recent years, Karoon has evolved from being an explorer. Karoon's been listed for quite a number of years on the ASX, but it's now a producer. We invested on the basis that as a producer, Karoon has to change its ways and has to change its approach to capital management. They have to evolve as its business evolves from exploration to production.
We began a public campaign last year in the lead-up to the AGM specifically. And as a result of those activities, perhaps incidentally, Karoon has changed and has announced a capital management strategy. It has paid its inaugural dividend, which is also its franking account, which is good. And has completed a first buyback and has now announced a second buyback. We reported to the board for all three of those decisions: dividend and buyback, approved access to the buying direction. We believe all needs to be done. What we've called on the board to do is that they need to announce a lot of acquisitions, because believe that acquisitions are a little bit scarce for the marketplace, both existing shareholders as well as people who might otherwise invest in Karoon. The campaign is in progress, so this may not be very much.
Last company I wanted to talk about today is Magellan. It's a very special business. Three core strategies: Global Equities, Infrastructure Equities, and Australian E quities through Airlie, and those three businesses are very interested as well. We identify our Magellan as material for the value change, and when we announce our investment in Magellan, I'll tell you that consensus people said the opposite. I had people ring up and tell me that we were crazy. Magellan was going to be a bust, and we humbly disagree, and I'm glad to say that our position is good. We've received fully franked dividends. They had the buyback underway, and with a share price of AUD 10.60, for us, the total return, roughly AUD 8 average purchase price, is now nearing the AUD 12.60, whatever that is, including dividends, so we're very pleased with the way the business is also doing.
So they're making all the right moves as far as we're concerned. There's been a change to the board. There's been a change to management. They've acquired a stake in another firm from management. And we particularly like the idea that they spent $11 million on that. But to their credit, they actually mitigated the number of dividends that we believe exist in asset management purchases. They mitigated the way they structured that acquisition, not that they've bought a stake of 1%. And there's an opportunity for Magellan and its very highly regarded and effective distribution teams to distribute the products of that new manager through their existing capability. So we think it's something we're happy to benefit from. They've rationalized their approach. The new CEO is best in making such decisions. Excuse me. And importantly, the flagship global strategy is delivering results.
Again, they've struggled through their three-year numbers, because for a lot of people, despite the regulatory requirements to remind people that past performance is no guarantee of future returns, the reality is the vast majority of people making investment decisions, they do focus on past returns before making their investment decisions, including three-year numbers and Magellan's three-year numbers that are not good. They haven't lost a lot of money, which is excellent. I lost a lot of money with Magellan myself. But we're very pleased with the work Magellan is doing. And they plan to announce further details of their capital management strategy when they release their half-year results in February next year. That's the presentation, or the formal part of the presentation that we've got slides for. I'll take any questions if we have. I'm open to go to Brian first.
I didn't join the presentation today. But yeah, I was much healthier than a couple of months ago. Yeah, seemed just holding on. I haven't seen anything there. I want to think about the listed very quickly to explain value for the interview. What would be your plan for exit when the time comes? Do you just wait for someone to approach you like you've approached them? This is the only way I can see it would happen. So it wouldn't be something which we'd be able to find. So I'd like to hear your view.
No, I think so. Mr. Brian. I'll repeat the question for those people online. I won't say my stuff. I won't repeat my stuff to say my stuff. The question relates to investments and what our plan is to exit that investment.
So I referred to the cash flows in the company and the notion that we're expecting to reinvest. Because of the nature of the business-to-value contracts to Origin and BP, we have very clear visibility on our income profile for the next couple of years because the contract revenues. Over that period, I expect to make some sort of carbon contracts bought to the side to independent buyers and sellers that are on the spot. I expect that we'll reinvest. So that's a way of getting off the table. So that reduces all things being equal, reduces the value investment each time it's paid. In terms of what the longer-term plan is, I really don't want to go into too much detail.
Our starting position with carbon contracts is that it is a very stacked cycle is an attractive buy and hold investment for the duration of it. So the trees will generate carbon credits till at least 2029, quite a long time away. There's several hundred thousands of carbon credits. After the contracts with BP and Origin terminate, all of the carbon credits generate via implementations. Now, growth rates are such that they decline over time, but as I alluded to before, we're very comfortable buying investments with carbon contracts at this stage, certainly setting price reference. Then beyond that, there's whatever else might happen, and keep in mind, when we calibrated our investment decision, spot prices were completely different. If I turn back to the chart that shows carbon credit prices, we began negotiating to buy carbon contracts in December, carbon credit prices were, yeah, low 30s.
