Good morning, everyone. I'm Suzanne Cheuk, Head of Treasury and Investor Relations at Jardine Matheson.

Welcome to the Jardine Matheson Holdings full year 2025 results presentation. For those joining us in the room here, you can download the presentation slides from our JM corporate website or at the QR code here.

For those joining us online, you should now be able to see the live webcast and presentation slides. You may also submit questions via the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen at any time, and we will address them during the Q&A session.

Now, we'd first like to introduce our speakers today. We have Lincoln Pan, Chief Executive Officer of Jardine Matheson Holdings, and Graham Baker, our Chief Financial Officer.

As I'm sure many of you already know, Lincoln joined us on the 1st of December 2025. Please join us in welcoming him for his first results presentation.

Today, you will hear from him on his vision for Jardines, our commitment to shareholders, and how we'll deliver, which we will go into greater detail on the 16th of June during our Investor Day in Hong Kong. Graham will then take you through the financial performance of the company and the portfolio.

There will be a Q&A session at the end of the presentation, which I'm sure all of you are very much looking forward to, but for people in the room, I would kindly ask that you hold your questions until then. With that, let me now ask Lincoln to begin our presentation.

Okay. Thank you, Suzanne, and good morning to everyone here in Hong Kong and to those who have joined us online.

I'm looking forward to an engaging session with all of you today. Thank you again to the many partners of Jardine Matheson, including some of you in this room, who have welcomed me to this great organization.

At Jardine Matheson, we have set a clear ambition for ourselves. We strive to be an outstanding investment vehicle focused on building diverse, high-quality businesses in Asia-Pacific, delivering sustainable, top-quartile total shareholder returns.

Two years ago, our Executive Chairman, Ben Keswick, initiated a transformation process to evolve Jardine Matheson from owner-operator to an investment company. Good progress has been made, strengthening our portfolio leadership teams and boards with industry leaders, setting total shareholder return as our governing KPI, and aligning shareholder and management incentives and recycling capital.

Today, our job is to accelerate the evolution of Jardine Matheson and our role as an investment holding company, building an organization that's committed to active, long-term value creation, talent development with aligned incentives, world-class governance, and continuous improvement in sustainability. Now, whilst we'll lay out more of our strategy and financial objectives in greater detail in our Investor Day in the summer, today, I would like to begin outlining the principles which Jardine Matheson will operate with to deliver for our shareholders.

First and most importantly, we're targeting a sustainable, top-quartile 5-year TSR, outperforming alternatives for investing in Asia. This will be supported by a commitment to growing the dividend annually and value creation initiatives to drive portfolio performance.

Our goal is to be a stable, diversified platform delivering GDP-plus growth and growing cash-on-cash distributions across our markets. Secondly, we'll have an active program to recycle capital, exiting below-hurdle assets with limited prospects and recycling capital toward businesses, existing and new, that improve our quality of earnings.

Both our portfolio investments in Hongkong Land and DFI Retail have done an excellent job of this in 2025. In 2025, Jardine Matheson and its portfolio companies recycled $4.8 billion of capital, more than the last 4 years combined.

Thirdly, we'll principally be a control or lead investor in our portfolio companies. This is a change to our legacy historic strategy.

Being a Jardine Matheson company must come with meaning and must come with principles. These include our ability to appoint, incentivize, develop, and change management, operating with international standards of governance and a commitment to environmental objectives.

From my experience in Asia, this is best done and almost only done as a control investor. Finally, we'll be a lean holding company where practically every resource at Jardine Matheson must be focused on enhancing value and managing risk in our portfolio and thoughtful capital recycling.

This is also a meaningful change from our legacy strategy. 2025 was a strong year for Jardine Matheson and its portfolio companies.

Alongside the significant capital recycling, below-hurdle rate return investments at Hongkong Land, DFI Retail, Mandarin Oriental, and Jardine Cycle & Carriage, there was a $1.4 billion deleveraging of the JMH parent company balance sheet. The JMH parent company balance sheet finished the year in a net cash position, which provides us with flexibility for future investment opportunities.

5-year TSR at the year-end was 8.8%, up markedly from -0.6% a year earlier. We continue to see significant value in our existing portfolio as well, and as a result, we launched a $250 million buyback program for the Jardine Matheson Holding level into November.

We are also investing. There is a misperception that right now Jardines is a seller of everything.

This is categorically not true. We invested $2.8 billion back into our companies in 2025 and will continue to reinvest in parts of our portfolio we believe in.

Graham will go over the financials in a moment, but I would like to highlight our dividend per share has increased to $2.35, reflecting a progressive dividend policy which has delivered annualized growth of 6.4% over the last 5 years. Whilst we made progress in 2025, we still see significant upside for JMH.

Our portfolio companies are tightly focused on improving execution, and we are continuing to support this with accountability, the introduction of TSR-linked long-term incentive plans across our businesses, and investment in talent for new investments and portfolio value creation. You will see us continue to be more ambitious and active in assessing and recycling capital in our portfolio, with clear return hurdles for new capital deployment, and we will see opportunities to continue to simplify the group and improve shareholder value as we have done with Mandarin Oriental.

We'll share more on our specific capital allocation hurdles and targets and principles later on in June, and we'll begin to work to grow Jardine Matheson's earnings in the future, focused on scalable businesses delivering and diversifying our Asia footprint. These activities are supported by a macro environment in Asia that has been generally improving and which favors permanent capital that can look beyond near-term volatility.

I hope you can start to see that Jardine Matheson is a very different company today than in the past. I'll now turn to some of the year's highlights, starting with the privatization of Mandarin Oriental in January.

