InstallatorGruppen (Copenhagen:IG) — Annual General Meeting

0:01 Good morning, and welcome to the INDIA CAPITAL GROWTH FUND LIMITED Annual General Meeting. Throughout recorded meeting, attendees will be in listen only mode. I'd now like to hand you over to Chair, Elizabeth Scott. Good morning. And it is, yes, exactly. And thank you so very much to you all for coming. And for those of you that don't know me, I'm Elizabeth Scott. I'm Chair of the company. And of course, I'm perhaps being delighted to welcome you all to our twenty twenty five Annual General Meeting of INDIA CAPITAL GROWTH FUND. And this is the first Annual General Meeting that we've held in London or in The UK. And previously, we've always held in the dance, and sadly, don't be so hand up. But it's a it's a real delight hope that you'll it you'll find it interesting.

0:50 Since it's now after 11:00 and we have a forum presence, I will now declare the meeting duly constituted and open. And could I just ask a quick question of you all? Has everybody registered with their own registrars, with Joe Vais, who's standing at the back, just so that he can keep count of who's here. If you haven't would you like to Yes. Has everyone signed in the attendance register? If not, I'll I'll come to you. Lovely. Thank you. Before we proceed to the transport business of the day, let me introduce my fellow board members, Nick Timberlake, Patrick Firth, who's chair of the audit committee, and Lynne Duckman.

1:44 We also have here Matt Lehoo, who is the company secretary of and works for APEX in Venomacy. And we also delighted to have representatives of our broker, SHORE Capital. And today, we are joined as well by Gervais Cox, who is who have never registered us, and he'll be assisting with the polling process today. And to begin this morning's session, Gervais will act as scrutineer to the polling process, and he's going to provide a brief explanation of how the polling process will be conducted. And after we've heard from Gervais, we're then going to hear from Gaurav, who's our investment adviser, and he's come all the way from Mumbai to be here, so that's great.

2:31 And then after his presentation, we'll then invite questions from the floor, both about Gaurav's presentation, but also a chance to ask any questions you might have about the company and then with the resolutions that we'll then follow. And after that, we'll ask you to submit your pony cards. We'll go through the model, go through the resolutions, and then we'll ask specific. Jervais, let me ask you first to go through the planning process. Thank thank you, Elizabeth. And ladies and gentlemen, good morning. My name is Jervais Cox. I'm head of the member registrars, and this is the company's registrars. I'm entrusted this morning with the task of conducting the poll on all the resolutions proposed and certifying results of votes to the chair of the meeting. Proxy cards were dispatched to all shareholders prior to meeting.

3:18 Many of you have already completed and returned them, thereby appointing either the chair of meetings or your appointed proxy to cast your vote for weeks. I have here a summary of the scores from the proxy cards received prior to the meeting, which indicates what the outcome of a poll would be if no additional votes were to be cast. I will use this as a starting point for capital votes. Please note that if you've previously completed and returned your proxy card and do not wish to change your vote, there's no need for you to take any further action on this poll as your vote has already been counted. I'm available to answer any questions which any of you may have regarding the completion of poll cards. Toll cards. To I hope that that was clear. The process is clear to everybody. And if you do have any questions, please make yourself known to Joce and us, and then we'll be providing the closing remarks to you both shortly.

4:21 And so now it is my great pleasure to introduce Gaurav Naren, who's Principal Advisor to INDIA CAPITAL GROWTH FUND. Gaurav has been part of the team advising INDIA CAPITAL GROWTH since 2011. And in the audience, we also have Shah and his behind us and Sohrab Choe, both of whom are very long standing members of the Indian equities team and work very closely with Gaurav. So, Gaurav, over to you. Thank you, Elizabeth, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. So just as a background, I've been now affiliated with the Indian equity markets for over thirty years.

5:06 I've been managing an Indian Indian capital growth fund for over a decade now. And I'm based in Mumbai. We're a team of four of the investors investment side. Three of us are in Mumbai, and one of the leads is based out of out of London. And really, what we look at is really the small and mid gap segment of the market. So, you know, on ground presence is is very, very important. What I will do is over the next twenty five to fifteen minutes, try and give you a really idea of what's happening in India, bit about the market itself, current environment, and how we are investing in the the fund.

5:46 So here we go.

7:43 People to the workforce. To give a perspective, that's 24% of the people who are fully going to start to change the world. But having said that, if you really look at the chart on the right,

8:38 bigger than the size of many other countries, and that's really shove traveling. So really, India is really getting into this whole consumption game, which, like, we also drive the investment side. And where we are today, we think today, you know, India becomes a very meaningful in every in every aspect. I'll put some details on what's happening on the consumption side.