They're now today AUD 42. I don't know where they're going to be in the future, but we're certainly in a position where things are heading. We'll also be open to consolidation of units, either for some of the buying contracts, or we might just look at the contracts as a one-man size SNC. The day we announced our take-up to third parties in the purchase stage, we wanted to raise further money by purchasing that contract. So I don't know what the answer is. I can't give you a specific answer to your question, but we're very comfortable that it's a high dividend investment that will take money off the table, so effectively, our investment will self-liquidate if nothing else happens over time, and then we've also got the opportunity that we'll do something else with it.
They're not worried about Trump declaring all the support?
No. That's the United States.
Yeah.
At the moment, carbon credit ACCUs are Australian. It's really only a couple of Australian assets. There seems to be a couple of changes, but we're still on the assets.
And the other question I had, it said that we had four years of dividends at the current level. I see a lot of friendly third-generation portfolio now. How many years would we need to have before we decide to raise them?
So the question is related. I'll cut to the chase and it's a fair question, Brian. The question is when will you raise that dividend? The board and the people backing the board put money both in capital terms, but we also consider the dividend relative to our share price. Just before COVID, we had the issue that dividend yield had risen quite substantially.
There's no hard and fast rules, but our observation is that once an LIC's dividend yield goes above 20%, a lot of people begin to think there's a problem. It's unsustainable. I think there's something else to do. We were heading to that level of thirty before COVID was even a thing. When COVID came along and because we merged with Mercantile, we had an issue where for a very short period of time, we didn't have the reserves to pay dividend. So we took the opportunity, never let a good crisis go to waste. We took the opportunity to cut the dividend. Part of the reason was also that the high dividend was not rewarding our shareholders in terms of share price or the discount to NTA. So we felt that it was worth bringing it back.
The board is constantly thinking about the buyback flow, and we're conscious that we want to make sure that we give us sufficiently money to our investors, but at the same time, make it attractive for people to buy into the shares and not have a yield that is too high that scares people away, so we're sort of juggling three balls plus a couple of others in the measure. What I've certainly been thinking about is that as our interest grows, that's probably the target thing. Sorry?
We encourage advising people. I will pause those down.
See, I think it would be the last thing, Brian, that you would certainly weigh in on this safe space. Training shareholders to just buy at discount and not to buy when the discount is very tight. We're just confined.
Look, as I've said, and we also discussed it, the scatter plot that I put up next is the scatter plot. What year's it? So make sure that we're in the right time frame and so we're going up. I'll also reiterate my recommendation for, which is try to manage the last dividend and look back once our NTA is submitted, which is just below 10%, and we're very pleased. We go into dividend looking at the next three years. It's a difficult act. We're of the view that the best thing to do for dividend or for NTA discounts is to do as much as we can in terms of selling and marketing the company. That's the long-term gain. That's what I think gives the best results.
Everything else that we can't do is a short-term sugar hit that doesn't solve the underlying problem or the underlying challenge, which is we need to find more people to buy the shares. Sorry, can I just go to Simon? Yes, please. Yeah. Yeah, I'll repeat the question. So we had a question about investments in Foundation Life. Foundation Life has been in both SNC and Mercantile. Foundation Life is effectively a run-off of a life insurance company. So life insurance companies sometimes call it Withs, and what they do is they sell off their life policies, where policyholders continue to pay their policies, but the entity no longer sells new policies. So it's a long-tail line. Again, going to support that, it's a very specific process. And Foundation Life is one of those. It's a run-off.
It's basically the old Tower business in New Zealand, and we bought it a few years ago as part of that deal. It's currently, and has been for a number of years, structured to effectively wind that stuff down. We're expecting that that wind-up occurs towards the end of this year or next year. There's been a number of regulatory hurdles to go through to get approval from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to complete that wind-up there. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand, in New Zealand, it's the RBNZ, part of the act. But what they do is everything they do to the insurance policies is about ensuring that policyholders' interests are not prejudiced. They have been working slowly over the next couple of weeks to achieve the objective. We'd expect to get an update this year, but it is worth noting the contracts.
Once that restructured focus will be effective, they reassure all of the risks with another party. The benefit for Foundation Life is that in a long-established life will have surplus funds that are accumulated, and surplus funds tend to be shared in certain proportions between policyholders and the owner. We will get a share of those excess funds, those surplus funds, and we're expecting to get this cash back, I'd say, now towards the end of next year. We'll just come back to this discussion.
One more I'm curious about, Cildara , which is a private investment company investment controlled by two 30-year-old gentlemen, which you've had a share in. I can see that it's grown, doesn't pay a dividend, it hasn't paid a dividend. Get out of that. Don't want to. We've obviously subsidized it recently. It doesn't pay a dividend.