This privatization enabled us to eliminate an inefficient listing structure whilst releasing significant capital for shareholders by selling part of One Causeway Bay, a non-core real estate asset. The privatization will allow our outstanding management team, led by Laurent Kleitman, to execute their ambitious growth agenda in a private setting.

Importantly, it will also create options for Jardine Matheson to realize greater value from our Mandarin Oriental ownership in the future. The hotel management business is a really exciting business for us and expects to be a main across driver for the group.

Astra delivered robust earnings amid softer domestic conditions in a challenging capital market environment. Despite this, share price growth in the year supported 5-year TSR of 9.8%.

Aligned with our TSR strategy, Astra and United Tractors each completed a 2 trillion Indonesian rupiah, or $121 million, share buyback program in January. They announced a subsequent tranche of share buybacks amounting to 1 trillion Indonesian rupiah each in the same month, which we're now in the process of completing.

We expect these buyback programs to continue given the strong value we see in Astra. We're also working with Astra on talent management and incentive alignment as we have done across other parts of our portfolio.

In the first half of 2026, we'll also announce enhancements to Astra's Board of Commissioners. Alongside this, executive succession efforts are ongoing, and you'll hear more leadership announcements from Astra in the coming months.

Looking forward, Astra will continue to focus on its core automotive, consumer finance, and heavy equipment and mining segments while investing in growth segments, for example, healthcare and infrastructure. We remain committed to investing more in Indonesia and to supporting Astra's capital recycling efforts to drive future growth.

I'm personally spending significant time in partnering with the Astra management team and down in Jakarta practically every month with our Astra leadership. 2025 was a productive year also for Hongkong Land as they took meaningful steps forward in delivering the early phases of their Strategic Vision 2035, which will transform the business into a more disciplined, capital-efficient, and growth-oriented company.

The early phases of this transformation focus on capital recycling. Completed or announced net proceeds recycled at the end of February have totaled $3.6 billion since the strategy was announced in October 2024.

A major milestone announced in February 2026 was the establishment of the Singapore Central Private Real Estate Fund, Hongkong Land's first private real estate fund. The new fund has $6.4 billion of assets under management, with Qatar Investment Authority and APG Asset Management as founding investors.

The fund represents a significant milestone in the execution of Hongkong Land's strategy to build a scalable third-party capital platform, broadening Hongkong Land's investor base and diversifying income through fee-based revenue. This is a good example of Jardine Matheson supporting our portfolio companies in enhancing quality of earnings and a portfolio company leadership executing new strategies at pace.

Michael Smith and his team are bringing significant innovation and drive to this business. DFI Retail also made excellent strategic process during the year.

This was led by decisive portfolio actions, including divestment of low-yielding minority stakes in Yonghui, Robinsons Retail, and our Singapore food business. The proceeds from these divestments allowed DFI to pay a $600 million special dividend, with Jardine Matheson receiving $465 million.

DFI committed to a 70% dividend payout ratio and have announced a midterm target of $310 to $350 million underlying profit by 2028. Scott Price and his team have brought execution and focus to DFI.

They are laser-focused on executing DFI's strategy and an outstanding team of retailers. Whilst we see value in our existing portfolio, we have and will continue to support share buybacks and share purchases at the JMH and the portfolio company level.

These have been substantial over the last 5 years, with JMH investing $7.7 billion. At the year-end, we had open buyback programs across JMH, Hongkong Land, Astra, and United Tractors.

As the company has announced, I am also an ongoing investor in Jardine Matheson, having personally invested about $10 million before and after I've started as CEO. This is a commitment I made to my principal shareholders that a CEO must have personal alignment independent of stock-based compensation.

My intention will be to reinvest the majority of my short-term incentive compensation back into Jardine Matheson stock while I remain CEO of Jardine Matheson Holdings. Sustainability continues to be an important enabler of long-term value creation across Jardines and our portfolio.

In 2025, we continue to make progress on carbon reduction in line with targets we are setting with our portfolio companies. At the portfolio company level, we're seeing tangible improvements in execution, with businesses advancing emissions reduction initiatives while also strengthening operational resilience and cost efficiency.

We're also seeing improvements across external ESG ratings, which we view as an important validation of our approach as long-term owners and responsible stewards of capital. Now, let me pass the presentation to Graham, who will take us through the financials in more detail.

Thanks, Lincoln. Jardine Matheson delivered very solid performance in 2025.

Our improved execution and heightened focus on shareholder returns, at a time when investors have recognized again opportunities in Asia to diversify their holdings, resulted in a strong recovery of our 5-year TSR to 8.8% per annum, the highest level in over a decade. Underlying earnings per share improved by 9% to $5.72, supporting a full-year dividend of $2.35 a share.

You'll recall that in the prior year, we held our dividend despite a drop in underlying earnings. Reported earnings returned to net profit of $1.1 billion, rising by nearly $1.6 billion from the prior-year loss.

This substantial turnaround primarily reflects the fair value of investment properties, which rose in 2025 in Central after 6 years of revaluation losses. Parent cash flows were robust, and importantly, our parent balance sheet finished the year in a net cash position, providing investment flexibility.

Starting with earnings, as shown on the left-hand chart, underlying net profit grew 11% in the year to nearly $1.7 billion. From 2025 onwards, we've updated our definition of underlying earnings to exclude entirely the results of Hongkong Land's build-to-sell, or BTS, business.

