Steadfast Group Stock

Welcome to Steadfast 2026 Full Year Results. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand over to Robert Kelly.

Thanks very much, David, and welcome, everybody, to the call. I'll get straight into it.

If you go to Page 4, it's just basically our graphs that demonstrate our performance over -- since 2014. I'd just ask you to read the graph from left to right, not from right to left, okay? We're proud of those graphs, and I won't bore you by going through them from top to bottom.

So if you go to Page 5, I think this is the brief page of where we're actually at and where we look like from that point of view. It just proves our resilience and how through funny periods of time in -- where the premium cycle goes up and down, we can adapt our business model to provide results.

The NPAT -- statutory NPAT at $269.1 million. Underlying NPAT up 8.2% to $319.5 million. Underlying diluted EPS NPAT, up 7.7% to $0.288. And the underlying diluted EPS, NPATA is up 6.7% to $0.33. Underlying NPATA of 7.1% of $366.3 million and underlying EBITDA stat at $669.8 million.

If you then go to Page 6, which is probably the most interesting part, but refers to the bid and the Scheme Implementation Deed. So as you are aware, we at Steadfast has entered into with Amwins and Dragoneer and KKR to acquire all of the issued shares in Steadfast pursuant to a Scheme of arrangement for cash consideration of $6 per share, less any amount of any Permitted Dividends paid per Steadfast share.

Steadfast is also committed to pay dividends to Steadfast shareholders comprising an ordinary final dividend in respect to FY '26 and a special dividend prior to the Scheme implementation, of an aggregate amount of $0.20 per share. The Scheme consideration represents 51.9% premium to the Steadfast undistributed closing share price of $3.95 on the 9th of June 2026.

The Steadfast Board has unanimously recommended that the Steadfast shareholders vote in favor of the Scheme. In the absence of a superior proposal and subject to the independent expert concluding and continuing to conclude in the independent expert's report that the Scheme is in the best interest of Steadfast shareholders.

The implementation of the Scheme is subject to various customary conditions, including the approval of Steadfast shareholders and regulatory approvals from a range of people from the Foreign Investment Review Board, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the New Zealand Overseas Investment Office, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Subject to Steadfast shareholders approving the Scheme and other conditions being satisfied or if applicable waived, Steadfast is currently targeting the implementation of the Scheme to be in December 2026. Steadfast shareholders do not need to do anything or take any action at this present time.

So turning to Page 7. This gives us an indication of the premium rate cycle, and it diagrammatically shows you the way the industry has gone from actually Q3 to Q4 of FY '26. As you can see, it's been a downhill slide. And over the past 2 years, that slide has gained more momentum. In particularly, we saw a softening at the FY '26 close in June, which was the slowest period-to-period amount that we have seen over the prior 2 years.

If you go to Page 8, this is the final dividend that we will pay. The FY '26 -- total FY '26 dividend will be $0.2095 fully franked, up from $0.195 for '25 or in other words, 7.4% up from last year. The final '26 dividend of $0.1275 shares fully franked will be up from $0.117 or 9%.

The Dividend Reinvestment Plan will not apply for FY '26, but because of the uncertainty of the Scheme -- the Scheme places over the top of that. And there are the ex-dive dates and the dividend dates. On the right, the graphs demonstrate to you clearly the growth of the shares from start in 2014 -- financial year 2014.

Going to Page 10. This is the analysis of the Steadfast broking Australasian Network. We've had sustained growth and with further broker acquisitions have increased our bottom line. The financial highlight for '26 is pretty simple. The broking network grew 6.2% to $13.2 billion, and our professional services fees grew up 2.5% to $78.2 million. In other words, GWP up organic growth up for the broker network, 2.4%, organic growth up for the AR network of 3.7% and new brokers up 0.1% or giving us a total uplift of 6.2% in our GWP.

The graphs are really interesting. If you have a look at the graphs on the left and you go back to '21. During the period from '21 through to '26, we have actually had initially PSC, not be included in our GWP and all of these figures are normalized in the current year for those leaving and also the Envest leaving.

So if you look at what our turnover was back in those days, there was 2 fairly substantial groups within our group that no longer are in. So our growth is incredibly powerful considering that they've got out of it.

The operational highlights, we completed 3 equity holdings, 31 step-ups, 10 step-downs and 31 bolt-ons. So we now have equity interest in 62 of the businesses in their network, which is over 50% of the GWP that the network sells.

In terms of insurTech, and David Gillespie, our CTO, will give you a further update a little bit later. Our broker network has a great group of platforms in insurTech that makes it -- gives them a great sustainable advantage. They are now 268 brokers live on our INSIGHT broking program with over 8,000 users, and we have 12,500 users participating in the client trading platform across Australia and New Zealand.

So I turn you now to Page 11. The solid underlying earnings growth of 13.2% on the Australian insurance broking network is highlighted, I guess, by the net revenue going up by 1.4% at the time when the whole market is down. But pleasingly that our EBITDA was up by 13.2%. Organic growth was -- of EBITDA was 2.7% and organic growth due to the softness of the market was 1.4% on the brokers.

But overall, what that means is that we have an EBITDA growth of 10.5% and acquisitions growth of 18.9%. FY 2026 shows that we have 83% of the EBITDA in Steadfast comes from our equity brokers as opposed to 80% the year before.

The charts -- the waterfall charts across here show what we did last year and what we did this year, our organic growth, our acquisition growth. And then it points out Rothbury, which is one of the major players in the New Zealand market and a step-up that we made in that business.

So including the solid EBITDA growth of 13.2% is a result of a really tremendous, I guess, diligence in our step-ups and bolt-ons that we've been able to do. And I guess, our focus is to maintain a sustainable margin improvement, both through the execution of the brokers hubbing strategy, which has worked extremely well. We continue to do that, and we've done that in the underwriting agencies as well.

And also our ability to enhance operational efficiency and the disciplined uplift that brokers have achieved during a soft market in their fee structure, which started last year, and I think has been continued on. And I think brokers are seeing the fulfillment of that coming in this current 12 months.

And enhanced subsidiary oversight on our behalf and governance through a dedicated data analytics program has enabled us to be proactive in monitoring our renewal retention, our new business performance and of course, that allows a sustainable earnings performance to take place.

So if I then take you over to Page 13, this is the underwriting agencies and it's interesting to be able to say to you that, we rose 2.3% in GWP at a time when the market is the softest that I've seen, I think, in probably 30 years. So it shows the sustainability of our underwriting agencies is incredibly robust. And if you look at the pie chart there, you can see the growth over there. So GWP rose to $2.5 billion from $2.4 billion plus we had a couple of -- we had this one sell down. So we took some GWP out of it.

Total organic growth was 2.3%. That highlights being the launch of Castle by Sure Insurance, which gives us a national home product. And then the increase of some new products for CHU and Mecon, Emergence & Coast, and the launch of Unity Trade Credit from our trade credit broker. Successful completion also of consolidation process with the 4 consumer agencies combining to create one agency under Prevail, 9 individual small to medium Commercial Agencies merging into one brand under Miramar.

This gives us a great solid pathway for this consolidation to reduce cost in operating and also puts efficiency into some of the AI that we're putting through our businesses. We're supporting growth of the -- by supporting this growth with mid-sale agencies by our acquisition and product differentiation, we grow. Investment in automation continues. Dave will talk further about that Dave will speak, and resulting efficiencies through the Underwriting Agency IT platform, which we are working on and continually moving. You'll see a lot of the work we're doing on the underwriting platforms and the agencies have to go to your P&L. They can't be capitalized, but very effective in increasing the efficiency of those businesses.

And of course, we maintain strong carrier relationships and long-term relationships. We focus on refining all of what we do, including our footprint in London and the Steadfast underwriting agencies, consortium and tender binding arrangements, which we put into place last year in London, increased revenue for us in our commission structure.

If you go to Page 14, this is the underwriting agencies, again, showing an EBITDA increase of 5.2% and net revenue increase of 5%. That's pretty pleasing to be able to keep those 2 in line because sometimes that's not easy to do and organic growth of 4.6% on income and 5.3% on EBITA. You'll see the impact of the disposal. We sold Sterling off of which impacted that 0.1%. I guess underlying EBITA of $260 million is plus 0.2%. You can see from the bar charts there how we've lifted from over the 2 years. You've got the organic and the very little acquisition growth there. And so most of it is in organic.

We have maintained our underwriting discipline. All of our binders are strong and well renewed. Our retention rate is what we target. And we've been able to, as you can see, maintain GWP and increase it during a very difficult time. Revenue growth exceeds GWP growth, which is always exciting. That's probably highlighted by the fact that we've been able to combine agencies and increase efficiency with some smart software that we've been using.

And additionally, investment in underwriting agencies and claims systems, which we continue to roll out in FY '27, ably by Susan Donaldson, who is setting up our claims. Pardon me, I'll just get a drink. Okay. Also, our actuarial -- actual equity ownership in FY '26 is 88%. So we own a very large majority of our underwriting agencies.

Now I'll take a breather and refer you to Page 16 and hand you over to Sam Hollman, CEO of International.

Thank you, Robert. FY '26 saw the core pillars of Steadfast International in place with focus moving to scaling our operation, further developing our product capabilities and diversifying our earnings base, both geographically and qualitatively.

I'd like to share with you some of the FY '26 operational highlights for a number of our international businesses. The first being ISU Steadfast, which is our broker network in the U.S. It exceeded FY '26 budgeted EBITA. We achieved a record number of new members with 38 new members, 21 net of terminations, and we also introduced 2 new membership tiers in this financial year, which provides a new opportunity for us to grow membership and create scale. We also enhanced strategic carrier relationships, achieving profit share growth of 15%, and we launched and drove participation in Novum and HWS Specialty Solutions, which are our businesses within our international family.

We completed also the first 2 trapped capital equity investments in members. These members are held at the Steadfast level and replicate what we've done in Australasia. The technology has been implemented to drive business forward with data insights, and we look forward to being able to see what that can bring.

HWS, I'll move on to. They're our specialist wholesale broker in London. They also exceeded FY '26 budgeted EBITA. FY '26 saw significant progress diversifying the business into new and expanded specialties through strategic recruitment. This was to cater to our global network requirements. This has established a strong foundation for future growth and profitability. And we also experienced strong new business wins in marine, and we also focused on organic growth of our existing specialty products.

If I move to Novum, who we only acquired in August 2025, they are our specialist MGA in the U.S. Since then, we've acquired an additional 4.25% of Novum in May 2026 on the original deal terms. They have had very strong financial performance in the 10 months post completion, with 60% plus organic growth in GWP and revenue in FY '26. We've scaled existing programs and established new programs. And as a result of that, we've expanded our capacity relationships.

We've encouraged engagement with ISU Steadfast with a focus on attracting flow and building strategic alignment, and that was really only done in April this year at ISU Steadfast Annual Conference. And in that time, there's been 1,000-plus policy submissions from ISU Steadfast members into Novum.

We've also seen the recruitment of new talent to support the rapid growth of that organization. And we've also expanded their technology platform, Novum Online with capabilities and solutions, which is implementing a lot of automation into the business and underwriting processes.

And I'd just like to call you out to the right-hand side of this slide with the gray boxes. This is a little bit of a brag sheet that the international team and Steadfast are very proud of. And it's just how those 3 businesses are performing since we acquired them all. And if I can only call out one metric of each, which is all to do with financial, ISU Steadfast since acquisition, 96% organic growth in EBITDA. HWS 1.5 years in, 34% organic growth in revenue; and Novum 10 months in, 60% organic growth in GWP and revenue. It shows we have a great track record of acquisitions to date. All businesses are performing well and capital has been spent well.

Can I please turn the page to the next one? I will move on to the financial highlights. The financials demonstrate continued strength of Steadfast International. We delivered underlying EBITDA of $29.8 million, growth of $23.9 million over the prior corresponding period. Strong organic performance was driven mainly by growth in ISU Steadfast profit sharing and network membership fees and also growth in HWS Specialty after the first 12 months post acquisition.

Acquisition growth has also been driven by the organic growth of HWS Specialty, with new business wins in Marine division, an exceptional first 10 months contribution from Novum at 60% year-on-year in GWP and revenue and also 2 minority investments in ISU Steadfast network agencies in the second half of FY '26. These results reflect the high-quality earnings as well as our disciplined approach to scaling the businesses.

Thank you, and I'll now hand over to David Gillespie, our CTO of Technologies.

Thanks, Sam. Today, I'm going to focus on the insurTech parts of Steadfast Technologies, but I do want to call out all of the technology team for the work they're doing to improve how we operate across all of the Steadfast Group. That includes the consolidation launch for the Miramar and Prevail agencies as well as the new underwriting platforms, the office moves and new workplace technology we've implemented to improve productivity and the significant uplift we've undertaken within the cyber area where, for example, we've deployed new AI tools to both protect our perimeter and our applications even when that comes from third or fourth-party software.

AI continues to be a key theme, and we have a very targeted approach to how we deploy. We've not taken a scattered approach, but I'm equally excited about how it's transforming how we operate in the Steadfast network and I will touch on some of its uses in the organization.

As I mentioned at the last results call, we have had our AI policy and governance forum in place since the end of last year. At the start of the year, we talked about one platform and the program of deliveries we had in the road map to modernize our platform and improve the broker experience and capability. And I'm really pleased to report the team have delivered what we committed to.

Sometimes the initiatives, which in themselves don't seem that important or critical but are crucial building blocks and the first 2 deliveries fall into that category. Steadfast ID significantly uplifted our security posture with multifactor authentication, which provides better protection and will enable us and our brokers to better manage identities, but it also simplified how our brokers and partners across our various applications access across our various applications. That went live in April with no issues, and that in itself is a testament to the rigorous approach we take at Steadfast to releasing quality capability, including significant change management activities across a large number of users.

Similarly, with our product insurer configurator engine, SPICE, it enables us to more quickly extend our product offerings, including in the future for single lines of business, but it has also future-proofed us as our insurance and agency partners move on to modern platforms. We work extensively to develop joint road maps with all the major insurers.

And as they move on to new platforms with more modern API integrations, we are ready to integrate with them. This includes an AI mapping agent to further speed that process up. And as Robert mentioned recently, we are currently in testing with Allianz on implementing their farm product for pilot in November with full rollout early next year.

With Steadfast Intelligence, we already have, I believe, the leading data platform in the market, which is used to provide insights for Steadfast, our brokers and our insurance partners. We have now deployed a Cortex, a conversational AI capability, built out an underlying semantic layer and deployed 2 targeted AI agents, one for broker analysis and one for insurer analysis.

These are enabling our analysts to get data insights 5 to 10x faster than previously and has identified opportunities for improvement across the broker network that we had not considered previously. We flipped the historical paradigm of it taking 80% to 90% of time to get the data and only 10% to 20% analyzing for insights to now spending 80% to 90% looking for insights.

In addition, the data team have created a federated multi-tenanted data platform called Guardian One that can provide agencies and brokers access to their data within a powerful analytics platform without the need for them to invest in a separate platform. The first broker group is going live this Monday.

And lastly, but most definitely not least, is Steadfast Apps, which is replacing our industry-leading INSIGHT platform. That went live on Monday for 7 pilot brokerages across Australia and New Zealand with full release to all other brokers on the 7th of September. And let me explain a little bit more about that on Page 20.

With Steadfast Apps, we are bringing together the capability of multiple applications into one powerful application and hence, eliminating the fragmentation of applications, processes and data and improving efficiency whilst also saving brokers license fees in having multiple applications. And as you can see, it is optimized for mobile.

Moving to Page 21. We have a conveyor belt of new broker functionality in the pipeline, which will be delivered in quarterly releases, so we can manage the change impact for our brokers. What you see here is just a subset of the improvements we will be making. Each release follows a human or broker center design process and over 30 brokers have been engaged through the design, prototype, build and test phases to make sure we deliver the functionality that meets their needs.

In this release, all brokers who currently use INSIGHT will transition seamlessly to Steadfast apps with no data migration required. And this activation has been designed as a stepping stone to the changes that are planned to come. Each user will have a dashboard of widget showing information that is pertinent to them. So for example, open tasks, policies due for renewal, open claims, et cetera.

Strangely enough, one of the biggest requests has been for both light and dark mode, which we have accommodated, as you can see. The AI-powered schedule formatter was one of the top requests from brokers and is a great example of how we are using Insurebot who we acquired last year as an incubator for new functionality. They have had brokers using this functionality almost 5,000 times since June. So that in itself gives us great insights as we integrate into Steadfast Apps with this release.

In the next release before the end of the year, we will enable brokers with a unified client relationship management system, document management and automation capabilities that simplifies day-to-day servicing and improves data quality. You can see in the bottom right, those designs have been completed, and we are now in prototype testing with users before development starts.

Then next year, we'll enable our Risk coach to ensure full insurance coverage for clients, streamlined quote to-invoice experience, uplifting SCTP, driving reduced handoffs, rekeying and time taking to move from quote to bind, all designed to make our brokers more efficient.

It's been great to see Steadfast Apps come to life. But from my perspective, it has been equally pleasing to see how we are powering those changes. We have implemented an AI development framework to enable us to build more faster and with fewer resources than we planned. That framework enables Agentic agents, for example, for project management, design analysis and in the last month, one to fix defects and testing. So it picks up the defect ticket, recreates the defect, fixes it and sends it on for approval for retest.

On our underlying platform, we've again been using AI to optimize it. We are treating this similar to the upgrades that happened with Formula 1 cars. Our first package has given us a 40% improvement in performance, and we have 2 more scheduled in the next 4 weeks. That will not only make the website more performance, but means we use less processing power so we can reduce the cost of the platform as well. As I said, it's been an exciting year with much more to come.

I'll now hand over to Hannah for the detailed financials.

Thank you, David. Can we turn on to the next slide? So I'm pleased to report that Steadfast delivered a solid underlying earnings growth in FY '26. Revenue increased 15.3% to $2.1 billion, while underlying EBITA increased 13.8% to $669.8 million. Underlying NPAT increased 8.2% to $319.5 million, translating to diluted earnings per share of $0.288, up 7.7%. Underlying NPATA was $366.3 million, an increase of 7.1%. The result reflects a combination of organic growth and contributions from acquisitions.

Our underlying agencies continue to deliver strong organic growth, supported by disciplined underwriting, active retention, targeted new business and effective expense management. In Broking, acquisitions made a strong contribution and helped offset comparably moderate organic GWP growth.