9:30 The number is about a 150,000,000 phones being sold every year. Now here, this is just the absolute number, but take a dump, like, say, Apple. On iPhones, India is today the fourth largest market, but within India, they're fifth largest player. The biggest in the Apple iPhone growth rates last year, Apple's iPhone growth in India was 35%. What's still showing you that one of the mark these markets are expanding, but everything is moving towards the value added side of the quest. If you move towards the investment side, because this consumption and aspiration population is also driving a lot of investment on the infrastructure. Growth that people are are talking about.

11:22 But what's really changed is that why is this one that is in that five five three is a company that we've seen a very big transformation. So what we're really seeing is incremental. The

12:06 top chart, CapEx of the government's infrastructure from its own budgets has traveled over the last five years, which is really driving the investment side of it. The second aspect that it was to get really get the annual spirits of the corporate sector in was by providing a lot of incentives to the private sector being in terms of tax rate being in line with the best globally to the extent of in a lot of sectors, special incentives with the whole idea that, you know, we import so much from China. Let's try and capitalize on the supply chain rebalancing that's happening. So all this is really all all in in progress today that a lot of changes in in in the economy. But before, I would say the biggest change of all is what's happening in India on the digitization side.

12:55 And I would, you know, really, I want to say that India's digital infrastructure is mostly among the best in the world. What's very difficult in India is that the entire digital infrastructure is infrastructure is owned by the government of India, which means it's very high volume, very low cost. And I said a bit on this slide because it's very critical to the India story. And when it started about a decade in 2015, when the government realized that the big challenge in India was a lot of people had no identity. So if you were born in a small town or a village, you know, there was no birth certificate to say who you were or what your address is, etcetera. So they came up with a a 12 digit biometric identity for everyone called the Atha.

13:41 And you took your retina scan, finger scan, and even if you were in a village, the village then would certify the serial names, your date of birth, and the Sylvia press. Today, every Indian has this digital identity. And what is done is it's used as a KYC for anything. You wanna open a bank account, you just give your identity and your, you know, your KYC done. It's all paperless. With that, the government forced banks to open bank accounts, a sectional society that the banks thought was unviable because of the cost of opening accounts, and 500 such million accounts, low cost accounts were opened in just two years. Now with that infrastructure in place with the identity along with the bank linkage to that identity, The government has rolled out a whole host of services. It's really called the INDIA stack.

14:28 And I'll give you a perspective for one thing. They rolled out one service called the UPI. It's like a payment gateway. Something similar to a Visa or a Mastercard. You can do any form of transaction from peer to peer, phone number to phone number, and it's all free. So to the extent that today if you go to a even in on the roadside, you'll find a car a person selling vegetable on a car, you'll have a QR code. You can buy even an apple for for 20p and just scan it and send the money to go straight from your bank account, which is account zero cost. The extent of how it's taken off is today, 45% of global real time transactions happen in India.

15:13 That's the top scale it's done. 16,000,000,000 transactions, like, per month. Likewise, most of our opportunity are happening. For that for the government, today, all the subsidies the government pays out is going straight into bank accounts. There's zero leakage. So huge amount of efficiency that happened. And when I say India's stacking, it's a good boost of services. For example, the government has a cloud based sourcing of all your data. So I say, today, I want to apply for a a loan, the amount paid or any form of loan. All the bank will do is whether a agency called an account aggregator with the central bank has has appointed. The bank will go to the account aggregator and say, you know, I want this data. The account aggregator will send me a new URP to accept your provide data.

16:02 It will pick up all your data, be it from your phone bills to your, you know, anything you have, your bank account statements, your identity identification, to your credit card statement, and everything it just takes automatically from from the source. I don't have to give any paperwork. So that's what's happened. The loan processing is really seen dramatically in India, and it's largely due to the digital infrastructure. What is really done is it's really bridge the gap between Google India and urban India and really to improve the cost of services from now dramatically. I think that's the biggest change that's happened in India, that it's really become a very, very efficient economy. Having said that, because the economy is doing well. And but what important is because of a lot of compliance which has happened because, again, due to the digital side of it.

17:14 Inflation is is close to all bank laws. In fact, after five years, the interest rate cycle has started coming has started coming down. This these two people really look like what are the biggest pain point for x side of it. We bought 85% of our oil, and you already had a very negative current account balance that the currency depreciating. Today, your foreign reserves close to $700,000,000,000. Currency is a a a pretty strong and stable currency. But, structurally, the the oil dependence has come down dramatically. And one reason is that today, India's services exports are almost equal to oil oil exports. About a 170,000,000,000 of IT services we export.

