Perpetual Limited

Welcome to Perpetual's Half Year 2026 Market Briefing. Following the formal presentation, there will be a Q&A session where participants can ask live audio questions. To ask a live audio question, press the Request to Speak button at the top of the broadcast window. The broadcast will be replaced by the audio question screen. Use the dial-in number and access pin provided to ask your question via the phone. Alternatively, for those on a home or personal network, you can ask your questions via the web by pressing Join Queue. If prompted, select Allow in the pop-up to grant access to your microphone. If you have any issues using the platform, dial-in details can also be found on the homepage under Asking Audio Questions. Press the Documents icon to see today's files. Select the document to open it. You can still listen to the meeting while you read. The audio queue is now open. I'll now hand over to Suzanne Evans, Chief Financial Officer.

Fantastic. Thanks, Michelle. Good morning, everyone, and good afternoon or evening to those who are joining us from other parts of the world. Welcome to Perpetual's half-year briefing for 2026. Before we begin today, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which we present from for today. Here in Sydney, that is the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to Australia's First Peoples and to their elders, past and present. We would also like to extend our respect and welcome to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who are listening to this briefing. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which all of you work today. Presenting our results today will be our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Bernard Riley, and myself, the Chief Financial Officer, Suzanne Evans. There'll be an opportunity, as you've heard, to ask questions at the end of the presentation. Can we please ask that we start with just two questions per person to ensure that we have time for everybody who would like to participate today? And before I hand over to Ben, we'd just like to also draw your attention to the disclaimer that's contained on page two of the presentation. Ben, over to you.

Thank you, Suzanne. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for Perpetual's first half 26 results briefing. Reflecting on the overall group performance this half, we delivered a solid result, achieving both revenue growth and underlying profit growth, as well as making good progress on our strategic objectives. As you'll see from the table below, our headline results showed total operating revenue of $697.9 million for the first half, up 2%. Underlying profit after tax of $112.7 million, up 12%. We reported statutory profit after tax of $53.9 million. The board has determined to pay an interim dividend of 59 cents per share, unfranked. and diluted EPS on UPAT with 97.1 cents per share, 9% higher than the first half of 2025. We maintain disciplined cost management, resulting in an improvement in our expense guidance for the full year. We continue to make strong progress on our simplification program To date, we have now delivered $60 million in annualised savings, and we remain on track to achieve the targeted $70 to $80 million by FY27. In asset management, earnings growth was supported by improved market conditions and cost management, partially offset by currency and net outflows, primarily in global, international and US equity strategies. Importantly, over the period, our Australian boutique performed well and Barrow Hanley's contribution improved. Corporate trusts continue to perform consistently. They're delivering strong growth across all three business segments and reinforcing its importance as a diversified earnings engine for the group. The business benefited from strong securitisation markets and client growth throughout the half. Wealth management showed resilience during the half by maintaining focus on delivering for clients as the sale has continued to progress. While we've made good progress with Bain Capital and our progressing documentation, there is no certainty that a binding agreement with Bain will be reached or that a transaction will proceed. Turning to the next slide. I want to now spend some time framing our asset management business in a broader industry environment. Quality asset managers come into their own during down markets and periods of heightened volatility. We continue to expect more flows between active managers. As you can see on the chart on the bottom right-hand side of the slide, flows between core active funds still dwarf flows from active to passive funds. The line between public and private markets is blurring, with private capital increasingly accessed through mainstream vehicles across wealth, retirement and insurance. McKinsey also noted a convergence of traditional and alternative assets. For Perpetual, this underscores a clear path to growth. High conviction, differentiated active capabilities and increasingly ETF-wrapped strategies align to new distribution channels. With that context, let me now turn to performance and flows across our boutiques. Our multi-boutique model provides earnings diversification across capabilities, client segments and importantly regions. As you can see in some of the points on this slide, we saw pockets of strong performance across a variety of our capabilities in the first half. with 54% of strategies delivering outperformance over the important three-year timeframe, reinforcing our relevance in an environment where active flows