2024 underlying net profit is therefore also represented in the chart. This change reflects Hongkong Land's announced exit from BTS and therefore, I believe, will help better understanding of the progress of our ongoing strategic businesses.

As this is a change, however, we've also included the chart on the right, which shows underlying net profit under the prior definition. Three things to note here.

Firstly, net profit in 2025 is the same on both definitions as net all-in profit from build-to-sell was less than a million dollars in 2025. Secondly, that was not the case in 2024 when BTS at our level registered a net loss of $47 million.

If we'd stayed on the old definition, our headline underlying growth rate would actually have been 3% higher at 14% than the 11% we've announced today. Thirdly, our result in 2025 on the old definition was 2.6% above the guidance we gave for the year, which you'll recall was for flat earnings excluding the 2024 BTS impairments.

In summary, a very solid earnings performance in 2025, both in growing our ongoing businesses and against guidance. Looking at this now by business, our two largest businesses, Astra and Hongkong Land, both saw marginally lower contributions in 2025.

However, this was more than compensated by growing contributions from DFI, JC&C, and Jardine Pacific, once again demonstrating the value of our diversified portfolio. I'll cover the core portfolio companies in more detail in a moment.

However, for now, JC&C saw an improved contribution from Vietnam and also benefited significantly from foreign exchange gains and lower financing costs at the corporate level. Our outside-in estimate of Zhongsheng's contribution is 23% below the prior year, linked to the bottom end of the range of analysts' estimates following a disappointing result in the first half of the year and ongoing pressures on margins from oversupply in the mainland new car market.

Finally, we benefited in 2025 from a significantly lower set of corporate charges, $67 million below the prior year, due to higher investment income, lower financing costs, and lower corporate overheads. Outside underlying earnings, the group recorded a net non-trading loss of $572 million, well below the nearly $2 billion charge in 2024.

As mentioned before, the main change was in the valuation of Hongkong Land's Central portfolio, which rose in 2025, the first increase since 2018, principally driven by the retail portfolio. Within impairments, the major item was against the carrying value of Zhongsheng, reflecting its deteriorating share price and challenging market outlook.

On the group's balance sheet, net borrowings excluding Astra's financial services companies fell by $4.6 billion to $2.7 billion, and gearing fell from 14% to 5%. This was driven by debt reduction at almost all portfolio companies and at the JM parent company level.

Financial services net debt moved marginally upwards in line with growth of the business's lending portfolio. Group cash flows from operating activities for the year were $5.3 billion, up 6%, with stronger cash generation at DFI, Astra, and Jardine Pacific.

Investing activities generated a net inflow of $2.1 billion compared to an outflow in the prior year. Organic capital expenditure in our subsidiaries together with investments in joint ventures in total grew 17% to $2.8 billion.

However, while we continue to grow our organic business investments, we also saw $4.8 billion of capital recycling from, among other things, the sales of Yonghui, Robinsons Retail, and Singapore food by DFI; nine floors of One Exchange Square, MCL Land, and MBFC Tower 3 in Singapore by Hongkong Land; the top 13 floors of One Causeway Bay by Mandarin Oriental; part of its Vinamilk stake by JC&C; and other listed investments sold by JMH parent. Lower cash outflows from financing activities mainly reflect lower share purchases by Jardine Matheson of its subsidiaries, principally of JC&C and Mandarin, than in 2024, as we prioritized debt reduction in our holding structure for much of the year.

The group has $15 billion of liquidity headroom to finance future growth. Overall, the group's portfolio companies continue to be highly cash-generative, supported by strong balance sheets and access to considerable liquidity.

Now turning to Jardine Matheson's corporate balance sheet and cash flows at the parent company level, parent free cash flow rose 7% to $933 million, and cash cover for the Jardine Matheson dividend remained ample at two times. The parent company balance sheet, as mentioned, finished the year in a net cash position following net debt reduction of $1.4 billion during the year.

The clean closing net cash position comprises 10- and 15-year bonds totaling $1.2 billion issued in 2021 at an effective interest rate of 2.6% and $1.2 billion of corporate cash held at leading high-quality regional and global banks, which together with further substantial committed facilities gives the group ample flexibility for new capital deployments. I'll now go through the performance of our core portfolio companies.

For details, do refer directly to our companies' respective results briefings. Looking first at Astra, unless otherwise stated, the numbers on this slide are all shown in local currency, and like all the other portfolio company slides, are on a 100% basis.

Astra saw positive progress in its 5-year TSR to 9.8% per annum, benefiting from a strong share price recovery in 2025. As Lincoln mentioned, Astra and United Tractors both launched buyback programs during the year aligned to TSR strategy.

Net profit in local currency was marginally down at 32.8 trillion rupiah amid a softer domestic economy, with lower contributions from the coal and four-wheeler businesses as coal prices moderated and the auto market contracted, partly offset by improved performances in motorcycles, consumer financing, and non-coal mining. Astra's contribution to JM's underlying net profit also fell modestly, with a weakening rupiah offset by an increase in JM's effective shareholding.

Astra's net cash position remains strong, providing capacity to fund its strategic priorities. Astra is, of course, a core part of Jardines.

We continue to have confidence in its long-term prospects and will continue to support its investments in driving value and growth in its core franchises. Hongkong Land has also seen a major improvement in 5-year TSR as it makes meaningful progress against its Vision 2035 strategy.

At the end of February 2026, Hongkong Land had recycled $3.6 billion of capital since the new strategy was announced, representing 90% of their announced 2027 target. Accordingly, net debt fell by $1.5 billion in 2025 to $3.6 billion.

