Macquarie Group Ltd S/Adr

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Macquarie's first half 2025 results presentation. Before we start, if I could just ask everyone to turn their mobile phones either on to silent or turn them off, that would be greatly appreciated. I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and acknowledge or pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging. This morning, as is customary, you'll hear from our CEO, Shamara Wickramanayake, and our CFO, Alex Harvey, and we also have our operating group and support group heads here in the room and also on the line. At the conclusion of the briefing, there'll obviously be ample time for Q&A. With that, I will hand over to Shamara. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Sam, and good morning and welcome everyone from me as well. And as usual, we'll just start with noting the footprint of the businesses that we have across Macquarie, which cover both annuity style and market facing businesses. And in this particular half year period, We had a 53% contribution from the annuity style and 47% from the market facing, given the environment we've had in markets over the last while. But as you know, we have four operating groups that across them give us very good diversification in terms of the underlying themes they're exposed to and are also very well positioned for growth, both because they're small in the global or local sectors they operate in or and or the sectors are set for good structural growth. And those four operating groups are supported by very four strong central service groups, which cover things like legal and risk management, our financing and capital, and also our operating platform. Now, in this most recent half, the first half of the FY25 financial year, you see we delivered a result of $1.612 billion, and that was up 14% on the prior comparable period on the first half of last year, but down 23% on the second half. And it was an ROE of 9.9%, which compares to the prior comparable period of 8.7. In terms of the contribution from the operating groups, at $3.021 billion, they were up 6% on the prior comparable first half. And that was mostly driven by contributions, increased contributions from Macquarie Asset Management with the timing of performance fee realisations and the ongoing growth of the BFS business. Compared to the second half of last year, we're down 22%. And that was because in that second half, we not only typically have CGM have a stronger second half in the northern winter, but we had strong results in terms of realisations of performance fees in Macquarie Asset Management and also Macquarie Capital realisations, the timing of which can be lumpy. Now, looking at the assets under management, we finished the first half with $916.8 billion of assets under management. That's a 2% decrease from the beginning of this financial year, and that's principally driven by unfavourable foreign exchange movements and also outflows in our equity strategies and some divestments we made in private markets. That was partially offset by favourable market movements. and increased fund investments and asset valuations in the private markets business. And then looking at the geographic composition of our income, it's broadly similar to where we've been recently, which is Australia and the Americas contribute about a third of our earnings at this point. The European region, EMEA, Europe, Middle East and Africa, about a quarter of and Asia 10% and climbing. In terms of this period because we didn't have as much activity globally and the BFS business is very strong in Australia the Australian contribution is the highest at 35% and I won't dwell on the half by half trend but you can see there in terms of regional contribution. What I'll do is move on now to looking at how each of our four operating groups performed in this first half. And starting with Macquarie Asset Management, the result of $684 million for the half was up 68% on the prior comparable period, and it was 23% of our earnings contribution. In the private markets area, I should say that was principally driven by performance fee recognition in this period. compared to the prior comparable period, the increase that we had. In private markets, the assets under management are up 1%, but the equity under management, which is the main figure reflecting how we're going, is down 2%. Now, that's mostly driven, as I said, by unforgettable foreign exchange movements and also some divestments that we had partially offset by... our fundraisings in that period. We raised $7.2 billion in the half year to date. You may recall in the first quarter we raised $1.6 billion. We've raised $5.6 in the second quarter. And the raisings are really impacted by what's open at the time. So we've in the last couple of years raised our very large recent European infrastructure fund and our North American fund. This period we don't have as many big funds open for raising. We have managed to also invest over $10 billion, and we have dry powder of nearly $32 billion at the end of the period. In terms of the public investments, the assets under management there are down by 4%, and that was again driven by unfavourable foreign exchange movements and outflows, as I said, in the equity strategies, partially offset, as I also mentioned, by favourable market movements. But you can see that our assets under management are down across all of the areas of fixed income equities and multi-asset because of those factors that I just mentioned. What business is doing in this current environment is focusing much more on active ETFs, which is how people are accessing these strategies. And we've got 10 active ETFs at the moment. And certainly in Australia, we're the largest ETF provider. active manager now. So not largest, we're top three, apologies, heading to largest hopefully. But that's Macquarie Asset Management. Turning to Banking and Financial Services, and I should say we've got Benway online because he's not in the room today, and Banking and Financial Services, Greg Ward is here in the front row, $650 million contribution. That was up 2% on the prior comparable period, and it was 22% of the contribution. The books are up across the home loan portfolio, the business banking portfolio, the funds on platform and the deposits supporting that. But we have continued to suffer margin pressure from the competitive dynamics in this market. And as Alex will show you as he goes through the numbers, one of the big contributors to BFS's earnings growth in this period was the operational efficiencies we're getting from the long-term digitisation program it's been running. Then turning to commodities and global markets, and again, Simon Wright, the group head, is here in the front row, $1.316 billion was the result. That was down 5% on the prior comparable period, and it contributed still the largest contribution to Macquarie, which is 43% of our income. And the results in financial markets and asset finance were strong. Another record result from financial markets with the customer numbers growing and strong client activity across foreign exchange, interest rates, credit, also in equities trading, a good result. And in asset finance, the book there you can see is up 2% on equities. the first half over the prior comparable period. In commodities, we had lower client activity, particularly in the second quarter, where we are finding there's huge capacity on the supply side and the demand side was not as active, so clients were less active over this period, particularly in global gas and power and emissions and in global oil. That was offset by some better activity and resources, especially metal. The inventory management and trading income was up, but offset again by the timing of recognition of income, but a more subdued period in the second quarter for CGM. And then Macquarie Capital, where Michael Silverton is also online virtually for this, the result was $371 million. That was down 14% on the first half of last year, and I'll explain a little bit the drivers in a moment, but that contributed 12% Macquarie capital of our income. We're continuing to deploy balance sheet there, and our credit book has grown to $22.5 billion, so a big period of investing, $5 billion of investing. That drags on earnings in the early period because of funding costs, but also the provisioning we do for expected credit losses. So that was one of the contributors to the result being down on the prior comparable period. Also, we didn't have the same sort of reversal of impairments that we had in that first half of last year. The activity in terms of the fee levels are up slightly, but we didn't enjoy what you will have seen in other markets where the investment grade debt capital markets have been particularly strong and it's not an area that we operate in. Also we have more a private sponsor client base versus corporates and the corporates have so far been more active but we are starting to see pick up now both in private sponsor M&A activity but also activity in the below investment grade debt markets. So turning then to our funding capital and balance sheet, our funded balance sheet remains strong as you can see our term funding comfortably exceeds our term assets in this period The team in our FMG team, Alex's team, raised $23.6 billion. And we also have our deposits at a record at $158.3 billion, up 7%. Our capital position also, we think, remains strong at $9.8 billion surplus. That's down from the $10.7 billion we had at the beginning of the financial year, and that's because our earnings and also our hybrid issuance were offset by the dividend payment and our on-market buyback. as well as movement, as you can see, the Foreign Currency Translation Reserve. We were talking about the FX impacts. And we invested $0.4 billion into our businesses. And you can see on the right-hand half of these bar charts where that went. The biggest absorption was, as I mentioned, in Macquarie Capital. where we've had growth in our private credit and our equity books, and also then in BFS, where we have ongoing growth in our home loans and our business banking books, and in CGM, where we had increased credit risk driven by fixed income derivatives and financing. Our regulatory ratios are also comfortably across our APRA BAL 3 minimums. And the last thing I wanted to mention is just in relation to the dividend. The board has declared a dividend for the first half of $2.60, which is 35% franked, and that's a 61% payout ratio. And I was going to hand over now to Alex to take you, as usual, in more detail through the numbers, but I also wanted to mention that we do also have in the front row here Andrew Cassidy, our Chief Risk Officer, Nicole Sabara, our Chief Operating Officer, and Evie Bruce, our Head of Legal and Governance, and also Stuart Green, CEO of Macquarie Bank Limited, is here in case you have questions. And maybe Glen Stephens, our chairman, may want to take the odd question as well. So they're all here with us. And with that, I'll hand over to Alex.