Across the group, we also maintained a strong focus on cost discipline and operational efficiency. Stat NPAT was $269.1 million compared with $334.9 million in prior year. The year-on-year comparison was impacted by a material accounting gain recognized in FY '25 in relation to the Rothbury step-up acquisition.

Turning to the next slide. This slide sets out the key drivers of the 13.8% increase in underlying EBITA. Organic growth contributed $29.5 million, representing 5% growth over the prior year. Acquisitions completed during the period contributed a further $25.7 million, while increased ownership interest in existing businesses, excluding Rothbury contributed $1.8 million.

The increase in Steadfast ownership interest in Rothbury contributed approximately $24 million to underlying EBITA. This reflects the accounting treatment where 100% of Rothbury's EBITA is consolidated into the group's results with the proportion attributable to NCR recognized below the EBITA line, consistent with the group's half year disclosures.

As a result, EBITA included 100% of Rothbury's earnings, while NPAT reflects Steadfast's effective ownership interest circa 68%. Taken together, these movements increased underlying EBITA by $81 million to $669.8 million.

Turning now to the next slide. Moving from EBITA to NPAT. Underlying NPAT increased by $24 million, representing 8.2% on prior year to $319.5 million. Organic growth contributed approximately $16.8 million, while acquisitions contributed $18.7 million. Increased ownership interest added a further $2.1 million, primarily reflecting businesses that transitioned from associate to subsidiaries during the year.

These benefits were partly offset by approximately $13.6 million of additional financing and amortization expense associated with acquisition activities. This explains the difference between 13.8% growth in EBITA and 8.2% growth in NPAT for the year.

From a capital allocation perspective, we assess acquisitions based on their contribution after financing costs, amortization expense and NCI, not simply on the headline EBITA. On that basis, acquisitions delivered a positive net NPAT contribution, while organic earnings remained an important driver for shareholder returns.

Turning to the statutory balance sheet. Steadfast finished the year with a sound balance sheet and appropriate liquidity. At 30 June, the group held $470 million of cash. Total current assets were $3.1 billion compared to the current liabilities of $2.1 billion and net assets were $2.6 billion. Total gearing was 36% with $138.8 million of undrawn committed bank facilities.

The group's corporate debt facilities were $1.37 billion with maturities well diversified between May 2028 and June 2032. Subsequent to year-end, we entered into additional $100 million of pilot facilities, increasing our committed facilities to $1.47 billion and providing $240 million of funding flexibility.

Turning to the next slide. Finally, the group continued to demonstrate stable cash conversion. Post-tax operating cash flow, excluding movements in trust accounts and premium funding increased to $408.6 million, up from $373.7 million last year. This exceeded underlying NPATA of $366.3 million, highlighting the group's ability to consistently convert earnings into cash.

After dividends to shareholders, net of DRP and distributions to NCI, free cash flow increased to $166.6 million compared to $124.9 million in FY '25. This further strengthened the group's funding flexibility and capacity to support future growth.

Overall, the group's stable cash generation continues to support shareholder returns while providing capacity to fund ongoing working capital requirements.

Before concluding, I would like to acknowledge the significant contribution of our subsidiaries, associates, joint ventures and network brokers. Their hard work, commitment and focus on delivering for clients have instrumental in achieving our group's solid FY '26 results.

Thank you. Now, I'll hand back to Robert to discuss our FY '26 '27 outlook. Thank you.

Thanks, Hannah. It's great. So Page 29 is an interesting page because this page is our business as usual, okay? And I guess it would alter dramatically if the Scheme completes. But it's important that you leave this meeting today understanding that we are running the business as if the business is going to continue in perpetuity for the rest of its life. And obviously, if the Scheme completes, then the whole dynamics of the business will alter. But we'll continue to execute on our growth strategy for both organic and acquisition growth.

I guess, we'll drive the subsidiary performance metrics that we've been putting in place to improve earnings quality, drive margin expansion. We'll recognize the operational efficiencies that we can get through various targeted revenue initiatives and also the strategic hubbing and not to downplay what David spoke about in terms of our agentic use of software in Steadfast Apps and the applications that, that will do in terms of reducing time to do things that will be advancing over the next 12 months or 18 months.

We'll maintain our capital discipline because it's crucial, and we've done -- we have done that since August 2013, pursue value-accretive acquisitions and generate substantial shareholder returns. We've managed to average out a much higher return to our shareholders than was anticipated when we floated the business, and we'll continue to do that.

We -- Sam's team have done an incredible job in the U.S. We'll continue the U.S. expansion in the way we have at the moment with expanding trapped capital over there very selectively, small steps at a time and making sure that we build and build that network the same way as we've built Australia and New Zealand and other places.

We'll leverage the technology, as I alluded to, and we'll enhance our operating efficiencies to drive margin across the whole group, and we'll deliver innovative AI-enabled solutions. I mean the AI revolution started in Steadfast 6 years ago. It makes me actually laugh, when I consider where people jumped up and say this has happened. We've been working on it for 6 years and implementing insurTech pipelines for AI. Steadfast accelerated that and will be -- and the brokers that are using it, as David put out are absolutely a standard by its efficiency that it creates.

We'll foster the values led by a culture of leadership, where all people are engaged, empowered, supported to do their best. Steadfast is an organization that believes people support one another and work alongside one another, not have the top of one another dictating down. We want talent to come and grow through the organization and never be held back.

And also, I guess, finally, Steadfast performance through risk management and compliance and governance, we'll continue to keep doing it and continue to go forward with this business.

So Page 30 is interesting. There's our guidance for '27 NPATA, $382 million to $392 million. Underlying NPAT, $333 million to $343 million and then underlying EBITA, $700 million to $715 million. And then you can see between 4% and 8% for diluted EPS and diluted NPAT growth.

We will need to get to probably 2% to 3% increase in pricing. We're very confident of doing that. We think we're in the bottom of the barrel at this particular time. And that slide we showed you before shows how you can go downhill and how you can go uphill with that and probably refer you to the key risks in our 2026 Annual Report, Page 74 and 77.

And so that will conclude mine, David. I'll hand back to you at this particular time.

[Operator Instructions] And our first caller today comes from Andrew Buncombe from Macquarie.

Congratulations on the results. Just one from me, please. In terms of the proposed takeover where the dividends have been capped at $0.20 per share. Based off the annual report that we've seen today, it does appear that there's quite a bit of franking credits or franking balance left. Can you just walk us through why that's not being returned to, I suppose, listed shareholders, particularly in the context of the recent CGT changes?

Andrew, the franking credits, we'll use -- Hannah, we'll use, what, $225 million of them, I think. The dividend payment.

Andrew, management considers it's prudent to retain sufficient working capital to support ongoing operations and corporate activities. So accordingly, the pro forma special dividend has been calibrated to cover roughly 4 to 6 months period, while we're still maintaining a meaningful return to the shareholders, but we ultimately have a healthy working capital position for the group.

And also, we've got to be cognizant of the fact that you can't borrow money. So we make sure that our capital is used correctly and the amount of capital that we can put into this allows us to keep running the business and not ever put ourselves at any risk of having anybody look at us that we may be borrowing to pay the dividend.

Congratulations again on everything that you and the team have built over the years.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is a text question from Rod Carrett from Steadfast NSG Group.

Rod asks, when will the special dividend be announced and paid?

I guess, the special dividend will come into play.

It will be disclosed when the scheme booklet is lodged.

When the scheme booklet gets out. So time-wise, maybe.

We're hoping early October.

Early October. Yes, early October, I think, Rod.

The next question is also a text question comes from Siddharth Parameswaran from JPMorgan.

Siddharth asks, can you help us understand whether any acquisitions are included in the FY '27 guidance?

Yes. There is some. If you are looking for a figure, about $100 million.

Our next question is from Shreyas Patel from UBS.

Shreyas asks, what gives you confidence that premium rates will improve to 2% to 3% versus the 4Q exit of 1%? What are you seeing in July/August?

Shreyas, one swallow does not make a spring. One month where it drops below everything else doesn't say that Armageddon is going to fall and the rest of them 12 months are going to be the same. What makes me so sure of that, I guess my 58th year I enter insurance now, and I've been watching these cycles go through.

And for the last 14 years, I've given figures about where I saw the market would land and what the prices would go up and down. And I've been right, I think, 98% of the time. My feeling is we're at the bottom of the cycle. My feeling is that there was a lot of competition for June and some insurers made some silly mistakes about how they were going to price their product and how -- and there was an overreaction to losing business.

So renewal premiums were sliced by the insurers. I don't believe that is going to be going on, and I don't think that will continue. And we saw an uplift in July, whereas last year, we saw a big drop in July, remember from the June '25. July '26 there was about a 3% differential between the 2. So I'm pretty confident that the 2% to 3% will run through.

A follow-up question from Shreyas Patel.

Shreyas asks, looks like a strong second half strata result. Can you talk to some of the market dynamics given your competitors are suggesting CHU is irrationally undercutting the market to pick up share?

Yes. That's an erroneous stupid statement for anybody to make. Anybody who makes a statement like that doesn't understand the strata market, has no understanding of the competitive nature of it and no understanding about who's actually creating the price drop. So my answer to that is that is not true.

There are no further questions. I will now hand back to you, Robert.

Okay. Thank you, everybody. I know we've been concise today, a little more concise than what we've been in the past, but we're in an interesting stage of this company. Thank you for coming and joining us today.

That concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us. You may now log out.

Welcome to Steadfast 2026 Half Year Results. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to Robert Kelly.

Thanks very much, and thanks, everybody, for joining us for the half year. And I hope this will be clear and unequivocal from the way we present to you, again, in line of what we started last year in the beginning of last -- about March last year, the CEOs will report on their various cash-generating units. And I'm referring to Page 4 of the deck and actually to point 4, where the FY '24 and '25 EBITDA have been restated in line with the way that we're now reporting the CGU. We're very proud of that slide, but the bullet points on the side at the bottom of the notes will give you a bit of an indication. So if you move to Page 5, this is what we're in business for. I'd like to show you the NPAT, $127 million, puts us up considerably over what we did last year. Our underlying earnings, NPATA, up 6.3% to $161.5 million. NPAT, up 7.3% to $137.5 million and EBITA up $12.6 million to $293.6 million. Our diluted EPS NPAT is $0.124 CPS, up 7.2%. On the right, the things to point out here is basically how we performed on our acquisitions. In the first half, we did $238 million, and they were all EPS accretive leases with 195 acquisitions planned to be completed in the second half. Hannah will give a lot more color to that. So I won't go down and try and spoil thunder. We still maintain a discipline in our acquisitions. And that's an interesting time at the moment because of the rerate that's just occurred over the past week. I don't think anybody knows what a reasonable EBITDA multiple will look like in the future at the moment. So we still are able to to complete in Australia around 10x EBITDA. So -- but watch this space because I can tell you there's a hiccup going on all around the financial services that we're working with around the world. We also continue to capitalize our -- to optimize our capital allocation in a disciplined way, evaluating our portfolios. And we will look at potentially releasing capital. And to explain what that might look like, if we've got an asset now that we bought really well and it's giving a return, which is okay, but we think we could turn that existing hard asset into cash and deploy that cash in another way to get an uplift, then we'll certainly look at how we may realign our capital in our noncore assets. Our expense management, we talked about this and how we started doing it. It's really reaching fruition. And you can see the numbers there. We've been able to slice $7 million off our head office. Interestingly, with the way we're reporting now, head office costs are really clear and unequivocal. And I think Hannah can elaborate on that further. Our subsidiaries also have been very diligent in trying to work with us. It's a little bit like the Titanic when you've got nearly 70 subsidiary companies sometimes to make them change. But I must say they've all taken along what Tim is implementing at the moment. And I think that we've got a saving of about $4 million. I think in the second half, the compounding effect of what we do will start to be realized all the way through. And again, a reaffirmation of our previous FY '26 guidance and scope for improvement over the medium with medium to improve EBITDA. medium for us, we reflect as being 3 years. So if we go to Slide 6, the dividend is up 5.1% to $0.082 and that's up 5.1%, I should say. And the dividend reinvestment plan will come into place. There will be no discount on that. And if I'm to be candid and frank about that, we're probably trading at a very attractive rate for somebody at the moment if they want to take advantage of the DRP. Our ex dividend date will be 2nd of March, the record date will be the 3rd and the 4th of March and payment date will be the 25th of March. So just on the right, you can see the bar charts there reflecting how we driven in this organization from 2013 to make sure the dividends went up in line. sometimes we're criticized particularly from international investors as to why we actually do convert so much of our net profit in dividend, but we said we do it and we continue to do it along the line. On Page -- if you go to Slide 7, the reason we put this in here is probably to explain to you how the premium rates vary. And we've taken a look from 2000 all the way through there. And you can see it looks like mountains and valleys and mountains and valleys and mountains and valleys. And what I'd like to point out to you, if you go to 2012 and 2014, you'll see that when we floated this business, it was on its way down. The premium cycle had been hard, and it was on its way down. And in fact, if you look at the valley at around 2015, you'll see it went down to plus 1% -- so if you then look at the way we climb up and down and up and down and up and down and then realize that if you put a line through our earnings and see how accretive they've been and how compounded we've done, we are able to handle peaks and troughs in the premium cycle. Insurance brokers know how to do that. And I mean, there's some speculation about whether the markets continuing to go soft. It hasn't been our experience at the moment. If you have a look at 2023, it was plus 9.2%. If you have a look at January 2026, and I know we're reporting on the -- up to December, but it's important to reflect on January that we're up 2.7%. So when you saw that the cascade and the catastrophic points of view that we put out, we went from 9.2% plus to 2.7 plus, okay? So you can see there was a 7% differential over a period of time when people said that the industry is in chaos and the pricing was chaotic and going to fall below. But during all these times, we, as others in our sector in Australia have been able to maintain our guidance, maintain what we're putting out and continue running the business. So just before we get on to our CGU CEO, if you go to Page 8, we've done a lot of work on developing the network, okay? And really, the amount of professional development that Steadfast does is outstanding. And we get -- on our webinars sometimes we get 3,000, 3,400 people look at our webinars. We get -- in our in situ meetings that we have around Australia, we get great attendances. And the team of people that runs our professional development explains what's going on in the industry. Our experts are absolutely long-standing industry stores. And that's part of the DNA that allows us to grow the network, and Tim will talk more about that. So we're also looking at the New Zealand market because it's very low at the moment, struggling -- everybody is struggling to get their numbers, but it's a great buying opportunity because it's a very stable market in terms of the consumers wanting to buy over there. So we'll look in that market. We're upgrading some equity that we've got in some of our businesses over at the moment at a good price. And the development of Singapore and into Asia is also on our wavelength and Sam might speak to this. We have a very close eye on India at the moment and the way that business has matured for insurance brokers and other parts of Asia. So we also continue to support our authorized network of authorized reps, and we are the leading network of authorized reps in Australia. We've got, I think, 3,600 authorized reps operate under financial services licenses that we control. So Again, that's a really different way of looking at how insurance broking has developed. So if you think about 3,600 individual businesses that are operating under somebody else's license in days gone by before the advent of AR networks, they may have attempted to get their own licenses. And so the consolidation of distribution to AR is here, it's dynamic, and we're one of the major players in it. Looking at the underwriting agencies, and Mark will reflect upon this. But our focus is on the retention and new business and all the time on pricing adequacy. -- our MGAs in Australia do about $2.5 billion. And that means somebody gives us $2.5 billion of their cash to deploy into the market and to give them a profit on it. So we are very cognizant of that responsibility, and we're very cognizant of maintaining long-term relationships we've been able to do. We do have a diverse portfolio of commercial and retail brands. And we've also been able to step into a couple of areas. And I think with the -- sure purchase, it gave us an opportunity to expand around the market. With the advent of Castle, that has been -- that has reached fruition, and Mark may talk a little more about that as we get there. And also, the fact that we have consolidated and our MGAs certainly -- that's been a really difficult but terrifically powerful job that's done. I'll let Mark talk about that a little bit further when he talks to you. And also new products, new markets, we're about to move, but we will start to write cyber in North America in the next 3 months. So that's just the start of what we may do into the U.S. market. The Novum platform gives us the opportunity to be able to bring MGAs in and get them out in some cases to nearly 9,000 potential agents who plug into that network. So -- and I guess what we've done, and I think with Mark coming into the stewardship of the MGAs is to continue to build the relationships we've got with carriers all around the world at a very high level and on a sophisticated level where when they talk about us distributing their product, they know our track record is one of consistency and profitability for them. So I'll leave that to Mark. On the technology side, I think this is interesting the advent of what we've done with the SCTP, bringing on InsureBot and some new products has absolutely started to streamline quoting processes. I mean and then our investment in Steadfast apps, and I'll let David talk in more detail to that. It has been our movement over the last couple of years into how we use AI contained within the business. And I think the development of our reporting capabilities means that not that we do every day, but we have access to our GWP and our profit lines basically on a daily basis. So we're not looking at trends 6 months in arrears or 3 months in arrears. We're looking at trends of what's happening today, where movements are occurring. So we know -- and I guess the involvement of the IT in our data and analytics makes -- gives us market-leading information. And so when I speak to you about numbers, they're not hypothetical numbers that we put off of Blackboard. They are actually factually -- actual numbers based on tremendous data capabilities that we've got built up really over the last decade. So it's very exciting. And I think that the frightness that came out of AI, it really knocks us for 6 because I mean, what AI is going to do to the processing of internal business where we have to move digital data around and give it to people and where we've had FTEs doing that, now that will be replaced. And David can talk a bit further on that when he does it. It is astounding when you see the way the market reacted that about a small insurer in Spain with a little product that couldn't really do anything like what we do now and the whole market got put into a turmoil. Yes, AI is going to be a disruptor. And yes, there'll be people who will enjoy speaking to somebody that's been made out of digital analytics as opposed to ringing up their local insurance broker and saying, "Hello, Jack, hello, -- can you fix my 18-year-old car that I can't get insured or the house is partly burned down, am I in trouble. So data analytics and the capability of AI are the DNA of growing insurance brokers, not the fear about insurance brokers, but the facilitation of getting rid of and streamlining a whole lot of processes. And then I guess, just on our subsidiary performance, it's a long-going process. It's not something new. We have done what not a lot of people have done, I guess, in our industry is to put finite CEOs and CFOs in charge of main CG cash-generating units to make sure that the accountability sits into certain pillars of income that comes to us and that we -- that they report up to Hannah. So that there is several people working on the constant revenue that we're generating and how we can save and how we can improve. This -- we started implementing this last year. We thought we'd implemented for the FY '27 year. We were encouraged by the market to actually implement it clearly. And just because I'm difficult to deal with, I asked our finance team, could they actually do it for the half year, which meant everybody worked night and day to do it. We did we put out a reaffirmation of what it looked like. And now you have an unequivocal view of what our brokers, our underwriting agencies, our international, our technology and head office costs and how -- and when you want to do a comparison, you don't have to guess you're going to have a look. And we're fully accountable for each one of those sectors at any one time. So I think the work that's been done headed up by Tim and Mark have been outstanding. I'll leave them to talk further about it. So I'll get -- I'll stop talking and put you the key people that make the business hum. So Tim, thanks very much, Tim Anderson.