Hongkong Land, of course, made the same change as Jardines to exclude BTS from underlying earnings. Underlying net profit on this basis fell by 8%, principally due to lower average office rentals and the temporary impacts of the LANDMARK renovation on retail income in Hong Kong.

However, recurring dividend income to JM increased 5% to $271 million, reflecting Hongkong Land's commitment to grow dividends per share over time. Build-to-sell net profits reported as a non-trading item were, as mentioned earlier, negligible after further impairments were taken against the residential portfolio, mainly in China.

However, good progress was made in recycling capital from completing BTS projects, with inventory sales of $800 million in the year. DFI's 5-year TSR also recovered strongly to 5.1%, with a 1-year TSR of over 90%.

After paying a special dividend of $600 million to shareholders, DFI finished the year in a net cash position, providing it with capacity for continued investment in its stores, technology, and future strategic priorities. In total, JMH received $575 million of dividends from DFI in 2025.

Mandarin Oriental's 5-year TSR was 13.5%, supported, of course, by the privatization. Mandarin finished the year with $856 million net cash following the disposal of the top floors of One Causeway Bay.

Part of this, after meeting capex needs, was used to pay a special dividend of $758 million to shareholders, including Jardines, in January 2026, and part of our share was in turn used to fund the privatization. Underlying net profit rose 8% to $68 million, with higher contributions from the Hong Kong and Tokyo properties.

Jardine Pacific reported higher underlying net profit of $191 million, up 28%. Its engineering and infrastructure businesses reported a 10% increase in underlying net profit, while the consumer businesses reported as part of others returned to profit.

We're actively making people investments to strengthen engineering and infrastructure and looking to recycle capital into this segment to expand and grow. We're excited about the prospects of Gammon Construction in Hong Kong and of JEC regionally and actively investing behind these management teams.

Jardine Pacific continues, of course, to provide a valuable flow of recurring dividends to the JM parent. Finally, looking ahead to 2026, I'd like to note that as a result of the tremendous work in 2025 on capital recycling and simplification activities, our underlying earnings will exclude a number of items that contributed in 2025.

Principally, these are the disposals at DFI and of our Vinamilk shares. Additionally, we will shift in 2026 to accounting for Zhongsheng as an investment rather than an associate so that only dividends rather than a share of earnings from Zhongsheng will be recorded in our underlying earnings.

After adjusting for these changes, our pro forma 2025 underlying EPS exit rate base for your 2026 estimates is 39 cents lower at $5.33. With that, I'll hand back to Lincoln.

Thank you, Graham. To conclude, 2025 was a productive year for Jardine Matheson as we continue to evolve from an owner-operator to an investment company.

Across the portfolio, we recycled $4.8 billion of capital, and underlying net profit grew 11%. At JMH itself, parent free cash flow increased by 7%, the dividend is proposed to grow 4% to $2.35, and the balance sheet moved to net cash, providing investment flexibility.

In recognition of this, we're pleased to see 5-year TSR improve to 8.8%. However, these are just baby steps to turning Jardine Matheson into the outstanding Asian vehicle we envisage, and there remains a lot to do, both on our portfolio and for new investments.

We're going to push ahead in 2026 to drive performance as a lean and focused investment company. We'll continue to actively recycle capital, we're strengthening our investment team, and we're actively looking for new pillars to grow our earnings in the future as we strive to deliver top-quartile TSR.

Turning to guidance, given the current uncertain political environment, both globally and in some of our key markets, we expect underlying earnings in 2026 to be broadly in line with the $5.33 base Graham just mentioned. However, the resilient returns and cash-generating capacity of our portfolio, as well as comfortable cash cover, gives us confidence to guide to a full-year JMH dividend for 2026 of at least $2.45 per share, up a further 4%.

At our Investor Day on the 16th of June in Hong Kong, we'll lay out in greater detail how we are executing against our strategy and financial objectives. We'll cover our capital allocation strategy and then also share our vision for what Jardine Matheson can become.

We're making progress as an organization. I need us to move faster and with deliberation, and I'm pushing the organization to do so.

Thank you, and we will now open the floor for Q&A. Suzanne, over to you.

Thank you, Lincoln. We will now take your questions.

Please just raise your hand if you have a question. Please state the name of yourself and your organization.

Karl?

Thank you very much. This is Karl Chan from JPMorgan.

Lincoln, nice to meet you. Finally, we get to meet.

Obviously, the first question is more for you. Just curious what is your personal KPI for yourself after you onboarded in JM, and what's your number one priority this year?

I think investors would be curious to know, and that's my first question. My second question is on capital recycling.

Obviously, we have done quite a lot last year, just curious what's next, and then what would be our strategy or major direction or plans for capital recycling? That's my second question.

My last question is, in your perspective, what is the best way to narrow NAV discounts? Obviously, I think say when we look at Hongkong Land results, I think the key priority from Hongkong Land is also on narrowing the NAV discount, right?

From your perspective, what is the best way to do that? That would be my last question.

Thank you, Lincoln.

That's a lot of questions, but thank you, Karl, and nice to meet you as well. I can first go through my KPIs, and these are not theoretical KPIs.

This is what was approved with our Board of Directors yesterday. My principal KPIs are split into two parts: financial and non-financial objectives.

My financial objectives for this year is to drive first objective is to drive underlying cash flow above our portfolio budget. Now, why above?

You don't need me to deliver the portfolio number. You have executives within the company who are responsible for delivering it.

Why we exist at JMH is to create additional alpha within our portfolio. I measure myself as if I just sit back and our portfolio delivers, it is not good enough.