18:03 Well, that's a new bit about the economy. The other aspect is on the equity markets itself. Here to ideas, I would say, quite a large market, a big margin market for a dollar of billion dollars. But what's interesting about the market is that unlike other emerging markets, it's a very, very diversified market. Possibly, it's closest to The US. It's got representation across sectors, and it's really not dominated by a few companies or or a few few sectors. But what's interesting is the breadth and depth of the market. The chart on the left shows you how many companies which have a market cap of over You have pure play electric vehicle companies. You have renewable energy companies. I mean, think the last three months, almost four

19:33 hospital chain hotel chains have listed. So really, it's it's a very diverse market to play. And I would say one of the most active markets both on the secondary and primary market side. But this is, I think, the most interesting aspect of the market, which may surprise you. That today the Indian equity markets are keeping driven a lot by domestic institutions. And I have this chart on the left, which is showing the inflows into domestic institutions, don't be mutual funds

20:32 the ownership of foreign institutional investors in India that rent was low to 16%, and it will be costly to lowest amongst all large emerging emerging markets. Now why is this happening? What's driving this domestic institution? And, literally, what's happening is a lot of this money is coming from retail investors who typically invested for savings in real estate or food. And if it was financial assets, it wouldn't fix deposits of the bank. Today, what you see in this chart of what is called systematic investment plans, which is monthly inflows from retail investor in tier three and four cities predominantly. We're putting a part of the salary every month, maybe 20 to £30 a month into a scheme of a mutual fund.

21:20 It started this is data over the last seven years. It started with about a billion dollars per month. Today, on an average, $3,000,000,000 of monthly gross down the joint retail investor and the partner. So that's the change that's happened. And why has this happened? If the deal goes back to the digitization story, that it's just become very accessible to these investors. Investors. The biggest broking clowns in India are to be able to build digital brokers. And this is a trend we see have continuing, and the number of such investors is over a 100,000,000. It's not a concentrated market at all. But why are foreigners staying out? And I think the biggest reason is the valuations.

22:07 You know, we I keep meeting a lot of institutions. They all love the India story, but when it comes to valuations, they say India is expensive. The fact is that if you see the chart on the right, India today is the most expensive market. It's really matching The US, which everyone says is also expensive. That's the actual valuation. Even on a relative valuation, the start on the left is the price warning multiple of the MSCI India index. And if you see, historically, India is to create at about 18 to 19 forward one to put. Today, that's closer to 22 to 23. So on a relative and absolute aspect, India looks expensive, which is what is, you know, you know, people like India, but how do I invest in such a market?

22:53 But having said that, why is India expensive? It is not a market driven by metals and other commodities. It's really represented very strongly by consumer companies, tech companies. So the nature of the market is such that you actually have very profitable companies which make it by default a very profitable market companies. They've had a lot of fraud building up.

25:42 So a lot of regulatory changes happen when they were still tied up, like, putting in the system. They post regulation where they increase the risk weights on certain asset classes so that banks stop lending there, which has since pulled down credit growth to 10 to 11% since we do slow down the economy. And the third was consumption has also been weak, risingly. Rural was weak largely because

26:08 of high inflation, but over and over and everyone is still questioning why why it will be. But having said that, that's a bit on the past now. What we've seen since then, both of the game accelerated. But, structurally, I would feel that India is one of the best positions in in this environment.

27:36 One of the simple reason that India is not a good export dependent economy. It's largely a domestic economy. And if you see our good states globally, it's just a general percent share.

27:50 Exposed to The US, our good state is only 2% of our GDP. So structure that's not an issue. So he was one of the first people to meet from, and the whole belief is that by June, they will come out with the first branch of some form of yeah. What will be the sign. So really, they're working aggressively to try and use the supply chain reallocation with India being one of the key players.

28:46 So coming to the fund, what are we doing? Investment style is very simple. We buy quality companies. We typically buy companies which are industry leaders in their segments, and we hold them for a long period of time. So what are we really doing?

29:17 We're not a concentrated portfolio. Our portfolio turnover is very low. It's just 10 to 12%, but we're really playing the growth story of these companies. So it's all about buying great businesses. It's just more in line with the the growth story in India. So I've tried marketing these portfolio into four areas. But if you see the column on the left, this is where a lot of our portfolio lies. These are what we call our

29:57 Where we added a lot of new new companies over the last few years would be, I would call, the high growth areas. These are companies which are really leveraging on the new way of the supply chain rebalancing that's happening globally. So that's where we find a lot of new opportunities, but each of them, we really want to work for a longer period of time. So what I really want to say is, like, our portfolio most of in our portfolio are industry leaders, a very strong niches to give us the visibility And you're paying it across from discretionary to nondiscretion.

31:14 And there is a further domestic CapEx scheme, and we have it every from cement companies to power companies, rail companies to other industries in in the engineering space.