Thanks, Robert, and good morning, everyone. We might start over on Slide 10, if we can, please. I'm really pleased to report the Australasian broker network continues to grow despite the softer premium cycle. In the first half, our network gross written premium increased 4.4% to $6.4 billion. It's been a very active period for our M&A team who completed 23 step-ups, 9 step-downs and 17 new acquisitions, 16 of which will be bolted into existing equity brokers. At the same time, we have enhanced revenue with growth of our broker network fees and professional service fees in line with budget. We continue to see strong engagement across the network, as mentioned by Robert, now with 414 brokers and over 3,000 authorized representatives, providing diversification for our group across products, industries and geographic regions. It's important to recognize that 86% of our gross written premium is in commercial lines, which is much more resilient to direct online and potential AI offerings to the micro SME and retail markets. Along with our broker network, our technology platforms provide a clear sustainable advantage to our business model. There are now 247 brokers live on Insight with almost 8,000 users. In addition, more than 13,000 individuals use our Steadfast client trading platform, which uses API and automation to gather and present policy information and quotes more efficiently. AI will no doubt further enhance this, particularly with the significant amount of data and reporting we can provide to our network. This is further evidenced by the significant increase in insurebot transactions we are seeing since acquiring the business earlier this year. We continue to see great opportunity between broking and technology. You'll have the opportunity to hear from David Colespy, our Chief Technology Officer, shortly. Over to Slide 11, please. Being good to see the network has achieved solid underlying earnings growth of 13%. Overall, EBITA has grown $21.5 million on the PCP. 11.7% of this growth is a result of our recent M&A activity, including the 17 acquisitions mentioned, providing a good run rate into the second half of this financial year. At the same time, we have increased effective ownership of EBITA from 79% to 83% with a number of step-ups into existing equity businesses. Organic growth continues, albeit more moderately in line with the expectations we communicated at the last investor update. We've implemented a number of cost-saving measures in the first half that will be fully realized in the second half. We have also committed to increasing broker fees by 2.5% in the second half to support our organic growth target. We continue to remain focused on subsidiary performance, including hubving to improve operational efficiency. At the same time, our brokers remain focused on delivering sustainable organic growth and margin improvement with a continued focus on top line renewal retention and new business performance. Slide 12, please. So just briefly about AI. With over 8,000 individual users on our insight broking system and 13,000 individual users on the SCTP, we're extremely well placed to use AI to the broker's advantage. We hold the data to make this possible. Having said that, our brokers are much better than AI making judgments, building relationships, being accountable for service and advice, providing risk management, claims advocacy and general insurance expertise. This will only be enhanced as the surrounding workflows, data capture and placement mechanics are increasingly automated with AI. Our Director of AI and Emerging Technology, Steve Tufton, has recently published a report on AI chat-based insurance apps and the implications for Steadfast. The summary of the strategic recommendations and our approach to AI is provided on this slide. Steadfast to summarize, the path forward is not resistance, but adaptation, embracing AI as a channel, automating what we can, but strengthening the human connection that AI cannot replicate. I will now hand over to Mark Senovich, CEO of Steadfast Underwriting agencies. Over to you, Mark.

Yes. Thanks very much, Tim, and good morning, everyone. Let me just start by saying that at a high level, the strategically important role of underwriting agencies in the Australian market continues. They continue to expand in terms of market footprint and in providing excellent service to clients as well as innovation. There's no question it's been a challenging market for the first quarter of this year. And in particular, in the strata and specialty sectors, Robert has spoken to our actions in this regard, and I'll touch on those in a little more detail later. We're very much focused on our strategy to diversify the portfolio and to improve efficiencies and foster both organic and acquisition growth. And a few key points here. Firstly, Robert has mentioned it, the success of the Castle brand launched as part of Shore. We've launched a number of new products within our MGAs and taken action in Q2 FY '26 to address the moderating market that we observed in the first quarter of last year -- of the financial year. And our ongoing investment into tech, into data and actuarial capability continues, including the addition of native AI solutions in a number of the tech platforms that we're implementing at this point. It also supports us, and Robert touched on this as well in respect of our carrier relationships -- our ability to deliver data is second to none. And on the operational side, you'll see a case study where I've touched on the consolidation of a number of our businesses and the value that, that brings to investors. So the challenging market sees GWP under some pressure. But on a like-for-like basis, we're seeing 3% growth in GWP. I do want to emphasize, this is very important, that the agency revenue footprint, including profit commissions and margin tends to skew to the second half of the year. I can't overemphasize that point, and I'll talk a little more to that in a later -- a little bit later. So we're really anticipating improved outcomes for half 2 and by extension for the full year. And just a quick word on balance sheet activity, and it's modest, but the sale of Blend, Sterling and Steadfast Re allowed us to cycle capital into step-ups on higher-margin businesses. And again, modest but demonstrates our capability in doing that with our assets. Just touching on a few operational highlights and focusing on the revenue side. I mentioned Castle Insurance. And when we purchased Shaw in 2023, we flagged the opportunity to launch an Australia-wide proposition. Since its go-live in October 2025, Castle has exceeded all of our expectations, including that of the Shaw team to the tune of about 52% in first half, and that continues into the first months of the second half. It offers brokers choice -- this is not just about a price proposition, but a choice proposition for our brokers out there, and we've seen brokers block to the Castle offering. Importantly, the Castle team also implemented a new tech stack, and that allows easy API access into third-party trading platforms and of course, provides us with greater analytics and the opportunity to implement AI at a future date.

Mark, the Castle brand grew out of the opportunity we got from QBE to do its renewal book on this broker business. How is the retention looking on that?

Both retention and new growth, actually, new growth -- new business has exceeded the portfolio that we inherited from QBE, Robert.

It's interesting then when you reflect on when a focused distribution network gets hold of a product and has distribution, how quickly that product can grow. And if you get the pricing right and the algorithms agreed between us and QVE, then it opens up an unbelievably cheap way for an insurer to get their capital into the market to a broad range of people. And I think this will be something that maybe the whole market will look at what it is.

I think the market is already looking at it. And I remain confident into the second half, we'll continue to see the growth trajectory of Castle. Also, I just want to comment briefly on some of our other MGAs. In the slides, I've captured a couple of examples for CHU. They've launched -- actually launched 5 new products. I've mentioned a couple there. But CHU read the cycle very well and adjusted their go-to-market strategy. The December and January numbers, albeit that they're smaller months, are showing improved retention and new business growth. And I think that's very important. We anticipate that, that trend will continue. Also, the increased capacity that we have now from QBE and from reinsurers offers an excellent opportunity to grow into an expanding market in Strata, which is new overstation developments in capital cities. So I see some good growth opportunity there. And likewise, some of our other agencies, Meon, Emergence and Coast, all have new product offerings. And we've launched Unity Trade Credit, a new underwriter in the trade credit space, which is actually quite a narrow market.

That's aimed at the smaller end, isn't it? I think trade credit.

That's correct.

And facilitates quotations almost instantaneously is on an automaker basis.

And finally, our acquisition pipeline continues to grow. We had one acquisition in the first half, and we have several other opportunities under discussion. And then just moving to Slide 15. Some of the Financial highlights, revenue is up 2.7% to $240.9 million. EBITDA more or less flat year-on-year -- sorry, Slide 15. Thank you. EBITDA more or less flat year-on-year at $112.7 million. Again, I want to reinforce the book skewed to half 2. Revenue is historically greater as is the recognition of profit commission, which is actually only calculated after the end of the calendar year for many of our binders. I'll touch quickly on fee income. It's increased as a number of our MGAs have sought to restructure their remuneration. It's not as big a mover for us as it is on the broker side. But nonetheless, we've seen fee income increase for underwriting agencies overall. And we've maintained our expense discipline, which will continue into half 2. Equity ownership remains at 88%. I mentioned some step-ups earlier. We've also had a couple of management buy-ins overall. And then on to Slide 16. I mean this commercial agency consolidation case study, really the headline here is that aside from a more effective broker and client interaction, we anticipate this will create an uplift of over $5 million in annualized EBITDA across the group following implementation from the fourth quarter of this year. The announcement on the commercial agency side is imminent. We've already executed this initiative in consumer agencies and the more ambitious project with commercial agencies brings 8 underwriting agencies into one and narrows the number of AFSLs from 5 to 2, just to give an example of the expense management that will come from this.

When do you get that in the second half?

It will come on board through May and into -- then subsequently into...

FY '28.

And I touched on the underwriting platform investment. It allows these businesses to operate on a single modern tech stack with unified underwriting claims policy admin and as well as improved analytics, which, of course, lends itself to the native AI applications that come with these platforms. It's also provided us with -- this consolidation has provided us with a unique opportunity to use our scale and leverage to consolidate our binder purchases in London with significant rationalization of binders, brokers, and this creates significant savings for us and improved commission outcomes. We're also in the process of transferring binders progressively to HWS, bringing revenues back in-house for the International division. And with that, a little headline for Sam, I'll pass over to you.

Nice segue. Thank you, Mark. If I could please move on to Slide 18. And I'll run you through the first half '26 operational highlights, which have been significant in our continuing development of the international expansion. So for ISU Steadfast, it's performing strongly and has exceeded the first half '26 budgeted EBITDA. We've had 22 new members, which is a record amount of numbers attracted to the group in any first half, and we've had 13 net of terminations. We've also piloted the new Advantage membership tier, which we had touched on in our December update, which is basically the ability to attract quality independent agents that were originally too small to qualify for our membership. It is a gap in the U.S. market with networks at the moment, and it's a very large and growing segment of the U.S. insurance landscape, which will be a new opportunity for us to continue to grow our membership numbers and create scale. And really pleasing, ISU Steadfast, we've embarked on our first trapped capital scenario with the first investment in a network member scheduled for completion on March 1, and we also have an intent signed for a second investment. So that's a super exciting development for international expansion to have gone down the trapped capital route. If I move on to HWS Specialty, again, another business performing strongly and exceeded the first half '26 budgeted EBITDA. We've really had significant progress in this first half of diversifying the business into new and expanded specialties to cater to our global network requirements and product lines, and we have done this through some really strategic recruitment. But I would like to emphasize that -- we are building the business, but we are also incredibly conscious of cost containment. And if you just look in CY '25, we had 13 new starters, but we also had 12 levers. And some of those were intentional to bring new exciting talent into the business and to continue to grow that business. So we are conscious of the cost containment component of building out HWS specialty. But we're also really focused on the organic growth of the existing specialties that we have with strong new business wins in marine cargo and also a new specialty area growth in U.S. transportation. And Novum, which was our latest baby in the first half where we acquired in August 2025, and that's had incredibly strong performance in just the 4 months since post completion. In the finished calendar 2025 year, GWP, we had was USD 140 million, which was 60% organic growth over the prior year. We're extremely pleased with that business, that acquisition, and we're excited by the possibilities that lay ahead. And we've had really strong engagement with the ISU Steadfast to focus on increasing that submission flow and the strategic alignment and opportunities that will come by having a distribution network in the U.S. market alongside and MGA in the U.S. market. And I'd like to draw your attention to the right-hand side of the screen, which is just basically a little snapshot of International since acquisition. So 2 years ago since acquisition with ISU Stead Bus Network, we've had 13% net growth in members and 26% growth in profit sharing from carriers. For HWS Specialty in the first year since acquisition, we've had strong organic growth, and we've also had 4 really significant recruits to build the capabilities we always said we needed in the product lines of property, casualty and delegated authority. to really capitalize on the global market opportunity and also the London market opportunity. That has now stabilized our business to really move it forward. And of course, Novum, only 4 months into the acquisition, we've had organic growth beyond acquisition expectations. And we've had 300-plus policy submissions from ISG Steadfast members into that MGA already in that first 4 months. I think this shows that we have a great track record of acquisitions to date. All businesses are performing well and capital has been spent well. If I can move to Slide 19, please, and I'll take you through the financial highlights of the first half. The financials demonstrate continued strength of Steadfast International. We've delivered underlying aggregate EBITDA of $9.5 million, growth of $10.1 million over the prior corresponding period. The strong organic performance is driven mainly by the growth in the ISU Steadfast network and the cost synergies we have realized from consolidating Steadfast London office into HWS Specialty. And acquisition growth has been driven by the acquisitions of HWS Specialty and Novum Underwriting Partners. We've had really strong organic growth since acquisition of HWS with the significant new business wins in marine cargo and U.S. Transportation, which has been represented under the acquisition growth. And the first 4 months of solid contribution from Novum with 60% growth over the prior period and submission flow from ISU also gaining traction. These results reflect the high-quality earnings as well as our disciplined approach to scaling the business. If I could move to Slide 20, please. This slide is all about the strategic opportunity and momentum ahead for the second half '26 and beyond. And we're looking forward with optimism for that period. So if I look at ISU steadfast and I look at our 4 strategic pillars there of network growth, market access, agency perpetuation and technology, we're really looking forward with a lot of excitement and momentum behind those. And even if I go back to network growth, our improved value proposition plus the new membership tier we have with marketing commencing in March this year to drive and attract retention to build on our network numbers. In the market access, not only do we have enhanced strategic carrier relationships, but we now have that ability to drive Novum and HW specialty solutions because we now have those in a position where we can drive that forward and service the network. So I truly believe we are just at the beginning of realizing this opportunity. Agency perpetuation, the ball is rolling now. I just explained, we have the first one signed and an LOI with another, plus we have a pipeline there of other opportunities. This has been a result of 2 years of building relationships and building trust, and we're now realizing that, and that ball will continue to keep rolling, which we're really excited about. And technology, data. Data is key. We have something that we have in the business at the moment with ISU to collect the data network, but it is not sound and to the point that we want to. We have now engaged with a third party only signing up at the end of this month to be able to capitalize on true data insights, which will build momentum in having discussions with carriers, improving consolidation of business that goes through them, creating new programs of work that can go into Nova and into HWS Specialty. So we will be making business decisions on true live data insights, which will be fabulous for our opportunities moving forward. If I move to HWS Specialty, we will continue to leverage the strength of the existing specialty products, but we will also expand on our capabilities and solutions, and we now have the recruits in place to be able to do that. And I'm really excited to also represent that our reputation now in the London market is really growing. So the recruits that we are attracting who want to be part of HWS Specialty are true quality. And I think that speaks volume for what our strategic plans are and opportunities are in that market and our brand. If I move on to Novum Underwriting, we'll continue to scale existing programs and establish new programs. There's a lot we can do in building out wholesale and E&S carrier appointments. But there's also a lot we can do with the Novum online tech system that we have, which is a true advantage in the market. And we will continue to implement a lot of automation into the business and underwriting processes, saving time, allowing us to write -- have more time to write more business. And I think we will continue to grow that agency distribution, especially through the ISU network, but also the external broader market by creating that brand awareness of not only Steadfast ownership, but the Novum brand and the opportunities and the strengths that it has. And if I look finally into even with the scaling of the new programs, we're launching several new programs, including entry into the Canadian market with a sureureready offering, which has just occurred at the beginning of this year. So -- in conclusion, based on the strong momentum in the first half and significant opportunities in the second half, we continue to be excited about the future of Steadfast International. It's an important growth area for the group, and we are well positioned with complementary businesses and geographies to recognize the opportunity. On that point, I'll hand over to our CTO, David Galeski.

