Greetings and a very warm welcome. Thank you all for joining. If I'm looking in the camera, all of you online, thank you as well. Before we start, I'll just go through a couple of key things. Firstly, the fire exits. If you hear a fire alarm, either go to the fire exits, which is through this door, and you can see straight across a sign saying toilets. That's where the toilets are as well. That's also where the fire exits are, head that way. If you have any issues at all, please ask one of the MUFG staff to help out. I think all of them have got quite clearly marked as to who they are. They'll also be standing around looking authoritatively. Don't ask me because I'll be running around like a chip with his head cut off.
For those joining us online via the MUFG corporate market services, you can read all the documents associated with the meeting online. The proxies are there, and you can also ask questions. If you have any issues, there is a help page on the online website, or you can call the helpline, which is 0800 200 220. Everyone will have an opportunity, ample opportunity to ask questions. We'll hold that till the end of the chair address. I think we will have some media here, who all of you are also more than welcome to ask questions. If we could just note that we'll prioritize shareholder questions first and then media questions, but we're here to answer questions. That's encouraged. Any questions at all? The business of the meeting will be to vote on three resolutions.
I'll just start off with saying we have our annual shareholders meeting in just about a month's time. What we're trying to do today is to focus very much on what we think of as the recapitalization of Metro , as opposed to the normal annual shareholders meeting. We will have that, and you will have another chance to talk again in a month's time. That's when we'll go through more normal business of ASM. The quorum has been achieved. I declare the meeting open. See if I can mess this up. Yep, already going backwards. The agenda will be some quick introductions. I will talk for hopefully no more than 10 or 15 minutes. I'll try not to bore you with my American drone for too long.
What we'd like to do is open up as much of the meeting as we can for questions from the floor as well as online. You guys don't get much chance to actually talk with us. We thought rather than sit here and talk at you, we'll let you actually engage with us and ask us all the questions you've got. We have three fairly meaty resolutions, all to do with the recapitalization. They're all interlinked. We'll close with that. We have a bit of light refreshment for the end of the meeting after the meeting out there somewhere, and somebody from MUFG will help you. Just by way of introduction, if I can just quickly introduce everyone here, what I think of as our team, and forgive me, you'll probably end up getting sports analogies throughout this.
I'll try to keep it to a minimum, but I think in terms of team. To my right is Pramod Khatri, he's an Independent Director. Julia Mayne, also an Independent Director. Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I'm Shawn, the Chair. Simon Bennett, who is Executive Director, but since June last year, when he became Executive Director, he's effectively been the Managing Director of the business and will be formalizing that fairly shortly, just FYI. Sarah Hipkiss, who's our CFO , Rupika Patel, who's in our finance team, and Nick Hardy-Jones, who's our New Zealand Country Manager, also here. There may be some of the team from Australia who hopefully have been able to join us if they've had the chance to. If so, I'm not sure where they are.
At the ASM, we'll do a more formal, a little bit more intro of everyone and give everyone a chance to actually have a speak and to have some questions. Also part of the team, there's Andrew Paterson from Jordan, just on your right. Toby Sharp and Sarah Broome from Bell Gully, just there. They have been very much a part of the team, getting all of this pulled together. I think you can all appreciate if you've read enough of the notice of meeting that this has not been a simple transaction. We've had a fantastic level of input from our advisors. Have I missed anyone? Excellent. I'll try and quickly go through the Chair's address and try not to take too much time on it. We've written it all down, and I'll assume that you've read at least most of the documentation.
What I'd like to do is actually ditch a script. I'm not going to hold to a firm script. I'm just going to walk you through about 10 slides that hopefully cover what we've been doing in this area basically for the last 18 months. I'll give you a personal perspective. I started looking at, loosely watching Metro in about mid-2022. If you look at that graph, you can see mid-2022, the business had roughly the same amount of debt as it had value. For me, that's probably a rule of thumb that says when you get to that one-to-one ratio, you need to reduce debt. I think the company in a previous board publicly said we need to reduce debt probably not too long after that. It's been a good long three years where the company has actually been overgeared.
At the same time, during that period, the business performance and before the business performance has also been poor. Partly, a lot of it's been externally driven. There has been a lot of industry change, but it's not all been external. There have been a lot of things that could have been, that could be done. Those are the two key points as to where we can, where we got, where we came to. In about early March, in about early 2023, we decided that it was, we better actually get on and try and do something with the balance sheet. What we've done 15 months ago, I became Chair March of 2024. At the same time, we reduced the board by two. We asked Julia Mayne to stay because she's been a fantastic board member. We restructured the board, so it's mostly new directors from late 2023 onwards.
In June 2024, we, as I say, appointed Simon as the Executive Director to run the business. Two key things, as I say, number one, reduce debt. Number two, turn the New Zealand business around. We also took a bit of a different style to things. Try to get down to what really matters, actually focus on the real questions, which are usually the hard questions. Make the hard decisions and actually start to act with a lot of urgency, quickly, quickly. I have a personal view that public companies move too slowly, have too much process, don't ask the hard questions, and end up in a lot of strife as a result. I don't think Metro is any different. We've also, subsequent to that, had some reasonable, significant management changes through the organization.
We started at the top, said let's get the right team on board at the top, and that started to flow. If I just quickly go through the New Zealand business, again, it's one thing to raise capital and actually recap the balance sheet, but you've actually got to improve the performance of the business at the same time. Both are essential. Can't have a successful Metro without either one of those. I have to really take my hat off to the team that since June 2024, when we made those changes, there's been significant improvements. DIFOT, delivered in full on time, running in the 60% in the Auckland facility. I don't know if you've been around automated plants, but anything running at less than 90% in an automated situation is just a mess, becomes a mess very quickly. That's what we had.
You can see the team's really focused and actually gotten the DIFOT up and has gotten the DGU per hour, as double glazed units per hour, and got the production up per hour. It's really not rocket science. It's actually getting your people to have the right mindset, doing the right things, not doing the wrong things, not spending so much time on process, actually focusing on the customer. The customer is probably the most important thing, second most important thing after the people. That's simple too. It's just good product on time, in spec. The business wasn't delivering either of those things. Quite pleased. These things take time. My experience with turnarounds is that they can take years and years. I'm really proud, I'm very proud of our team and how fast it's actually started to flow through. The, call it the capital strategy. You'll note we're raising equity.
You'll note that we halted the sale of the Australian Glass Group, AGG. That was fairly early on when the new board took over, and that we're raising equity capital. In my experience, and I've been through too many undercapitalized companies in my private equity days, the default should always be to raise equity capital if you have too much debt. We've looked at just about every possibility to try and reduce the syndicate, the banking syndicate debt, including other debt from other parties, longer term debt. That's still debt and doesn't actually fix the problem. An equity raise, from when I first started following the company, an equity raise seemed like the obvious answer to it. Why we didn't sell AGG just quickly is there are a few reasons. Number one is that it's a strategic risk.