Thanks, Shamara. Good morning, everyone. As Shamara said, I'll now take you through a little more of the detail of the financial results for the half. So starting with the income statement, you can see the bottom line, just over $1.6 billion in terms of net profit contribution for the half, up 14% from where we were for the first half of last year. If you look at the components, their net operating income, about $8.2 billion, up 4% from this time last year. And you can see some of the drivers there, obviously fee and commission income up. We also had a strong period in terms of investment income coming through and other income coming through the P&L. If you sort of break that down a little bit, and those three areas were offset by net interest and trading income, which was slightly down, and a more normalised period of net credit charges through the P&L for the first half. So if you break down those income lines a little bit, from a net interest and trading income, what we're really seeing is some margin pressure, particularly through our Australian BFS business, and I'll come to that in a second. and also lower volatility in the CGM business affecting the trading income. Fee and commission income, we're seeing good momentum there, particularly in the asset management business, but good momentum across fee and commission income more generally. And as I said, investment and other income up on where they were this time last year. Obviously, by their nature, a little more lumpy in terms of the component parts, but we're seeing good realisations and revaluations coming through that activity in the first half. And then from an operating expenses viewpoint, you can see operating expenses basically in line with where they were for the first half of last year. And I think this reflects a couple of things. We continue to invest in the foundational components, things like regulation and compliance spend, obviously continuing to invest there. digitisation and data and technology. And I'll talk a little bit about that in a moment. From an employment expenses perspective, you can see basically broadly in line. And there's a couple of things going on there. Obviously, the underlying performance of the business is up. So profit share and share-based payments expense are up over the period. And they're broadly offset by reduction in underlying employment expenses, where we're seeing a reduction in the average headcount across the group. So I think there's been good cost control over the half. From a tax viewpoint, $686 million in terms of tax expense, an effective tax rate of 29.9%, which is pretty consistent with where we were for the first half of 24 and really reflects the geographic composition of income through the first half. If you turn now to the first of the operating groups, starting with the asset management business, a strong half, obviously up 68% from where we were this time last year. And you can see the key driver there. The performance fees were up $167 million over the half. And the key drivers there were MAIF 2, MAIF 4, which we've seen before, and obviously MIP 3 continuing through the half. And then from a base fee perspective, the net base fees were up $29 million. There's probably two stories there. On the private market side, private market base fees were up 7% or $49 million. That reflects a period of strong investment, both last year and continuing into the first half. So it was increasing the base fees from the private market side. On the public investment side, obviously you draw down in those base fees from public investments, largely reflecting the fact that we've had outflows across particularly our... Eric, his portfolio. So the mix between equity and fixed income continues to shift, notwithstanding the fact that we saw a recovery in markets or some recovery in the markets in the public investments business. Green investments up $37 million, so we've continued to transfer those assets from the balance sheet into making those assets available to fund investors. That process is largely complete now, but we've still had some profit through the half. And as we've talked about before, net expenditure on green platforms broadly in line with where we were for the first half of last year. In terms of the underlying drivers, you can see assets under management down 2%, as Shamara mentioned. Largely, that's a reflection of unfavourable foreign exchange movements. But if you break it down a little bit, on the private market side, up $2.7 billion. You can see a good strong period of investing there. So we invested just under $11 billion, $14 billion in terms of... in terms of assets, so a good period of investing. We obviously saw some realisations come through over the period. And the other thing we see coming through the assets under management is the valuation changes, and that valuation change is largely reflective of the digital assets that are part of the asset management business in Macquarie Asset Management. On the public investment side, consistent with what I guess I was just talking about, you can see market movements up nearly $20 billion or $19 billion on the market movement side. So we're seeing recoveries in equity markets and in fixed income. More than offset, I guess, by outflows, both in particularly in the equity portfolios that have continued over the course of the half. Our turnings of banking and financial services are really, I think, a solid result this year, this half up 2% on the first half of last year. And if you break down the component parts there, you can see the personal banking down $29 million, and that's really... We've had growth in the average loan volumes up 12% in terms of average draw and balances on the mortgage book. We have had some margin compression. That margin compression really is what we talked about over the course of the last little while. We saw significant competition in the mortgage market through the early part of last year at a time where there was significant retention, discounting and obviously the cashbacks that we've talked about before. So that was flowing through into our margin into this half. You can see business banking basically broadly in line with where we were for the first half of last year. So volume growth's up 17%. We are seeing some margin compression there. And again, as we've talked about before, we expected quite a bit of competition in that market. Certainly in the last quarter, there's been a big step up in competition, and you can see that coming through the growth between the June quarter and the September quarter. And really pleasingly, as Shamara mentioned, expenses down $65 million for the first half. And I think as everyone's aware, we've invested heavily in the platform in BFS, in the data capabilities, in the digitisation capabilities, and in focusing on operational efficiency. It was really pleasing through the course of the half to see the benefit of some of that work coming through. In terms of the underlying drivers, all moving in the right direction across both the assets and the deposit side there, supporting the growth of the business going forward. In terms of our first market-facing businesses, the commodities and global markets business, so you can see the net profit for the group at $1.316 billion, down 5% from where we were this time last year. I think actually this result really reflects, as the tagline said, the continued strong underlying client business and obviously the business we think is very well positioned for upside. But what we did see through this half may be focusing initially on commodities. So you can see the risk management income down 307 million. That's a 26% reduction from where we were the first half of last year. And there's a couple of key drivers there, certainly on the energy side, so gas, power and emissions. a much weaker environment for both client activity and for trading associated with that in the first half. Particularly in Europe, where markets have normalised quite a bit since the invasion of Russia, Ukraine and the instability in energy markets there. But also in terms of North America, in terms of the supply dynamics that Shamara talked about. So 307 million reduction in risk management income there. from the energy component. We did see a pick up, which I think is reflective of the diversity point I was talking about before. We did see a pick up in the metals activity, both base and precious metals activity. So I guess that's reflecting the diversity of the client franchise that we've talked about previously. Inventory management and trading up $179 million. People will recall, I'm sure, a fairly weak first half of 24, so we're all coming back from a weak first half, but a good period of trading given the market conditions, partly offset by timing of income recognition associated with transport and storage contracts that came through during the half. Financial markets up $40 million, about 5%, and I think a really good story that we've emphasised over the last few years, that growth of the underlying client franchises in financial markets continues, and it's continued, obviously, into this half. Not surprisingly, we've seen more volatility in FX, we've seen more volatility in interest rates, and we've seen some opportunity from a financing viewpoint. So that's all coming through that financial markets line. And then from an operating expenses viewpoint, a little bit up in operating expenses in CGM, mostly a function of a brokerage and commission associated with the equities business that Shamara talked about, together with the continued investment we're making to support the platform and its activities around the world. A slide that I think everyone's hopefully very familiar with, on the left hand side you can see the components of operating income in CGM and obviously the various shades of grey, grey, green at least, the underlying client business and you can see the underlying client business broadly in line from where it was the second half of 24 down on where we were for the first half of 24 but still the predominance obviously of income coming through CGM and on the top right hand side you can see the continued growth in client numbers both in financial markets and in our commodities business, which is really underpinning the franchise that Simon and the team are creating around the world. From a regulatory capital viewpoint, pretty flat. And no doubt people will pull apart the component parts. You can see credit capital up slightly. That reflects the activity that's going on in the financial markets business in particular. And you can see market risk capital down a little bit, I guess, consistent with the trading environment that we're seeing coming through the group. And finally, Macquarie Capital. So Macquarie Capital's first half result was $371 million worth of profit, down 14% from the first half of last year. There's a few components that you can see across this slide. So if I focus on the net income on the private credit portfolio to start with. So in terms of average drawn balances, the private credit portfolio is up $2.7 billion from where we were in the first half of FY24. So we're getting more net interest income from that activity. But as Shamara mentioned, we had a good period of origination there. In fact, we originated about $5 billion worth of private credit through the first half, which by comparison was in the first half of last year was 1.5. So a good period of actually finding opportunities to deploy into the private credit space. But that's creating additional origination ECL that's coming through the P&L. And the other thing that's going on from an ECL viewpoint in the private credit portfolio is we've really got through that process of some reversals that were coming out of the COVID period. So we had some reversals last year that obviously didn't repeat into the first half of this year. private credit contribution down $59 million, despite the fact that the book's actually growing. On the other investment-related income, as people recall from the full year result, we had quite an elevated equity balance sheet associated with Macquarie Capital's activities around the world. That's creating additional funding costs coming through the P&L, despite the fact that we had quite a good period in terms of equity activity, both in terms of realisation and revaluation through that business. And on the fee and commission income, up about 5% across the group, mainly driven by our equities business. We've seen, consistent with the underlying performance of equity markets, we've seen an improvement in our brokerage activity in our equities business, and we've also seen a pick-up in the M&A business around the world, a small pick-up in the M&A business around the world coming through the P&L. In terms of the underlying drivers, again, a slide that people are familiar with. Capital alongside Macquarie Capital's clients expanded by 600 million during the half. A lot of focus on technology and on digital infrastructure where the team have a long track record of successfully deploying capital there and we saw some good opportunities through the half. On the private credit side, again, it's drawing additional capital based on the origination that I talked about before. In terms of the sectors, very well diversified in largely defensive sectors in a range of markets down the world, predominantly Europe and the US and a little bit of exposure down here. Now turning to some of the other aspects of financial management across the group, the cost of regulatory compliance and technology spend, a chart that we've put up for the last little while. Obviously you can see, as we talked about at the full year result, what we're expecting is a stabilisation of regulatory compliance spend. You can see that coming through the first half. We're down about, I guess we're down about 5% on the first half of last year. both in projects and in business as usual. That reflects the fact that some of the projects we had underway have come to a conclusion, and we are seeing some operational efficiencies coming through our BAU, or Businesses Unit, or Regulatory Compliance spend, which is good, so the teams are getting better at addressing the needs. We do, however, continue to invest heavily in this area and would expect to continue to do so going forward. given the obligations and the opportunities that are in front of the group. From a technology spend, broadly in line with where we were in technology spend is about 20% of the overall cost base of the group. So we continue to invest heavily in technology to support the growth of the business and to support obligations that the group have around the world in areas like data and digitalisation, unified technology architecture and so forth. In terms of the balance sheet, it remains solid and conservative. We raised $24 billion through the first half. It was a very strong period, as people know, for investment-grade fundraising over the first half, and we took advantage of that. We were able to do our inaugural green bond, raising $1 billion, so we're pleased with the support we've got from investors in that area as well. The funding base remains very diversified and a long-dated weighted average maturity of 4.6 years and we continue to diversify the funding base in terms of the investors we're talking to as well as the currency available to the group. The deposit base continues to grow 7%. Obviously, the deposit base is really instrumental to the growth that Greg and the team are delivering in BFS. We're basically funding that growth through the deposits. And we continue to diversify that deposit base. I think we continue to offer attractive digital products, and we're seeing that in terms of the opportunity to grow that over the course of the half. And you'll notice from the funded balance sheet, nearly half of the funded balance sheet now comes from deposits. The loan and lease portfolio up at $192 billion, I guess up about 5%. And the main growth there obviously is home loans at the top of the page. Business loans have grown a little bit and Macquarie Capital at the bottom of the stack there in terms of the private credit activity. And the equity investments, we were at 13.2 at the full year result. And I think people, we were talking at that time about that was quite a high level of equity investments. We expected that to come down over the course of the half. And, of course, it has the principal drivers there. You can see that second line. So we had some assets, the green assets that we were transferring into the Macquarie Green Energy and Climate Opportunities Fund. Those transfers have occurred over the half, so that's bringing down the carrying value of that second line. We've seen some good opportunities on transport and industrial infrastructure, mainly in Macquarie Capital and the telco IT media and entertainment lines. And at the bottom of the page there, the second to last line, the real estate obviously has come down from $1.2 to $600 million as we've finished the building next door and completed the sale of 39 Martin Place. For a regulatory viewpoint, lots going on, as usual. I mean, obviously, from an APRA viewpoint, very focused on liquidity and interest rate risk, and we're participating in those discussions, as you'd expect. APRA have also released a paper in relation to hybrids, and we'll be responding to that in due course. From a bank CT1 perspective, strong ratio, 12.8% at the balance state. Liquidity ratios remain very strong, both in terms of the unencumbered liquid asset portfolio together with the NBL LCR position. And finally, in relation to capital management, As people recall, we announced a buyback this time last year of up to $2 billion. As at the end of October, we bought back just over $1 billion. Out of that $2 billion, an average price of $189.80. The board has resolved to extend that buyback for another 12 months. That obviously gives us the opportunity to continue to buy back stock but also balance the capital needs across the group. The dividend reinvestment plan will support the interim dividend. It'll be done at a 0% discount, and we'll buy shares on market to support any participation in that DRP. And we're obviously very pleased to be able to get our MCN7, our group hybrid, away during the period, raising $1.5 billion. And so we really appreciate the support from everyone on that raise. And with that, I'll hand back to Shamara. Thanks very much. Great.