Thanks, Sam. Technology is at the core of our business, and we continue to invest and support our networks. Page 22, please. You've heard Tim, Mark and Sam talk about their business units, and we work closely with them in ensuring that we are supporting their business strategy. In the broker area under Tim, we have the market-leading insurtech platforms with SCTP and Insight. Coming from one of the major insurers, I was aware of those platforms, but seen in detail what capability they have and talking to brokers has made me even more impressed. One of the reasons I was excited to join Steadfast was the opportunity to build out the next generation of those platforms with Steadfast apps. I've undertaken similar programs at Fidelity in the U.K. with Funds Network and at Tal Life with ColorBuilder. -- and now with the opportunity to embed AI where appropriate and equally making sure we're more agile as insurers upgrade their platforms. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in coming slides. In parallel, we're continuing to onboard new brokers, new products and new insurers. Last year, we acquired Insurebot, and that was for 2 reasons. Firstly, to provide rapid automation of broker to insurer integration with Insight, but equally for their entrepreneurial approach to act as an incubator for innovation. Last week, I saw a showcase of new capability they've built for a broker in New Zealand, which will go live in the next couple of weeks and will deliver significant efficiencies for them. This is an approach I've used in previous roles, and we're now replicating here in steadfast. In the underwriting area, Mark spoke about the uplift that is underway there, and it's a great example of how we leverage partner products with AI embedded to improve and accelerate our capability. For example, in our claims processing, where our claims staff -- AI agents will guide the claims staff with prompts and execute routine tasks. With our international business, you saw from Samantha's update how Novum fits in. When we looked at it from a technology perspective, we saw a great platform with Novum Online, which in many ways is similar to Insight. One of the capabilities we realized was the automation engine, which Sam talked about there. And when we see opportunities to cross leverage, we'll use that. Lastly, we want to ensure our staff are fully literate on AI. We actively encourage them. We have internal and external training available. And where we've deployed AI, it's not just a set and forget. We track usage. And when it's not as high as we would like, we support staff in leveraging it. How we use it is continuing to evolve as AI continues to evolve as well. Moving on to Page 23 and one platform. We tend to talk about Insurtech has just been about SCTP and Insight, but it's broadened that. In the next couple of months, we'll start deploying Steadfast ID, which serves 2 main purposes. One is around uplifting our security posture and secondly, to start consolidating the entry point for brokers and insurers to a single storefront, which is a real enabler for future capabilities and uplift and showcases the additional services that Steadfast can provide. I spoke about the uplift and replatform we are seeing with our insurer partners and our product configurator engine is a new middleware layer, which will enable easier integration as they upgrade. This will be going live by June and will then allow us to reduce our onboarding time for insurers and new products from over 3 months to less than 1. We have regular meetings, as you would expect with our insurers to make sure we've aligned road maps where it makes sense. You've already seen some examples of our reporting using the data platform. That will only get better as we introduce a conversational AI overlay. So rather than configuring reports, we can just ask the questions. The team have been testing it and trust me, it's pretty impressive. Most companies spend 80% of their time getting data, 20% analyzing. We are flipping that. So the majority of time will be analyzing for insights. Steadfast Intelligence is for internal use for comparison performance perspectives for brokers, operational and analytics reporting and equally for insurers and underwriters to undertake deep dives on their product performance across different segments. In addition, having that rich data is fundamental to creating accurate and reliable AI systems. Steadfast Apps is where we bring much of this together. So let me talk about that on the following page, Page 24. As I said, we have great broker platforms, but it's important not to be complacent. We're constantly in dialogue with our brokers. In fact, many of the Insurtech team come from a broking background. So taking their inputs on where their pain points are, how we can optimize the existing processes, how technology is evolving and opportunities we have with AI, we have been developing Steadfast Apps, our next-generation platform. We really believe in user-led design. So we build working prototypes and test with brokers to make sure that delivers the benefits and improvements they need. We're using AI to augment the broker, not replace them. At our convention next month, the Insurtech team will be showcasing some of the new features that we will be bringing to the platform. And as I said earlier, through the year, we'll continue to add new products and insurers. As well as making the brokers more efficient, one of our aims is to reduce the total cost of software ownership for them by embedding CRM, document management, et cetera, into the platform, which will have the benefit of removing handoffs and optimizing processes and in some cases, negate the need for additional software. We want to widen the jaws with increased revenue as more brokers come on and have a more efficient platform. We're already seeing stronger financial discipline around our cost -- our cloud costs and that will increase next year as we complete the rollout of the new platform. Lastly, we also see AI as a new acquisition channel, and we're now embracing generative engine optimization as much as the traditional SEO. I will now hand over to Hannah, our CFO.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining today. I'll be guiding you through the group's financial performance for the first half of FY '26 with a focus on our earnings delivery, balance sheet strength and cash flow generation. Please move on to the next slide. For the first half of FY '26, the group has delivered a solid result, especially given the moderating pricing environment. This outcome reflects proactive expense discipline, subsidiary performance improvement initiatives and a solid contribution from acquisitions. Key highlights for the first half include underlying revenue increased 14.6% to circa $1 billion. Underlying EBITDA increased 12.6% to $293.6 million. Underlying NPAT increased 7.3% to $137.5 million with diluted EPS of $0.124. -- and underlying NPATA was $161.5 million, up 6.3% with diluted EPS of $0.146. The reported stat NPAT for the period was $127 million compared to $106.4 million in the prior corresponding period. The seasonal distribution of NPAT in the first half of FY '26 was originally guided to be circa 4% to 45%. However, as Robert has already addressed earlier, the material expense savings are expected to be realized in the second half. Hence, the earnings seasonality is now expected to be broadly in line with last year, close to circa 43% -- can we move on to the next slide, please. This page breaks down the drivers between -- behind the 12.6% growth in underlying EBITDA. Growth was supported by a combination of 2% organic growth, reflecting a moderating pricing environment and 5.7% acquisition growth, excluding the Roe step-up. We have continued to be diligent on acquisitions, including transactions involving increased stakes in existing businesses. As a result, these transactions do not uplift EBITDA directly, rather the benefit flows through to NPAT by reducing noncontrolling interest, which is addressed on the next slide. We have also shown the Roe impact separately. While Roe is consolidated at 100% basis at the EBITDA level for accounting purposes, we have only stepped up soOFa 3% Accordingly, the uplift NPAT from ROTE is modest at this stage from a financial perspective. Can we move on to the next slide, please. This slide highlights the different mix of organic versus acquisition growth between EBITDA and NPAT. As mentioned earlier, organic EBITDA growth was 2%, closely aligning with organic NPAT growth of 2.3% shown. The further uplift in organic NPAT growth to 4.5% is primarily driven by 2 factors. First, savings from amortization expenses as certain acquired businesses reached the end of the accounting useful life of customer relationships, including CHU, UAA and BCP. And second, reduced amortization following business asset impairments recorded in first -- in FY '25. On the acquisition side, EBITDA growth of 5.7%, excluding Roy, broadly aligns with the 7.5% acquisition growth in NPAT. However, higher amortization and borrowing costs means less of this growth flows through to NPAT, explaining why the mix differs from EBITDA. Overall, the group delivered a solid underlying NPAT growth of 7.3% for the first half. Next slide, please. The group continues to maintain a conservative balance sheet, providing capacity to fund future growth while preserving financial flexibility. As of December 2025, total borrowings were circa $1.2 billion with a gearing ratio of 33.4%, comfortably below the Board approved maximum rate of 40%. This gives the group capacity to borrow further $382.2 million while remaining within the gearing limit. During the period, the group also increased its corporate debt facilities to circa $1.3 billion, including accordion and shelf facilities, total potential debt capacity reaches at circa $1.7 billion. This positions us well to fund our acquisition pipeline while maintaining balance sheet discipline. Next slide, please. Finally, conversion of the profit to cash flow. The group has delivered adjusted net cash from operating activities to $164.7 million in first half of FY '26, reflecting continued stable conversion of earnings into cash. You will note that post-tax cash flow from operating activities was lower compared to the first half of FY '25. This was primarily driven by higher financing costs, reflecting interest rate headwinds and increased utilization of the facilities to support our acquisition pipeline. as well as redundancy costs paid during the period. While the redundancy costs are a cash outflow, they are excluded from our underlying earnings. After dividends paid to shareholders and noncontrolling interest, free cash flow was $34.7 million, up from $32.5 million in the prior period. Together with the debt flexibility of $382 million, total available funding of $415 million provides ongoing capacity to fund dividends, support organic investments and pursue disciplined acquisition opportunities. Thank you. And now I'll hand back to Robert to talk through on the FY '26 guidance.

Thanks, Hannah. And I'll refer you to Page 32 in the outlook. Just that on behalf of the Board, we got to -- I want to reconfirm guidance NPATA $365 million to $375 million NPAT $315 million to $325 million; EBITA, $650 million to $665 million and diluted EPS NPAT growth of between 6% and 10%. I think that during this period of time, you saw us realign and restate our FY 2024 and '25. In February, we advised the market of these changes to its segment disclosure and that they would be reflected in FY '26, as I alluded to before, the refinement of the calculation of the group's underlying EBITDA and NPATA. These changes are presentational in nature, and they don't reflect any changes to the underlying performances of the business. They're designed to give you clear and view of how we make our money and spend our money. So the guidance is subject to just a few assumptions. We're achieving 2% to 3% increases in insurance premiums. As I say, January 26 showed 2.7% we reviewed to 1% to 2% under abundance guidance before Christmas. The trend that came through for November, December and January proved that, that conservative 1% to 2% was out and that will definitely do 2% to 3%. At the moment, it's trending more towards 3%, but it's a volatile period of insurance at the moment. So we're still, again, showing 2% to 3%. And also the key risks that exist on Page 50 and 52 of the pack here. The waterfall chart there shows you FY '26 FY '25 26.7 -- and if you look at the 6% to 7% guidance on the right, that's the increase we expect to be. Net acquisitions, we're showing you and net organic, we're showing you there. So it's a pretty solid position to be in at a time when the market was guessing what would occur, we put out a strong guidance, and we're confirming that guidance at this stage. So on Page 33, we're resilient. We're adaptive. Our business model works. We had challenges in FY '26. I think the first half of '26 was a bit of a gestation period. The waterfall in pricing from June to July and August was unpredict predicted. I think we took a little while to react to it. We have reacted to it and those reactions will be presented in the second half. We continue to execute our growth, and we continue to look at underlying strong earnings versus period-to-period. First half, we adapted to market conditions. The expense reductions will come through, and we completed the $240 million in acquisitions. Technology, David has just spoken much more eloquently than what I can do about it. All I can say is that we were ahead of the pack when we introduced hindsight and the client trading platform. And 5 or 6 years ago, we brought Steve Tutton into this organization with the master of AI on a predicted basis that we were going to have to move. in that area very quickly, and we've been looking at that. And David's entree into this business has been sensational with his international experience and the vast amount of major companies that he's worked with. So we -- as I said, we reaffirm our guidance. We'll continue to prioritize our capital. We will look at rearranging our capital. I mean we've been around 13 years. We've been diligent at what we bought. And I won't be frightened to look at assets that we've got and see whether they're worth more money in cash and being applied somewhere else. Don't get fearful that we're going to do something silly. -- everything we do on our capital management is well thought out. And we'll make sure that we keep our discipline on our acquisitions and continue to do the portfolio rationalizations as Tim and Mark have eloquently stated before. And over the term, we see continued margin improvement. So what I'm saying to you, it was a tough first half. We accepted it. We worked on it. We executed on it and the second half was better. So thank you, everyone. I'll hand you back to the...

Thank you, Robert. Our first question today comes from Andrei Stadnik from Morgan Stanley.

I think we've just gone into the afternoon. Can you talk a little bit more about the second half earnings bridge? Like some of the things you outlined should support second half growth, like I think the cost out seasonality, some of the recent acquisitions. Can you help just investors a little bit of the second half earnings bridge?

Okay. I think probably the best way to do that is to start with you, Tim, in terms of the time lag it takes by the time you start doing something and the success you're having in that area.

Yes. So on the top line, firstly, we've started plans to review the fees across the business, and we'll look to implement some changes to those over the second half. But looking more to the operational costs, we had met late last year with our subsidiary principles. There are 63 of those now with some guidance around the need to use natural attrition where possible to improve on employment expense costs. And so they put those into play before Christmas. And so they'll start to wash through into the second half as well. We'll see some real improvement in the employment expense rate there. So I think both of those 2 factors combined will get us to where we need to be.

And I think also we were a little slow off the mark of looking at the fee structure that we had in. And I think people got a bit complacent. And I think the second half will reflect on the fact of the increased fees that you've been able to push through from that point of view. Mark, I mean, I guess you and Steve will turn the underwriting agencies upside down when you said we're going to consolidate these. We're going to move more into HWS wood. We're going to employ some people to do some stuff. We're going to shuffle around. Are you ready to produce a better second half than the first half?

Well, I emphasized that in my opening remarks, and I'll continue to do so. So Andre, thanks for the question. For us, we have a footprint of revenue, which is biased to the second half. That's because of the weighting of renewals into that period. Secondly, we've got the growth initiatives underway. I spoke to Castle. CHU looking at their pricing and product and a number of our other agencies have really taken on board the sudden shift in pricing in the first quarter of the financial year and are reacting to that. I touched on profit commission that has a second half footprint to it, very much biased towards that. And while it is an at-risk component simply because of weather, it does have a longer time duration footprint to it. So we're seeing profit commissions emerge from 5 years earlier. And then as Robert just alluded, the operational changes that are playing through, we'll start to see those emerge in the final couple of months of the year and into FY '27.

You've got the responsibility of the second half. I mean, what's your view in what Andre said?

Yes. So improvements from both broking and underwriting agency segments on the revenue line and in conjunction with the savings that we have mentioned, Andre, $7 million from the head office and $4 million from subsidiaries. that will bridge the gap between where we are today to the guidance.

So we're pretty confident.

Just to double check, did you imply the acquisitions in the first half was skewed towards the end of the first half?

I guess that's true acquisitions, but we did a lot in -- I guess we did a lot in finalizing towards November and December. Yes, to answer that absolutely correctly. And I don't know whether it was because of the fear of the ACCC. -- people will probably think it just happened to be -- I mean, we had all our -- the ACCC agreed all our acquisitions. It was just, I think, a bit of a time constraint of getting through and making sure we got them completed. There's nobody from the M&A department here at the moment. So they were probably lazy and get them done quicker. But yes, it was -- I mean, sometimes people think we do this deliberately, but the ramifications of getting documentation done and getting people agreed and getting -- it's absolutely compound sometimes. And so we struggle to get it all done by Christmas. So I think everybody could go away. But yes, it was weighted towards that. So the impact of that, of course, means you're not getting the revenue uplift because in most cases, December is a benign period anyway. It's not the most exciting period. January is not the most exciting period. So you won't feel that impact on those acquisitions until more or less in the February, March, April, May, June period.

If I can ask just one more question. Just around the gearing target. I think it went up from 30% to 35% a year ago, and it's gone up to 40%. Can you explain a little bit about like the reason and why you're comfortable with that?

Well, we -- in theory, we do have bank covenants requirement up to 40%. So we always have the flexibility. We thought it's a great time to leverage our balance sheet to fund for the acquisition and hence, that was an increase there.

Yes. We always ran at 40%. All our covenants were at 40%, okay? In fact, we could have had covenants at 50% if we wanted to because of the nature of our balance sheet and the perspective and the long-term relationship we've got with the Australian banks. We've seen the growth of this business be strong. So I mean, with the market the way it was, we just reloaded and use more of our capacity.

The next question comes from Julian Braganza from Goldman Sachs.

Just a first question for me in terms of just the acquisition multiples. Just want to understand exactly where you're at, at the moment across the different jurisdictions. If I look at your -- just your annual -- your half year report, I think you flagged about 11.5x EBITDA on acquisitions over the period. But I think, Rob, on the call, you had mentioned 10x. So I just want to understand if it was driven by M and ISU that led to the higher multiple. But yes, just understanding where the multiples are at at the moment and your expectations from here?

Yes. In Australia, we're basically around 10 to 10x, okay? So that's a mixture of what we bought overseas and with Australia bringing it back to about 11.7%. In most cases, we get -- we believe with that we have the ability to bring in savings. And historically, it's proved when we paid a little bit more for it where we think there are savings that we've achieved those savings. And so I think that as long as going to ask me to predict what the multiples will be next week because I have no idea what the international share prices will do. But when you watch $4.5 billion get knocked off the market cap of the biggest insurance broker in the world because of somebody gets frightened about some implication, then I can't tell you what the multiples will be going forward. I can tell you the multiples we'll be paying going forward will reflect our capacity and will reflect our view of getting EPS accretion for doing that acquisition.

Okay. Got it. That's clear. And then maybe just touching on just the broking organic revenue. So it was about 1% this.

It's actually about Julian, it's about...

So 2%, is it -- is that across the group? Or is that...

Growth in -- if we unpack organic growth and take away a couple of things that we threw in there, yes. And we're predicting 2% for the second half.

2% for the second half. So that's driven by the fee increases that you're planning to put through into the second half.

Yes. Julian, it's Tim. Just to provide some more context around that. The core broking business has performed really well so far to budget. I think the biggest variance that we've seen is in the New Zealand market. We've called that out already with some of the underperformance there. And the other one was in the professional lines businesses that's really had some challenges. So if we look at those 2 parts of the business in its -- separate from the core Australian broking business, we're performing much better and closer to the...

Yes. But as we said before, we're still very interested in the New Zealand market. It's a great market. It's just in a bit of free fall at the moment. And it's interesting when you think about it, that professional lines is one of the ones that is taking hits in competition at the moment. So if you've got a professional lines broker, it's D&O premiums fell period-to-period 8.4% alone. So it's very difficult to -- if you're a specialist in that area to not struggle to get organic growth when the whole -- when your product line is being discounted around. But that will come back.

Got it. And just to understand a little bit better the levers here around that organic growth from both commissions and fees. One of your peers is talking to some fairly material upside potential that could come through if they were to sort of maximize these levers. So I just want to understand into the second half and into next year, more holistically, have you had a bit more of a look and a sort of quantification around how meaningful this could be in terms of upside for organic growth on the commissions and revenue?

Yes. I won't put a dollar number on it, but just to give some clarity around that, commission rates remained very stable throughout the first half. We did see a slight improvement to the fee rate, about up 1%. But moving it even at that rate has a significant dollar value increase. And so we're now targeting to increase that further by 2.5%, and that will achieve further organic growth for us.

Okay. Okay. That's clear. And then maybe just margins, last question on margins. So to be very clear expectations for margins here for both broking and agency versus -- just into the second half versus PCP and into '27. I think in agency, for example, you're

flagging continued investment

there on your platforms, but you've also got cost out coming through. So to be very clear on the margin trajectory into the second half and into FY '27 as well.

Should I take for the margin? Yes. So for broking and agencies both, I think for particular for agencies, we've started including profit share into the segment of agencies, excluding that, both of the margin seems to be quite steady, broadly in line between FY '25 and '26 based on the new segment disclosure. For FY '27, we will be able to give you an update as we speak FY '26 results.

We used to take -- we used to take profit shares in the head office, okay? And in reality, what we've done with the realigning of the revenue, as Hannes just said, if an underwriting agency the profit share goes into the underwriting agencies' income.

Okay. Got it. And just to clarify, the only cost that goes through the FY '27 numbers is that $5 million of savings that was flagged in agency. And that is that the only one and the $7 million and $4 million is obviously in the second half.

Sorry, are you referring to the $7 million head office and $4 million savings from the...

That's right. That's second half, but the $5 million in agency from combining businesses, that's flowing into FY '27?

Yes, Julian, we'll start to see that emerge in the last couple of months, but it won't be a significantly impactful shift. However, in FY '26 -- FY '27 rather, I think we'll start to see the full emergence of that.

If I add on to that, Julian -- sorry, the $7 million from head office and $4 million from subsidiaries, we're expecting circa half of that to fall into FY '27 as a run rate savings.

The next question today comes from Andrew Bunk from Macquarie.

Just a couple from me, please. The first one, you're obviously running a cost-out program at the moment. It would be useful to get some color on what your intention for these sorts of programs are going forward. Is this a one-off? Or is this business as usual?

I think Han, you can handle. I think the restructuring that we've done, okay, is a one-off.

Certainly, I completely agree with Robert. So any restructure that we have done is certainly one-off. When it comes to continuous margin improvement, that's BE for us.

Excellent. The next one, are there any businesses in your group that you would consider to be noncore? The new disclosures have obviously given investors a lot better visibility into how much is going on in the group. Would you consider anything to be noncore?