31:27 This is like our portfolio activity. I keep talking about having low turnover opportunity over the last year. We've identified companies and sold ones. It's really low is low. But what we've been doing is booking a lot playing a lot of ways with our portfolio. So stock goes up too much. We take some profit. If it comes off, we add on. Because the core portfolio, we are very bullish on the long term. On valuation, we keep taking

32:22 extremely high. It's 4050%. But I think there's a reason behind it that the f y '25, you see it's slightly negative. And the reason is about a few stocks in the portfolio took one off hits. So that

32:48 portfolio is trading at about 20 times. Historically, it's been closer to 16 to 17 times. So really, the expensive nature of the market is getting reflected in our portfolio. And if you ask me what is our biggest worry, it is at these valuations, how do you really make more money? On our returns, if you look the three year returns, we've delivered absolute phone returns angle.

33:44 But if you can ask what's the MSCI India index, which most people follow, we can very well. I think the last six months have been slightly weak, but we are seeing a lot of recovery again, and this is largely because of all the noise around Trump, which small caps take a slightly bigger hit. So I'm gonna end with one slide, and this is my favorite slide, actually. And it's really what my story is going there, and then The US market despite the SNP being where it is. And the simple reason is that India's earnings growth is so strong, and it's it's projected to to be as strong that you have to just, you know, look at India in a different context. That it's a really a fundamentally structured long term story.

34:44 I'll really end there and leave it to submit it before. Thanks so much, Laura. That was a really interesting presentation, and I hope you all found it interesting as well. Now there's an opportunity for everybody to ask the questions, and we really hope you will. We've also got people listening in and watching online, and Lucy at the back will be there taking any questions from them. And when we finish questions from the floor, we'll go Lucy. And please do ask questions not just about GROWTH's presentation and what you've heard today, but also any questions you might have about the company so that when we finish the q and a, we can then move into the formal business of the meeting.

35:38 So who'd like to ask the first question?

35:43 Yes. That's been there. I'm sorry. Could you give your name and if you're a shareholder or not? That would be very kind. Thank you. Stuart Graham, shareholder. It's interesting from the slides that the foreign investment still continue to

36:29 SI claim. Is that likely to continue to or does it only allow the locals to invest in India stocks? Or is it a bit like our system here where you can get the tax breaks and invest everywhere else? No. You can invest overseas as well now, but there is an absolute restriction on the total amount of investment fees. So you can invest two funds, so you can invest in global funds overseas. But there's an absolute gap which the government has put to the central bank has put, and that's okay for it exceeded. K. So a lot of bank funds are actually closing subscription because there's really a flood of money coming in.

37:15 My sense is at some point, you know, because the forex is there are so comfortable. It is gonna keep increasing increasing the limits. But so that's one way of it where investors like me can just invest in a fund which ties up with, you know, Fidelity Global Fund, the other global fund that they invest. The second is you can also invest directly, but here too there's a gap of $150,000 for an amount which you can invest.

37:41 I think a lot of it is being used to invest in real estate, frankly. But my sense is this gap will keep opening up as, you know, the comfort on your forex is the the next level account. You lost almost $25,000,000,000 in mid March. But since mid March, we've actually seen a a return of investors on a manageable $1,000,000,000 for annual in the last three months. You've seen the turnaround happen, but given the amount that went out, it's it's, you know, still a negative 11,000,000,000 for the year. Yes, sir.

38:27 Naray Gandhi, I'm a shareholder. Given that the predominance of the investments is in the small to medium cap market, what is your view on promoters who have a high earning and, yes, skin in the game is an important aspect. But given that in India, you don't have consolidated accounts, it has in the past been seen that promoters play fast and loose with the capital of their underlying companies. How do you perceive that and manage the sort of governance issues in the underlying companies that you invest in?

39:10 I think it was a very critical question because the biggest issue as an investor is on governance. What we've done is, you know, we have we are very rigid on governance. So we have what is called our universe. And any company which has even an eyewitness of issues on governance, we do not take it into our our universe itself. So a lot of groups, lot of sectors, we just do not touch simply because of the history of governance issues. You know, for example, the real estate sector, historically, all of the cash billing, you know, on me. There are certain promoter groups who are meant to be very close to politicians. So we just put them out because we we want we feel there are enough opportunities.

39:58 But the second part of what I've seen over the last thirty years, there's a big realization among the Indian families that the wealth creation is really coming out of a of stock market appreciation or wealth that we are ownership. And that's a very dramatic shift that happened. Was in the last five to ten years that Indian family business have stopped taking money out of the company. So they want to show the higher profit to get reflected in the value. So a lot has changed on that side. I think the third is regulation is very tight. It's tight. Auditors are under a lot of scrutiny on these areas also. You know, for example, price of waterhouse was was actually banned in certain So a lot has changed in the economy.

