Washington H. Soul Pattinson and Company Limited

Good morning and welcome to the SoulPatt's financial results presentation for the financial year 2026, being the 12-month period ending 31 July 2026. My name is Courtney Howe. I'm responsible for corporate affairs and investor relations at SoulPatt and I'm pleased to introduce our presenters for today. Todd Barlow, MD and CEO, will address performance highlights and major transactions completed during the year. David Grubin, CFO, will cover the group financial results. before handing back to Todd to step through portfolio performance and the outlook. We will respond to questions at the end, starting with analyst questions on the line. As usual, there is the option for written questions to be submitted at any point during the webcast, and you will see a question box on the bottom of your screen.

Over to you, Todd. Thank you, Courtney, and welcome to everybody joining us today. FY26 was a significant year for SoulPats. We completed the $15 billion merger with Brickworks, the largest transaction in our 123-year history. We simplified our structure and strengthened the balance sheet. The combined group is already delivering value and outperformance for shareholders. Our portfolio is more diversified and more liquid, carrying more capacity to act than at any point before. We're also expanding the portfolio geographically with a growing number of global investments embedded across the broader portfolio. The aim to grow the portfolio and outperform the market over the long term. Increase cash generation to underpin dividend growth and deliver those returns while actively managing investment risk. The next three slides discuss each of these objectives. Starting with portfolio growth, we had a strong outperformance against the ASX benchmark. Post-tax net asset value on a per share basis grew 27.2%. This includes significant tax assets that arise from the Good Works merger. If we exclude tax and look at the pre-tax NAV, the portfolio returns 10.2%, outperforming the index by 4.2%. Over the last five years, the pre-tax portfolio has returned 11.5% per annum, 3.5% ahead of the market. There's a phenomenal track record in an environment where many fund managers have found the market very difficult. Looking at the growth from the perspective of title shareholder returns, Last year, the 16.8% growth was 10.8% above market. What matters more to us is the long run. Over 25 years, Soul Patt has returned 12.8% per annum against 8.4% for the index. Compounded, that is a total return of more than 1,900%, just about tripling the market value. Cash flows from investments grew 11.5% to $572 million. On a per share basis, NCFI has compounded at 15% per annum over five years, from $0.75 per share in FY21 to $1.51 in FY26. That cash flow reflects the health of our portfolio and importantly is what funds the dividend. Today the company announced a final dividend of $0.63 fully franked, taking total dividends for the year to $0.111, up 7.8% on the previous year. This marks our 28th consecutive year of dividend growth, and over that period we are very pleased that dividends have compounded at over 10% per annum. One comparison I want to draw out here is SoulPatt's dividend growth relative to the pre-order market. Over the past five years, our dividends per share have compounded at over 12% per annum, whereas dividends across the ASX200 have been fairly flat at around 1% growth per annum and were negative last year. Another key objective is to manage risk. In the last five years we have actively de-risked what was an equity-centric portfolio into one that is genuinely multi-asset. Today we are more diversified and less correlated than ever before. The shape of the portfolio shows how actively we manage this. Five years ago the portfolio was $5.8 billion and 90% listed equities. Today is a $13.7 billion portfolio and listed equities are 40% including all of the listed equities across listed companies and emerging companies. The balance of the portfolio sits across asset classes that behave differently through the cycle. This year we turned over $12.7 billion in total buying and selling and we hold $2.7 billion of net cash and liquid investments in the fixed income strategy. Essentially our allocations follow opportunity. We do not fill buckets with capital moving to where the risk adjusted returns are most attractive. Our aim is to exceed market returns with a portfolio that carries lower risk than the market. The clearest evidence of this is what happens in down markets. Over 25 years, when the ASX has had a negative month, SoulPass has performed 1.8% better per month on average. We protect shareholder capital when markets fall and keep pace when they rise, and this is the biggest contributor to our track record. Let me turn to the two major transactions that occurred through the year. First, the merger with Brickworks completed in September 2025. This simplified the structure, increased free play and liquidity, and grew our shareholder base by 35% to $84,000. It