Thanks very much, Alex. And I'll take you through the outlook as usual, starting with the short-term, the factors impacting the short-term outlook. And we do this by operating group. So for Macquarie Asset Management, we expect the base fees to be broadly in line. In relation to the net other operating income, subject to market conditions, we're expecting this to be significantly up, as we've said, and that's mainly due to higher operating investment-related income from our green investments. But while we have those green platforms on the balance sheet, we do expect the net expenditure in relation to them to remain broadly in line. For banking and financial services, we expect to see ongoing growth in our loan portfolios, our deposits, our platform volumes. but that will continue to be impacted by market dynamics that will drive margin pressures. And we will also continue our investment in digitisation and automation, which should support ongoing scalable growth. And we will monitor provisioning, as we always have. For Macquarie Capital, subject to market conditions, we expect transaction activity, as we've said, to be significantly up on what has been not just a challenging year, but a challenging period. in global markets. For investment-related income, we expect this to be broadly in line, supported by the growth of the private credit portfolio, which, as we mentioned, has grown pretty strongly in the first half, and asset realisations. And we expect to continue our balance sheet investment across debt and equity here, principally the recycling of the balance sheet in our credit strategy and our four equity strategies. And then for commodities and global markets, again, this is subject to market conditions, but for the reasons Alex and I have discussed, we expect commodities income to be down, but that is, of course, subject to volatility that may create opportunities as ever. And financial markets and asset finance contributions, we expect continued contribution from both of those businesses. And our compensation ratio and our effective tax rate, we also expect to be broadly in line with historical levels. Now, that short-term outlook, as we always say, is subject to a range of factors that can impact external factors and internal factors. market conditions, global economic conditions, inflation, interest rates, volatility events, geopolitical events, also the completion of period end reviews and the completion of transactions, and the geographic composition of income that is impacted by things like FX as well, and potential tax and regulatory changes. And because of that, we continue to maintain our cautious stance and our conservative approach to capital funding liquidity that positions us well through all cycles. And I'll just finish by just noting over the medium term, we think we remain well positioned to deliver superior performance. And that is because of the mix of businesses we have, as I mentioned at the beginning, that give us very good diversification but also very well structurally positioned for growth, given tailwinds and their position in their markets. And that's our Australian BFS, Customer Experience Focused Digital Bank, our Macquarie Asset Management, Global Private Markets and Public Investments business, our Global Commodities, Financial Markets and Asset Finance business and Global Macquarie Capital, Specialist Advice, Capital Solutions and Investment Business. And they are growing in our usual patient-adjacent, you know, from deep expertise-led expansion with ongoing investment in our operating platform and a number of programs we're driving there, our strong and conservative balance sheet, funding and capital and liquidity, our proven risk management framework and culture and our overall culture of investment. empowering all our teams in their local communities to go and look for needs where we have expertise and respond to that with solutions. So with that, I will hand back to Sam to take your questions. Thank you.