Anytime you look at selling a business unit, you take on a big strategic risk. Secondly, the New Zealand business would have been left with something like about AUD 25 million worth of debt. That would have been stranded on the New Zealand business. The New Zealand business could not support AUD 25 million worth of debt. Intangibly, we also have a fantastic management team in Australia. We've leaned really heavily on the Australian Glass Group team to help us turn the New Zealand business around because essentially it's different, different flavor, different things in terms of what needed to happen. The AGG team had turned their business around in much the same way. We have a pool of fantastic management resource that, had we sold that business, we would have lost. The last thing is that you'll hear me talk about executability.
My background is private equity and investment banking. Please don't hold either one of them against me. We actually operate differently and nice and in partnership. The whole aspect of this AGG sale was the fact that it looked from the outside like it was a deal that was done and could be done, but I don't think it would have actually ever been executed. I don't think it would have ever been executable. The acquirer hadn't achieved full finance. They still had about 25% of their debt in equity finance to find at the time that we halted the transaction. Four reasons why that wasn't a good idea. The last one, which is that Australia has an inherent growth opportunity in the fact that the market itself is being driven by regulatory changes, which is growing it.
We would have lost so much had we sold that business. What does sustainable recap mean? That's basically what we've been working on for the last 18 months. I still can't believe it's that long. Obviously, we've refinanced the balance sheet. It's a soft thing that goes through a business that, when a business is in trouble, it weighs heavily on the minds of customers, staff, and suppliers. Like I say, it's an intangible aspect, but we very much get a chance to give some confidence to everyone around the business, all the stakeholders. The last thing is that we can now, once this is, assuming this is done and finished, we'll be able to actually invest in a bit of growth. We'll actually be able to loosen up a little bit and look for areas where we can invest for growth. I don't mean sales growth necessarily.
What I mean is invest for profit growth because let's face it, that's all that matters. Now I've already blasted through my time. I'm probably already five, ten minutes now. Since late 2023, since I joined the board, I was in capital raise mode. We've been in capital raise mode basically since then. We have tried every possible avenue to raise capital, equity capital for the business that's valid. We have struck every tree. If it looked like a tree, we shook it. When I say long list of investors, literally a long list of investors, and we went out and actually approached, we actually pursued things. We didn't sit back, wait for things to come to us. We actually have aggressively tried to pursue raising equity capital. Amari was one of the parties that we approached in early, about I think late last year.
It took that amount of time, but in the end, that's where we got to. We had a false start with Cowes Bay. I'll let you ask questions about it. I won't go through that in detail. We got close to term sheets with two other, in two other parties, two other investment rounds, not public. We didn't bring them public because they didn't sign term sheet. You'll note that we don't do non-binding indicative offers. What we actually announced when we did the deal with Amari was committed term sheets, binding, conditional, but binding agreements. We've had a number of what I would think of as non-binding indicative offers, but we didn't proceed with any of them because they didn't actually, they didn't meet the needs. This is a complex transaction. I've worked on, I don't know, 7,800 transactions in my private equity.
I started life as an equities analyst at a share-broking firm. Spent a bit of time on the institutional trading desk, spent, as I say, a few years as an investment banker. Don't hold it against me. This was a beast of a deal to try and put together. What we wanted to do, number one, is we needed to get at least, I think, AUD 25 million off the balance sheet of debt. AUD 25 million- AUD 30 million of debt. Now, to get AUD 25 million-AUD 30 million of debt off the balance sheet, we needed to have a large equity partner come in, and that's where Amari came in. When we approached Amari in late 2024, it was as part of our capital raise. Would they like to participate as a cornerstone shareholder in our capital raise? We also needed to achieve new investors.
We have a AUD4.5 million commitment, which is from Simon and from Pramod for showing commitment in the business, which I'd heartily welcome. We also had to attract about 10 new investors into the business. You can probably appreciate that professional investors have had ample opportunity to invest in Metro and have chosen not to over and over again. It had to be a pretty compelling reason this time why they would say, okay, yes, actually, I'll invest in Metro and become a new investor in Metro. Not an easy thing to achieve in a company like Metro's situation. That minimum of AUD 15 million raised was a requirement for us to be able to negotiate accommodation from a banking syndicate for a AUD 10 million debt forgiveness. All those were required for us to get AUD 25 million worth of debt off the balance sheet. That's what they were all driven towards.
They're all required. They're inseparable. One can't happen without the other. We can't say, if we don't like this piece, let's do that piece. We had to put all of them together. As I say, very complex in some ways, a lot of moving parts, but it achieves what we think is a proper recap of the company. If you look at that chart, you can see, if you want to use some broad metrics, that net debt to EBITDA right now is double digits. We were always targeting getting it down to about one to one and a half over a sustained period of time. You can see that based on the forecast that we have, we should be well achieving the one to one and a half times EBITDA within a couple of years.
Trying to focus a bit on the negatives, wearing shareholders' hats and saying, what wouldn't I like about this? There's dilution. Anytime you have a capital raise with an external party coming in like Amari, there was always going to be the prospect of dilution. What we've tried to do is minimize that by having a generous oversubscription facility, firstly by having a rights offer, but also then by having a generous oversubscription facility. If you're a smaller shareholder and you want to have a chance at maintaining your position or even increasing it, you can do so through the oversubscription facility. We tried to mitigate that. There's been a reasonable amount of press about the independent value or the value per share at AUD 0.03 less than the AUD 0.05- AUD 0.09.
I'd just note that the AUD 0.05- AUD 0.09 is post the capital raise, so it includes the debt being reduced by AUD 25 million. That's probably the only appropriate way that Grant Samuel could look at it. It's a price that you could expect to see theoretically post the capital raise. Yes, AUD 0.03 is lower than those, but the flip side is that theoretically, there's AUD 0.05- AUD 0.09 worth of value post the capital once we complete the capital raise. There should be a value uplift. The transaction does involve Amari taking a 51% stake. That's purely a function of this being a capital raise and we needed a minimum of AUD 10 million- AUD 15 million. It could have easily ended up being 60% or 70% if we were less successful in achieving some of the outside new investment. That, as I say, is a function of the cap raise itself.
We've spent enough time with the Amari people to know that their objectives are aligned with all shareholders. They're a long-term investor. They're not driven by short-termism, which is music to my ears, and I think all shareholders should be happy with that. I'm focusing on the negatives. It's been raised: what if they, as a controlling shareholder, try to oppress minority shareholders or take value for themselves? A, that's not the kind of people they are, and I trust that judgment. B, it's illegal. We have governance, we have good governance practice, we'll establish very good protocols, very good Chinese walls. As I say, it's against rules to advantage one shareholder over another. That won't be happening. There's also no control premium. As I say, Amari was introduced as part of a capital raise. It wasn't a conversation, do you want to take control?
It wasn't from them, hey, we want to take control. They were investing as part of a capital raise. The shareholding level was almost a function of maths as opposed to desire or motivation. Plus, I'd blanket theoretical, but control premium, just because a company has control of another company doesn't mean that money flows to them automatically. There's no magic wand out of having control. You actually have to create the value. That's the same situation here. Any value that gets created for Metro is going to benefit everyone, not just Amari. We looked at whether a control premium, A, it wasn't available, it wasn't part of the whole transaction that we put together. B, I'm answering more questions from outside, but it's not an applicable concept in our view. We've looked through as many alternative options as we can.