We need to generate above and beyond cash flow what they are delivering, which again is our purpose. The second is we have a capital recycling number, and this is a sell number, which is we're targeting a certain number of closed transactions to recycle and generate additional exit capital for our businesses.

Those are my financial KPIs. My non-financial KPIs is to kick-start our investment program, which combines starting to look at new transactions, ideally putting forward transactions to an investment committee, hiring and improving our team, and then I've also taken a specific KPI for Astra 1-year TSR.

Given the importance of Astra for our business, I hold myself personally accountable to drive that business. Those are my short-term incentives.

My long-term incentives, which come in a form of stock-based compensation, are principally tied to absolute TSR targets for JM over a 5-year period. The vesting of those options are in 5 years and tied to delivery of TSR at that time.

Those are KPIs. In terms of priority, we need to build the team.

This we are It is a change culture we're getting to at JM. Being an owner-operator, you have very large functional organizations in a sense to command and control and put compliance around your portfolio companies.

We're back into a world of recycling capital, what do you need? You need investors.

You need people who are accountable, know how to manage businesses, know how to partner with our portfolio companies. There's no bigger priority right now than getting high-quality investment professionals side by side with me to help us drive the business forward.

In terms of capital recycling, there's two sides of this: there's selling and there's buying and putting that capital to work. In terms of selling, the way we look at it is we have absolute TSR targets we're trying to achieve.

Anything that we don't think is going to achieve that is going to be in play. Some businesses, we may have turnaround plans and performance improvement plans that get the long-term improvement of that business better, but there are some assets in our portfolio we just don't think is is going to deliver our long-term hurdle rate.

Those businesses, we're actively looking to divest, partially sell down, find other ways to get capital out of them. In terms of new businesses or new capital allocation, our buyback program is an example of where we see value.

Our buyback program in Astra is an example of where we see value. We will at some point look at new things, right?

Some of our investors would like us to recycle capital within our organization and just move capital around. That is not why I'm here.

Jardines needs new pillars for growth, and one of the things we worked on with our board the last week is setting guidelines for what good acquisitions would look like, and that's something we'll get into more in June. The last thing is NAV discount.

You should go talk to the investors on what matters to them, but for me, kind of on a pure corporate finance basis, a NAV discount exists when people see the capital is dead asleep. What we're trying to do is show active management of capital, movement from lower to better quality capital.

We're just going to do this. Whether people want to adjust the NAV discount, it's out of our hands.

Thank you. Raymond?

Thank you. This is Raymond Liu from HSBC.

Welcome. Great to meet you again, Lincoln.

I got three simple questions here. The first question is actually about something similar about priorities.

In the PowerPoint presentation, we see there's a lot of priorities, a lot of objectives that you want to achieve. Can you share with us what are the three key major priorities that you want to achieve so that to improve JM to be transforming much stronger JM down the road?

This is the first question. The second question actually is about capital recycling.

If you look at the capital recycling in 2025, it was amazing, close to US$5 billion. Should we expect the momentum to continue in terms of capital recycling in 2026 or onwards?

The last question is about Mandarin Oriental. Following the privatization of Mandarin Oriental, can management share with us more about how is going to unlock the value of this hospitality business?

Thank you.

Okay. I'll give you two priorities.

You asked for three, right? We should prioritize, actually I only have two: team, Astra.

That's where my time is. Build the team, focus on Astra, get Astra to think about TSR and how they can generate value, no different than how Michael Smith, Laurent, and Scott Price do.

That is my operating priority to really help Astra get to that next level. Again, with some management changes coming in the coming months, I think we're very excited about partnering with them to do this.

That's it. I don't have a third priority at this point.

Capital recycling, please don't take $4.5 billion and straight-line it for the next 5 years. It is completely not within our control.

There's stuff going on, right? We at the JM level have capital recycling efforts at assets where we control practically 100%.

Hongkong Land has their own capital recycling program, which Mike has talked about. Scott has his own capital recycling program, which he is driving.

What we can drive is the rest of JMH. Astra has their own capital recycling program.

It's the other parts of the JMH portfolio where we either control or largely control, we're going to be actively driving recycling there. Then on MO, we're just at the beginning of opening new locations.

To be frank, every time I open LinkedIn or I get a MO feed, they're opening something somewhere else. As you can see, we're super excited about this.

We're back in a position where this brand is growing again. We want to give Laurent and his management team the next couple years to grow this.

Doubling the number of hotels we manage, I would say it's a very realistic ambition. If we're able to do that and keep seeing long-term pipeline, then we can talk about long-term equity value and what we want to do with it.

The reason we wanted to privatize MO is just give them 100% focus on driving new high-quality hotel openings.

Hi Lincoln. Hi Graham.

This is Jeff from CLSA. My only question would be maybe want to hear, Lincoln, your assessment on what is the asset-right strategy for Jardine Matheson as we look beyond the next 3 to 5 years, and maybe on top of that, is there any particular sector or geography that you are the most interested in?

Thank you.

I always look at a business like this, and the scale and size, it's like a big boat, right? Sometimes boats lean too much in certain directions.

Right now, we are a very asset-heavy business. I'm not to say asset-light is better than asset-heavy, it's just about relative risk.

You want different types of risk within your earnings profile. It's just like we don't want 100% of our earnings to come from one place.

In a sense, right now we are actually too concentrated in earnings from two locations. Diversification from it is a good thing.

This is how I look at my job as a capital allocator within Jardines. It isn't to say that thing is beautiful and amazing, let's run there.