Well, Sarah Thompson from the AFR considers I accumulate to be noncore and not really germane to our income. So I guess I'll reflect on having on that statement and see whether she's right or not. But in reality, what I'm looking at is businesses that we've got and developed that are making profit. And if we think there are other businesses that we could buy that would make more profit, then we'll -- I was going to say liquidate, but I say with the KPMG liquidation partner and he gets annoyed with -- he calls it restructuring rather than liquidation. So we'd probably look to consider restructuring those businesses by amalgamating them or indeed ultimately maybe sell them and say what we could do with the capital in another area. I think we're pretty clever about knowing where businesses we can invest that give us the best return. So if we're not getting as good a return from a slice of capital we've got somewhere, and we think we can get rid of that, get that -- turn that business into liquid cash and apply that liquid cash elsewhere for a better reception, a better return, then we certainly -- we will endeavor to do that over this next 6-month period. And I guess, always, we'll look at recycling our capital anyway. I mean we look at that all the time. I mean, technically, we look at that before we do an acquisition. I mean we get shown a lot of acquisitions, and we look at it and go, well, if we did put our capital into that, what are we going to get back out of it. And many of them that we don't -- I mean, there's one that we've just rejected, which somebody else will buy, but we just couldn't make it work on the numbers that they put forward and the asking price that they wanted to have. So we're not afraid to turn away and not do that.

Great. And then just a final one from me, please, in relation to international. So maybe for Sam as well as you, Robert. You're going into Canada, you're talking about India, you're investing more in the U.S. There's a lot of stuff going on for you overseas. With how quickly technology is changing globally, let alone in the insurance space, is this the right time to be pursuing so many different offshore opportunities?

Yes, Andrew, pretty easy answer to this. Our focus is the U.S. and the U.K. without a doubt. We are exploring opportunities in India just because it would not be prudent for us to do so as such a huge part of the world and the economy. And we've had interest reach out to us rather than us to them. So we will -- like our ethos of everything we've done in Steadfast, we will keep our eyes and ears open to everything and look at everything before a decision is made, but our clear focus is the U.S. and U.K. market.

The next question comes from Siddharth Parameswaran from JPMorgan.

I just had a question just on your acquisition strategy from here. I think, Robert, you've been quite clear that you will be -- any acquisitions you do have to be EPS accretive. I was just keen, given where your share price is, whether it makes sense more to deploy the capital into your own shares rather than new acquisitions, particularly overseas, where the multiples tend to be higher.

I think, Sid, it's a good question, and it's not something that we don't look at. But in reality, every time we look at it, we think, you know what, we can deploy this money much better than what we can buying our own shares. And I think that's an easy thing for a company to do is to buy shares back if it's in the doldrums a little bit or if it's one, we're not. We're very happy with what we're doing, and we're extremely keen to deploy capital because we think we know how to deploy capital. Our track record would support that. And -- but to answer you, honestly, we do look at that and part of prudent capital management is to actually make that evaluation. And until such time as the pendulum turns, and we don't think we can put capital out at a better rate than buying our shares back, then we won't buy our shares back.

Can I just add one...

You did all the work on it. I'm still on your glory.

Sid, I think share buyback is certainly an option from a capital management perspective. But we, management strongly believe the selective M&A opportunities that we've got and long-term margin improvement initiatives that we have will definitely provide a better long-term value creation for the shareholders. So in the short term, that could be an option, but we want to focus on the long term.

Yes. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. If I could just ask a second question just around AI and just your strategy. It seems very much that you're being a little bit more cautious than your peer in terms of how you think the customer may seek to adopt these tools. I was just keen to get your perspective on whether you've also considered a ChatGPT marketplace? And what do you think this will mean to broking and individualized advice models?

I'll get -- I'll let David answer this. But in reality, in a broker's business, 30% of his business is usually comes under pressure each year. They want to change it. Okay. At that 30%, my experience is -- and I think I'm entering -- I think I've just completed my 57th year. So I speak the authority over many, many cycles is that the true broker client will come back and say, I've got a good deal. Can you match it? -- probably 10% to 15% of the broker clients will take the view, well, you should have given me the best price, and I've been screwed and they move, move out. If AI is going to answer that question, then I think definitely from being disrupted, a percentage of our business could be. But our businesses are advice businesses. Our businesses are where people want to be able to talk to somebody. And I can't see that AI is going to interrupt that. What it may do for us is internally, and David will speak more authority on it, is absolutely allow us to expand our businesses without expanding our FTE cost base. David, I don't know what you...

Yes. I think it was interesting the night before that app was released, I was actually doing my own car insurance and you go through that form. And basically, that app was a front end to the form. At the back end, you still have to have a core platform, and that's why we talk about our moats that you need a highly available, secure and compliant core platform. We've got those integrations, deep insurer integrations with our partners that we talk to on a regular basis with that multiproduct hub with SCTP. Could that be replicated? Yes, it could. But it's those relationships we've got with the insurers. And it may well be that we put a chatbot onto the front end to support our brokers to be able to do that quicker, and that's -- we talked about that innovation hub. That's one of the things that they're looking at. But at the moment, that front end is basically a chatbot compared to a form. We see that evolving over time. but we are adapting to that. And I think we've got, as Robert says, a broker is much more about relationships. We'll support them to make them much more efficient in using AI. And within those sort of core platforms, which we have with insight, we'll embed AI agents to make them much more efficient for the brokers as well. So I think it's about making us and our broker partners much more efficient.

I listened to Mike's call yesterday. I always do in case I can steal some ideas that are better than mine, right? So I'm not fearful to do that. I didn't think that was -- I thought that was logical of things what they were talking about and what they were going to investigate and go forward. I don't think we'd be any more different to them in how we've been investigating and what we want to do...

Yes. Okay. Great. And just one final question. I think you flagged a couple of hundred million dollars of acquisitions in the second half. I was just keen to understand just the new ACCC regime, whether any of them have actually already been lodged under that and just what the -- has anything been approved so far? Maybe you could just give us some idea how that's going.

I guess I can answer that. We did 20 transactions with the ACCC step-ups and acquisitions, and they approved every one of them. In fact, the time lines went down to dramatically. They went from sort of 6 weeks initially down to basically 2 weeks and 3 weeks to get them done. Anything that we've got signed term sheets on at the moment have been through the ACCC regime. We've found them to be cooperative. We found them to understand the sector we're in now. We found them to want to see Australian businesses grow by acquisition. And we know the dim they put down about merging or acquiring businesses, and it's pretty simple. If you're going to restrict access to the consumer for a product or a service or you're going to increase the cost of that product or service by doing the merger or the acquisition, you'll be in trouble with us. And luckily, I think they understand our plans. They understand the way we go about doing it, the independence we give our assets to operate. And as I say, we've done 20 transactions with them in the last 12 months successfully.

The next question is a text question from Jason Palmer. Jason asks, -- in the past few months, since the MCAP has materially reduced, has activity of interested parties perhaps looking to take control of Steadfast increased? How many inquiries have you received? Have any nonbinding offers come in? And what price?

Okay. No price, no nonbinding offers, -- nobody is knocked on the door, and we're not in discussions with anybody to sell. However, if somebody came at 750 or $780, I'd certainly return their Farm.

The next question comes from Richard Amland from CLSA.

I've just got a clarification question regarding the covenants. I'm referring specifically to the total leverage covenant, net debt not to exceed 2.5x EBITA. Can you confirm if that EBITA number is in reference to consolidated entities or if that's after taking in the share from associates? And I've got -- I've got a net debt figure for the end of the half of about $1.4 billion. So I'm just trying to confirm that you're reasonably close to that covenant and what the implications are for that.

It. Yes, it's calculated based on the underlying EBITDA, and we monitor that covenants every single month. I can guarantee it's nowhere close to 2.

If I'm looking at -- and please correct me if I'm wrong, I've got trailing 12-month EBITDA of around $600 million. 2.9...

Did you buy sorry, did you buy a chance include a premium funding? Premium funding is ring-fenced from the bank covenants requirement.

Okay. I might take it offline if you guys are very comfortable, that's fine. I can see clarification...

Thank you. The next question is a text question from Jake Ward. Jake asks, with the derating of the share price towards multiples similar to businesses you are acquiring, how do you intend to, a, meaningfully drive EPS growth; and b, fund further acquisitions without increased dilution or hearing changes?

We have a -- I guess, we have a position that we don't buy non-EPS accretive businesses. And with the rerating, I guess, of the whole -- let's -- I'll just take the brokers, not the insurers because they also got rerated, then that puts a different perspective across everybody who wants to buy in the market. And at the moment, we are not in a position where there's anything that we've got in our sites that would not be EPS accretive right at the very moment.

Thank you. The next question is a text question again from Daniel Wood. Daniel asks, so is it Steadfast's view that, generally speaking, the soft or softening market has turned? If so, when and some of the why, if you can? What indicates that apart from your historic base premium cycle chart?

The only thing we can say is that we chart carefully the main product -- all our product lines. And if you look at our product lines that were in the red over the first half, D&O was in the red, ISR was in the red, okay? Blood stock was in the red. Construction was in the red, cyber was in the red. Travel was in the red, Accident and health was in the red, Aviation was in the red and life risks were in the red. All of those are a very small percentage of the -- for instance, -- if you look at our -- the other side of the chart, the liability, management liability, professional risk, Bizpac, strata, contractors, plant machinery, rural, farm, motor, commercial, statutory risk, business financial, machinery breakdown, marine, marine cargo, information technology and business property and home and contents, landlords, motor private, motor commercial and Strata residential and Parametrics were all positively period-to-period. They all went up. So when we manage our portfolio, and we see what happened that we moved from plus 3.7% in June of '25 -- and you see it dropped to 2.4% in July and then going to 2.1% in August and then flatten in September to 2 and stay flat in October to around 2%. And then in November, you see it go to 2.1%. And then in December, you see it go up to 2.4 and then you see it in January go to 2.7%, then if you look historically over trends, then you'd have to say that there's potentially that the market has bottomed and now is starting to go back to what is realistic in other words, I would call inflationary increases. So maybe I would expect to see the 3% be set over the next few months and maybe even potentially go past it if the trend continues. And then if we settle into a cycle where the total GWP that we handle is inflationary baked every year, it's between 3% and 4%, then that would be a static way of doing business that would be very accretive to our bottom line. So yes, Danny, I think there's a potential to say that the cycle is not going to drop because we're not seeing any fresh other than what's coming out of London and in some lines that we're being impeded. So yes, I think statistically, the potential is there that the cycle has bottomed and will flip back into a more rational way of pricing, which means it will cover inflation.

There are no further questions.

Okay. Thank you, everybody. I'm not going to do a summary of what we said because I think everybody here has given you a really fair and clear understanding. I hope you like the new way we report where the CGUs are responsible, gives you the ability that they do like-for-like. And I welcome any one-on-ones we're having and look forward to meeting you there with the team. And have a good day, everybody, and thank you for participating.

Welcome to Steadfast's Investor Update. [Operator Instructions]

I'll now hand over to Robert Kelly.

Good morning, everybody, and thanks for putting a bit of time aside to join us today. The purpose of the call is just to give you an operating update before we actually go into blackout. We've been struggling to get around and see everybody and we thought this would be the easiest way to do this call now.

I'll just refer you to Slide 4 of the pack. And that just gives you a little bit of a rundown of where we -- what we've been doing. We realized about 18 months ago that the market would eventually start to flatten. And so when we started to do this, we started to apply ourselves very much to have a look at our organic growth. This was enhanced by the fact that 60% of our turnover, that's the network's turnover and not just the equity brokers turnover, we have complete and other access to all of their information. So our data analytics is absolutely so nimble and so easy. And I'll show you a little bit of that on the next couple of slides.

The interesting part about that is that you'll see and it will answer quite a few questions about how the flow of commission and in fact, what policies are going up and down. So in terms of cost savings, we continue to drive some of the initiatives that were started, I guess, by [ Rhiannon toohey ] and which has been pushed through by both Mark and Tim to make sure that we were well ahead of the game as we started to see a leveling of premium growth.

So we've got approximately $3.6 million annualized savings so far but on a pro rata basis in FY '26. And this meant some rationalization across our operation. We made a couple of areas of our business redundant, basically because the way we have restructured these CGUs over the last 12 months meant that there was no necessity for head office to do a whole lot of work that was actually being done by the CEOs and the CFOs and contained within the CGU. So those cost savings, we will continue to push ahead with.

We targeted mainly head office and some work on some nonrecurring things that we could cut out of it. But our acquisition pipeline, which we can confirm was $127.7 million that we have completed. And there's a slide that I'll go into it further from that point of view. Just to conclude on that, we're very confident in our guidance that we put out in 2025.

So if you go to Slide 5, this is a fascinating slide. We're often asked about, and I mean there's been some trajectory running around the market that commission rates were falling. This is -- these slides are factual slides. They're not something put together out of here. They are actually based on our data analytics on 60% of the GWP of the network. That's a massive amount of GWP, somewhere between $6.5 billion, probably and $7 billion are contained within this quadrant. So we think it's an incredible position.

Just to show, if you go at the top, if you look on the right-hand side, you can see the class of risk. And if you take the top one, which is the message and you go down to quarter 1 for 2023, which we think is probably about the inflection point where the market was going to start to flatten and move down. It was also coincidentally the time when we started to push the fact that we thought the commission structure that was in householders was actually out of kilter with what it should be.

If you look at the -- if you go to the top one, which is the fee that we got, you'll see that our fee rate was about 6% in FY '23 quarter 4. Now if you then go across now to today, you'll see that, that fee rate has gone up to 8.8%. And if you go to the bottom quadrant, which is the fee and the commission, you'll see that we've maintained a very -- almost perfect line of getting around 21.2% commission even with the reduction over the last 12 months of dropping from 22% to 20% to 17.5% to 15%. So I think when people comment upon this is going to impact us, I mean, we're well aware of what's happening. And when we put out our guidance, we take into account exactly what commission structure we know we're going to get and what fee structure we're going to get.

So interestingly, the next thing I'd point to is the casualty, which is the red line there. If you go back again to '23, and you'll see we were around 4% that sort of hovers around there and now it's at 4.2%. It shows there was a lot of stability in the casualty market and it wasn't impacted quite strongly from our point of view in the reduction that was going on. So again, if you drop to the bottom line, you'll see the fee and commission structure, it was about 18%, and it ends up being 17.5% over the 2-year period.

And then if you go to commercial, which I guess is the number of -- what everybody is fearful of, then it's a fascinating situation because the fee on commercial was actually just under the 4% mark. And then at today's state, it's 3.6%. So if I was to be critical of us in any way, I'd say that we haven't reacted quickly enough to the differential in commission. But if you drop down to the bottom line, which is the fee and commission and you have a look at that, you'll still see we're at 15.4%. So that income was probably somewhere around 16.5%. It's not at 15.4%.

But I think that slide demonstrates really effectively how we know how to manage the falling prices in the market, the commission differentiations, and we know how to see it. So if you then go to Page 6, this is something that I think we get asked all the time. Whenever we're traveling and people go, the market is collapsing, what's occurring? And this is a fantastic slide because that's the factual position as going back. And if you have to look at the left, as we've been saying for probably 3 years, the D&O fell by 8.4%, right? The ISR fell by 3%, Bloodstock by 3.5%, Construction by 3.8% and Cyber by 5.7%. And then some of the specialties fallen, but I mean that's a small percentage of what we're doing. And then aviation and life risk fell.

But then if you go to the right-hand side where the blue is, these are all of the GWP that actually went up in price during this period of time when everybody was saying the sky is falling, there's horrific things going to happen. And I mean we're getting really good things. Our Biz Pack sustained 6.1% growth, which I think is exactly what we've been talking about when we've said that all the Biz Pack insurers in Australia are striving to get more from that. So the live figures what it actually is. They're not in any way sanitized. And I think that's the first time we've actually put something out that says this is our portfolio, that's what's gone forward, and that's what hasn't.

And then just if you go to Slide 7, this is, I think, one of the most fascinating slides. This is our renewal persistency. Again, you can see it starts from quarter 3 '24. And if you have a look at in quarter 3 '24, 17.59% of our renewals fell but 11.23% stayed exactly what they were the year before and 71.18% went up in price. Now that's probably the annuity side of insurance broking. So to say what stays with you, what renews and what goes forward.

I won't read through but if you look at the Q2, October, November '25, that 17.59% that fell has gone up to 25.7%. Interestingly, the 11.23% that was a rollover has increased to 14.16% over rollover. And still 60.14% of our renewals went up in value. So when you hear that the sky is falling and you hear that things are going to be really difficult to go forward, we really, really want to just point to the fact that these are the facts. These are the facts about the commission. These are facts about how the portfolios are going. And it's the reason why insurance brokers can usually manage their cash flow.

So just to go to Page 8 now. We've been a bit circumspect on this, but I think everybody is for it. We did -- we completed $127.7 million worth of acquisitions. We've got another in Australasia. We've got another $202 million that we will complete before the end of financial year '26. Now obviously, our share price has taken a bit of a downward trend recently. So we will now complete those acquisitions by using the full capacity that we've got in our balance sheet, which means that our banking covenants say we can trade at 40%. So we'll go up to 40%, and we'll do those acquisitions not out of our lines of credit from that point of view.

Yes. Joan just pointed out to me, that $127.7 million meant we paid an average multiple of 9.8x for that. So when people start to analyze what we're doing and put through, there's the facts of what made were $3 million worth. So if you go to Slide 9, this is a bit of an analysis, I guess, of over the past year, we've strengthened our relationship with the regulator, and we've had a great engagement with them, and we've further enhanced our relationship with the ACCC. It's been an important part of how we operate by reinforcing our position as a trusted, I guess, transparent and well-governed market leader, particularly as our business continues to go to scale by way of acquisition activities.

I was recently in a luncheon meeting with Gina Cass-Gottlieb, the Chair of the ACCC. It was a fantastic meeting. There was about 11 of us. It was a full and frank meeting. It wasn't Chatham House rules so it was open interaction. And I must say that the interesting part about that meeting was that the Chair of the ACCC said unequivocally, the ACCC is very keen that business in Australia is developed by merging and acquisitions, okay, as long as it stays within the guidelines. And I think to have that said publicly, it's very important.

The key outcome, we've achieved a stronger regulatory relationship since over the last 12 months with the ACCC. They've got a clear insight into the way we operate and our operations, our M&A processes. And we've had really, really, I would say, a strong and interactive relationship for you with them from that point. We've got high confidence in how we're going about this. For FY '26 -- for financial year '25 and '26, we have done transactions between million up to $100 million. And by way of how that's gone with the ACCC, they've got to understand how we operate. They've got to understand what they need to look about our -- what we're doing. And we've now got to a way where we can actually provide things to them.