Great. Thanks, Shamara. We'll start with questions in the room and then we'll go to the line. Ed, I'll start with you. Ed Henning, just in the front row, second front row here.

Thanks very much. Think. Thank you. Ed Henning from . A couple of questions from me. Can you just touch a little bit more on CGM? You talked about the supply side issue that you're seeing at the moment. In the second half, it's normally a stronger result for the northern hemisphere winter. Can you just talk about what you've got in your guidance for the second half around the increase coming through as a first question? And then the second question, as you look into 26, can you just touch on the impact of potentially selling the two large green assets in the man business, how much that expense base is, and then the timing of when that rolls off, please?

Yeah, and I'll let a few of the group heads contribute as well because Ben's online and Simon's here. But basically on CGM, I'll just give a brief comment, Simon, and let you comment, is that we are seeing through this most recent second quarter that there is strong supply, particularly in energy markets, but across the board in North America and Europe, and we haven't had demand destruction issues happening like extreme weather events, etc., So it's been a reasonably benign summer and storage levels are very high. And if I take Germany as an example, they've been able to reduce their energy demand by 20% since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Unfortunately, things like industry relocating to China, et cetera. But it's been meaningful, the reduction or the management of demand, and then also the storage and supply that people are sitting with, but I'll let Simon elaborate in a moment. And then in terms of the green assets, as you know, we had quite a large portfolio that we brought across over to Macquarie Asset Management. Some of the new stuff we bought was held for the funds and it's going into the funds as they raise. But the old assets, as we've mentioned, we're looking to exit to third parties because we don't want questions on the transfer price. The portfolios that we have being realised now is this year a green solar portfolio called CERO, which will be realised either this financial year or early next year is probably the first one off the Cap off the rank and then we have an offshore wind portfolio called choreo Which will probably be realized next financially or early the one after the expender chain relation to those portfolios We said will be broadly nine It's several hundred million dollars a year that we're incurring in opex and debix And it varies as the assets go through their cycle. So at the moment, they're principally in development phase and I think possibly middle of next year as we get into construction on some of the assets, the expenditure could pick up. But I would say we're super disciplined in terms of which projects we proceed on, what we invest based on whether we're creating value that we think we'll get return for. So whilst it might affect lumpiness of timing of income and expenditure, The team are very experienced in investing in these asset classes and very disciplined about it. This year's expenditure is broadly in line with last year's. So I might, Simon, if you don't mind, let you just speak a little bit because others will probably be interested in this as well and what's going on in financial markets is obviously going very strongly and clients growing, but in commodities.

Yeah, sure. Thanks. I mean, your description of the macro environment is accurate. When we're looking at the commodities business, and in fact, the whole of CGM, it is still a client-led business. And so bifurcating the two issues, the client-led business continues to build and grow. However, when it's less volatile, when prices are lower, opportunities are less and margins are lower. But despite that, we've seen continued growth in client numbers, which is really pleasing, which gives us that optionality as those conditions change. With regards to the trading environment and volatility, absolutely. Market conditions have been much more muted, largely a result of those supply issues, but also geopolitical tensions actually reducing, despite the issues we've seen in the Middle East, the supply factor in oil, particularly around the Saudis, has actually overrun and dominated that. So we've seen the oil spectrum actually be remarkably muted through this period. So whilst we've actually had good results trading the volatility we've seen in the ranges and the opportunities that have been presented, we are seasonally dependent. Should things change, we still have all that optionality in place. We have all the access to transport, to storage and to transmission. So should things denormalise or destabilise, that optionality remains. But in the meantime, the platform is producing well in terms of the client income. And in fact, the trading areas are doing well given current market conditions.

Yeah, that's all good comment. And Ben, did you have anything you wanted to add on the green assets? Is he on there? Maybe. It's been on. Okay, we'll let Ben comment later.

Sorry, can I just follow up just on the first one on CGM, just what you've got priced, because obviously the second half is normally stronger, what you've got priced in for elevated volatility coming through, or are you assuming the current conditions hold going forward and then you get that little bit of seasonality? I just want to understand where you're going.

Probably the latter is what we're assuming, given what we're seeing in each of the commodity markets at the moment.

Yeah, we're budgeting on normal run rate at the moment, but we'll see how the window plays out. Run rate of the second quarter.

Thank you. Andrew, this one. Thank you. Andrew Triggs from JP Morgan. First question just around data center realizations. Please, firstly, just confirm that given May 2 paid performance fee that it was a partial realization of the air trunk sale, but also looking further ahead to other assets, big ones like aligned data centers in the U.S., what's the timeline for realization there? And also for smaller assets like Virtus in Europe and Netrality in the U.S., what's the plan or the timeframe we could consider there?