Like I say, if we look like a tree, we shook it. Crescent Capital, Viridian. Viridian is an intense, aggressive competitor of ours in the marketplace. I'm sure you're aware. Crescent is Viridian's owner. Crescent's an Australian PE fund. When I joined the board in November of 2023, I think it was within three months, I found a file in Diligent, which said Viridian Metro merger proposal from Crescent. I went and read it and thought, okay. Conversations have been had with previous board and Crescent about actually Metro acquiring Viridian was what it was at that time. In February of 2024, shortly after joining the board, I reopened it and thought, okay, and I got in touch with Crescent. I actually got in touch with them. We've continued talking about this as a possibility since then. We're now talking 18 months probably.
It's been an ongoing dialogue about the possibility. If you read what is out in public, it looks like a hostile takeover fight. It probably looks like a board trying to defend its jobs and trying to defend itself. That absolutely isn't the case. If we had an actionable proposal from Crescent, we would have brought it to you as shareholders. If we get an actionable proposal from Crescent, we will bring it to you as shareholders. The issues with the Crescent transaction were a pile of probabilities that just didn't stack up. It wasn't an offer. It wasn't a takeover offer. It was a highly conditional proposal. Commerce Commission approval. Finance. They have the finance for the equity purchase, but they don't have committed bank financing, so they would need to get bank financing. We'd have to do a deal with them that works for you as shareholders.
When you pile those three things up, one can only conclude it's just highly unlikely. That does not mean, however, that we've closed the door on Crescent in any way, shape, or form. We haven't. We've never closed the door on them. It might look like in public, but we've always maintained an ongoing dialogue with them because we're here to drum up valid options to recap this business or valid options for shareholders. If a takeover is a valid option, we will work it up and we will bring it to shareholders. It's just never got to that phase. As I say, it seems unlikely too, but it's always, anything's possible. If something happens, if any transaction that looks likely, we'll bring it to shareholders. We'll bring it to you as shareholders and we'll ask you what you think.
If this fails, I was reading the TINA, is it the TINA acronym? There is no alternative. That's a very harsh way of putting it because there's always an alternative. In this situation, there is also, there is an alternative, but it's kind of ugly. As I say, we've been working hard trying to raise capital for a long time. We've had the support, patient support of our banking syndicate. They've been fantastic, absolutely fantastic. Commercial, don't get me wrong, banks are always commercial, but they've been fantastic and very supportive and given us what we need to actually do the job and help them as well as shareholders. We would have to get them to extend again. Uncertain. Never know for sure. The biggest problem is that the problem doesn't go away. The actual fact that the company is undercapitalized doesn't go away if this doesn't go through.
The only possible thing then would be, as I say, a Crescent-type transaction that would, and that's highly, highly, I think, unlikely and uncertain. If the problem doesn't go away, things get even tougher. If we had to go revisit a capital raise again in another three to six months, it will be just that much harder, and the terms will be way worse than they are now. It's a bit of a TINA, but it's more that things would just get quite very difficult, quite ugly, and definitely not in shareholders' interests. We appointed Grant Samuel as the independent appraiser. They came to the same conclusions that we do, which is there's a material uncertainty that the business can continue, that the recapitalization is a good thing for the business and a good thing, obviously, for the balance sheet, but also the ability to operate.
There are some costs to it, dilution, the fact that if you consider it a cost, I don't, but if you consider it a cost, then Amari will be a 51% controlling shareholder. Overall, the positives massively outweigh the negatives in our view. As I say, Simon Bennett and Pramod Khatri are voting with their wallets, and that's a strong level of commitment. I think it's fair to say that Julia and I also highly recommend that everyone vote in favor of this recapitalization. On a personal note, I've spent quite a bit of time in financially distressed situations in my private equity days, usually by me making a dumb investment decision.
I've done a lot of capital raises and a lot of recaps in companies, and I think we're really lucky, actually, that Amari said, "Yeah, we'll be the cornerstone investor in this." We're really lucky that Simon Bennett turned up on the board and said, "Yeah, I'll actually get stuck in and help actually run the business and actually see if we can't fix it." I actually think we're subject to this being approved and a successful capital raise. I think we're going to be in a fantastic position. I'm actually pleasantly surprised with how this has panned out. I think that's probably enough from me. Have I missed anything?
Is that all right, Shawn?
Yeah.
I'll open it to questions. I think we'll do online questions to start off with, or should we?
Yeah, I'm going to mix them up, I think.
All right. Thanks for listening to my drone. We're going to give Simon the mic and answer the questions. I'll take some, Simon may take some, and we may hand them around.
I just, can I just have a show of hands for those who sort of have questions? One, two, three. Cool, cool. Okay, I'm just going to mix them up a bit because some people have been a bit greedy online and don't want to answer all their questions upfront. Really easy ones too. First one, why are you being so cagey about this? From Stephen Main, he's asked a few. Why are you being so cagey about who owns Amari, seeing as they're about to control our business? Who are the main people at Amari that we're dealing with? Who are they likely to appoint to the board? Is Amari and its Atlas Steel business still at all connected to ASX listed Bisalloy Steel or Quadrant Private Equity?
If you're asking us as a minority shareholder to put their trust in Amari as a controlling shareholder, why haven't you put a single name of a human to the Amari or Atlas corporate brands?
Do you want me to?
You can, or?
What are you going for?
Yeah, look, I mean, I think we have Stephen Robertson is going to be the director. Where did we put that, Shawn?
No, absolutely valid point. I didn't realize that we didn't have Stephen Robertson's name throughout, so that's okay in me. Yeah, we could have used his name more often, and it was only in the original announcement.
Right, okay, yeah, so there we are, [crosstalk] . Stephen Robertson will join the board, and look, we've had, as Shawn has said, a lot to do with them. We think they are, they obviously run businesses. Some of our shareholders are known to them, and we think they are a good shareholder. No, they're not attached to Quadrant Private Equity, nor any other listed entities as far as I'm aware.
Just on that, yeah, it's a private company, and we have to respect their privacy. It's a B2B company as well, so it's a private company that doesn't have any consumer-facing businesses. Amari's, as I say, it's an Australian company, private, they deal B2B, we're not trying to hide anything, they're private, and look, I think we have to respect their wishes there.
Thanks, Shawn. Next one, Grant Houseman. How will new capital be allocated and what will be the net debt-to-equity ratio after the new capital is allocated to pay off debt? What will be the annual interest payment amount in NZD once the capital raise is allocated to pay off debt? Depends a bit on what moment in time you're talking about, like the minute afterwards or the, you know, the full year. Also, we've got not a fixed amount of participation, so we gave a range in the documents. We think the debt-to-equity becomes sort of 50% or thereabouts. We think the interest costs on an annualized basis, if we, I mean, you can kind of do the math, if we're AUD 30 million of debt, you know, it's going to cost us maybe 6% and a bit of that in current rates with margins.