And from that point of view, we had exceptional support and clearance on our acquisitions. We have put to the ACCC 20 acquisitions or mergers or what we've done. And I'm pleased to say that 18 of them have been passed. The 2 that haven't are only in the recent time, very recent times. And we've been able to, because we work so closely with them and so methodically answering and going forward what they need. I'm really pleased to say that initially, they were taking about 30-odd days to do them. And recently, in recent months, we've been able to get a turnaround within 10 days.

And just on that, people are then saying, well, what is it going to be like after 1/1/26? Well, I'm pleased to tell you that we've been working on the rigors of what life is like for really most of '25 with the ACCC. In other words, we've been assuming that the rigors of 1/1/26 exists. And so we've been providing all that information there. So given our acquisition growth model and our regular and proactive engagement with the ACCC, we think it's now not an issue of dealing with them. I think we've got a great regulatory pathway with them. They're constructive, they're predictable. We're constructive, we provide what they want to know. And I guess as we roll into '26, we have no reason to fear that because I guess we've been operating under that for most of '25. So we look to continue to build our momentum and continue to go forward with them.

So I guess that's a quick one for me. Okay. I'd like to now hand over to the Head of our Australasian network, Tim Mathieson. Thank you, Tim.

Thank you, Robert, and good morning, everyone. Really pleased to report that our network continues to grow throughout Australasia. This financial year, we've already welcomed 19 new brokers, taking us with a total of 421 network brokers. Key reason for brokers joining our group, of course, is our market-leading technology, which remains a sustainable advantage. 60% of our network brokers, as mentioned by Robert, have adopted our inside broking system, which provides us with incredible access to data, data that's processed by around 8,000 users on the platform. Demonstrated by Robert earlier, we have a unique view across the industry of products, insurers showing us policy and premium movements over time.

We just move over to Slide 11, please. Insight broker system enables us to make smarter, data-driven decisions to support organic growth. For example, our brokers can now track fee and commission movement across their individual portfolios to remain nimble in the moderating market. They can also use our data to identify new business opportunities to drive revenue growth. They offset this also through greater treasury management using data to make informed decisions about term deposits to uplift interest income. So we're seeing some good organic growth occurring across the network.

In November, we engaged all of our subsidiaries in a planning session to address the need for organic growth and stronger expense management in the second half. All of these businesses have a plan that focuses on margin improvement, and this plan is reviewed monthly with our subsidiary performance team. With almost 50% of our brokers' operating expenses relate to employment costs, we've asked our subsidiaries to hold off replacing all noncritical roles in the second half. We need to start realizing the efficiency of our recent technology investments that enables more productivity across the group.

On to Slide 12, please. Pleased to report Australasian broking team are well on track with delivering their operational business plan. So far, the team have executed plans to attract new brokers into the network, so new brokers up nearly 5% year-to-date. We've also executed plans to increase broker network member fees by 25%, as we said we would, generating new revenue. In addition, we've executed plans to secure an uplift in our professional services fees from our key partners, taking the total PSF to over $80 million for FY '26.

These are all initiatives that we reported earlier that we said we'd do and we've now delivered. Despite the moderating market, it's pleasing to see that nearly 80% of our broker subsidiaries continue to achieve revenue growth year-on-year. So an important point to make that brokers in the main are still growing year-on-year. Furthermore, 3 of our largest broking subsidiaries across a wide geography, that's GSA here in Sydney, Fenchurch over in Perth, and Taswide in Hobart, 3 of our top 10 largest businesses have seen combined revenue growth exceeding 15% year-to-date. These businesses have a really strong sales culture and are taking advantage of the current market conditions and increased competition in the market to write more new business and achieve volume growth.

We spoke earlier about inorganic growth in our Trapped Capital pipeline, but I just wanted to also call out CBN's strategic expansion into the New Zealand market. This acquisition of Folio brings with more than $20 million of gross written premium and the opportunity for us to build a new -- a brand-new authorized representative network beyond Australia.

Slide 13, please. To help support our growth outlook, our broking CFO, Rhiannon Toohey and I have led 6 hubbing integrations in FY '26. And this was all levers that we indicated we had the ability to pull and we've since done so. This includes a strategic realignment and support of Coverforce by specialized fast-growing businesses, including GSA, BCB and CBN. Also Network Insurance Group and Insurance House, making it now the largest broking subsidiary in our Australian network. Movement of Whitbread Insurance Broking into the mid-market broker. Edgewise has allowed Whitbread to become a specialist strata insurance broker. Meanwhile, the corporate AR and House of Brands model that's been successfully operated by QIB Group, Ausure and CBN continues to bolt on brokers and authorized representative from across the network.

As I previously mentioned, the consolidation of businesses is always beneficial to our stakeholders. That is clients have greater access to a larger team of experts, particularly those specialized in their industry and their location. Brokers benefit from operating within a larger group, with wider expertise and career opportunities to progress. Shareholders benefit from a reduction to back office costs and margin improvement. And ultimately, everyone benefits from combining strengths and adopting best practice that boost productivity and also professional standards of our industry.

I'll hand over to Mark Senkevics to provide an update on the Steadfast underwriting agencies. Over to you, Mark.

Thanks very much, Tim. Please turn to Slide 15. Thank you. So thanks, Tim, and thanks, everyone, for joining. Today, I'll give an update on our underwriting agencies and focus on how we can drive both subsidiary performance and our strategic growth. At a high level, like the brokers, we're focused on a few key areas and largely expense management, but a few other things that I'll raise here. So we're concentrating on growth, both organic and acquisitive.

There's quite an initiative in terms of consolidating our 30 agencies and brands into fewer and more substantial businesses. And also, as I mentioned, maintaining tight expense control with strong oversight of our subsidiary performance. On the fee income side, while there is an opportunity for us to optimize fee income in the agency space, we are doing so where it's possible, but it's a little bit more limited in the underwriting space. And that means our focus needs to be on business retention, strengthening our distribution and developing new revenue streams.

I'll take you through these in a bit more detail over the next couple of slides. So if we can move to Slide 16, please. So firstly, on the organic side, it's clear we're seeing a moderating pricing environment, and this is more pronounced in some lines of business. But Strata, in particular, in certain specialty segments are facing increased competition, and this is partly driven by Lloyd's capacity entering into the market. To offset this, we're pursuing organic growth opportunities aggressively, and we have several projects underway. I'll highlight a few of those.

Firstly, a great success is Sure Insurance. We acquired Sure in 2023 and during last year's investor presentations, we outlined our strategy to expand its offering nationally. You might have seen the announcement that Castle Insurance went live on the 1st of October 2025. Now this business, part of Sure and backed by QBE leverages Sure's leading claims management and risk selection capabilities. As of the end of November, the team had written already 14,000 policies in just 2 months, already surpassing what we thought was an ambitious FY '26 target. And we expect this trajectory to continue and Castle's announcement has also resulted in an uplift in Sure's original Queensland portfolio.

Beyond Sure, our agency teams have been active in launching new products. CHU has introduced its Flex Complex product for hard-to-place strata risks. Mecon has a new mid-market offering in the construction space. And Emergence, our cyber agency has now offers a theft liability cover. In addition, Coast has entered into the life sciences space, which is a new one for our portfolio overall. And I anticipate we'll have a number of additional announcements in the second half of FY 2026 around new product offerings.

We've also identified a gap in the credit insurance market and launched Unity Trade Credit underwriting agency with the support of Mark Hill as capacity. That business is now live and writing policies, and we anticipate great outcomes for that business. I'll come back to Prevail in a moment for a deep dive.

On the inorganic growth side, our stated strategy, which I shared at our convention in March, is to acquire bolt-on businesses for our mid-scale agencies. Scale equals margin when it comes to underwriting agencies. And in July, we executed on that strategy with the acquisition of Xenon underwriting into ProRisk. This move adds both geographic and product diversity, and we've already seen some synergy benefits. It's early days, but we've seen a couple of hundred thousand dollars of saving in the expense line and 23% increase in GWP on the Xenon property and liability business due to improved marketing, business development and cross-selling.

We also anticipate improvements in our binder commissions, which will result in a 20-plus percent increase in commission income from January this year. And the tech migration for this business is underway, which I imagine we will see additional synergy benefits. Our acquisition pipeline remains strong. We are in discussions with a number of agencies across the region. And the focus is consistent for us, diversifying our product offerings and expanding our geographic reach.

And on the final column there, our strategic integration and alignment. So over the past year, we've been consolidating agencies with natural adjacencies and product cross-sell potential. And the first to deliver is Prevail, my case study on the next slide, but which brings together our high net worth offering and consumer businesses. Similar work is taking place across our commercial agencies, which we'll announce in the second half of FY '26. And the consolidation also extends to our binder arrangements. And we envisage seeing a larger, more diversified risk pool and therefore, improving commission terms from our insurers, a benefit...

[Technical Difficulty]

Okay. And just finishing off on the end of Slide 16 there. We're investing in technology. Several of our agencies are replacing underwriting platforms, which will deliver significant efficiencies in underwriting, claims management and portfolio oversight. These upgrades include AI capabilities for example, broker submission ingestion and claims handling as well as strengthening our value proposition with brokers and our insurance partners.

If I can jump to Slide 17, please. So we have a great case study here with Prevail. I touched on this a little earlier. It combines 3 of our high net worth brands, Dawes for prestige motor, Mansions for high-value homes and Argis for farms into a single brand and platform. The segment has shown growth, but in our view, remains somewhat underserviced. So we think there's a great opportunity here.

Over the last 5 years, we've seen 50% growth in GWP for this business and [ 74% ] growth in EBITA for that same period. And the trajectory hasn't stopped. Over the last year, we've seen 20% year-on-year growth. And the CEO of that business, David McMurdo, has told me that he feels they're just warming up. Launch has generated strong engagement with more than 50,000 website hits to the Prevail website and more than 9,000 brokers now registered on the Simplafy portal. And cross-selling is already happening, and we plan to offer further products and keep an eye out in the end of FY '26 for new launches, which I think will continue to see the trajectory of this business.

So in closing, our underwriting agencies are focused on subsidiary performance through disciplined expense management and strategic growth, both organic and inorganic. These actions, combined with technology investment, product innovation and group distribution will see us deliver sustainable returns.

So thanks for listening. And over to Samantha Hollman, our CEO of International, who joins us, I think, in the middle of the night in London. No, it's only 11:00.

That's correct, Mark, at 11:30 at night. So lucky, everybody can't see me and my very jetlagged eyes. But I'm very pleased to be able to give an update on international since our meeting in last August. It's actually been a very busy and productive time over that period.

So I'll start with ISU Steadfast in the U.S. One of our strategic initiatives there is to continue to have that membership number growth. I'm really pleased to report that we've experienced the highest number of new members in this calendar year '25 with 37 new members joining and 12 leaving. But another real positive is that the earn of the members that have joined is higher than the members that have left. So the members that have joined are a higher quality, a better sized and really utilizing our carrier partnerships and growing that earn through to ISU Steadfast.

And speaking on that earn, we get a profit share growth from the carriers, which is really the main source of revenue that comes through to ISU Steadfast. And currently, we're projecting that to be the highest in the calendar year '25 than the previous year, but that won't be finalized until the end of December, but it is tracking well today. This signals really great growing support of our carriers amongst the membership and aligns our members supporting the carriers and the products that we have. So with that continuing to grow, that also grows our value proposition and attracts more members to want to be part of the ISU Steadfast network.

Another really key strategic initiative is to deliver on market access for those members. And we've not only introduced HWS Specialty in London earlier in the year, but we've also introduced Novum, the MGA, which you'll recall, we only acquired and announced the week of our last meeting and discussions back in August. So they are 2 really incredible initiatives that, that network did not have prior to Steadfast acquiring them.

Another really great initiative that's occurred is on the Trapped Capital front, addressing out the perpetuation for ISU Steadfast members. We're currently in due diligence with 2 potential members who will create regional hubs for us in 2 distinct areas of the states. We're expecting those deals to be finalized in Q1 of 2026. We're also in discussions with another few members also currently to also become regional hubs in that area. So that's really great progression of the continued work that's been done in that area and the trust that we've been building in what we can offer there.

And of course, we held the regional meetings in October. Every year, we hold 2 weeks of regional meetings in all 4 regions of the U.S. to update members on the initiatives of everything that we're doing. It's really exciting to receive and see the support that Steadfast has from that network. There's incredibly strong sentiment on the strategic direction that we're taking that network and the way we've built that network and the offerings that we've put through. So that's really positive. We're really happy with everything that is going through ISU Steadfast at the moment.

The other update clearly is on Novum. I mentioned at our last update, we'd only just purchased Novum that week. So there's been a lot of work done in the last 3 months to integrate that business seamlessly and successfully into the Steadfast family and really alert our membership on what the possibilities are for them to now do business with them. Novum have had incredibly strong business performance in the 3 months post completion. We're really thrilled with how that business is operating. It's a great team. They are driven, they are entrepreneurial, but they are also really considered in the risks that they write. They've really hit the ground running. With this acquisition, there is actually no downtime for us to stabilize the business or restructure the business for changes required. They are ready to roll from Day 1. So we are progressing really strongly with them, which is super pleasing.

They also attended and presented at that regional meetings with ISU Steadfast to educate them on who Novum are and to market to the members what those specialty 5 lines of products are. It was received really well by the network. And there's been 105 ISU Steadfast members now sign up to look into Novum and use that platform. So that's just under 50% of the network. And considering Novum write quite niche areas that would suit all of the membership, that's really pleasing interest. So it's a great start.

The other item for Novum is that we had always mentioned that this would act as our platform to be able to launch any potential Steadfast underwriting agencies into the U.S., really expediting that opportunity and making it incredibly cost efficient. We have 3 agencies that we're put in contact with Novum that we're continuing to work with to explore the opportunities of entering the U.S. market via them. So that's another really great progression of our strategy that's been happening in the last 3 months.

The other one is to touch on is London, where I am at the moment. with HWS Specialty. We've had significant progress in the build-out of the capability of talent in that organization. You'll recall me referring to when we purchased Novum -- sorry, HWS Specialty. It was a great opportunity, but the business wasn't necessarily fit for purpose at the time of purchasing. We knew we needed to build the capability in the product lines that our members really needed in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. And that generally is the property and casualty lines of business.

But we also saw a great opportunity to build out a delegated underwriting authority team to be able to move the outsourcing of our buying business, supporting our underwriting agencies, bringing that in-house, bringing us control of that, service of that, but most importantly, revenue back into our own business rather than outsourcing.

So we've had significant progress in that, in particular, in the last couple of months. We've filled 6 roles, 2 have commenced. So we now have a Head of North America Property, who specializes in the American market and a supporting broker who actually came over with a book of business as well, a GBP 500,000 book of business. So they have now started and hit the ground running. But we also have another 4 roles that are going to start in Q1 of 2026. This is a Director of Delegated Underwriting, where we can bring those binders in-house, and it's a very well-known person in the London market, and we'll be in a position to announce that in January.

We've also recruited a property broker on the Australia and New Zealand side. And this position already deals with several Steadfast members in another capacity. So already has relationships, which is ground great and should also hit the ground running. We've also recruited a Head of Casualty, and we've recruited a Head of People & Culture to replace an outgoing retired position. So that's really strong to have built that capability.

But we're not just there building, building, building and investing. We are reviewing the entire business and making sure we're keeping expense under control. And as a result of that, we have retrenched 4 roles that we did not see we required any longer, and we will continue that due diligence. But by doing that and adding the new positions, we really are raising ambition in that business, and that's what we wanted to do. So we're excited about moving forward. And we've had incredibly strong new business opportunity wins in the U.S. cargo space. So that's also been excellent. And I can advise that the EBITDA of international is performing ahead of budget across all 4 businesses.

So to finish, we will continue to build the international businesses, looking to add scale and capabilities to our U.S. network to continue to source trapped capital investments in selected U.S. members to form regional hubs. We'll continue with the expansion of specialty product capabilities in both the U.S. and the U.K., and we'll continue to drive the collaboration amongst our 4 international businesses for all of the businesses to benefit and operate in an international ecosystem because that's where not only will our international businesses benefit, Steadfast will benefit and the clients of our brokers and agents will benefit.

So I'll hand back to you now, Robert, for Q&A.

Thanks, Sam. Thanks very much, and thanks, guys. It was a really great presentation. I hope that gives you a feeling for the strength and depth of this contained in this organization, particularly with our 3 main CGUs, 2 well-established ones in underwriting and broking and also the new frontier we started a few years ago of North America. So thanks, Sam. Are you taking back for Q&A at the moment?

[Operator Instructions]

Can we just keep the questions to 2, maximum of 2, because we're in a short timeline?

We can. Our first question comes from Julian Braganza at Goldman Sachs.

Just a first question. In terms of FY '26, just the guidance you've previously provided in terms of EPS growth. Originally, it was more skewed towards organic growth of about 3% to 7% and acquisitive growth of about 3%. How does that now look like post all the changes that you're making just for FY '26 in terms of capital, in terms of improved performance cost out? How does that look like post all the changes that you're making?

Julian, we've confirmed guidance. There's no overarching this guidance.

Okay. So in terms of the split between organic versus acquisition for '26, no change in that view?

Well, I think it's in the frame of what we've actually given you. So if there was any need to walk through it, we would have certainly informed the market.

Okay. So still consistent with that split. Okay. That makes sense. Can I ask the second question? Just in terms of the premium rates, I just want to be super clear on the definition of the premium rates. So your guidance is for rate increases of 1% to 2%. So I just want to be clear because in your presentations, you talk about premium increases of about 2.4%. So I just want to make sure it's like for like.

We're running at 2.4% at the moment. And when we get through December, I think if we can see the trend the way it's going at the moment, and this is a big -- this is a really big statement that there may be some flattening in the dropping of the premiums at the moment. But what we're seeing is we're not seeing a deterioration at the moment. We're seeing a flattening in the pricing mechanism. But this is a very funny time, so I wouldn't but certainly, if we have a good December, then that might indicate that the initial impact of the dropping of prices is actually starting to flatten out.

The next question is from Andrei Stadnik at Morgan Stanley.

Can I ask my first question on ISU? Am I right in seeing that ISU now has $6 billion of P&C premiums from 250 members? Because I think last time you gave some numbers back in March, it had $5.1 billion in P&C premiums from 235 members. Is that the right growth metric?

Yes. I think we quoted last time it was $5.7 billion in P&C premium, and we've rounded that up to $6 billion.

Good. And what about the number of members growth? That seems to be rising?

Yes, it is. The 250 is the correct number.