Yeah, so AirTrunk was realised in this period, but we have seven assets in the fund it's in, in May 2, and it's a whole of fund performance fee. So we basically recognise the performance fees under the accounting standard when there's a... highly improbable risk of reversal but we actually have to earn the target IRR for the whole of the seven assets before we get a performance fee and the air trunk number has made us confident enough to recognize some level of performance fee across the whole of the fund but it'll really be as that fund realizes it was a 2018 fund so it technically runs till 2028 and could extend to 2030 So as we go through, you know, there are other assets in the fund as we realize and we'll value and we may recognize fees over the life of that fund from air trunk and other assets. In relation to the other data centers, yes, you're right. We've got Align. We have OData in Latin America. We have Neutrality. We have Virtus. We've got Bohao in China. So we've got quite a portfolio of data centers. It's now those communications assets, predominant data centers are about nearly 30% of the portfolio in infrastructure. We keep evolving to where we see the opportunities and over the last, I don't know, decade or so, we've been investing a lot more in communications infrastructure. fiber optic networks, towers, data centers, but they will get realized over time. With AirTrunk, it was unusual that we realized an asset so quickly, only a few years into the fund life. It's been six years since the fund started and about four years since that investment. But we thought we had driven as much growth as our fund had the capacity to support, so we exited that asset quite early. The others we will realize over time. We may partially realize them. We may bring others in. because these are very capital-intensive assets as well. So sometimes we may bring partners in, as we have done on some of them. Sometimes we may realize part. But I think the data centers should hopefully contribute to performance fees in Macquarie asset management for the coming years.

And specifically for Aligned, is it an IPO or trade sale route that's most likely?

Aligned is not being exited at the moment. We're happy to keep owning Aligned for a while. The fund it's in has a decent period to run and we're able to keep funding the growth in that asset, including bringing partners in.

And the second question is just around the MATCAP realisation pipeline with the investment income outlook downgraded for the full year. That's maybe a little bit of odds with what we're seeing around the world in terms of the big pickup in capital markets activity, started with corporate to corporate, but there are some green shoots, I guess, with respect to financial sponsor activities. Maybe just some colour around what drove that change to the outlook for the full year.

Thanks, Andrew. We're a bit, I mean, obviously it's a, yeah, syncretic portfolio. So, you know, the trends are kind of helpful, but it depends on where the assets are up to. And so I think the team, you know, just thinking about the timetable to get transactions done and also, you know, there's a couple of transactions that, you know, we think, you know, in conversations with the team, it's pretty clear that they feel like They've just done some bolt-on acquisitions. They need a bit more time to see some of the synergies coming through to create the value that we think we're going to extract from the portfolio. So having looked at the overall portfolio, notwithstanding the fact that I think conditions are, as you say, feeling like they're improving, notwithstanding that, there was a view that we should bring down that investment income a little bit for the course of the next 12 months, but nothing concerning, so mostly just a timing issue.

And it's hard from the outside to track the flows in and out of that portfolio. And it's the embedded gains in some of those historical acquisitions. Is there any reason to suggest that we won't get a protracted period of lower than normal realized equity IRRs and that will, IRRs across the portfolio for a protracted period of time, even though there's a pickup in global activity?

I think there's a couple of things. So if you look at the long-term performance, And from an investment viewpoint, as you know, we set this out in that US operational briefing. So the team's delivered about a 23% IRR over a long period of time. So we feel good about the track record that the team has delivered and in particular the areas of focus that I talked about before, technology, government services, business services. digital infrastructure, they've been a feature of the activity for a long period of time. So I think we feel good about the outlook into the medium term. As I said at the full year result, one of the things that we've done over the course of the last 12, 18 months is, I guess, restocked the equity book following a period of significant realisation in 22. So if you went back to 22, We had a very strong period of realisation for Macquarie Capital and indeed for the green investing. Obviously that happened and the team's been restocking. So from a sort of stage of maturity viewpoint, it's probably a slightly more immature portfolio than you would ordinarily see. And during the half, you can see the drawdown in that $60 million I referred to on the on the chart is effectively you've spent the money and you're building the assets and you've got the funding costs associated with it. So as to exactly when those assets realise, Andrew, I think it's obviously not easy to tell because, you know, we think the portfolio is well positioned and, you know, that might provide opportunity. But generally speaking, I would have said the portfolio is slightly younger than perhaps it was a few years ago, reflecting the fact that the team's, I think, really... sort of aligned with market conditions and the opportunity that presented itself a few years ago. We've now restocked into the areas that we think will perform into the medium term.

Yeah, it's fine. I won't add to that, but I think you've covered it.

And then I'll come back to you, John.

Thank you, John from Barranjo. Shamara, just a quick point of clarification. I think you mentioned CERO you hope to get away either this year or early next year. To hit your numbers that you've provided for FY25, do you need that asset to be sold this year?

We've got some realisations that we've planned for this year and we've got a range of things that we could realise this year. But, yeah, the CERO one is one of them. We have some other options as well, but CERO is one of the ones that we're looking towards.

Even if it slips to next year, you're still comfortable with the guidance you've provided?

We should be. We'll have to see where the other things turn out, but at this stage we think we should be comfortable to have realisations in those green assets to deliver the guidance that we're giving. We certainly, with the assets, are very focused on getting the best return for the investment, so we don't want to rush if the market's more subdued and exit an asset at a lower value than we know we can get. depending on timing. But at this stage, we're comfortable that we can realise those green assets that we've got in the forecast within this financial year.

Great. Now, a question also on commodities and global markets. Obviously, you saw the profit contribution go from, what was it, 1.2 to 6 over a number of years. It's come back to somewhere in the low threes this year. You talked a bit about more supplies coming through, so, you know, prices aren't as volatile this year. We also, when we look around and read various articles, it looks like there's more players coming into the market as well, including one of your former employees, more capital coming in. Is that also going to restrict the ability to generate those great periods of super normal profit and we're more likely to see much more subdued earnings around this level for the next coming year, couple of years?

I'll have a go and then let you speak, Simon. But basically, as you say, we've gradually gone from 1.2, 1.7, 2.6, then went up to 3.9. Now, that was a year where we did have extreme volatility and then six in the year where we had crazy volatility. After that, it came back to 3.2, which is more our trend line. But we still had decent activity levels last financial year. This year we're finding it particularly low, the activity levels. And as Simon said, the franchise continues to grow. Yes, there are competitors coming in, but we're growing into new areas where we are new as well. So, for example, North American Gas and Power has been a big contributor for two decades. The EMEA Gas and Power really only over the last five years has started to become material with moved into Asia in that sector, other commodities, agricultural ones, resources we're growing into. So there are many, many markets for us to grow into while others may come into some of them. But Simon, what would you...

Yeah, thanks for that. That's all true again. Yep, there's been more players join more risk capital deployed. Interestingly, it's all happening at a time of subdued volatility. And so what not reflecting too hard on the interim results we're seeing, but those new players are suffering at the hands of muted volatility. So whilst we don't think will be an exit of a lot of that capital there will be the rush of new capital will will be more muted going forward um and obviously for these new people they play in two spaces in the in the spectrum many financial and physical most of these new players are in the financial part of it for us we play both sides which gives us the additional optionality um so we are In terms of the platform, we continue to benefit from that increased optionality, so it should volatility return. We've got a better chance to play in that market. But to Shamara's point, where we've had a very strong franchise in North America and a growing one in Europe, Asia continues to be an opportunity for us. As those markets deregulate and evolve, we are deploying strategies and people and capital to those markets, which we're starting to see real green shoots. So as you'll see more competition, perhaps more muted opportunity in the developed markets, we'll offset that with our growth through other markets.

Final question, just exploring that. So if you say this is a new benchmark of a, let's call it a more normal operating environment, if you add in Asia and the other potential new markets you're going into, how large would they be relative to the, say, three and a bit that you expect to make here? So get a feel for how big the opportunities are.