It goes a couple of million bucks down from like AUD 6 million. This is also quite a fun question. We've raced to who to answer this. The documents for today's meeting repeatedly say that Sydney-based private equity firm Crescent Capital owns our competitor Viridian and had been pitching alternative proposals to buy us that the board believes may have run into competition concerns if pursued. Why didn't you explain that it was Crescent which originally floated our business for more than AUD 250 million in 2014? What is the history of Crescent, of how Crescent went from owning us to owning our biggest competitor and then buying us back? Right. Rip the plaster off. Look, you know, Shawn plays a bit nicer than I do. He said that we were happy to look at a Crescent proposal, and that's true, 100%.
It didn't sit there well with some of us that, you know, we thought, and then when I was doing my DD on the business before coming on the board, I couldn't understand how you could have a guy that was the CEO, then CEO for somebody else, and how did he lie in bed straight at night? I don't know. That's for them. Where was the question? Why didn't we explain it? We did have mentioned the history, but these are matters of public record. We really felt it was our role. Sorry, Shawn, I'm probably overstepping. Our role was to be unemotional and understand if there was a transaction there, and we needed to look at it in the cold light of day. That's what we did. I think that's the answer.
I think if you dwelled on the past in Metro, and I know you all feel this, so I'm telling you something you know well, you'd get lost in the weeds. We thought it was kind of semi-irrelevant that Crescent were the, it floated at the price they did. If they had a valid offer, we kind of didn't care who they were. We still put it in front of shareholders, engaged with them, and put it in front of shareholders.
When we were canvassing the so-called Cowes Bay Group family office proposal, why didn't we explain that we were dealing with Australian rich lister Kim McKendrick, who sold his enormous Godfrey Hirst Carpets business, the owner of Feltex Carpets in New Zealand, for AUD 600 million in 2017? The AFR valued his wealth at AUD 794 million earlier this year, so why weren't we even able to get AUD 10 million out of him rather than pursue this proposal with the mysterious Amari outfit? Why did Kim McKendrick walk away? This is from Stephen Mayne. I'm going to pass that one.
Okay, the answer about why Kim McKendrick didn't come in is because, again, that's a private company, and we were respecting the privacy of Cowes Bay Group. It is a family office, so it is its own organization. We didn't because it's a private company. Why that deal didn't happen was because it was more of a misfit for what Cowes Bay wanted, I think is probably the best way to put it. We negotiated with them for a long period of time to get a term sheet done. During that time, a market downturn hit, so there was a renegotiation, and that was probably fair enough. When you look at what Cowes Bay invests in and how they invest, and then you look at Metro, there was basically a bit of a misfit.
If you look at some of the things that Cowes Bay have bought, they've been coming out of receivership. They've actually failed firms, not just firms in financial difficulty. I think there was a price expectation at the end of it from Cowes Bay's point of view that we and the banking syndicate just couldn't live with. We being us as directors at the Azure proxy, essentially, because it would not have been a good deal for shareholders. At the end iteration of the deal, when they were finished renegotiating, it didn't stack up as a good deal anymore. I think it was a 70-30 that we would have a consummated transaction with Cowes Bay when we started. It was never 100%. They never are, but 70-30 and the 30% rolled. I think that's probably the best way to put it. It was basically just a misfit.
We might just go to the room now. A question down the front here.
Hi, good afternoon. My name is Xiao Yuchen. I have some questions here. I've been thinking, why not start from step by step, start from lower dose, and monitor the situation to see how it goes, similar to how a clinical trial works? For resolution number three, any conflict of interest? Also, the key consideration, independent evaluation. When was it done? The date and time of it, because it looks like it's quite outdated and obsolete. There can be some alternative. I've been thinking whether it needs to move from NZX to a smaller exchange, for example, Catalyst or something like that. I've been thinking about those things. Thank you.
Can you just repeat that first question? First question?
I'm not too sure why, for example, you try to push or get us to work for all three resolutions at the same time. Start from step by step and start from lower dosage, lower dosage, and see how it goes. Monitor the side effect and efficacy and see how it goes.
Okay. That question first, that was just the transaction that required the three things to happen at the same time. To your third question, you know, why Simon Bennett? There must be a conflict. Good question.
I'm not saying there must be, but is there something?
Yeah, it's a fair question. I think that's why it is a resolution the shareholders had to vote, that they were happy for me to buy shares in Pramod. A bit like the Amari, we actually needed people, we needed underwriters. We couldn't get the transaction away without the underwriters, and two of those are in front of you.
Julia and I aren't investing, and that's the reason we're not. We're independent and not conflicted, as you say, in terms of what we do. That was a deliberate decision on our part to maintain independence on that issue.
The question about the Grant Samuel report was a recent report that was commissioned when we announced the transaction. They did a quick job.
Can you not tell us the date and time or when it was done? Obviously, recently it floated between AUD 0.03 to AUD 0.04 around that range.
The report was released the day that we released.
Two weeks ago, okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Exactly on that day, yeah.
Yeah, two weeks ago.
Yeah. It's a little lady on the aisle.
You're currently then camp shareholder. It's interesting that the corporate vultures that sold us overvalued shares in the beginning were circling back again to see if they could have further pickings. I was very impressed with the Grant Samuel report. It obviously supersedes your annual report. I don't know quite what we're going to have to talk about next month because it really is all out there right now. I would like to think that if this recapitalization goes ahead, that Amari is a good firm to deal with, that there are synergies with their metal frames or whatever it is they do with the business. You're shaking your head. Are you not?
Sorry, carry on.
Do you agree that there are synergies with Amari and Metro Glass businesses?
We think that Amari is going to be a good shareholder, and they're shareholders of lots of manufacturing businesses, and they don't have a group. They were clear about that when we went through the documentation. They invest in people and businesses separately. I think that because of their involvement in metals, they know about windows and are involved in windows and hence know about glass. That was the reason they got involved. We don't see synergies because we need to run independently of their other investments.
Okay. I'm a little confused. I did read the Grant Samuel report quite thoroughly, but I've forgotten some of the facts as to the crowd in Cambridge are doing the same as Metro Glass . Is that right? You've got a competitor there, and they have taken some of your business.
Yeah, they took a lot. That's the APL group, and they're a die holder. They extrude aluminium and make it into a system that they distribute through licensees who build windows effectively. They are branded systems. If you're building a house or your GJ Gardner or somebody is building your house, they might say, "Hey, do you want some Vantage windows?" They may say, "And what glass?" That likely they will talk to you about the window first. APL owns a bunch of these brands. They produce these different systems, and lots of their licensees were Metro customers. The company, or similar shareholding, set up their own glass plant in Cambridge. It was a huge investment, and then they.
When you say that, do you mean float glass?
No, processing.
Oh, processing.
Yeah, there's no.
Still importing the actual float glass.
When people talk about float glass, they're talking about just a clear glass, like old school, that you might have had in a window, single glaze. Now with double glaze, you might have one layer of that float glass, and then you'll have a layer with some sort of coating on it. Low E is kind of the new thing. As people move from single glaze to double glaze, the glass became a bigger part of the window than it was. I think that might be.