also transformed our tax position from a constraint into an asset with savourable coupling details. Rickworks Building Products is now the largest investment in our private company's asset class. Since taking full ownership, we have been simplifying the operations, we've repaid debt and certain legacy operating leases and worked with management on a cost out program with annualised savings that will flow through from FY27. The merger triggered pre-existing rights held by Goodman, which gave rise to the sale of our industrial property interests, which completed in June 2026 and delivered $1.9 billion of net cash proceeds. This was a very positive result for SoulPats. The portfolio was substantially developed and stabilised and priced at full market value, at a time when listed industrial property is trading at a meaningful discount to asset backing. Subsequent to the transaction, long-term bond rates have been increasing, putting further pressure on future returns. We are confident we can redeploy the proceeds from this transaction into meaningfully higher returns. We retained about $400 million of real estate exposure from Brickworks, now within real assets, and importantly, a number of good development sites with further offsites. The relationship with Goodman began in 2005. Over two decades, land that once housed brick plants and clay pits was progressively developed into prime industrial estates. The returns over that period were exceptional. It's one of the best examples I can point to of what patient capital and the right partner can compound into. Shareholders will have heard us talk about our desire to allocate more to private markets and how that was taking us offshore. This strategy has been developed Over the past three years where we have been building relationships with private market managers across private equity and credit in North America, the UK and Europe. The strategy evolved from the fact that the asset classes we like are quite niche in Australia. In private equity, we look to back high quality companies with growth capital in partnership with founders, management or owners. There's a limited number of those kinds of opportunities in Australia at scale. Another area we like is private credit, where we can invest in a structured way to protect our downside and get access to good risk-adjusted returns. There's a natural ceiling to the size of our direct book in Australia, but there's a very big pool of opportunities globally. The team has mapped more than 1,800 prospective partners and reviewed over 300 in depth to arrive at 17 commitments for FY26. We do the sourcing and diligence in-house, and the relationships are already earning us co-investment opportunities on preferential terms. FY26 was a very busy year with around $1 billion of new commitments made across 17 positions. Post year end, we have agreed to allocate another $660 million. It should be noted that these are just commitments and the funds that have actually been invested today is around $600 million. But over the coming years, our commitments will be drawn down as opportunities present themselves and Money Is Called. Each position is sourced and diligence by the same team that has responsibility for direct investments. So for example, a fund allocation to credit will sit within our credit asset class and be managed by our credit team. Return profiles will take time to build and the target returns are indicatively above 20% for private companies and above 10% in credit. We believe that offshore markets not only provide the depth of opportunity but also a good diversifier for the portfolio and an opportunity to derive foreign income that we can attach our frank and credit to. FY26 was an extremely productive year. In addition to the merger of Brickworks, we trended up to $12.7 billion which is our highest on record. Sometimes I'm asked how this level of activity reconciles with being a patient long-term investor. I don't believe the portfolio activity is inconsistent with our historical approach. The market environment is changing rapidly and we need to adapt. In addition to the portfolio adjustments we have been making, we believe we need to be agile and build the liquidity to act when the time is right. We are positioning the portfolio to be even more diverse and resilient than ever before. We are also opening up exciting new asset classes and opportunities. However, our approach to being disciplined, patient and long-term in terms of thinking beyond the short-term randomness of market volatility is consistent with the way we've always acted. Last year we sold $2.7 billion more than we bought. This was a deliberate strategy and a desire to build up liquidity and a fixed income portfolio that I'll discuss shortly. In addition to the cash we've accumulated, we also have access to attractive debt that will assist with further acquisitions. At year end, the total liquidity was over $3.8 billion. I'll hand over to David Grubin, our CFO, to take you through the group financial results. Thank you, Todd.