Yeah, we think we can, as a franchise as a whole, CGM, and I include the financial markets part in that, We do still think we're a growth opportunity. We see lots of markets we're going into and product evolution. We've constantly battled with developing markets, increased competition and those things we've been in. So we are constantly looking for those new markets. But again, it'll be subject to what the volatility and what marked the speed of deregulation, the speed of our opportunity evolving. So I wouldn't want to say exactly what the offset will be in terms of timing, but we are confident we will continue to grow from the baseline. If we look at where we were pre-22, 23 as a baseline business, if we actually now benchmark that volatility we have now, which is more like a 2021 type year, we are doing better in terms of a baseline business, basically because of client growth. And so we continue to see that evolve.

We'll go to John. Yep. Just in the second row here. Thanks.

Thanks, Sam. Shamara, Alex, my question is quite simple. It's just around your ECL provision that you're carrying. Obviously, that's been a big driver, I guess, of your results over the last 12 months. Just understand the size of the write-off that you took within the actual ECL allowance that you saw. It was quite a big jump from what you've seen over the last two halves. Maybe you could just give a little bit of detail behind that. That's my first one.

Yeah. So we think, thanks, Sean, for the question. We've obviously seen a bit of a normalisation. So coming out of COVID, we'd obviously built provisions in COVID in anticipation of slowing down. We're then releasing those provisions as conditions sort of stabilised over the last two halves. One of the things that occurred this half, and you'll see there's been a pick-up in the overlay, which is the point you're making. Obviously, the way the ECL works, it's a modelled outcome. And so there's a range of inputs that go into that modelled outcome. One of the inputs that is relevant for our ECL, and I'm sure for others, is share prices and what share prices indicate for rates of recovery, so loss given default on positions. So, with the share prices rallying in the way they have, We took the opportunity to add an overlay associated with that to say, well, you know, obviously it would be great if share prices continued to go, but we shouldn't necessarily imply that those high share prices mean the rates of recovery are as high as they're anticipated based on that. And so we took an additional overlay, which is really driving the step up in ECL provisioning over the half. And it's just in terms of quantum, think of it just under $100 million, something like that, across the group.

And just on the size of the write-off, that increased to the extent that it did. So historically, the last two halves have been about $15 million. I think it got up to $139 now. Is that just a portfolio clean-up?

It's mostly the absence of the right backs. So we're not seeing any pick-up in default. It's not like, you know, you've got Stage 3 default going on. But obviously, as we came out of that period of COVID, you know, we had some write-backs that came through the P&L last year. And when you think about that sort of write-off, as you describe it, it's really the Stage 3. So you're netting off the current write-offs against what you've written back. Yeah.

And just as a second question on CGM, particularly in the global markets piece, right, the equities line that you show there, I somehow thought that cash equity sat within mat caps.

There's different equities business. So cash equities does sit in mat caps. I think of that as the breaking business. That's in Macquarie Capital. The equities business in CGM is in equities trading, equities trading and derivative business. So the warrant business sits in there, the index art business, the prime broking business sits in CGM. And so we saw a pick-up over the course of the last half, mostly related to equities trading opportunities that the team saw. OK.

Thank you. I was briefly going to say, Alex, you've got in the page that you had in your pack the changes in terms of the... impairment charged reversals. And so you can see in the second half of last year, we did have a meaningful reversal, hence the turnaround. So every 100 mil.

Great. We'll go to the back. Brendan, we'll go to Brendan, then Andre. So just in the last row. Thanks.

Good morning, Brendan from Citi. I have a couple of questions on Macquarie Asset Management. Just firstly in the public markets business we've seen a number of periods where we've had elevated outflows and the base fees are falling and offsetting the growth in base fees we're seeing in MIRA. What's the medium term plan with this business? Are we going to expect that trend to continue where the fund just runs down or are you expecting performance of these funds to improve and outflows turn into inflows?

Yeah, basically as far as our business is concerned, you saw I think in the slide I put up that two-thirds of our funds are beating their peer benchmarks over a three year period. So the underlying funds we have are performing well, but we're typically in active strategies. And what you've been seeing in the markets during this period is money flowing more to passive strategies and also coming in through ETFs. So what we are doing is responding to that. And I mentioned we have 10 active ETFs at the moment. We're distributing much more to the way people are now accessing public markets. We're evolving what we offer. But I would say overall our public investments business is one that is really at scale now. So we have a big revenue line compared to a reasonably fixed cost line because we've been able to grow our assets particularly in the North American market and here where we can fund all the platform legal distribution and sales, compliance, et cetera, with the fixed revenue base that we have. So while numbers on the revenue side have come off a bit, we're still earning very strong annual income and ROE on that business. And we need to keep evolving to the new ways that people are accessing those sort of offerings. So there's certainly been trends in public investments where people are going much more through ETF, et cetera, and money flowing to private markets, which has benefited our private markets offering but yeah there's an element of how the market's revolving but all up that is a very strong earnings contributing business and a good ROE business for us.

Thank you. And my second question is just on the performance fees in the mirror business. So pre-COVID performance fees that contribute sort of 60, 70 basis points of equity under management. Now post-COVID that's kind of roughly halved. Obviously the data centres have been good investments. So are we likely to see that return to pre-COVID levels over the next couple of years?

Yeah, I think the big thing driving the mix is the mix of assets that we have. So we're broadening now into much more asset classes that don't necessarily have those performance. Infrastructure debt book has grown our private credit assets, the aircraft finance books, agriculture, real estate that don't have the same level of performance fees as the infrastructure funds. Our fee rates on the infrastructure funds haven't changed and our returns on the funds haven't changed either. Those are broadly very similar. And so the level of contribution in performance fees per dollar of EUM over the cycle, it's lumpy obviously, is remaining very similar in the infrastructure funds. But I think what's happening is our asset mix has boarded into the high 40s now in terms of performance fees on the total EUM.

It's also, maybe just to add, Brendan, it's also a function of the sort of maturity of the fund relative to the amount of capital you're raising for new funds. So if you think about that post-COVID period, you know, in 24, we raised $22 billion of new capital. In 23, we raised 38. I think the year before might have been $29 billion. So it's been quite a big step up in capital raised for various funds around the world. And so from a sort of a proportion of assets that are ready for realising versus the proportion of assets that, or the proportion of capital you've got to invest, yeah, that mix changes a little bit. But, you know, as Shamara said, I don't think we're, we're still seeing good performance across the portfolio and certainly from a fee pressure perspective, no particular issues, but you get a bit of period you see just in terms of the weighted average life of the funds.

Maybe just to follow up on that, Alex, just looking back at your fund history, 2015, 2016, we really saw a step up in the size of these funds. So does that mean the opportunity for performance fees as those funds mature is actually going to improve over the next couple of years?

I think a few things, and Shem will have a view here as well. I think, I mean, obviously we have seen the funds step up. So if you looked at, you know, MEEF 7 for the sake of the example, which is a recent fund, just over 8 billion euro, which is big in comparison with the history. So I think, you know, there's obviously what that allows the team to do with probably bigger transactions. And so over time, you'd imagine hopefully that plays its way through into performance fees as well. I think the other thing that's interesting when you think about the performance fees, just the mix of funds. There's now a much broader mix of funds at various stages of their life. So I think in terms of sort of the risk associated with performance fees into the medium term, we should feel good about that as well. So I think there's a combination of sort of the size of activity going up, and the diversity of those funds and where those performance fees are coming from versus where we might have been back in that 15, 16 period.