And look, for my second question, can I ask around the pricing? You've given us data on pricing through insight, which is 60% of Australia. But based on your prior experience, the other 40% that might come through later, how does the other 40% behave in terms of pricing based on your prior experience?

Look, we think that the 60% is absolutely representative of the 100%. They're all very similar businesses. They operate in similar demographics. They've got the same sort of way that they deal with people. So I'm very confident to say that, that would be the same across the whole of the network. Even though we only have 60%, but that's not a bad demographic to be able to know intimately what's going on with 60%. So yes, I don't think it's too grand a statement to say that would be representative of the whole network.

The next question comes from Andrew Buncombe at Macquarie.

Just the first one, how are you going to account for the costs related to the redundancy programs at head office? Will they be put above the line and absorbed within guidance? Or will that be put below the line?

It depends. I guess at this stage of the game, we're probably not looking at how we're going to account for it in the full year, Andrew. But I look at some of our competitors around the world, and they usually put them below the line if they're conducive to increasing net profit.

Okay. And then the second one, recent newspaper articles have suggested that Steadfast may have been an M&A target. Can you please advise if Steadfast has recently been approached for a potential takeover?

We have not been approached. Unless you got something in mind, Andrew, that you want to share with us.

Our next question is a text question from Siddharth Parameswaran from JPMorgan. They write, I understand that you are operating as though new ACCC process was live. Does that mean no additional risk from 1st of January as ACCC providing feedback in line with new powers? Or is it just that you are operating in the new rhythm, but you won't know how the ACCC will rule with their new powers? Also, with a pushback on a couple of acquisitions we saw from the ACCC, what did their concerns relate to? And how will that limit size and geographic range of new acquisitions?

Well, I don't think we had -- we're not in the same position as what IAG was where they were trying to move into a market and I can't go on what we said in the paper, where they would have maybe between 55% and 60% of the market. We are not in that same position. So anything that we're doing doesn't put us anywhere near the levels of interest of the ACCC we think from being able to control a market. In fact, we've been -- over the last 12 months, they have a detailed and intimate knowledge of our position in various jurisdictions, our notice operand, our way that we do not direct business to anybody.

So I don't think you compare somebody that's trying to get an acquisition where they will control 50% or 60% of a market with somebody like us where we control roughly 30-odd percent of the market over a huge geography. And if you look at the IAG, that was a definitive area in Western Australia, which although it's a very large state and according to them, support the rest of Australia. I don't know whether to that. But a large state, we have a very small population. And so if you were going to put something in, in the consumer area that was going to make 50% to 60%, then I can understand why that may present some, I guess, queries from the ACCC.

The next question comes from Jason Palmer at Taylor Collison. What are your assumptions around agency binder renewal GWP placed through H.W. Wood in FY '26 and FY '27?

Firstly, we probably wouldn't give you any guidance on FY '27, okay, because we're not doing the guidance at the moment. But thank you for trying. It's very good to see that. Secondly, the process of integrating is well and truly, I guess, started. And I think Mark is probably better to give you a view of how long that may take to do and certainly will run into '26 and '27 and probably '28, I think.

Thanks for the question, Jason. So this is an initiative that's already started. HWS are already benefiting from some revenue that's coming from our agencies, and we've identified the leakage into third-party brokers and see an enormous opportunity to bring it back in-house here. So it's already started. Sam mentioned that we'll have a new head of binder for delegated underwriting starting with HWS in January. This is an individual we know very well and who knows our portfolio very well. So we anticipate that, that person will hit the ground running.

That person will also be part of a project that is underway to consolidate our Lloyd's binders, starting with Miramar and we'll look further afield. This will be bringing together all of our lines of business to build a very diversified portfolio, which we anticipate will see much, much better outcomes from a commission standpoint, but also, frankly, from a brokerage pay way standpoint as well.

And I'd also add that right now with HWS, they're working on new business opportunities for us and new binders for us. They've done one for Coast already, and we have a number of others already in play based on the existing capability, which starts with marine and into fin art and species space, and we see an enormous opportunity to profit from that capability already. So it's coming back in-house, and it will, over the next couple of years, I think, largely, Robert, yes, back inside.

And I think the point you made, Mark, very wise, the person that's coming in to head up that broker is a fairly substantial name in the London market.

Absolutely.

Another text question from Jason Palmer. What are your assumptions around U.S.A. E&S premium in ISU Steadfast that could be placed through H.W. Wood? What is the upside in economics to H.W. Wood and ISU Steadfast plus members of ISU Steadfast?

I think that's a difficult one for you to answer, Sam, is I think at this stage. I mean you had lots of queries.

The thing we can say there is that at the moment, there was -- in the U.S. market, there is an incredible amount of business going into the E&S market. We have clearly identified that and identified the need to recapture some of that business coming back. We have noticed a change in the market where more recently, the service has been going back into the traditional carriers, not quite as much going into the E&S market. But what we are doing is we're making sure that when we set up Novum that we make sure we set up a program where we are starting to be able to capture that E&S scenario. We will create a placement desk within ISU Steadfast, and we will start to funnel the opportunity of putting that business through our own family.

Next question comes from Olivier Coulon at E&P Financial Group. What do you expect first half, second half split to be like relative to history? Will cost out program mean it's more skewed to second half than normal?

The answer to that is yes. Yes, it is skewed more to the second half and yes, around the half.

The next question is from Andrew Adams at Barrenjoey. Original guidance at end of August assumed 3% to 5% rate increase. This was lowered to 1% to 2% at the AGM. Hence, the sky is falling concerns, tracking at 2.4% for the first 5 months, are you now saying that the 1% to 2% may be too conservative? Or do you still expect negative rates in the second half of 2026?

Andrew, you may be one of the analysts who thought we'll just change the percentage of GWP and put it out. The really smart ones actually sat down and said, well, maybe we should look at what they're doing to rectify that. This Board works under abundant caution in everything it does. Okay, the 1% to 2% was to make sure that you weren't -- that at a time of uncertainty, right, because we were only running into basically 60 days at that stage, and we didn't have the full accounts for the one, then that did create a sky sing effect. But in reality, we're holding a very strong 2.4% at the moment. Would we alter it? I guess I would look at the December result. And if, in fact, we keep trending towards that, then it's going to be more like 2% to 3%, okay?

My gut feeling, okay, is it will be head towards more like 3%. But this market, as you know, we've been in a long time, is very unpredictable, incredibly unpredictable. I was talking to one of the insurers, a major player who said they couldn't believe the drop that they saw in July and August compared to the May, June time. So yes, abundant caution, 1.2% overreaction by the market. yes, okay. 2% to 4% we're tracking for at the moment. Maybe I think it's definitely going to be more like 3%, but I wouldn't like to guarantee it. That's why the abundant caution, 1.2% exists. I'm not suggesting you're one of the lazy analysts.

Our next question is an audio question from Jeff Cai at Citi.

Just a similar vein in terms of rates. Can you give a bit more color in terms of what you're seeing to give you a bit more confidence why the average rates are sort of flattening out in the latest quarter?

Yes. Based on those predictions, the actual facts of what we're getting period-to-period, policy volume to policy volume and what we've actually achieved, yes. So we've got factual to say it's the 2.4%.

Got it. And then a follow-up question on the topic of succession. To what extent has that sort of changed your mind given what happened in the last few weeks in terms of staying on as the CEO for much longer? What's your latest thinking?

I think I've told the market for the last 2.5 years that towards the end of '26 is when I wanted to get out of my executive role. And I don't think that's changed at this particular time.

There are no further questions. I'll now hand the meeting back to Robert Kelly.

Okay. Thanks, everybody. I appreciate your time. I hope that helped to give you some color over and have a happy Christmas and a healthy New Year and look forward to seeing you at the half year. Thanks very much.

Welcome, and thank you for joining us in person today. As the time is 10:00 a.m., we will now start the live broadcast for our online attendees.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the Steadfast Group Board, I'm pleased to welcome you to the Steadfast 2025 Hybrid Annual General Meeting. As I am in Sydney, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

If we experience any technical issues today, a short recess or an adjournment may be required depending on the number of shareholders being affected. If this occurs, I will advise you accordingly.

As a quorum is present, I declare the meeting open. All of your nonexecutive directors are present today: Vicki Allen, Andrew Bloore, Joan Cleary, Michael Goodwin, Gai McGrath and Greg Rynenberg. Our Chief Legal Officer, Duncan Ramsay; our Company Secretary, Alexandra Rose; and a number of our senior executive team are also here, including Tim Mathieson, who I'll talk to about in a moment.

Also attending the meeting is David Kells, Relationship Partner of KPMG, our auditor for the FY '25 year. David is available to answer any questions you may have about the conduct of the audit and Steadfast financial statements and the auditor's opinion.

The meeting will proceed as follows: I will provide an address about the company's performance, strategy and outlook. I will then ask our incoming Chair, Vicki Allen, to say a few words. I will then deal with the items of business in order in which they appear in the AGM notice of meeting. Shareholders will be given the opportunity to ask questions in relation to items of business being considered at this meeting.

On behalf of my fellow Board of Directors, I am pleased to report another record underlying net profit after tax for the year ended 30th of June 2025, making it the 12th consecutive increase in profit since our listing in 2013. The group delivered a 17.2% increase in underlying net PAT, that's net profit after tax, to $229.5 million (sic) [ $295.5 million ] and underlying shares -- and underlying earnings per share increased by 14.2% to $0.267 per share in the year ended 30th of June 2025. Statutory net profit, which includes nontrading gains and losses increased from $228 million to $334.9 million.

Our strong record in all key earnings metrics since listing clearly demonstrates the success of our business model. Steadfast Group remains committed to strong and effective corporate governance. Steadfast continues to adhere to the corporate governance principles as set out by the ASX Corporate Governance Council. The details of our governance and risk management frameworks are available on our investor website.

In this connection, shareholders will be aware of our announcement late yesterday that the Managing Director and CEO has chosen to step aside until such time as an external investigation is completed into a complaint made by an employee. I really would appreciate your -- the shareholders' patience in allowing the Board to undertake a thorough process in the interest of ensuring procedural fairness.

The Board has appointed Tim Mathieson as acting CEO. Tim joined Steadfast in 2015 and was promoted to CEO of Australasian Broking in July '25. I'll get Tim to say a few words before we get into the full detail of the meeting so that you can get a feel for what sort of person he is. I think he's great.

The Board declared a fully franked final dividend of $0.117 per share, up 14% from the final dividend last year. This takes the total dividend for FY '25 to $0.195 fully franked, up 13% on FY '24. The final dividend was paid on 26th of September 2025.

Steadfast has delivered 25 consecutive increases in interim and year-end fully franked dividends since listing in August 2013. This, together with the growth in value of shares on issue has resulted in a total return of 530% for FY '25 for those shareholders that participated in the listing.

Steadfast Group continued its disciplined approach to acquiring broker and agency businesses in FY '25, achieving earnings per share accretive acquisitions in line with our FY '25 guidance. The acquisitions included HWS Specialty, an independent insurance broker headquartered in London, providing wholesale, retail and reinsurance solutions across international marine and cargo, property, fine art and specie and other classes of business to the Steadfast Network and to the market.

An increase -- we also increased our shareholding to 49.1% in Rothbury, and I note that the CEO of Rothbury is here this morning. Thanks, Roger. Rothbury is the second largest broker in New Zealand. We also agreed to acquire a further 42.8% in 2 tranches in June '26 and '29.

In August this year, Steadfast completed the acquisition of a major stake in Novum Underwriting, a specialty underwriting agency and wholesale brokerage located in the U.S.A. Novum specializes in the digital delivery of insurance programs. And for those who do not know much about the U.S. market, insurance programs represents a major part of that market.

You will also be aware that I announced in late August that I will be retiring from the Board with Vicki Allen to be appointed Chair of Steadfast immediately after the AGM. Vicki has extensive Nonexecutive Director and Chair experience, including being Chair of Mortgage Choice. Vicki joined the Steadfast Board as a Nonexecutive Director in 2021 and was appointed as Chair of the Remuneration & Performance Committee in 2022.

I have been honored to serve as your Chair from 2012 -- 21st of October 2012 to date, a period which has seen the listing in August 2013 and the delivery of consistent growth in all key financial measures.

In the past 3 years, Steadfast has made 2 new appointments to the Board of Directors as part of our Board renewal process, both of which refreshed the Board skill -- the broad skill of the Board. This renewal process continues with the appointment of Mr. Michael Goodwin announced in August 2025. Michael is currently a Nonexecutive Director of the large international general insurer, Hiscox Ltd, and he has over 30 years' experience in the insurance industry, having worked in Australia and the Asia Pacific region for QBE and antecedent companies for this period. Michael stands for election at today's meeting.

I'm also very grateful to Joan Cleary for offering herself for reelection. Joan's extensive financial and leadership experience in the general insurance and reinsurance industry add materially to the value of your Board's oversight capability.

The Board regularly reviews the Steadfast Group's remuneration arrangements for the executives to ensure that our framework remains fit for purpose and continues to deliver outperformance, achieve our core strategic objectives and retain and attract talent. Our incoming Chair, Vicki Allen, will address the remuneration report ahead of the voting for item 4 of this meeting.

The first 3 months of FY '26 has seen a lower increase in premium rates in Australia compared with our expectations of 3% to 5% increase when the FY '26 guidance was originally set. We now anticipate the average premium rate increases for the full year will be around 1% to 2%.

In response to the changing market conditions, management is implementing a range of initiatives, including acquisition opportunities and expense management. Steadfast FY '26 guidance remains unchanged. Principal risks and uncertainties are set out on Pages 50 to 52 of the 2025 annual report, and I urge you to have a look at those 3 pages.

On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank the Steadfast team for delivering another record result for our shareholders as well as continuing to provide quality products and services to our Network brokers and other stakeholders and put in place strategies for long-term growth. Our continuing growth would not have been possible without our Steadfast Network brokers, Steadfast Underwriting Agencies, our complementary businesses and the loyalty of their clients.

I would like to extend my gratitude to my fellow Board Directors who continue to be focused on driving increased long-term value through new strategic initiatives supporting the Steadfast team and continually improving our governance.

Finally, the Board appreciates the enormous support it received from its shareholders, particularly in providing additional capital to grow revenue and profits. From a personal point of view, it's been a great privilege to have been part of the Steadfast journey from pre-listing to now. And I can assure you I will miss being part of Steadfast and the insurance industry.

So I'd now like to hand over to Vicki Allen to provide her address as incoming Chair.

Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Chair, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to address the meeting as the incoming Chair of Steadfast Group, and I'm honored to assume the role of Chair at the close of this meeting.

I joined the Steadfast Board as a Nonexecutive Director in 2021 and was appointed as Chair of the Remuneration & Performance Committee in 2022. This has given me the time to develop the insight into the operations of Steadfast, to appreciate the importance of a robust insurance industry for all stakeholders and the excellent opportunities ahead for the group.

With over 30 years' experience in financial service and the property sectors, holding senior executive roles and more recently, nonexecutive director and chair roles at a number of organizations, the Board considered that I have the necessary experience to oversee the next phase of Steadfast growth. I look forward to working with my Board colleagues, the Steadfast leadership team to develop and implement our group strategy.

On behalf of the Board and the executive leadership team, I thank Frank for his outstanding stewardship as Chair of the Board. Frank has been Chair of the Steadfast Group Board since 21 October 2012, as Steadfast transitioned from a broker network to a listing on the ASX in August 2013. Under Frank's guidance, Steadfast has achieved disciplined and consistent growth over the last 12 years. I wish Frank all the very best for his retirement.

I'm privileged to have the opportunity to succeed Frank as Chair. I'm committed to serve you, my fellow shareholders. I take the opportunity to reconfirm the importance to me and the Steadfast Board of strong corporate governance at Steadfast. I hope to meet as many of you as possible following the conclusion of this meeting.

I'll now hand back to the Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Vicki. Before we proceed with the formal business of the meeting, I'd like Tim to say a few words and give you a bit of feel of his background. Tim?

Thanks, Frank, and good morning, everyone. It's an absolute honor to be serving in this role as acting CEO. And although I know many of you in the room already, I thought I'd provide just a brief update of my experience right across the industry.

I joined QBE Insurance back in 1998, the same year that Mr. Frank O'Halloran was appointed CEO of QBE. So Frank and I have known each other for some time. During that time at QBE, I had a vast range of experiences running distribution networks, working in underwriting, claims and managing large teams right across Australasia.

I've been at Steadfast for the last 10 years. I recently celebrated a 10-year anniversary at Steadfast. And for the past 5 years prior to returning to Sydney this year, I was running one of our largest subsidiary businesses called QIB Group in Queensland. QIB Group formed through the merger of 2 large organizations. And over the 5-year period, we merged and acquired 18 other businesses to serve as a central hub for the Queensland broking operations. At the same time, we were able to triple our revenue, double the earnings of that business before transferring back into Steadfast earlier this year.

I feel that I'm well suited to the role. I've got a lot of experience in the industry and also well qualified to act in the CEO role. So thank you. Nice to meet you all. Thank you, Frank.

Thank you, Tim. We will now proceed with the formal business of the meeting. I propose to take the notice of the Annual General Meeting as read. Also, I will dispense with the formality of moving or seconding resolutions as all matters are properly dealt before the meeting.

Voting on the resolutions will be conducted by way of poll. Please note that only shareholders, proxy advisers or shareholder company representatives may vote. I declare the polls open.

Lumi Holdings and MUFG Market Services are the returning officers for this meeting. Shareholders attending the meeting online will be able to cast their vote by simply selecting one of the voting options. Your vote is automatically recorded. There is no need to press a submit or enter button. You can change your vote up until the time I declare voting closed.

If you have any difficulties, please refer to the guide available in the AGM tab in the online Steadfast Investor Centre. There is also an AGM helpline provided.

Once voting opens, shareholders attending the meeting in person will be presented with a list of today's resolutions on their voting keyboard -- keypad, using the track ball to highlight the resolution you wish to vote and press the green square to confirm. The resolution text will appear, bring up the voting options by pressing the green square. Press 1 to vote for the item and 2 for against and 3 to abstain. To move on to the next item, press the green square. I must admit, I sound as though like on a call and somebody saying push 1, push 2, push 3, push 4 and -- but sorry about that. But we do -- we have staff here that will help you if you're running into trouble. Steadfast staff or our returning officers will be available if you need assistance, as I said.