Are they still assembling windows as Metro?
No. As Metro is the processor, we buy glass from offshore. Our processing is taking these big sheets of glass, we cut, we aerosolize, we wash and smooth the edges. We put it through a furnace if it needs to be toughened. Both sides of that window there are toughened. In your house, you might have one of the two panes need to be toughened. Toughening is a process through a furnace. After those stages, we take the two frames and join them together, and that becomes a double-glazed unit. That's what we do. In Cambridge, they do exactly the same thing. The reason that Metro lost a bunch of shares is because there were only so many people in the country that could do that process. APL was selling a whole lot of aluminium to their licensees, and we were selling a lot of glass to those licensees.
They thought, "Oh gee, look, we should produce glass as well." They built this processing plant. Now we compete with them head to head.
I would like to think if this recapitalization takes place, that you will give your customers, especially those who've paid deposits, security in their delivery. The kitchen thing disaster that's been in the news lately, where people have paid deposits on appliances, and they were in receivership when they accepted the appliances. As long as you don't leave any of your customers in the loop, I'd be very happy to vote for this.
Thank you very much. We certainly needed the entity to continue for all the warranties. I mean, 10 years back, there's a lot of people who have put their faith in Metro, and we certainly want to stand behind those warranties.
Yes, I want to ask if the Auckland Metro thing out at Highbrook, has it got a future with that opposition growing and can do glass and frame, as it were? I see in the graphs, the Christchurch group is still going right. They don't have competition from APL, AGP, whatever it is. They have competition from Viridian down there, don't they?
The competition that I was talking about, their business is not putting glass in frames. They are selling an aluminum system, which is going to their licensee, like it might be a shed of 10 or 20 or 30. They are getting the job from the builder, and they are then building these windows and then putting their glass in. That's transacted between the head office, you know, whoever they are, APL or AGP, and their licensee. Yes, they do work in the South Island. They are a competition, not a sole competition. I think that, to give some perspective, Metro was probably producing 60%- 65% of the glass anywhere in a building in the country at one point, with the exception of large high-rise commercial. That business we're talking about has now got sort of 30% of the window market. They're still smaller than we are.
The answer is yes, Highbrook is performing really well. The team are doing a fantastic job. We've got, as you saw on the slide, high levels of service and delivery and low levels of rework. It's performing really well. It's totally fit for purpose, as is Christchurch.
I see that Christchurch never really dipped, but at Highbrook, by the look of it, went right down low. Was that quantity or quality or both?
Nick Hardy-Jones is the reason that Christchurch was going well because he was running their business. Yeah, look, it was just not operating optimally.
Bad plant management.
Yeah, they're not that easy to run, these glass plants, but yeah, it could have done better. I think that they, as Shawn said before, I mean, looking back, it's not that helpful, but they just weren't necessarily as focused on that. It might be delivery in full on time, so they missed a piece of glass on the delivery. They got everything right other than one. To get 90-something % DIFOT, it's very hard. A house lot has 30 windows, say, so you've 30 out of 30 to hit to have been complete in full. We only missed one window and that delivery has failed. That's one not in full. Does that answer the question?
It's only partly because I want to be sure that Highbrook is not going to be further eroded by the opposition.
Yeah.
The other thing is a separate, which a parallel question is, Viridian, has it suffered a cut in its business like we suffered a cut in ours? Because they're just around the corner.
Yeah.
Have they?
Yes, they have, yeah.
One suspects that this play by this capital to get us to take over Viridian is to get themselves out of their own problem.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's hope they go bust first and give us some room. Yeah, thank you.
Minuted. Anybody else in the room? Okay, I'll keep going down the list. Stephen Main again, shareholders have contributed more than AUD 300 million to our company, yet here we are staggering along with a market cap of less than AUD 10 million and embarking on an emergency recapitalization. I'm a new Australian shareholder, but seeing as I have a sister also called Julia Mayne, could our longest-serving director, Julia Mayne, please comment on whether she believes that there are decisions which could have been taken during her four years on the board that would have avoided this value-destroying recapitalization proposal being pursued?
Quick question, Stephen. I think that's a good question. I have been here for four years. I think that from the time when I joined the board, probably the biggest thing we could have done is focused on the business improvement plaster. That was probably what I'd say. I think we also explored a lot of opportunities that didn't come to fruition for different reasons. I think it's the business improvement side. Whether that would have avoided where we sit today, I think it's pretty difficult to speculate that that would have actually happened anyway.
Thanks, Julia. I might leave the harder ones. George Bridgewater, was the offer that was rejected for the Australian business approximately NZD 30 million? If not, can you please confirm the amount? Trying to back this out of your comment that it would still leave the New Zealand business with NZD 25 million of debt.
The offer was for AUD 30 million Australian plus an earnout of AUD 5 million, but the earnout was based on, yeah, it was not done. The offer at the time was AUD 30 million Australian, and I think we had about net debt of about AUD 57 million, so that nets out to about NZD 25 million Kiwi. There was a AUD 5 million earnout, but that was based on pretty unrealistic goals in terms of the earnout, so that was very unlikely to happen. That AUD 30 million was the third or even fourth price that came our way, and as you can appreciate, all the previous prices were higher than the AUD 30 million. They still had not closed off on their due diligence. They had not completed their financing. They only had about 80% of their acquisition financed.
They were not a big business, so they were not able to actually just say, "Here's the check, and we do a bit of due diligence, and yeah, you're good for it." It was not that at all. They needed to get the money. That AUD30 million, I believe, was a best-case scenario. That AUD 30 million Australian was a best-case scenario. If I speculate, if we wanted to continue to try and pursue that deal, it would have taken another three to six months while they were trying to get financing. The second wave of the construction downturn would have hit, and we would have ended up, I do not know, I will speculate, AUD 20 million, AUD 25 million. Hopefully that, does that all add up? Hopefully that adds up to the numbers and the kind of thinking.
Like I say, it was not, I would have given that deal a 50-50 chance of even executing, full stop. It is easy to talk about offers, and they offered you this, and they offered you that. When you get down to the nitty-gritty of it and you say, "Is there a deal to be done here?" I do not actually think there was even a deal to be done, and I do not think it would have been even at AUD 30 million.
Thanks, Shawn. The information provided, Michael Rutland, the information provided covered the dilution of shareholdings and shareholder control of the company, but didn't mention the dilution of the book value per share, which may well drop to a quarter of the earlier value. Do you please comment on this? We don't understand that question.
I think that's right. I think that's probably right, but I'm not sure that that book value per share is relevant to a shareholder value. I would probably note that Google probably doesn't have a book value per share. It's probably less than 1% of their share price. Sorry.
Not really. I'll say what book value per share would be. Either zero and would be something. If the shareholder's negative, then the book value per share would be zero. I just must be knowing if we saw it there.
Sorry, repeat that. Yeah.
Market planning is our company, because technically, if you say that, Google cannot get that.
I think auditors would know what was the shareholders' net worth for this particular, like how the shareholders, when the Grant Samuel guy did analysis, what was his analysis with the accounting books about the shareholders' net worth?
About the book value of the net assets?