That's great. Thank you. We'll go to Andre, just next to him.

Good morning. Andre Stadning from Morgan Stanley. Can I ask a slightly dry question, but just on tax? The first half increase in seasonality on the tax rate seems a bit higher than normal. So can you talk about what's driving that and just more broadly why we're seeing kind of this first half, second half seasonality on tax?

So the tax rate, I mean, the effective tax rate, Andre, is... I mean, it's really just driven by the geographic composition of income. That's the primary driver. So if you have more income in higher tax jurisdictions, then it's going to pull up the effective tax rate. And the second thing that sort of drives the effective tax rate is non-deductible. So things like hybrids, for the sake of the example, we obviously have hybrids in the mix. They're non-deductible for tax purposes. So you end up with a step up in the effective tax rate as a result of that. In terms of the seasonality, I suspect it's more... I don't really think of it as seasonal, but at the end of the day, if you think about some of the offshore jurisdictions, you end up with a lower effective tax rate in those offshore jurisdictions. So if you picked up, you know, Simon's point and said, well, you know, CGM is still a little bit skewed to the Northern Hemisphere winter, and you're pulling more income out of the Northern Hemisphere winter, or you're realising assets in Macquarie Capital in the second half of the year, you'll get a little bit of... You'll get a greater weighting in that geographic composition to slightly lower tax jurisdictions, but there's... I don't really think of it as seasonal, it's just where the income comes from in one period versus the other. And obviously as BFS continues to grow across the business, we're pulling income into Australia, which obviously has a corporate tax rate here.

Thank you. My second question, can I ask around the ROE? Like, how are you thinking about the ROE, particularly from the E component? Because, you know, I noted the extent of the duration of the buyback, but not the size. And the pad ratio this time was a bit lower than what it was six months ago in the dividend. So you seem exceptionally well capitalised. So how are you thinking about getting the ROE up, particularly in the E, which is more in your control?

Yeah. Do you want me to go? Yeah. So, obviously, you know, we announced the $2 billion buyback and we bought back $1 billion over the last 12 months, but pleasingly, over the course of that 12 months, we've invested, I think it's $1.2 billion of additional capital into opportunities all around the world and we've distributed $2.5 billion worth of dividends. So, over the course of the last 12 months, we think we've, you know, brought the equity base down, but we've also supported the growth of the business. As we think about it going forward, Obviously, we've extended the buyback, Andre, so I think the board endorsed the flexibility that the buyback gives us. It gives us an opportunity to manage the capital position at the same time as we're supporting the business's growth. You're right. I mean, I think the reason we announced the buyback in the first place was that we generated an exceptional profit result in both 22 and 23. So as we said before, we were sitting on excess return based on the exceptionality of conditions in those periods of time. We've obviously got through the instability of the rate rising environment and announced the buyback. We're partly through that buyback. We like the optionality for us going forward. And so we think that makes sense. In terms of the capital position itself, I mean, I think the businesses continue to find good opportunities. You've seen the growth in the BFS business over the course of the half. You've seen the growth in Macquarie Capital's business over the course of the half. and the asset management business. You know, the asset management business we think will come down when you transition the green assets into the fiduciary offering, but they're seeing good opportunities to expand their capabilities. So I think we sort of like where the business is positioned. In terms of the ROE itself, I mean, I think a couple of things. Obviously, the franchise is growing, so we're pleased with the franchise, whether it's assets under management or loans and deposits in BFS or customers in CGM or principal credit in Macquarie Capital. But some of those, we're obviously transitioning the green assets off the balance sheet. That creates a drag from a return viewpoint. And obviously, as I said to Andrew's question before, the MACAT portfolio is relatively young in comparison with the past. So it's at a period of time where it's creating value rather than realising value. So I think that's pulling down the ROE.

Jim? Yeah, I think you've covered everything basically.

Great. We've got a couple of questions on the line, so we'll go to the lines and then we'll come back to the room if there's any final questions.

The next question comes from Brian Johnson with MST. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you very much. Just a few very quick ones, if I may. The first one is, could you give us a handle on what you think the dividend reinvestment plan participation will be?

Hey, Brian. Without a discount, that's typically been 7%, 8%, something like that? Okay.

Historically. The second one, if I may, Alex, like private credit is pretty topical at the moment. Yeah. And previously, I'd just be interested if I just get three numbers from you if I can. So from memory, I think the life of the book is about three years. Is that still the case?

Yep. Yep.

Yep. Okay. And the long run loss rate is about 30 basis points?

About that. Yeah. 0.3%. Yep.

Okay. Can you tell me what the ECL balance is in respect to the book?

Yeah, it's about stage one and stage two is 2.4%. If you include the stage three, which I don't know whether you're interested, but if you include the stage three, it's about 3%.

So we've got about 300 basis points of cover on a long-run loss rate of 30 basis points. That's about three times, is my maths wrong?

10. 10 times. 10 times. 0.3.

It's 10 times the annual, but it lasts for three years. Yeah, so if you did it over three years, 100 basis points, yep. Okay, so basically it's not an issue. The next one, if I may, just when we have a look at slide 47, which is the capital allocation one. Now, I can see that you've just done a 9.9% ROE based on $9.8 billion of surplus capital. I can see that you've got a $2 billion buyback afoot, of which you've done $1 billion. But that is premised on a 10.5% regulatory core equity T1. Yep. And that's even not a core equity T1, that's T1, I think. So when we have a look at it, from a practical perspective, that $9.8 billion is probably a little bit overstated. Alex, should we be thinking that the true surplus capital is about a billion bucks?

Well, I mean... That is correct. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as you know, we don't disaggregate it into the sort of It is over the regulatory minimums, as you say, and the equity we have behind the non-bank businesses. Obviously, in addition to that, we have some board buffers and some management buffers in terms of how we operate the business, so you can imagine they're well in excess of the regulatory minimums, and then we hold a surplus above that to support the growth of the business. I mean, I think I'd... I guess I'd conclude that... you know, we feel like having done, if we did another billion dollars worth of buyback, we obviously wouldn't want to leave ourselves with no room for growth. So we feel like there's an opportunity to do a billion dollars worth of buyback over the next 12 months to generate net return. So we have obviously net profit, less dividends, generates additional capital. And even with those two things in mind, we've then got an appetite and capacity to support the businesses. So, you know, we feel like we're well capitalised, but again, it's obviously a balancing act, Brian, and the And the buyback gives us, you know, we think good optionality to tighten the equity base in the event that the teams don't see good opportunities to deploy. But generally speaking, if the teams see good opportunities to deploy, I think that'll be the, that has generally been the preference and that's generally been everyone's preference for what we use capital for.

Yeah. Could I just have a go at wrapping this all together then? If I have a look at that slide 47. Yep. 9.9% is the return on equity you're doing, and you might say perhaps it should be a little bit higher, but the $9.8 billion is not practically deployable. So let's say it is 9.9%. Is that good enough? Brian, I just... When we have a look at it, if we look, for example, at Macquarie Asset Management, we're probably getting a fantastic ROE on the private markets business, less so on the public markets. It's just, Shamara, have we seen a fundamental change in the ROE outlook for Macquarie? Or when we start to get this tremendous pipeline of assets coming through, do we see that number pump back to where it used to be?