It's all about relative risk. Our shareholders need dividends.

Our shareholders want steady EPS and DPS growth. Us going and putting $10 billion in AI, there are better people to go invest with to get that allocation.

We're about balancing the boat here and giving steady returns and a growing dividend. That's what we want to do.

Now, to take examples of what we call an asset-light business, you don't need to look outside Jardines, look within Jardines. Mandarin Oriental hotel management business is an asset-light business.

We don't need a ton of capital to open new hotels. We're partnering with great location owners to bring our hotel brand to them.

Why we've highlighted Jardine Engineering, this is another example of an asset-light business. It's a services business that does a lot of hard asset management and support.

That is an example of a business that compounds much easier than say real estate, where you put money in the ground, you need to wait 5 years to get capital back. It's not to say one is better than the other.

We just have a lot of this, and we need some other types of growth.

Simon?

You can ask Graham questions, too.

Thanks for the presentation. Just you put a lot of emphasis on the KPI, i.e., the total shareholder returns targets, and saw that you did quite well on 8.8%.

Do you have any target in mind? When you talk about hurdle rate being one of the criteria for your M&A or capital allocation, can you give some more color on that?

That's first one. The second one, I think, whether it's for Graham.

Just on the assumption that this year, or the guidance that this year the earnings going to be stable year on year, can you give us some more color on how do you come up with that in a guidance? Secondly, just again, you an amazing job in turning net cash on the holding company level.

Given that now obviously Lincoln taking up a lot more active job in terms of capital recycling, do you have in your mind what sort of level would be a more ideal level of net debt or net cash on the holding company? Thank you.

You want to go first?

Sure. Obviously, in coming up with our guidance, we go through a a long and detailed bottom-up process with our portfolio companies.

To a very large degree, we are reflective of what they have in their forecasts and what they and their boards see as a as a sensible outlook. Right now, of course, the last week last 2 weeks, we've been placed in a in a world where there's a whole new sort of left-field element of uncertainty arisen.

We also see political and uncertainty in one or two of the markets that that we are heavily invested in. At this point in the year, I think it's it would be heroic to say we know exactly how things are going to conclude and how quickly, probably is the most important thing, they're going to conclude in the Middle East.

Despite having good confidence in our businesses, we have to be modest and recognize that there's a more than ordinary amount of uncertainty at this point in the year. We'll obviously come back to that as we get to the half year, and we'll obviously know a little bit more about how the year is going to shape up.

In terms of an ideal level of gearing, look, Lincoln being brought into the company, I suppose, initially might have made some people think, well, sort of is Jardines turning into a private equity firm, and we're going to gear up the balance sheet to, no disrespect, six times EBITDA and, "Hey, here we go." That is one thing that is not changing.

We will continue, and I think Lincoln's very positive about this, to run our businesses prudently and with a high degree of of of margin for error and indeed margin for taking advantage of opportunity within our balance sheets. We don't have a number.

I'm not managing to 5% down to that number. That that's the output of actions that have been undertaken through the portfolio companies.

As you probably heard through the presentation, the point of doing that is not to sit on a big pile of cash. It's to be ready to invest in finding those new opportunities, both within the portfolio companies in adjacent areas to their existing franchises and the core parts of those franchises that we believe have good prospects for return and growth in the future, but also at our level in looking to build new verticals that we can potentially see as long-term growth drivers for the group as a whole.

Look, there's no rule that says we have to be single-digit gearing. You've seen over the last 5 or 6 years we've been well beyond that, but don't expect us to be popping up in a couple of years' time with 70% gearing.

It's not going to happen. That's not who we are.

Okay. Then

your first question. The way I look at what we have to be, it's a it's a war for capital out there.

Investors have infinite options to put their capital. For us to be what I want us to be is a outstanding option or a top-of-mind option if people want a diversified Asia allocation.

Out of a managed portfolio, I want them to look at us. Now, what is that benchmark?

There's a whole bunch of ways that capital allocators can invest in Asia. You can invest in indices, you can make your own basket and portfolio, you can put it in private capital.

For me is we are we are liquid, which is an advantage. People can come in and come out at any time.

We want to be that option if somebody's looking to beat index, but not be locked up for 5 to 10 years. We want to be in that sweet spot of hitting that total shareholder return on a regular basis.

I think if we're able to do that, we'll be as competitive as capital as anything. We will not use relative TSR.

Like I don't think I I do not think about our performance relative to other conglomerates in Asia. That is not a high enough benchmark for us to clear.

That's not how investors see us. No one has a Asia conglomerate allocation in their portfolio.

Maybe some people do. I'd be surprised.

You're competing for this capital. You're competing for high-net-worth capital, you're competing for institutional capital.

If you're not in that sweet spot, there's no reason for people to invest in us. Again, that's how we'll present this in June in more detail.

Graham does not want us to give a specific number at this point, but I think it's the right thing to do as we continue to refine it. That's how I think about this, right?

Like we need to be fighting for capital to invest in us out there every time we go out there.

Hi, this is George Choi from Citi. Just one quick question.

Over the last 2 years, we've seen a number of your major subsidiaries doing a number of major moves to enhance total shareholder return, and obviously a very decent job at that. JC&C seems to be lagging behind a little bit.

Just wondering what the reason behind that, does that have to do with the complicated structure at that level? Thank you very much.

JC&C is an intermediate holding company. That's all it is.

Don't expect it to have a TSR strategy. Astra will have a TSR strategy.

Underlying assets will have TSR strategies, but JC&C is not an asset. We are looking to put more capital to grow with.