increasingly reward demonstrated performance. During the half, we saw $22 billion of gross inflows and $32 billion of gross outflows, resulting in a net $10 billion of outflows. While collectively we saw outflows in U2S global and international equity capabilities, emerging markets and Australian equity strategies saw areas of investor inflows. This was supported by a strong half of fixed income capabilities, highlighting the benefits of a diversified asset management platform. Net outflows in the half were offset by stronger equity markets and foreign exchange movements, supporting earnings growth and increased AUM over the half. We remain focused on active client retention and delivering strong investment performance, which together underpin improvements in our flow profile over time. Turning to the next slide for some more detail on our Australian asset management business. The integration of our Australian distribution capabilities has materially strengthened our local platform. We now have a large and diversified footprint across both the intermediary and retail channel, which I'll refer to as wholesale, and the institutional channel, with $71 billion of AUM across Australia. If we look more closely at the wholesale channel, we manage $32 billion of AUM. Of the over 15,000 ASIC-registered financial advisors, nearly 11,000 have holdings in perpetual group products. We also have key sales and distribution team members working closely with ASIC consultants and sub-channels, including high net worth researchers and brokers. Wholesale delivered $1.5 billion in net inflows for the half. In our institutional channel, we managed $25 billion of AUM across superannuation funds, government clients, insurers, endowments and foundations. We did see outflows for the institutional channel in the half. However, we saw an improvement on the second half of 2025 and we've secured several wins in the first half. These flows include a $250 million contribution from a super client into Australian Equities, $110 million contribution from a large institutional client into JL Hambro's emerging markets capability, and $100 million new multi-asset mandate from a large superannuation client. Important to note, we also manage $14 billion of AUM in the cash channel. Importantly, our Australian distribution is now a unified platform. with strong expertise in distributing across asset classes and boutique brands through a single coordinated team. Our team of 46 includes sales, marketing and client services, and is one of the largest local distribution teams in the industry. We're also seeing the benefits of strong product development, including the launch of contemporary investment solutions, and I'll touch on them in more detail on the next slide. A key priority for asset management is ensuring our product range is aligned to evolving distribution channels and strategies where we see sustained client appetite, particularly in fixed income. During the half, we launched the Perpetual Diversified Income Active ETF, which performed well relative to other ETF launches in the period and held over $215 million in AUM as at the 31st of December. We also successfully raised $268 million for the Perpetual Credit Income Trust, with assets now in excess of $800 million. In working with our client base globally, we were able to successfully launch Barrow Hanley's US Mid-Cap Value Fund into the UK market in June, with the fund reaching over $165 million in assets in Australian dollars, or $110 million in US dollars, by the end of December 2025. This represents a significant achievement, especially given Broadridge's global market intelligence data, which indicates that fewer than 1% of newly launched funds surpass the US $100 million of assets in AUM. Looking ahead, we have an active pipeline of strategies under development, and where appropriate, we will support them through seed investments to target attractive growth areas. Suzanne will talk further about our seed capital program shortly. We expect the continued convergence between traditional and alternative capabilities to remain a feature of the industry globally, driving a forecasted $6 to $10 trillion of capital reallocation over the next five years. To that end, our discussions with Partners Group have advanced and an early stage product design is now being introduced to the market to assess interest. We're also looking at the launching of a direct bond SMA in Australia to expand our suite of fixed income solutions for advisors and platforms. Turning to ETFs. The US active ETF market represents a significant opportunity. While active ETFs remain a relative small portion of overall AUM, they are becoming an increasingly important channel, capturing a high share of industry flows and revenues. We will continue to build on our established ETF platform here in Australia, and we're going to apply some of these learnings to the US market. We've decided to enter the US ETF market in a risk-managed basis by our third-party provider of multi-series trust structures. This structure is lower in cost and offers quicker speed to market, helping us to bring scale before we need to invest more heavily. If we now turn to the work we're doing with JR Hambroa, I've spoken previously about restoring JL Hambro to its heritage strength, and it remains a key priority for us. We've made progress on revitalising the business, and this will continue through the second half and beyond. In September last year, we announced the appointment of Bill Street as CEO. Building off the work we'd already