40:47 But for us, you know, when I say we buy quality businesses, one of the biggest strengths for us is comfort on the line. So there are multiple businesses. We really don't go into conglomerates and multiple businesses because we feel, you know, if that is a petty thing, you don't know what can happen. So you just play what you feel you want to own forever. It's really how we would try. Which is why being in India is very important because I've experienced over the past is if you've heard a rumor of something amiss, it can rarely turn out to be true. It can happen three years later or four years later. But I learned the hard way. So I realized that, you know, no matter how much diligence you do, you will not catch it. So you kind of just stay away and say, you know, let let that stock run, but I won't. And one of the reasons, you know, we saw our performance was the mid gap index much lower simply because we're just not playing certain story.

41:44 We think they look very great simply because the nature of the industry or the pedigree is such that we don't get that comfort. Thank you. Scott Hill, shareholder. A question around foreign investment and then decline. Running against your slides. One slide talking about very efficient market in terms of digitalization, which is a positive. Another slide talking about ROE and and growth, you know, up there in the top five of the world, yet foreign investment not coming in because of price earned, Kind of a little bit contradictory there, which would suggest that there are other fundamental issues that are blocking foreign investment. I just wanted to get you a fuse of what they might be. Yeah. I think this is where I believe foreign investors have got it wrong.

42:43 That, you know, they have got clouded by China. And a lot of money what we've seen is so many investors, foreign investors, lost money in China that they just blocked this view of emerging markets. And in fact, most of the money into India, 370% of the investments coming to institutions, coming to emerging market funds, not directly in their funds. I think that mindset has to change, really. And India actually delivered because in India, what you see GDP growth translates into earning earning store. I think that investors who are really putting in big money in India are the sovereign wealth fund, pension funds. You know, they are the biggest investor in India. They have very long term strategic money. They are putting big funding for India.

43:29 But the institution somehow, you know, they're just still reusing the emerging fund route. And but what my and my drivers, what I really get is that when we get so hard in China that, you know, the whole mindset of emerging markets is, you know, that's the stay away. And I think that will change at some point of time because, I mean, you know, finally performance will will will show it. Thank you. Yes, sir. Hi. I'm going to share with them. So if I look at the top four things that are disclosed right now, so that I think the top part is which is probably trading at some something like 100 times speed. So I was just curious, like, what can you talk a bit more about your stock selection process? You also spoke about the expense evaluation.

44:21 So how are you trying to navigate that side of the bank? Yeah. So I you know, valuation is a concern, but are you if you see, I have about five stocks four or five stocks with about 5% rate. Dickson is one of them. Now we bought Dickson maybe about three years back at being one fifth the price. It was some 50 multiples. Today, it's at about 55 multiples. That one towards 65, 70. What we're doing is, you know yes. What we know about it is that for the next three years, I have predictable earnings growth of 35 to 50% simply because of the business they wanted already won. The question is, what should I value that?

45:06 So what we are really doing is we are playing with our weights. So for example, with Dixon, we've been for the last year, all we've been doing is taking profit. So, you know, if if the price goes to five five and a half percent of the fund, I can easily take down half a percent or or 4%. So, really, that's what what I'm doing, and that's one way of it. The same with, say, the skipper, which is also 5%. Now I own skipper for eight years and the stock, I think, the last year that's gone up over ten days. But here too, you know, skippers today, JD has an eighteen month report. But, you know, why is it lower? Because it's in one segment, which is the past and then go there. When I just speak with the management, you say it's a twenty year story now. But when I bought it, it was at the seven month report. So, you know, I made multiple. If I'm not captured at 5%, it would have been about 12 or 13% of my portfolio.

45:57 So I'm playing my risk on valuation by my ways. But what I'm not doing is selling because of valuations. Because to buy something else, I'm finding whatever I want to buy is equally expensive. So, really, that's the way I so I'm looking at two things. One is, do I have predictability in earnings growth? If I have it, then I'm not getting too carried away on values on the existing stocks. Of them. So Vixen is I don't call it what's called the Foxconn of India. Foxconn makes phones, iPhones across China everywhere but for Apple.

46:49 Vixen is the largest such company in India for electronic manufacturing services, and they manufacture all the phones for all the Android phone manufacturers in India. So other than Apple, they make phones for everyone. This year, they will be making about 45,000,000 phones. If they want to do it, it's about 65,000,000 phones. It's not just phones. They make they're the largest manufacturer of washing machines. They make it probably from Samsung, Panasonic. They make televisions for Samsung. Now they're pointing to IT hardware with laptops. So, you know, till now, a 100% of laptops in India were imported. They've already got the mandate for four of the five biggest global players to manufacture in India. So that's another massive market which is opening up for them, which is where the predictability comes in. So it's really the largest manufacturer in India, and, you know, this is very labor intensive. It's all about executions.