Questions can be either asked using a microphone in the room or through the online platform. If you are a shareholder in the room and wish to ask a question, there are 2 members of staff holding roaming microphones. Please put your hand up at the appropriate time if you wish to ask a question about a particular resolution. If you are participating online through the virtual meeting website and wish to ask a question, you can either type your question or ask through audio. [Operator Instructions]

Following the voting, general business questions will be taken. Shareholder questions received prior to the meeting will be addressed after the formal business of the meeting. Each resolution set out in the notice of the meeting is an ordinary resolution, and as such, must be approved by a simple majority of the votes cast by shareholders entitled to vote and voting on the resolution. Shareholders should note the voting exclusion set out in the AGM notice of the meeting.

Please note that I intend to vote in favor of each resolution for those proxies that are open for the Chair's discretion, and Vicki will talk a little bit more about that on a couple of the resolutions.

Resolution 1, the first item on the agenda is to consider and receive the financial report of the company and its controlled entities. The directors' report and the auditor's report for the financial year ended 30th of June 2025 are set out in the Steadfast 2025 annual report. These documents have been made available to shareholders. There is no vote on this item of the business.

Alexandra, are there any questions on this subject on the financial statements online? No. Are there any questions from the floor? As there are no questions for this item, we will move on to the next item of business.

Resolution 2, the next item on the agenda is the reelection of Joan Cleary as a Director of the company. Joan became a Steadfast Director on 28th of July 2022. She is a Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee and serves on the People, Governance & Culture Committee and the Nomination Committee and the Remuneration & Performance Committee. Joan is an Independent Director. Information about Joan's skill and experience can be found in the notice of the meeting and the 2025 annual report. Joan is retiring by rotation in accordance with Article 13.5 of Steadfast's Constitution and ASX Listing Rule 14.4, and is offering herself for reelection.

I now invite Joan to say a few words.

Thank you, Frank. So can everybody hear me? Good. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for this opportunity to say a few words in support of my reelection to your Board. Frank has stolen my thunder a little bit, but just to reiterate, I joined the Steadfast Board in 2022. And since then, I have chaired the Audit & Risk Committee and have served on the Remuneration & Performance; the People, Culture & Governance; and the Nominations Committees. I also serve on the Board of 2 regulated general insurers.

Prior to transitioning to a nonexecutive career, I worked in the insurance industry for over 30 years, who would have guessed, holding senior finance roles in both the London market and here in Australia. My executive experience includes oversight of performance and financial risk across multiple geographies as well as understanding financial services regulation, navigating the constantly changing reporting environment, dealing with complex reporting judgments and managing the challenges of legacy issues.

I believe that my professional experience and independence of thought bring value to this Board and enable me to contribute to Steadfast as Steadfast continues to navigate the challenges of achieving sustainable growth and profitability in an ever more complex business environment.

It has been a privilege to serve on this Board, working with this professional and dedicated group of directors and this highly talented management team. I welcome the opportunity to continue to contribute my skills to the Board and would be honored to have your support. Thank you.

Thank you, Joan. The Board, with Joan abstaining, recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution.

Are there any questions online? No. Are there any questions from the floor? As there are no questions, we will proceed to the voting.

Press now select for, against or abstain for this resolution. And please don't hesitate to ask someone who's here like me. The technology these days gets a bit more difficult as you get older.

So have everyone had an opportunity? All right. Congratulations, Joan, on your reelection. She's an outstanding contributor to our Board.

The next item on the agenda is the election of Michael Goodwin as a Director of the company. Michael was appointed as Steadfast Director on 15th of September 2025. Michael is an independent director. Information about Michael's skills and experience can be found in the notice of the meeting and the 2025 annual report. In accordance with Article 13.9 of Steadfast's Constitution and ASX Listing Rule 14.4, Michael must not hold office past the first Annual General Meeting following his appointment and is offering himself for reelection.

I now invite Mike to say a few words.

Thanks, Frank, and good morning to everybody. It gives me a great pleasure to be here, particularly after watching the formation of Steadfast 30 years ago. So I was around in Australia at that time, and then the subsequent listing in 2013. I guess since then, there's been a very strong development and obviously, very, very good returns to shareholders over that period since 2013.

In the late '90s and early 2000s, I was actually working in Australia as an actuary and as an executive. And during that period, there are significant changes in the distribution landscape with FSR and a number of things, which I'm sure a number of the brokers in the room will remember and the pain that we went through having to deal with that at that stage. But part of that, though, drove strong innovation within the Steadfast Group to actually take advantage of that, and that still goes on today.

In 2004, I moved to Singapore. And for the next 8 years, managed general insurance businesses in the Asia Pacific region from India through to French Polynesia. So I got to see a lot of different parts of the world, some nice, some not so nice, but enjoyed every moment of it.

2012, I commenced my nonexecutive career, which has included being a nonexecutive director on listed international insurers and also unlisted international insurers. So I spent a lot of time working around the world during that period.

Whilst overseas, though, I can see the amazing growth that Steadfast was doing, driven by the management team and also from the support of the brokers and the underwriting agencies all working together to generate that growth.

When I was asked to be considered as a nonexecutive director, one of the things that I was looking at or a number of them was the value that I can bring to the Board is that international experience and helping them continue that strong growth, both in Australia and as they look for, of course, opportunities overseas.

My work has also included looking at a lot of M&A transactions across the world, both from an operational and transactional experience. So that's another thing that I think I can bring to the Board.

Then lastly, just a little bit about me. I'm still a registered veterinary surgeon in New South Wales, still a qualified and practicing actuary. I reside in Singapore, but I spent a lot of time around the world attending Board meetings in person. From that, I look forward to working with the Board and with the different brokers, and happy to do that with your support.

Thank you, Mike. And he actually said he was a vet and he got sick and tired of that, he decided to become an actuary. So sorry, Mike. The Board, with Mike abstaining, recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. Alexandra, are there any questions online?

Chair, there is a question. It's from Mr. Stephen Mayne. it's a two-pronged question. Firstly, did Mike know any of our directors before joining the Board? And secondly, what was the recruitment -- was the recruitment process competitive and run by a headhunting firm?

The answer is there was a competitive process and a headhunter firm was involved. And the answer to the first question is, yes. But as declared and when we announced Mike to the market that he used to work for QBE and work for me. But Vicki, as incoming Chair, I don't know whether you wanted to add anything about the process.

No, Frank, you're correct. We did run a process. We had a headhunter involved. And through that process, Mike was the best candidate to suit the skills that we needed on the Board and the approach that he has in terms of governance. And I believe he's a very good fit for the Board.

Yes. And I think it's fair that most people would realize that it's important that the Board has someone, a director who has substantial international expansion because that's one of the major strategies of the group going forward.

Are there any questions from the floor? As there are no questions, we will proceed to the voting. Please now select for, against or abstain for this resolution. Congratulations, Mike, on your election.

The next item on the agenda is to adopt the remuneration report for the financial year ended 30th of June 2025. As Vicki is Chair of that committee and the incoming Chair, I invite her to say a few words.

Thank you, Frank. The objectives of the Steadfast Group remuneration framework are: to maintain market competitive remuneration that enables the group to attract and retain key talent; to align remuneration to the group's strategic and business objectives and the creation of shareholder value; be fair, transparent and easily understood by all stakeholders; be acceptable to shareholders and aligned to community expectations.

The Steadfast Group and the executive team have performed strongly and achieved full year financial results within the guidance range announced on the 29th of August 2024. We believe that the results achieved by the Steadfast Group reflect our focus on sustainable performance, continued growth organically and by acquisition and the leadership and the efforts of our experienced executive team.

I invite you to read our remuneration report on Pages 54 to 77 of the 2025 annual report, which provides more detail on our policy, including the short- and long-term incentives for key executives for the financial year.

Looking ahead, in FY '26, the Steadfast Group will revise its short-term incentive plan for executives. This will include the use of a company balance scorecard of metrics to determine the incentive pool available for distribution. Up to 65% of the balance scorecard will be based on financial measures across underlying NPAT and several strategic measures and the 35% on nonfinancial measures across other strategic measures including customer and subsidiary, people, risk and reputation. These changes will be published in the 2026 annual report. We invite any feedback on our remuneration framework.

I'll now hand over to Frank.

Thank you, Vicki. I felt it appropriate that Vicki talk to this resolution because it's going to be her responsibility going forward. The vote on this resolution is advisory only and does not bind the directors or Steadfast. Nevertheless, the Board will take into account the outcome of the vote when considering Steadfast's future remuneration arrangements. Noting that each director has a personal interest in their own remuneration from Steadfast in this resolution, the Board recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution.

Alexandra, are there any questions online?

Frank, there is another question from Mr. Stephen Mayne. The question is, thank you for disclosing the proxies early to the ASX along with the formal addresses. What caused the 15% remuneration report protest vote? Did a proxy adviser recommend against?

Yes. I'll hand this one over to Vicki. But before we go, you've got to remember that 85% voted in favor. So over to you, Vicki.

Yes. Thank you. A proxy adviser did recommend to vote no for the remuneration report. However, other proxy advisers recommended to vote yes.

Are there any questions from the floor? Someone will bring you a microphone.

Elizabeth Fish speaking from the Australian Shareholders' Association. Thank you very much for taking my comment today. We do have a query about the remuneration report. And the fact is that the long-term incentive is still measured over 3 years, while the majority of ASX 200 companies measure over 4 years. And we also thought that dividends should not accrue on unvested rights and that the underlying net profit after tax is used to calculate the ROC and earnings per share continues when LTI or the long-term incentives. So would you like to comment on that?

Elizabeth, thank you for your question. I'll again hand over to the Chair of the Remuneration Committee to explain.

Thank you, Elizabeth. The first of your questions was in relation to the LTI period of tenure, which is currently 3 years. I do acknowledge that there are differences in the market where that period of time can be from 3 to 4 to 5 years, depending on the organization. It's something we review annually, the long-term incentive scheme, and I'm always open to feedback in relation to the setting of that long-term incentive.

I think your second point was in relation to dividends accruing. Dividends do not accrue on the long-term incentive scheme. There is a notional accrual of dividends on the short-term DEAs, and the short-term DEAs are in place for 12 months. The underlying profit is used for the calculation of return on capital purposes. We choose underlying profit because we think that's the best measure of the operational performance of the organization and therefore, the best measure for us to apply to the efforts of our senior executive team in calculating return on capital and calculating their performance for the year. Thank you, Elizabeth.

Are there any further questions from the floor? As there are no further questions, we will proceed to the voting. Please now select for, against or abstain for this resolution.

The next item on the agenda is to approve the grant of equity to the Managing Director and CEO in relation to his FY '25 remuneration. It is very important for you to note that the Board has the discretion to change the number of shares provided to Mr. Kelly following achievement of performance hurdles where the Board considers it necessary to protect the financial soundness of Steadfast. Adverse outcomes have arisen that reduce the original assessment of the performance, generating the provision of the benefit. Full performance outcomes have been materially impacted by changes in Steadfast's dividend policy, capital structure, gearing or corporate structure.

The nonexecutive directors will exercise such discretion in a manner that is consistent with supporting sound and effective risk management, protecting Steadfast's long-term stability and aligned with the creation of long-term shareholder value and will take into account any factors considered appropriate. Malus and clawback provisions also apply. If and to the extent appropriate in all the circumstances, the Board may exercise any applicable discretion available to it under the relevant plan rules.

Alexandra, are there any questions online?

No questions.

Are there any questions from the floor? As there are no questions, we will proceed to the voting. Please now select for, against or abstain for this resolution.

The next item on the agenda is to approve the grant of equity to the Managing Director and CEO in relation to his FY '24 remuneration. Any vesting in FY '27 of the FY '24 long-term incentive DEAs, that's deferred equity, will be subject to the nonexecutive discretion as well as the 3-year performance testing, which is based on underlying diluted earnings per share growth and relative TSR hurdles over the period. These measures are aligned to the share price performance and shareholder returns.

The nonexecutive directors retain the discretion to amend the vesting dates, vesting conditions and adjust downward the vesting outcomes of any unpaid or unvested performance-related DEAs. The nonexecutive directors will exercise such discretion in a manner that is consistent with supporting sound and effective governance and will take into account any factors considered appropriate. Malus and clawback provisions also apply.

If and to the extent appropriate in all the circumstances, the Board may exercise any applicable discretion available to it under the relevant plan rules. The nonexecutive directors recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution.

Alexandra, are there any questions online?

Yes, Frank, there is a question. It's a long question, but the end of it relates to what are the clawback provisions in these incentive grants if the -- if Mr. Kelly departs the company?

I'll hand that one over to the incoming Chair because that will be the future Board's decision.

We have the usual malus and clawback provisions available to us. And as Frank said, in all circumstances, the Board can apply any discretion available to it under the plan rules.

Are there any questions from the floor? As there are no further questions, we will proceed to the voting. Please now select for, against or abstain for this resolution.

The next item on the agenda is to approve termination benefits to the MD and CEO in connection with Mr. Kelly seeking to hold off an office or position of employment with Steadfast or a related body corporate in circumstances of death, genuine retirement, redundancy or total/permanent disability. The nonexecutive directors recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution.

Alexandra, are there any questions online?

No questions, Chair.

Are there any questions from the floor? As there are no questions, we will proceed to the voting. Please now select for, against or abstain for this resolution.

The next item on the agenda is to approve termination benefits generally. For the purpose of Section 200B and 200E of the Corporations Act 2001, and for all other purposes, the giving of all benefits up to and including 30th of September 2028, be approved in connection with awards relating to the 3 financial years ended 30th of June 2026, 2027 and 2028, respectively, to current or future key management personnel of Steadfast or persons who hold a managerial or executive office in Steadfast or a related body corporate other than Mr. Robert Kelly, in connection with that person ceasing to hold an office or position of employment with Steadfast or a related body corporate in circumstances of death, genuine retirement, redundancy or total and permanent disablement. As set out in the explanatory notes, which form part of this notice of meeting to be approved. The nonexecutive directors recommend that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution.

Alexandra, are there any questions online?

There are no questions, Chair.

Are there any questions from the floor? As there are no questions, we will proceed to the voting. Please now select for, against or abstain for this resolution.

We have received some general questions from shareholders, which we would like to be able to share with you. Alexandra, please open the online audio questions and read out any online questions, and I or the appropriate person will respond.

Thank you, Chair. There is a further question from Mr. Stephen Mayne. Thank you to Frank O'Halloran for his long service to this company. What does he regard as the 3 best decisions the Steadfast Board made during his time with the company? And does he have any regrets?

Not my answer because I've loved every minute of it. And if I've made a contribution to the success of Steadfast, I'd be very proud of that. But this Steadfast is a team, it's not 1 individual, it's not 2 individuals. It's a group of individuals, and that includes our Board of Directors. So the credit should be taken by everybody about the success of Steadfast. So thanks for the questions, Stephen. I owe you a beer.

And there are no further questions, Chair.

Are there any questions from the floor?

[indiscernible] Are you getting much business in the cybersecurity insurance area?

Thank you. Well, I might give that question to either Mike or to Tim.

Okay. I'll take that first, Frank. The answer is, yes. It's a key risk for many of our clients, particularly SME businesses. It's generally underrepresented though in terms of the portfolio mix. As an example, we've recently compared the uptake of cyber insurance for business pack policies, and it's generally around the 5% to 10% rate. So it is underrepresented, particularly when you consider most firms would rank it as their #1 or 2 largest risks to their business. So yes, it's a good opportunity for us going forward.

Thanks, Tim. That concludes -- sorry, are there any other questions from the floor?

I noticed reference in the CEO report to beginning to get involved with artificial intelligence and that certainly makes sense. I guess, we don't know where artificial intelligence is going to end up in the business sphere generally. But it seems to me like a classic opportunity for a disruptor to come in and start competing with the insurance brokers because it shouldn't be -- at least in the placement of business, risk management might be a bit harder. And well, claims management probably would fit in. Have you given any thought to this at this early stage?

Yes, we certainly have. It's regularly on the Board agenda, and it will continue to be on the Board agenda, I assume, Vicki. But unless you want to add to what I've said, it's high priority.

Yes. And in many respects, it can be an enabler for broker businesses to create more efficiency so they can spend more time with their clients. But we're moving cautiously. We're enabling the opportunity across the business for teams to participate and learn about AI. We have importantly considered our data management processes to ensure that we're appropriately managing data. And we're taking opportunities to, say, create small teams and look at particular examples of how we might take advantage of AI.

Actually, I might ask Greg to make some comments about how he's using AI in his own broking business.

Well, I just wanted to say that we see AI as not a threat but an opportunity. We do see that it will affect our business and our competition, but I think most brokers are really looking at how we can develop it and use it to actually give clients a better service, improve their whole way that they do business with us. So we actually see it as a complete opportunity.

All right. Thank you. Are there any other questions from the floor?

All right. That concludes our discussion on the items of business. In a couple of minutes, I will close the voting system. Please ensure you have cast all your votes on all resolutions. I will now pause to allow you time to finalize those votes.

[Voting]

I now declare voting closed on all items. Ladies and gentlemen, the business of this meeting has been completed. On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank shareholders for attending today's meeting, and I declare the meeting closed.

But one thing I can assure you is I'll be sitting out there with you next year, and I probably will have a number of questions for the Board. So thank you. Thanks, everyone.

Can I just say a couple of words, please? Sorry, can I just say a couple of words before we finally close. It would really be remiss of me not to thank Frank O'Halloran for acting as our Chair since 2013. I told the story yesterday. We were 300, 400 insurance brokers. We've built this business from 0 to where it got to in 2013. And when Robert and the rest of the directors at the time decided they wanted to list this business, us, as average insurance brokers, we really, really were quite -- we were worried about where it would go and what the journey would look like.

But the funny thing is Robert and myself, we were looking at a Chairman for this business. And when Frank O'Halloran's name came up, we just thought, well, he's an icon. This man is just amazing. If we've got him on our team, then we are going to have the right advice, the right information given to us, and Frank delivered in hands. Him and Robert have been an amazing partnership in this building of Steadfast from 2013 to where we are today. We should really thank him and the Steadfast insurance brokers and broker land out there, really wanted to take the opportunity today to say thank you, Frank, for everything that you've done for Steadfast.

Steadfast is an amazing business. Don't ever underestimate that. Insurance broking is an amazing, amazing business. We've got a lot of opportunities out there. The only regret that I have as a director and as a person is I wish I was 20 years younger to take advantage of what we've got going in front of us. So thanks, Frank. Thanks on behalf of all the Steadfast brokers, I really want to thank you for what you've done for Steadfast.

All right. Thank you. We have some -- I think we've got some coffee and drinks out there and a few bites by the way.