started with J.R. Hambro, Bill has quickly commenced implementing a clear strategic direction, beginning with the simplification of J.R. Hambro's operating model to create J.R. Hambro International, an aligned platform that better positions the business for growth. The future success of J.R. Hambro is an important component of our global offering, and we look forward to updating you on its progress over time. Turning now to corporate trust. The business experience is another strong half and continues to deliver steady growth across all three of its business segments. The Australian securitisation market remains robust, supporting continued growth in debt market services. Importantly, we continue to see growth across the non-bank lenders, contributing to a more favourable mix of mandates for us. Managed fund services growth was driven by custody and our Singapore business, benefiting from both new and existing client growth. Digital and markets also delivered a 5% uplift in assets under administration compared to the second half of 2025, reflecting continued investment and expansion of our client offerings. Highlighting its strength in the market more broadly, for the 10th straight year, Corporate Trust was awarded the Kangaroo's Australian Trustee of the Year. Looking forward, the business remains focused on executing its five-year growth strategy, including investing in its core business and digital markets. Corporate Trust has proven time and again to be a highly resilient and growing business. UPBT has grown steadily at a CAGR of 11%, from around $22.4 million in the first half of 2019 to approximately $49 million in the first half of 2026. The cost-income ratio has remained broadly stable in the mid-50s range, underscoring our disciplined investment in the business as revenue has continued to grow. This slide also illustrates what is driving that growth across each of our business segments. Notably, Corporate Trust's service-led operating model is aligned both to the credit-linked and equity market growths. which provides a stable, diversified earnings base that is less exposed to equity market volatility. That diversification is particularly relevant in the context of asset management's market sensitivity, reinforcing corporate trust's role as a consistent and resilient earnings business within the group. Moving now to wealth management. In the half, the business remained focused on delivering for its clients while the sale process continued. Underlying profit before tax was lower, reflecting expense growth. However, wealth management was resilient. Funds under advice grew by 6% over the half, supported by institutional flows and strong equity markets. It was also pleasing to see the strength of this business recognised externally. Five of our advisors were recognised in the Barron's Top 150 Financial Advisor list, reinforcing our position as a trusted provider of high-quality, client-focused financial advice. And we were again recognised as a finalist in two categories of the 2025 IMAP Managed Account Awards, marking our third straight year of distinction. Wealth management is at the core of Petrel's 139-year history and has all the hallmarks of a successful business. strong funds under advice, 12.5 years of consecutive net inflows, as well as being one of Australia's largest managers of philanthropic funds with a very strong client advocacy measure, as you can see here. In relation to the sale process more specifically, I'd like to reiterate that while we have made good progress with Bain and are progressing documentation, there is no certainty that a binding agreement will be reached or that a transaction will proceed. In parallel, we're establishing a clear standalone operating perimeter for the business to support a potential sale and ensure continuity with minimal disruption for our clients and for our teams. Our wealth management business is a high-quality, profitable business with growing funds under advice, and the board and I are focused on ensuring that any transaction that Virtual may ultimately enter into is in the best interest of our shareholders. Turning to the next slide. Our simplification program remains on track to deliver our overall target of $70 to $80 million in annualized savings by June 2027. Importantly, the benefits are now flowing through inter-reported earnings alongside a simpler, more streamlined operating model. The chart on the right-hand side of the page highlights our planned program of work, which, as you can see, is well advanced. As at 31 December, we have delivered $60 million in annualised savings. Of that, $26.9 million of actual savings was reflected in the first half, 26 results. The majority of savings to date have come through workforce-related efficiencies, supported by ongoing rightsizing across the global business and the removal of duplication as we simplify structures and reinforce organisation or reduce organisational complexity. We incurred $4.4 million of additional cost savings, an additional cost to achieve these savings during the half, and they are recorded as significant items. Looking ahead, the areas of focus for the second half of FY26 remain finance systems transformation, back office simplification, and the ongoing rightsizing of functions across the group. Total costs to achieve the program are expected to remain at approximately $55 million. In summary, we are pleased with the progress we've made so far, acknowledging we still have more work to do. I'll now hand over to Suzanne to walk through the financials in more detail.