47:49 Right? Which is where this is where where the spend is. So that's one such company. You know, as the supply chain shift happens, India is just gonna get more and more business. For example, Mixon, it's not just Indian companies for Motorola. It's manufacturing for the Indian requirement, but they're also now it. They've already shifted 25% of the global manufacturing to Dixon for its US requirements. Now I'll tell you where the change is happening. For example, Apple started manufacturing iPhone in India for three years back, and the intent was they'll shift about 15% or 20% of the global manufacturing to India. It's already moved to the 25% of the global manufacturing. And after what mister Trump is doing, he's obviously said that all iPhone sold in in The US will be manufactured in India.

49:01 Is the cheapest manufacturer of transmission cars globally. And the reason it's cheaper than the Chinese company. The reason is it's backward integrated into all the components itself. So buying steel, they make everything in the car. Now what's happened with them is, thanks to renewable energy and the investments in the car sector, our business is booming not just in India, but also globally. So they're they're having a situation where they don't have capacities. So, you know, every year, they're adding the few 40% of their capacity. And, you know, the market is like, over over the last few decades, they've got all the regulation, registration in The US, European markets, Australia. And for example, in Australia, you know, it was a China dominated market in Japan, Chinese companies. Finally, you know, skip over all all the business from there. See, that's what's happened with Skipper.

49:56 If I speak with the management, they say this is a twenty year story for them. You know, that is the sort of opportunity to do globally. Everyone is in every country that's investing in transmission, including the European companies, The US companies, simply because of the change in the with the renewable energy. So really, it's it's a it's a fantastic story playing out, and we have that comfort and confidence that, you know, it's not a one or two year story that you're seeing. It's really a much stronger. And last year, they did a both their revenues and earnings were over a 100%. So, you know, what you're seeing is actually getting reflected in the number that's happening. Thank you, Gaurav. Any other questions? Yes. Jeff at the bank. Jeff Prestridge. I'm not a shareholder, and I'm from a horrible group of people called the press. Can I just ask a question on the discount policy? I know the trust trades are in the 80% discount.

50:56 Is there a buyback facility in place? Given the size of the fund, think it's got a market cap of around 144,000,000. Do you see a point in the future when maybe you could issue new shares in order to grow the fund and may and hopefully drive down the ongoing charge, which is quite steep at 1.6%. I mean, maybe these questions for the Board. Well, I'm happy to make a stab at it. And any of my colleagues on the Board, I'm sure, will fill in if I don't do an adequate job. But the answer is that we do have a buyback facility, and we have used that, although not that recently.

51:49 We also have issued shares within living memory this time a year ago, about a year ago. It was more than a year ago, actually, until SEBI introduced their policy in India, which tightened rates. And we saw the market go against us and we went out to premium very quickly having issued having issued some shares. So we have been active in the market. And of course, we have a redemption facility in place, which means that every other year, shareholders are able to return all their shares to us if they wish to do so at a at a small discount, which is basically able to cover costs.

52:35 With regard to size, it is absolutely our ambition to grow the company. And, you know, we would very much like to be in a position to issue more shares because we think that that is beneficial to shareholders. Effectively, that's accretive to shareholders in terms of of earnings, if you like. But it also allows the management fee to decline as a proportion of what you're paying that. So yes is the answer to your question, Jeff. We'd very much like to do so. Yes. Barry Carpenter, just a guest here. Yes. I've a couple of questions.

53:21 The actual fund, you don't say who are the principal shareholders by amounts and also as more wider part of the Indian economy. I understood that the Indian economy was doing so well because it was buying cheap oil from Russia. How does I mean, how do you see that? And if it is still going, I understood that there would there could be further sanctions put on Russia in respect of taxing the the countries that are buying the cheap oil from Russia, in which case, if India is still doing that, they could be hit very hard by further sanctions, which would perhaps wreck the economy.

54:12 And so it is just not a worry for anybody investing in India at the moment. Well, should I let Gorev answer the question about oil first? And then I'll come to your question back shortly after that. You know, I think the thing is no more than India is getting very, very cheap oil. There's a brief period it was getting cheap oil. But, you know, we were pre pre Ukraine war. We had negligible imports of oil from from Russia because this is too far. And at its peak, it went to about 45% of our oil imports came from Russia. But I'll counter that with another argument. Last month, 20% of our oil came from The US. It was negligible three months back.