It's essentially an extension of Jardines. It's just part of our holding structure,

and

everything that they do will be aligned with what we do. There's no point talking about separate strategies because they are very, very closely integrated with us as part of the holding structure for the group.

We have to respect the shareholders that are in JC&C, and we have to put their appropriate regulatory support for those shareholders. Outside of that, I look at our JC&C team and the Jardine Matheson team as one team.

Thank you, management, for taking my question. This is Ben from UBS.

I actually have two questions. The first one would be regarding on Astra.

There has been some uncertainty on their mining business in Indonesia. Do we have any current plans on what to do with this part of business, and do we see Indonesia and also mining business as a core part of our investment going forward?

On the second part is so we've done a lot on capital recycling and improving shareholder returns on our listed subsidiaries. On our non-listed part, Jardine Pacific, do we have any plans on what we're going to do with it in the future?

Thank you.

Great questions. The first thing, let's talk about what mining in Astra is, right?

Mining in Astra is a combination of heavy equipment leasing, mining contracting, and actual ownership of mines. You need to break that up.

The mining contracting and heavy equipment leasing make up 80-plus percent. Right?

Mining ownership as a relative profit contributor is a smaller part of the business. It's not just what Astra does.

There's often a misconception about what this business actually does. The mining contracting business is a much less asset-heavy business than a mine ownership business.

We have been in the news around our mine ownership with Martabe. Where we stand right now is we are constructively working with the Indonesian government.

We have been long-time investors, long-time believers in Indonesian market, and we remain confident that due process and fairness exists in the market. I think we'll get up to a constructive conclusion with our discussions with the government around our ability to operate the Martabe mine in the future.

Jardine Pacific, if it's not blindingly obvious from how we're trying to position it, I love our engineering and infrastructure businesses in Jardine Pacific. We should build that as a business.

Right? Elton Chan, who's running that vertical for us, we should think and talk about Jardine Engineering and Infrastructure.

We have great partnerships with Schindler. We have great partnerships with Balfour Beatty and Gammon.

Both of those businesses are benefiting from the rebound with the Northern Metropolis here in Hong Kong. We're really excited about the growth of those businesses.

JEC, as I mentioned earlier, is an asset-light way for us to grow the business. I think asset services, right, things like HVAC maintenance, maintenance services, is a good asset-light, compounding growth vehicle for us that we need to push beyond Hong Kong, right, and Elton Chan has pressure to expand that business for us.

I think you'll see us talking about that business more. In Jardine Pacific, when as an outsider you read Jardine Pacific, it's very hard to understand.

You look at engineering services, you look at infrastructure services, there are synergies we can build around the assets we have now. I think you'll see this come out in our strategy discussion in June.

That, of course, is consistent with our other private business, which is the Mandarin Oriental, which, of course, has a strategy built around compounding returns out of an asset-light business. At least two good reasons to think about the JM parent level with assets that you can't access otherwise.

Maybe let's take some questions online, and we can come back to the room later on as well. We have a question from Jayden Vantarakis of Macquarie.

"Congratulations on the results and thank you for the briefing. Jayden has three questions, some of which I think we have already addressed, but I'll read it out.

He has a question on Jardine Pacific. As previously noted, it is under strategic review.

What is the latest thinking on this portfolio? His second question is on net cash.

Having a net cash balance sheet, now we have more capacity to invest. Can management share into what sectors and geographies?

The last question is the dividend has been held at 40% payout, and the guidance indicates that this will be the case for 2026. What is the thinking on capital returns at Jardine Matheson Holdings level?"

Okay. You want to take three, and I'll take one?

Sure.

You want to go first?

One I think you've covered. I think the net cash balance sheet, where and what, I think that's you.

In terms of the payouts, we will talk more about our mid- and long-term strategy for returns to shareholders in June. Right now, we wanted to signal greater clarity in terms of where we are on 2026, and I don't want to go beyond that at this point.

I think I've tried to address this around where we want to deploy capital and talking about just balancing the risk we take overall. Again, we want to build up our investment capabilities and team, but we're already in the market looking at new investment opportunities and refiring up our investment program.

I think geographically, the point that you've made around diversification into markets, still in Asia,

but

in developed markets to provide uncorrelated risks, if you like, uncorrelated earning streams from our existing positions is important on the geographic dimension. I think in terms of sectors, obviously, as soon as we start naming sectors, that has an impact.

What I've heard from you, Lincoln, is actually we need to look quite broadly in terms of sector exposure. If you just pick a sector, you kind of sort of force yourself down a rathole that may not have very many opportunities of scale.

I have two additional points to what Graham is saying. We're not going to be kind of a thematic kind of collector of assets.

Right? You see this in some other conglomerates in the region where you have a honestly random mix of assets in healthcare: 30% in this hospital, 20% in this diagnostic clinic, 40% in that hospital.

It's not a business. Go invest in a fund, right?

Funds do this, right? An operating business like ourselves needs to be taking assets and building them, right?

It goes back to something we started with in this presentation: it's about control. We want to own the majority of it, and then it's a Lego block.

You put things on top of it. If you have random 30% stakes everywhere, you're a Lego block in somebody else's strategy, and that's not the way we want to deploy capital.

Right? We want to be able to put the best management teams we can in this business, we want to put governance in this business.

Ideally, we want to own it for a very long time, but there may come a day it no longer meets our hurdle, and then we want to exit it. Being a passenger, a 20% passenger in somebody else's car doesn't allow you to do that.