Yes, because it is very simple.
I don't think they use that as a criteria for assessing the value, the book value of the asset, net assets per share, because it's probably a less, well, it is, it's a less robust way of valuing the company than saying a multiple of earnings.
No, it's not the, it is the most robust way of, because that's how you pay the employees, that's how you pay the shareholder dividend. This is the most basic way of doing something. Let's say a shareholder decides to go to a court and say this, he doesn't like this plan, he'll just simply ask, "Give me the books of the company." I understand, as an MBA, I understand why these rights are there, why the market share and everything matters. To say that there's no book value per share, nobody knows it, it's just impossible. Somebody knows what is the book value per share. It is either negative and zero, that is okay. Or it is something AUD 0.001, or it is AUD 0.10 or AUD 0.05, but there would be something about, that's the reason why I'm saying this.
When the lady said that this analysis is good, I said this analysis is only 80% covering everything. It is not mentioning what is the book value per share when all the plans started. It has to be candid and say that book, because I'm pretty sure that book value per share would be negative. That's the reason companies are raising that. It's very simple. If you make more laws, more laws than your equity capital, then your book value per share is zero. Ideally, an analyst should mention that thing.
We've got positive CACs. It worked 195 million shares. At the moment, if you look at our financial statements, our financial statements for the year end of 31st of March, they're audited. That net value or net equity, if you divide that by the fact we've got about 185 million shares on issue at the moment, that gives you a value. The question's accurate. Depending on how many more shares we issue, we do get more equity and some debt forgiveness, but there'll be a greater number of shares that you divide it by. You're correct, the question's correct, it will roughly quarter if we raise the minimum amount, but that's only relevant to a shareholder if we're in liquidation. The price that you realize for your shares is the share price. The price per book value is only available if we're selling all the assets.
You know, what lock in the negative situation?
No, we don't have negative net assets.
Yeah, we haven't got negative net assets. So if your shareholders' fund is not negative, you've got a positive. Hopefully, there is some book value per share.
Obviously, we'll come to know after one month when the AGM will be there.
Yeah, we're going to answer that question at the AGM because we're going to know how many shares we have. Yeah, and we'll look at the rupees, some simple maths. Going to get Andrew Paterson, John, thank you for your help. I think we've actually, without.
Is there another question?
Yeah.
Oh, sorry.
Another question?
Yeah. I had so many questions, in fact. For example, one question that I found is that on page 23, it is mentioned that MPG was thinking of divesting AGG in 2023. I see that AGG has turned out to be a good business.
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's what we've talked a lot about. The previous board had looked at the debt and the banks, obviously, we talked to them and they said, "Oh gee, they chose a path of reducing debt by selling a business." Your current board decided that was a really good business and there's good growth prospects and that that was a hard transaction to conclude and it was not an amazing price. That's referring to a historical statement that we did want to and now we're saying, you know, we've said since we don't want to sell AGG.
Yeah, so my second question is if I see the market share of all the companies, it seems that if we go with the very DN plan and if we choose the merger that was suggested by Crescent Capital, we will end up owning 50% market share in New Zealand as well as Australia. Now my worry is AGP is coming very fast and they have a 30% market share. If they keep growing so fast and if we don't have, if we go below 30%, what will we do with the business? Because if the revenue is not there, then obviously nothing will turn positive net profit.
The transaction with Crescent slash Viridian was they only discussed buying, they discussed buying Metro, but it was only the separate entity, which was the New Zealand Viridian business, would take over the New Zealand Metro business. It was never described anywhere, but we had assumed that they would sell the AGG business because they had quite high market share in Australia. That was something that was never contemplated by us. We were the party being acquired under that scenario. As we've discussed, look, we never got to pass go. We didn't collect AUD 200 million. It was just a proposal which was very, very difficult to execute. We didn't explore any of those things, which you're quite right, we should have or would have. I don't think there's much you can take out of the Viridian in Australia and the Australian Glass Group market shares.
It's a good question from before, and I'm sorry, I'll probably rush the answer. Mike, it is a key question for a shareholder. Metro lost a whole lot of market share to this business in Cambridge. Are you going to lose a bunch more? We don't think so. We don't think so because we, as you saw on the chart, we're doing a really good job. We're producing a high-quality product, giving good service to our customers. That's a, and that's kind of, you know, maybe it's an easy cop-out sort of answer, you know, textbook answer, but it's true. The other part to the sort of the answer is that, you know, I tried to explain these different system owners. We call them dieholders. In New Zealand, there's Altus, which is a joint venture between Fletchers and some private shareholders. They've got, you know, 34% of their aluminium market.
Then you've got APL, which is, you know, got, you know, say, let's say 40% of that aluminium market. Then we've got FMI, and then we've got Omega. Now, two of those four dieholders also produce glass. They all have this network of hundreds, or in total, there's hundreds of these licensees. They absolutely have to buy the aluminium off the dieholder. That's what the arrangement is. The relationship is the dieholder, they buy the aluminium. They don't have to buy the glass off the dieholder as well. Although we assume that when they came into, when they started producing glass, they gave really favorable terms for doing some sort of bundle or the like. That played out so that that network of APL is not a big customer of ours anymore. We kind of know the size of them.
We know their capacity for glass, and we think that they're reasonably well contained. The opportunity still exists for us to sell glass in that network, and it does happen. One of our advisors, one of the team, put some windows in his house recently, and he said to me, "Oh, I suddenly see these Metro glass stickers all over the windows." I asked him who the fabricator was, and it was an APL fabricator, but Metro windows inside of there. Of the risks that the business faces, we don't consider losing significant share to that network being one of them. I predicate that with the fact that we have to be as good as we can be in terms of our service delivery. That's why we're so committed to it.
When I arrived in the role in May last year, we had a very competitive market and were struggling to hold market share and prices going down. It seemed common sense that the only way we could win was to do a hell of a good job. Sorry, this is AGM sort of speech, but we decluttered the business. We just looked at everything we did every day and just put lines through stuff. We said, "Is this going to get a high-quality product on time to our customer? Yes or no? If yes, then keep doing it. If no, then don't do it." Canceled meetings, got rid of corporate stuff, just focused fair and square on what was happening in the plant, ensuring that all of those people were 100% focused on the task at hand. The shareholders here have had a rough time, no question.
We've got good people, and they wanted to help, and they wanted to know how to win. It was really straightforward as a business to say, "Look, you do this and this and produce really high-quality product, communicate well with your customers, and we will win." The business really responded. We feel confident in our ability to be really competitive in the marketplace.
This is a very competitive market. This is a very competitive market. Aside from the DIFOT that we are good at, we're getting good at, are there any other, what are the unique selling propositions that we have in order to make us better, better than our competitors?
Thank you for your question. One of the other differences between that other APL/AGP channel is that we install, whereas they don't. We have this network of branches around the country, so we will do the installation with glaziers, and we think that's a real competitive advantage for us. Viridian also do. We think, you know, we think we're better, and that is a reasonably unique selling point for us.
Broader product base.