Good morning, everyone. It's a real pleasure today to present our 2026 results to our shareholders. They're a strong set of numbers and it is a delight to be able to do that today. As always, I'd like to remind investors that statutory profit isn't a measure that we always use to assess performance, given the number of one-off items running through the financial report this year, particularly following the Brickworks merger. So I'll do my best to demystify some of these complicated accounting issues for you all today. So our reported or statutory net profit after tax for the year was $2.191 billion, up 502% on the prior correspondence. This year we've presented our statutory NPAT in three components and we've done that given the higher level of portfolio turnover this year and our reduced reliance on associate earnings. So we think the regular and non-regular NPAT split is no longer a meaningful way to look at our financial results. So how have we done this? Firstly, we've bucketed up items into non-recurring and they total a $1.5 billion gain. Around $1.3 billion of it came from the day one accounting gain and tax cost base reset on the completion of the Brickworks merger, which we don't expect to reoccur in 2027. The balance around $200 million is made up of two parts. Firstly, a gain of $436 million from market to market, our remaining interest in Tuas and Eris, So we moved from equity accounting to fair value accounting during the year, and that was partly offset by just over $200 million worth of impairment restructuring and other non-recurring costs. The second component is a total portfolio of gains and losses, whether they be realised or unrealised. The FY26, they totaled $343 million, up $107 million on FY25. on market conditions and where we want to take the portfolio. And finally, we're left with what we call now Operating MPAT, which is the MPAT from subsidiaries, associates, plus our portfolio income, for example, dividends, interest, fees and distribution, less any of our expenses that we have to pay on the portfolio and our corporate costs. Consolidated Operating MPAT was $319 million for FY26, down $36 million on the on the prior corresponding period, largely due to a lower profit contribution from our new home investment. If I now turn to our key performance metrics that we do focus on, net cash flow from investments is the first one. It's the performance measure we believe best reflects the financial health of our portfolio. It captures income received in cash from the portfolio, including dividends, interest, fees and distributions, as well as any realized gains or losses on trading assets. NCFI for the year was $572 million, up 11.5% on FY25. That growth was given by a larger-than-average credit book which delivers strong returns and higher dividend distribution income from our real assets portfolio through the industrial property joint venture businesses and some property development activity and the cash-generated businesses in private companies. On a per share basis and reflecting the increased capital base following the Brickworks merger, NCFI grew 8.3% to $1.51 per share in FY26. Over a five-year period, NCFI per share has compounded at 15% per annum, starting from 75 cents in FY21 and finishing at $1.51 that I just mentioned in FY26. This consistency in cash flow growth is what underpins our unbroken 28-year record of dividend increases. I'll now turn to net asset value. We look at net asset value on both a pre-tax and post-tax basis. Following the Brickworks merger and the resulting step-up in market values of all of our assets in the combined group, our post-tax NAV is now higher than the pre-tax NAV. The deferred tax liability that we previously carried has now become a deferred tax asset. In my terms, it means less tax to pay when we realise those assets in future. Post-tax NAB increased 31.4% in the year to $14.5 billion. That's an extra $8.15 per share or a 27.2% increase on a per share basis. On a pre-tax basis, NAB was $13.7 billion. A return of 10.2% per year, outperforming the market by 4.2%. And that outperformance isn't a one-year story. Over the five years, we've returned 11.5% per annum, outperforming the market by 3.5% per annum. I'll now turn to tax assets. The RIP Works merger has also transformed our tax position. We now hold a net deferred tax asset of $792 million or $2.09 per share compared with a deferred tax liability of $1.4 billion in FY25. This change has arisen from the merger with Brookworks where the tax cost base of all of our assets was reset to market package. This is important for our portfolio as it means we can transact in the future without tax friction. In addition, our shareholders have the benefit of a franking credit of just over $1 billion or $2.75 per share. That balance grosses up to a potential dividend of $2.4 billion of untaxed income that's able to be distributed to shareholders fully franked. And given the increasing exposure to offshore assets in our portfolio generating foreign income, Soul Pats can continue to pay a fully franked dividend to our shareholders by drawing down on this bank for franking credits. Before I hand back to Todd, I'd like to touch briefly on how we value the portfolio, given the increasing diversity of asset classes we now hold. We apply a rigorous valuation methodology to each asset class every six months. Around 40% of the portfolio is valued at market value, principalled by listed holdings which are valued at the market prices at the end of each reporting period. A further 31% is subject to third-party valuations. These are assets involved in externally managed funds and are valued at the assessed valuations provided by the managers of those funds or based on observable market data. We subject these assets to our own analysis and of course they're subject to external audit. An example of this would be our real estate assets which undergo third-party evaluations at least annually. Assets that direct us to their value applies to a further 21% of the portfolio. These are predominantly private companies, not held in funds. They are director's valuations informed by valuations reviewed externally by independent valuation experts. And the final 8% is our private credit assets that are held at what's called amortised cost. As required by accounting standards, we apply an expected credit loss methodology. This follows a review of credit ratings for each debtor and a specific market rate risk factor and company factors are included in that calculation. This approach is also externally reviewed and subject to external audit. I hand it back now to Todd to walk us through the portfolio performance and individual asset classes.