54:58 So India is switching around based on its own I mean, if you see the government, they say to our country, this comes first. But having said that, the actual reality is that when India buy oil from Russia, the transportation cost is so high because it's traveling across the world. The oil companies tell us that the actual difference will be 1 to $2 a barrel. But the bigger question, this is where the external affairs minister has publicly gone on record and said, you know, India is the second largest importer of oil. We used to buy almost everything from The Middle East. Where would Europe get its oil if India continue to buy from The Middle East? I know companies in our portfolio used to have a gas company.

55:47 We had ten year contracts with Qatar Gas for its gas supplies. They were all stopped because that gas had to go to Europe. And no one talks about that bit of it that if India continued buying only from the Middle East, what would happen to the oil price, then what would happen to Europe? So my understanding is if you see a lot of journalists kept writing about it, but you didn't see governments talk about it. And, possibly, the reason behind this is simple that there was an understanding that, you know, if India doesn't move, what will happen to the rest of the world? And the fact that India has very efficient refineries and, you know, today with the Trump, what I'm seeing is happening with Trump and India having a deficit. The fact that within two months, we've already switched to 20% imports from from The US.

56:37 It's also the government being very, very proactive and trying to take an advantage of of of the situation. But but the fact is I think, you know, overall, what we sense is to the India's economy of size and a very strong government. And the government is already saying, you don't dictate terms to us. We look after our countries in this first. I think that is the bigger policy statement that's coming out. But India has actually friends with all countries, you know, with Russia and Israel. Other than the Chinese, I think they're very good at least everywhere, and we just keep keep repeating on that. Thanks, Gaurav. Let me turn to your question about shareholders. It is, of course, included in the annual report.

57:23 Our three largest shareholders are actually the platforms, Hogreys Landsdown Interactive Investor and AJ Bell, who between them own over more than 40% of our shareholder register. And that, of course, is effectively retail investors. So we've seen a big change in our shareholder list over the past five or six years where we used to have one or two of the value investors on our shareholder register, and they are no longer really present. So I hope that answers your question. So we're predominantly a retail shareholder base. Any other questions? Yes. Sorry. Sorry. No. No.

58:09 That's alright. I'm sorry. Just a follow-up question on on the tariffs and oil. I've not seen anywhere, and governments and institutions, etcetera, tend not to do this. But if you're working in a FTSE one hundred company, they probably would. And that is with Donald Trump going left, right, up, down, being very unpredictable, do you have anywhere where you've done an assessment on the INDIA CAPITAL GROWTH FUND which says, this is pre Trump tariff. This is the current situation, and this is what we believe is the exit strategy where it might be a scenario planning. And you compare the India capital growth fund with other India funds so that you can demonstrate the robustness of your own strategy relative to other funds that give confidence to shareholders?

59:07 We don't compare it to other funds, but we know exactly where our stocks are positioned. To give you a perspective, we have 18% of our portfolio, which is in some way linked to the Trump targets. It's largely in auto industry companies. It's in some textile companies. I would say these are the two big three things that we have. What we see with textiles, India will be a big gainer because today, Vietnam, Bangladesh actually have an account with the tariffs. And even the new tariffs, the team will become heavy. Whether it's 10% or 30%, everyone becomes their pass on the IGC. That's the biggest gain of the IGC itself. One, I don't think we also have some in pharmaceuticals, but, you know, it's a supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredient, which is actually just two to 3% of the cost of a medicine sold in The US. So it really doesn't matter what what happens in the products.

1:00:02 So I would say we've really gone very, weak stock in our company and the sort of implications. We spoken with all the management. And, frankly, there is no clarity. And every company, all what's uniform is that they're saying that finally, we passed on to the US consumer. Eventually, some say, you know, right now, we are taking 50% hit because US buyer is taking a 50% hit, but over time, it it factor out. So really, that's it's still a very confusing thing, but we know exactly which company is exposed in which way. And our belief in the whole thing is that these companies will eventually acknowledge with us. You know, we did a similar exercise when COVID happened.

1:00:48 And then then it was more panicky where we actually went into Fed bank cash flow, then which company can survive for three or four months. And what we realized that we found three companies which were really at risk because they had a slight bit of leeway, then we said, what if business tied up for three months? And those are the three companies which did the best of that. So our biggest risk turned out to be our biggest winner. But having said that, you know, what's your question? You know, for us, it's really all about the portfolio and the companies, and what is the risk we we we see in there. And right now, I I mean, other than the fact that there's a lot of uncertainty, my discussion with companies that even with the top US companies, the buyers are also taking it quite easy. So they're not panic. That's really happening.