A question from Karl Choi of Bank of America. "When JM invests into new growth drivers, will you consider investments in completely new industry verticals?

If so, what are the rough parameters? As a portfolio manager, would you consider reducing JM's ownership stakes in some of its listed investments, but retaining a controlling stake?"

Okay. I think on the first one, this often comes up as a question, how do we invest in a new area.

First off, many of our businesses we already own do expand in a new areas. How do they do it?

They hire great people, they get great external board members to support their growth, they advise themselves up to do the appropriate work to enter the segment. We're not going to be doing greenfield new businesses from JM.

Right? That's not our line of business.

If people are concerned about that, that we're going to take somebody from Mandarin and suddenly go tell them, "Go build data centers," that's not what we're going to do. Right?

We're going to buy proven businesses with proven management teams and give them incentives to grow the business. This is the way we want to build this business going forward.

That is going to be the model we do it, and we complement it with a Jardine way of working with our companies. We put world-class directors, independent directors on the board.

We put incentives for management aligned with TSR. We put the right Jardine Matheson representatives on the board to work with the management, and we take the business forward.

That's going to be the way we drive and look at new capital. For our public stakes, whether we would divest down, it goes back to our hurdle and return strategy.

That is just something we need to look at on a case-by-case basis. I would just say it's not a priority at this time for us to be divesting down our major positions.

Fundamentally, for our core portfolio companies, we still see good value in the strategies that they're executing. As Lincoln said, it's not something that's front and center for us at all.

A question from John Lam of UBS. "For JC&C, there are minority stake investments.

How does Jardine Matheson view those equity investments?" Okay.

I think John's principally talking about our positions in Vietnam.

In Vietnam.

I'm actually spending a lot of time on both our Vietnam assets because I actually see there's good value in them. Right?

These are good partners. These are assets which don't have immediate ways for us to exit them.

We're working with them as good partners, as we have for a very long time, and helping the management team and leadership at THACO continue to grow their business, and helping the leadership team at REE continue to grow their business. I actually see personally good value to generate for us out of the Vietnam portfolio, and that's one of the reasons I spend time down there to work with those management teams.

Back in the room, maybe. Are there any more questions?

More questions? All right.

Okay. Oh, Karl.

Thank you. Maybe just a quick follow-up on geographical exposure.

Just curious what's our view on the China market now in our upcoming capital recycling or asset allocation? Do we think that we might expand our exposure to China?

China's not off the table. I want to be black and white, we are looking at potential investment opportunities.

The market has changed, right? Many of you here cover the China market and are seeing the shifts in the market.

It is actually becoming more of a yield, steady growth market, cash-on-cash return market, which is not dramatically different than some of the growth we're trying to add into Jardines. Now, I think we need to be quite careful, right, and this ties to sectors we go into.

As a business, we've not wanted to be exposed to import-export cycles, and I think at this point, the import-export cycle is very difficult in China to invest in. We also need to be mindful in the current cycle cost of capital in China is really cheap.

We have attractive cost of capital, but we have many competitors in the China market, particularly around industrial, particularly around real estate, that have a cost of capital half of ours. Right?

That is a competitive disadvantage in getting into industries where we're competing with SOEs and private companies which can borrow at half our cost of capital. That's a very difficult race to win.

I would say we are looking at opportunities, the bar is high, but by no means would we say we're not looking at or China is off-limits for us.

Thank you. Yes, we can take one last question.

Thank you, Simon.

Just you touch on about Astra being one of your priorities and focus. How do you think about Astra in terms of the challenge, and some of the low-hanging fruit that you feel you'll be able to extract?

I think what has happened with Astra and its strategy over the course of the last several years, it's very hard to understand. It's all these pillars of businesses.

What is the strength of Astra? There is a amazing automotive ecosystem, both in four-wheeler and two-wheeler.

It's not just dealerships. Right?

Astra today is one of the leading manufacturers of auto parts in the country, it's one of the leading assemblers of vehicles in the country, a leading wholesaler in the country, this is both in four-wheeler and two-wheeler. It's a diversified automotive play.

It's got a dealership network that provides aftermarket services, used car services. Now, that's complemented by a financing business, which is part captive auto, part independent auto, and part third-party unsecured financing.

Again, this is a diversified business. A mining business, which the market thinks is mines, but actually is mining contracting.

These are the three pillars of Astra. The future, the management team that will lead Astra into the future first and foremost need to come to the market and say what is defendable about these businesses, what is the cash generation that comes with them, and what's the growth we can get by investing more in these three pillars.

They're all market-leading businesses. We are extremely proud of what Astra has built in line with the Indonesian government priorities over the past couple decades, and that's the first part you look at on.

The capital recycling is Astra is in some businesses which are not market leaders. It's a similar mindset we have at Jardines: if it's not hitting return on capital, it's not a market leader, recycle it to build a fourth major pillar of Astra, which is what the management team is trying to do with healthcare or infrastructure.

This is what we're trying to do with Astra in this cycle. It's not radically change what they want to do, not go get into AI or get into a radically different sector.

It's compound these pillars, and then start to build a fourth, fifth pillar around these businesses that are aligned with the strategic priorities of the country. That's a lot of my time, we have a great management team at Astra.

Right? They are great at operations.

It is thinking about capital allocation, aligning management with capital allocation in these businesses is the work we have ahead with Astra.

Thank you. Right.

Thank you for all your questions. If you do have more follow-up questions, as always, please reach out to us at [email protected].

With that, we will conclude our results presentation today. Thank you very much again for coming, and we look forward to seeing you again in June on our Investor Day.