I'm kind of reticent to sort of go deeper into that question because I don't really want our competitors to know. That is a fundamental difference between us and that other chain, that's for sure.
Just one more question. May I ask, are you going to be the Managing Director as well as a member of the board as well?
I'm going to be the Glazias. Yeah, that's what's been proposed is that I really, I think there was just a reflection that I would continue running the business but remain on the board. Yeah, if I know we've got more questions here. I think this question's been asked in a different way, but I'll just, for completeness, read it. George Bridgewater, general question to all Simon and Pramod, potentially others are sitting on both sides of this transaction, both purchases of new equity, but also promoting the sale of equity. Conflict? Why are shareholders better off with this significantly diluted rights offer compared with takeover at a premium? Are the board preferring to preserve their position and participate in the transaction rather than acting in the best interests of shareholders? Did Amari offer to full takeover? It is hard to understand why they wouldn't.
I think we've hit most of those things, but you're standing up.
No, I'll just answer it because you can't really answer it because you're conflicted. Take us back in time to when we were trying to achieve a successful equity capital recap. We actually needed Simon and Pramod's commitment to get to the AUD 15 million. That's the simple answer for that. As I said earlier, Julia and I both deliberately did not participate, even though we probably could have used our money as well in the capital raise, but we did not participate so that we were totally independent with no interests whatsoever other than acting in the best interests of the shareholders and the company. As I say, in no way, I don't see Simon or Pramod as being conflicted in any way through their investment. Again, as I say, as kind of Chief Capital Raiser and in conjunction with our advisors, Jordan, we needed the equity capital.
We've tapped Simon and Pramod to see if they would be investors as well. I don't see any conflict actually in that. You've had two independent directors. Julia's Chair of ARC and I'm the Chair of the Board. Those are the two roles that stayed independent, which I think is appropriate. Do you think there were a couple of other parts of that?
I think it was just dilutive, which we've touched on. You know, why our shareholders have been offered a significantly diluted versus you haven't touched on the takeover. Did they offer a takeover?
As I say, we approached Amari and the conversations with Amari have all been about them becoming, as the words were, cornerstone investor. That's what we've used with them. They're a cornerstone investor. No, we never entertained, never discussed, negotiated, talked about takeover offers. That wasn't their intention. Certainly wasn't our intention. No, it'd be a short answer to that.
Easy one from James Houseman. What is the date when existing shareholders have to pay for the additional shares as part of the rights issue? 16th of September. 16th of September. What does the board fully believe that Amari is committed to the New Zealand side of the business rather than the AGG, which has been far outperforming New Zealand? I think he's committed to both sides of the business categorically. I think there's confidence in both sides from best of my knowledge.
Very much so.
Can't read this one properly. How did you get the banks to write off AUD 10 million from Richard Flower? They're just kind people.
Yeah. No, the banks are always commercial, as I said before. They've also been very supportive. I'd like to think we earned their support by not springing negative surprises on them, telling them as it is, actually doing the hard work, taking the hard decisions. I do think, you know, I'd like to think we earned their support. They also wanted a recap business that is sustainable as well. There's no magic in AUD 25 million debt reduction, but that's about the right number. They came to the party and helped us out to get there.
Yeah, I mean, in my travels around the business and through customers, the number of people who have said to me, "Hey Simon, Metro was such a great business. I'm really pleased that you're going to make it a great business again." I think the banks are in that camp. They, yeah, I think that they, as Shawn said, they want us to be strong and moving forward, and they incentivize us to kick into the capital raise. I guess it's obvious, it wasn't easy to get it over the line. It wasn't, you know, just about had to, you know, bribe Aunt Sally and, you know, everybody else to try and put the money in for the underwrite. I think it was great that they incentivized us to do it rather than incentivize us to sell AGG . Good sensible stuff, should be more of it.
Stephen Mayne, again, thank you for disclosing the proxy position early to the ASX, which suggests the deal will get through based on votes cast by the big shareholders. Could you please advise how many of your thousands of shareholders voted by proxy? Was the retail turnout today even 10%? What sort of proxy solicitation camp did you run to get out the vote? We ran no solicitation campaign, and we might be able to tell you that answer.
Only 35% of the shareholders. Let me just see if I can.
It's going to be the numbers are going to be released in any case, but the actual number of votes.
It was 77 million votes that had come through in favor when the online voting changed, but I can't remember the exact number of shareholders.
Yeah, about 37%, 77 of, oh, wasn't that of 185.
Sorry, thank you. 244.
Okay, for the record, 244 shareholders voted by proxy. Not many thousands. Did you have—I'm sorry, I did cut you off. Just not too technical, please. I'm just a poor glass guy.
I'm going to start a simple question.
Yeah, sure.
The sale price is AUD 0.04. Market price is right now.
Yeah.
Let's say, because on this page number 47, the going concern basis, it shows that the lowest valuation would be AUD 0.05. As per this report, will that AUD 0.05 valuation be after we do all this capitalization, right?
Correct. Yeah, that's correct.
Let's say somebody thinks this is a good investment and you want to invest some money, you have to buy a sale. Let's say I have only one sale. I assume I think I buy, I like this company. I buy some stocks right now from the exchange and then I'll become eligible. It's like, and then I'll get new shares, I'll get a right based on AUD 0.03 per sale.
Correct.
You expect, if you take the average, you expect to be traded at around AUD 0.07 if market realizes that. Is it a right understanding?
I don't expect that. That's what Grant Samuel, I think he's saying that that's what the valuation is, the difference between the valuation and what actually the shares will trade at. I'm getting sort of slightly out of my depth at that point.
It's not a bad proxy. It's not a bad proxy. It's not a bad proxy. Yeah, their theoretical valuation is not bad. If you had to take a stab at what the share price should be or would be after the recapitalization, then that's as good a stab as any.
In that case, let's say my technical question is, if I buy one sale from the exchange, then I'll become eligible for 16 sales at AUD 0.03 per share, right?
AUD 1.6 share.
AUD 1.6 shares.
Yeah.
The question is, I have invested AUD 4 and then I would invest another AUD 3. My investment is only AUD 0.04 and AUD 0.03. AUD 0.07 is my investment, and now I have two shares.
Your investment will be AUD 0.035 or AUD 0.033 on average because you won't pay AUD 0.03 and then another AUD 0.04.
Okay, okay. AUD 0.035. If everything goes right, the AUD 0.035 would have a value of AUD 0.05. It looks fair like that. It's an opportunity. That's how it shows as per this report.
I think, again, those are just specific numbers that Grant Samuel has come up with. I think dimensionally, the message is that if the company is recapitalized, the share price should go up. I'm willing to say that personally, I think the share price should definitely go up when the company's recapitalization and we hit close to our plans. Yeah.
The only risk is that the banks will not give us forgiveness for AUD 10 million.
There's no risk to that.
That's right.
There's no risk to that.
I think one of the reasons banks are giving us that forgiveness is because if, let's say, we have a AUD 25 million debt and they are ready to compromise on AUD 10 million, that means they are hoping at least let us get the AUD 15 million back from this company. That's how the mindset of a banker would be.
Yeah.