We're buying into an asset that's significant. Again, I don't want too much detail for us. Buying things is not always win-win trades. We don't buy with a view of selling. We buy with investment. It's not just about trading. Basically, as far as I know, I'm satisfied the end game means that I keep buying and I don't stop with them. You do make a point to own it. I guess at the end, I would buy it. What's the harmful output? No, just wait for a year. Again, look, I think just with the terms of trade, Simon just said in response that we're happy here with this as well.
Awesome. Thank you, and my question is, at this stage, how many companies do you look at before you find something that you buy in?
So again, we've had an commendation on the slide. Those of you who are still online, and the question is, how many companies do we look at before we invest? So basically, how many things do we have to look at? Look, we don't keep detailed records of that. It's up to you how many percent of this are buying. In the last year, we've had two investments there. You're thinking, "What one?" Aside from trading things, four positions. I don't want to scrap the names. Three. It's always neither, so I often hear other investors complain at various times that they can't find anything, that there's nothing to do, or this is too invested. We don't think in these terms. We're always looking at things. The other thing is, sometimes we might look at a company for quite a while, and we understand the company itself, and it's just not at the right price.
And then something happens, and it falls, and suddenly it becomes interesting. So think of what we do as just a long, continuous journey. And so right now, I don't think it's neither harder nor easier. If you think back to COVID, again, a lot of people in my circles got COVID because of lots of things. But I can tell you, speaking very honestly, we made a couple of purchases on the list being A2B, but we had no idea how things were going to play out. There were parking lots in the rest of Sydney that were depending on which brand were either bumper-to-bumper, row after row of silver taxis for silver service, or yellow ones for taxis combined. We had no idea when that was going to happen. No idea. But we've got a lot of people telling you now. Yes, we can. Possibly. Possibly.
But what we did there was we simply said to ourselves, "The price we were able to buy was more than adequate to pull that stock." So that was a good period believed in that. We were just deciding a few weeks back. That's the thing. I'm very pleased with that. And that's a company that we've known for a while, but only recently share price. That was a very good plus. But also some insights developed which allowed us to see a clearer path. So if we get to a point where that becomes public, it's very useful. Yes. Sorry. Yes, yeah.
So do you still feel that you've been up there acquisition individually? Or I'll leave you with that question.
I believe . Sorry. I'll reset the question. Just about three. Yes, the share price has fallen since we bought in. And the question is, is it a very astute and accurate observation that the buyback, because I mentioned that there's been two buybacks, the second buyback up to $25 million, seemed pretty incredible. I won't disagree with that. And then follow-ons, all of those actions suggest that they may have acquisition issues. I think they're pretty wise ones. Their questions have gotten to the C-suite board. I think that the market, and for us as shareholders, will believe that there's no acquisition risk when they are clear with the statement that there are no acquisitions to be done until a certain point again. So that's why I say it's a work in progress. I think it's also worth noting that there's a lot of accepted wisdom about relationships, global conflicts, and oil prices that have held true for decades that seem to have gone out of kilter at times.
Obviously, oil spiked immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Things have been slowly tempered. Again, we don't know for certain, but I suspect that all of these are part of the huge geopolitical games of state that are being played where it's in the interest of a number of countries to keep the oil price down because the oil price is one of the things that helps fund the Russian war effort, despite I think Russia's best defense trying to raise the oil price. Oh, actually, can I get Marshall? We wouldn't put it out if it wasn't running out. NTA reports that at a single point in time at the end of the month, cash balance has changed. We always find the cash. We always get what we need and we spend it. We deploy it.
We buy and sell based on what we need to do and off of what we're in. Conservatively. We're just managing the portfolio. No. We don't have that one. Yeah. But they didn't even receive it. We spent that. We haven't received the return of capital from GDC yet to this week. There again, that will bolster our cash, whether it survives to the end of November or other than other. Again, we're just managing the portfolio with our friends who were still open to it. Unless we make a mistake and tell you about it, just assume that everything is in the balance. Welcome.
Representing Mary's family members who have had so many with her. Very much appreciated the opportunity to be back. Particularly excited with that.
For Steve, while we confirm the accumulation of several years of imputation credits and the opportunity to participate in the currency exchange in advance, it's much appreciated, the full support that you've given us and treated us as the Chair of the true owners of the company. I mean, speaking. So I'm involved about the cash balance in the situation. Sometimes we're fully invested, and in other cases, we need certain times we need to think something that's better. Yeah, excellent.
Thank you very much.