Yeah, the main thing I'd point out, Brian, is that 9.9 is a first half return and we had 14% as our average for the last 18 years. Last year in the first half we did 8.7 and the ROE is impacted in any particular situation. short-term period by the lumpiness of earnings in some of our businesses, so particularly Macquarie Asset Management and Macquarie Capital, where Macquarie Asset Management at the moment is holding a particularly large few billion of assets. on which the earnings are going to be very lumpy. So typically their equity would be 1% of the equity under management in our funds, but at the moment they have both the aircraft finance and the green assets in there that will, as we've always said, realise over time. And if you look at the restated Macquarie asset management accounts, they reflect the big lumpy one-off gains as we've historically had these big green positions that we realise in a lumpy way. So it'll create more volatility in their ROE for a period, but we're confident that we can get the ROE on those investments and that's why we have made the investments and continue to sit with them. Macquarie Capital's book has grown a lot, a couple of billion over the last few years as we've grown the private credit which delivers income as we invest but also we've grown in the four equity strategies and those positions have lumpy realisations and that book is seasoning. So we're going through a period where there's a bit of a drag on ROE in the short term, both in terms of the Macquarie Asset Management green assets and the Macquarie capital investments we're doing in our four equity strategies. But basically we apply an ROE hurdle to all our businesses as we give them capital, and it may be different for BFS where we're investing in lower risk strategies to what it might be for Macquarie Capital when we're investing in venture capital like Newex and PEXA, etc., And the check sizes will be different. But ultimately, there are different target returns for the different businesses. Another one for CGM, of course, And we do not deploy capital unless we're confident that our businesses can deliver those hurdles. As you can see, the long-term returns out of the businesses have been 22% in the what are called annuity-style businesses and 17% in the market-facing. And that has delivered a 14% net after holding large surplus capital positions like we always have had. So we feel comfortable over the medium term that we can be delivering these low to mid-teens ROEs after our large surplus capital positions. But in the short term, two of our groups have a large asset investment that we'll realise in due course instead of in this six months.

So, Shamara, the peers in the private markets management business often seem to do ROEs of 40% to 50%, which makes a lot of sense. Are you confident that once we get these kind of capital-intensive assets cycled off the balance sheet and we turn it back into this kind of fiduciary business model, should we be thinking that the private markets business can get back to that ridiculously high 40% ROE?

Actually, Brian, our peers are not doing those ROEs. So if you look at Apollo, they've bought Athene, they've put massive capital out the door and have now big spread related earnings from balance sheet. KKR has bought Global Atlantic, a big insurer, dragged their ROEs down a lot. Brookfield has a lot of balance sheet in its businesses. Blackstone is doing very good ROE because it has amortised a lot of the acquisitions it did quite some time ago. But generally our ROE in our asset management business, if you take out the green investments and aircraft finance, is much higher than our peers. But the markets tend not to be focusing on ROE for the asset managers. They're really looking at the revenue and earnings growth that they're delivering. And so those are trading on very, very high multiples. But if you actually did the work into the ROEs, well, certainly the work we've done shows that they've brought their ROEs down by putting a lot of capital out the door, but they've driven a lot of very reliable earnings growth out of that. And that's what they're doing at the moment is they're diversifying much more into the insurance channel, into the wealth channel, absorbing a lot of capital for that. So our ROEs in the underlying business actually are higher because we have been a bit more cautious to date, but it is a way the industry is trending. Thank you, Shemana. And I accept the Blackstones, et cetera, may be at much higher ROEs, but the Black Rocks, et cetera, are not. There's big acquisitions happening there.

Shemana, just to lay to the point, though, if I have a look at the pure infrastructure fiduciary business of those units, I get that the ROEs are where they are at the group level, but a lot of the narrative is that the infrastructure business is still that 40% plus level.

Same for us. We have $2 billion of equity in our $200 billion of equity under management, and we're getting very, very strong ROEs on that.

It's the business model. That order of magnitude is not incorrect. Thank you. Thanks, Shamara. Appreciate it. Thanks.

Thanks, Brian. One more question on the line.

Yeah, thank you very much. I just wanted to ask on the digital revaluations in Macquarie asset management, I was wondering if you could comment on the carrying value of Macquarie Capital digital assets. On slide 31, it looks like you have a touch under $1.5 billion of digital infrastructure there. It doesn't appear that there's been... Any similar sort of markup across that portfolio in MATCAP? Is there any comment you can make to that?

I'll let Alex comment, but briefly, what we have to do with the fund assets is a different accounting standard where we basically, as we move on, when there's highly improbable risk of reversal, we have to recognise performance fees. So there's an obligation on us to be revaluing our assets in a very rigorous way. We are conservative in doing that because it's a highly improbable risk of reversal test. Whereas on the balance sheet, when we hold these positions, it depends whether we're equity accounting or consolidating, et cetera, as to whether we need to mark.

I mean, broadly, Matt, balance sheet activity is held at cost. unless there's been a change in an accounting classification. So if you went from consolidated to equity accounting, you have to remark your retained interest. But basically, other than save for that, we generally hold these things at cost, obviously, subject to any impairment requirement. For small equity interests, and they tend to be a smaller part of what we do, you've got fair value through P&L, but for the majority of the... the sort of equity exposures, we tend to hold them at cost unless there's been a change in classification.

Because typically we'll have a controlling interest in these to drive results on them. But, yeah.

OK, fantastic. Thank you. And I just wondered if you could make any comments around... We've talked previously about the, you know, the gap between buyers and sellers on some assets. Is that closing? And how are you viewing from a Macquarie perspective Group perspective, the value of some M&A opportunities out there, given your script trading at two and a half times book, is this a more attractive environment to grow your business?

Yeah, we've certainly seen as the rocketing we've had of interest rates globally has started to ease and investors have become more confident now as to where discount rates are settling, that buyers and sellers are starting to meet on price more and activity level has picked up in M&A. Certainly in Macquarie Asset Management, we mentioned we've invested over 10 bills, so we're picking up again in terms of opportunities we're seeing to deploy capital. In Macquarie Capital as well, we've deployed capital and we probably at this stage, as I said, are focusing on recycling and seasoning our book. But we certainly in private credit have seen good opportunities. The $5 billion that we invested in the first half is equivalent to what we've been investing over a whole year recently and we're getting the good returns as well, good quality investments at the spreads that we want. So activity level certainly is picking up. At the Macquarie Group level, it's up to each of our operating businesses strategically whether they want to grow by acquisitions, not just investing in their equity strategies, but does CGM want to do another acquisition? There was a time when we did Corona, Constellation, et cetera, but it is really driven by the businesses coming to us and saying they see an inorganic opportunity to grow. I think, Greg, in BFS we're happy with organic growth for now. In CGM, I don't think we're having anything major put to us, nor in Macquarie Capital. And Macquarie Asset Management, as we've discussed, there are a whole lot of structural changes happening in that sector, and we will evaluate whether we should look at inorganic responses to that versus organic growth. Perfect.

All right. Thanks, Matt. Thank you very much. Thanks. Any further questions in the room? No. Great. All right. Thanks, everyone, for your support and your interest, and we look forward to catching up over the next few weeks. Thank you.