Rather than losing everything, let us get 15%, 60% of our lending back.
Yeah.
They are giving us the AUD 10 million, right?
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, that's how simple I'm saying.
More or less.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. I'm pleased that we had it a bit easier on those questions at the end. Any last questions?
Very good.
I'm not. He's from Oxford. Just a comment if I could. I'm struggling as to people's attitude about Simon and Pramod's investment in the company. I applaud directors who have skin in the game. I think it should be incumbent on anybody who is director of a company to have a minimum investment in the company that they're representing their shareholders for. It's been made clear to us if Simon and Pramod hadn't put that money in, we wouldn't have reached the banks' capital requirement. I thank you and I applaud you for doing that. It's a big investment on a company that has really got some strong headwinds in front of it. Just changing tack a little bit, and I made the comment to Simon as I came in. I'm a property developer. I use Metro Performance Glass.
I have a building that I've recently had some issues with in terms of double glazing. It was an older building, one of the early double glazing window systems that went in, and there was dreadful condensation. I needed to fix it. I got on the phone to Metro Performance Glass, seeing I had my next shareholder in them, just to see how they performed. I haven't been paid to say this. I make it absolutely clear. The performance has been absolutely brilliant. The guy was there within 48 hours to measure up. He arrived at 9:00 A.M. when we agreed we'd meet. Three days later, I had a quote. I had correspondence from Cecilia in the office that was appropriate on a time, gave me timeframes, and I went and opened up the building for Johnny, the installer, and they did a brilliant job. I couldn't be happier.
I felt pretty, pretty pleased to see that I have had experience with Metro Glass probably five or six years ago, and this was a different Metro Glass. Just one other point that I would like to suggest is that I suspect none of the attendees here today have been and seen the facility out at Highbrook. There's not a hell of a lot of people here today. I'm sure we could squeeze into a boardroom. Why don't we have the next annual meeting at Highbrook? Thanks for the comments. I think it's a good idea. We have talked about that. We just get hosted so well here by MUFG that it would be hard to leave, but I think it would be a super thing to do. We'll take that into consideration. Thanks everybody. I'm going to hand back to you, Shawn.
Thank you, Simon, and thanks everyone and online questions. Brilliant. Good stuff. Sorry, I'm just going to shuffle. Can I have that running sheet that you had before?
Yes, you're on there.
Okay. Onto the actual resolutions. Sorry, bear with me for a second. Okay, the resolutions themselves are outlined in the notice of meeting. Each one of them is to be considered as an ordinary resolution, and as such, must be passed by a simple majority of the votes cast by shareholders entitled to vote. As I said before, the three resolutions are interconnected, so each one of them needs to be approved for the full proposed recapitalization to proceed. Voting will be conducted by way of a poll. We'll announce the results by the NZX and the ASX. If you voted ahead of the meeting by proxy, or if you've appointed me as your proxy, or the Chair as your proxy, then you don't need to do anything. Shareholders joining remotely, you can cast your vote using the electronic voting card.
I believe the online registration has been validated, or yours has to be validated, sorry. To vote, you'll need to click get voting card within the meeting platform, and you'll be asked to enter your shareholder or proxy number. You can vote by clicking for, against, or abstain. Again, refer to the online portal guide if you need any help, or call 0800 200 220. Everyone here should have received a voting card. If you haven't received a voting card, please raise your hand, and staff of MUFG will come around and give you one and collect your voting cards after the final resolution. If people want to hand them in now, that's fine too.
Proxy votes, I think Sarah has already commented, 77 million have voted for, 4.5 million have voted against, 2.8 million have voted discretionary, that being either myself, the Chair of the meeting, or I think New Zealand Shareholders Association. Those numbers are pretty constant through all three of the resolutions, as you'd expect. That's 45% of the company's shares have voted, 92%- 95% roughly in favor. I think that's probably the best way to summarize it, Sarah, if I got that right.
Yeah, that really was slightly different to each of them.
Onto the actual voting and the formality. Resolution one is for the issue of shares to Amari Metals, which is pursuant to the proposed capital recapitalization, where such issue will cause Amari to become the holder and controller of more than 20% of the voting rights, and where resolution is to be passed to approve this under rule 7D of the Takeovers Code. We again unanimously recommend as a board that you vote in favor of all three, so I won't repeat that. Are there any questions specifically relating to this resolution? Okay, I now put the vote, ordinary resolution one.
Subject to resolutions two and three being passed, the issuance of up to 501,655,800 shares to Amari Metals Australia Pty Ltd for AUD 0.03 per share pursuant to the proposed recapitalization, where such issue will cause Amari to become the holder and controller of more than 20% of the voting rights in Metro Performance Glass Limited, as described in the notice of meeting, be approved under rule 7D of the Takeovers Code. If you could again vote, if you haven't already done so, vote by selecting for, against, or abstain for resolution one on your voting card. Resolution two, to consider and if thought fit to pass the following ordinary resolution.
This is self-contained inside the wording of the ordinary resolution, so I won't give you any more background, but it's subject to ordinary resolutions one and three being passed, the issuance of up to 798,260,738 shares to subscribers under the proposed recap for AUD0.03 a share, as described in the notice of meeting, be approved for all purposes, including NZX listing rule 4.2.1. Are there any questions specifically relating to resolution two? Cool. I now put the vote, ordinary. Again, mark your cards and/or online for, against, or abstain. Ordinary resolution three, this is to do with the two directors' participation in the recap. I think the actual wording in the resolution is self-explanatory, so I'll formally read that.
Subject to ordinary resolutions one and two being passed, the issuance of up to 33,333,333 shares to Simon Bennett and 6,666,667 shares to Pramod Khatri under the proposed recap at AUD 0.03 a share, as described in the notice of meeting, be approved for all purposes, including under NZX listing rule 5.2.1. Are there any questions anyone has specifically about this? No, cool. I now put it to the vote, and if you could vote by selecting for, against, or abstain on your voting cards or online, that would be great. Toby, I think that covered the process properly. Thank you. That concludes the voting process for the voting on the three resolutions. Thank you for voting. Thanks for casting all your votes. Thank you very much for your questions. Your votes will be collected. If there are any other cards, we could pull them in.
As I think, as Sarah said, the full results of the voting will be announced on NZX and ASX this afternoon. You have a question? Fire away. You have a question or you?
I do. Shawn mentioned the law can, when is the deadline of the rights issue?
When is the?
The deadline for applying to the rights issue?
In?
The fundraising, because I wish to apply.
12th of September.
September or 12th.
Yeah.
For the retail investor.
Yeah, it's coming up soon.
Still some time.
Yeah, and 16th is settlement. The 12th is the closing date. When it exactly opens is not at the top of my fingers. 1st of September. Between the 1st of September and the 12th of September, you can apply.
About two weeks' time, I can apply from 1st of September to 16th of September.
To the 12th.
Oh, sorry, to 12th.
Yeah.
12th, 1st to 12th.
Yes, that's it.
Thank you.
Okay, I'll declare the meeting closed and genuinely want to thank you all for your participation, for asking questions, and for your support. I really appreciate it. Thanks very much.