1:01:34 Thanks, Gaurav. Thank you. Any other questions from the floor? And if not, Lucy, have you got any questions online? Just one has come through asking if you've thought about an annual redemption period. At the moment, we have a two year redemption facility, and we think we'll stick with that for the present time, but it's something we consider each year. Yes? Just just to follow-up on that, Hassan. In in in the context of that redemption, how does the board think about the liquidity of the portfolio and and sort of potentially plan and think about managing managing costs in a prudent way.

1:02:20 Yes. How how do you think about that? It's obviously something we do consider. And the way the redemption facility is managed, Robin might be able to talk to this a bit better than me, is that, of course, effectively, you're doing is you're carving out the proportion of the portfolio that's being redeemed, and then those stocks are sold at that time. So shareholders have to wait to get their money when they redeem is effectively the answer to the question. I think just on the liquidity of the portfolio, think it's worth saying that whilst it's a closed ended fund, the holdings and the liquidity of those holdings is, I think it was about, if I'm wrong, Gaurav, 50% to 60% of the portfolio could be redeemed within five days in a normal market, at normal costs without bearing any cost to the shareholders.

1:03:21 So we're confident that the portfolio is structured in such a way that it can meet the redemption requests as and when they come through without incurring any additional costs for shareholders in providing those funds to them. So we have a very rigid risk committee meeting. And one of the big risk factors is also liquidity of the portfolio. So at any point of time, I know exactly, you know, what percentage of my portfolio can be sold in, you know, five days, ten days, ninety days, etcetera, and which are the illiquid stocks. But each stock, we know how many days it will take in to liquidate the whole investment, either 20% of the market volumes or 30% of the market values.

1:04:09 And we also run screeners in the sense that, you know, typically, liquidity events happen when markets crash, but suddenly the liquidity price up. So we we also run screeners at what if, you know, some catastrophe happen and liquidity in the market right after 50%, then how long it would take? So I would say that, frankly, liquidity is not an issue in that portfolio at all. I think 90%, we can sell in ten days. So it's there'll be three, four stocks which will you know, one, I think, may take sixty days to sell or something like that. But otherwise, we manage liquidity very well. You know, in my thirty years of investing, one thing I have I have realized is, you know, only when things go bad, all these problems happen. So, you know, you're very willing that something nasty happened and liquidity dries up and then where are you where are you positioned?

1:05:02 Thanks, Greg. Could I add something to that? Yes. So I think, you know, you see here we were global investors. A few years back, that would have been Ocean Dark, and that hasn't really come up today. But there's a huge amount of support for the team, particularly around risk and compliance and all of those things. And the sort of information that the board sees from the River team on risk and analytics, I think you'd be hugely impressed if you saw it. And it's kind of a little bit open in the room, really, the RiverGlobal thing, but it's it's it's hugely impressed me, the the extra resources around analysis that that we get, and that is a huge support for you. It's an investment team.

1:05:47 Is it correct? Thanks, LIMITED. Any other questions? No. If not, Gaurav and his team, of course, will be available after the meeting to address any questions, any further questions that you might have and to talk less formally about what he's doing in the about what they're doing in the portfolio. So let me now move on to the formal business of the meeting. And I think you've all had the reports and accounts in your hands for the statutory period. So with your permission, we'll take the notice of the AGM dated the 04/10/2025 as read. That's okay. And in addition, unless anyone has any objections, I would I propose that we take each resolution as set out in the same notice of meeting as read.

1:06:44 I see the objection. Thank you very much. A schedule setting out a summary of the proxy votes received for each resolution is available from the secretary, and the result of today's poll vote will also be announced to the London Stock Exchange and will be available on the company's website following the meeting. So, ordinary resolutions. I'll start with the eight ordinary resolutions that are being made. And in order that an an ordinary resolution is passed, a simple majority of the total number of votes cast for and against the resolution is required. So resolution one, I therefore propose resolution one as set out in full in the notice of our annual general meeting dated the 04/10/2025 that the annual report and audited consolidated financial statements for the period ended 12/31/2024 and the report of the directors and the auditors therein being received and adopted.

1:07:46 Resolution two, as I propose resolution two as set out in full in the notice that our meeting dated the 04/10/2025 that Deloitte LLP be reappointed as auditors of the company and that the directors be authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditors of the auditor. Resolution three. I propose resolution three as set out in full in the notice of annual general meeting dated the 04/10/2025, that the director's remuneration report for the period ended 12/31/2024 contained within the annual report and audited consolidated financial statements of the company be approved.

1:08:32 Resolution four. I propose resolution four as set out in full in the notice of annual general meeting dated the 04/10/2025 that Elizabeth Scott, that's me, be reelected as a director of the company. And resolution five, I propose resolution five as set out in full in the notice of annual general meeting dated the 04/10/2025 that Patrick Firth be reelected as a director of the company. Resolution six, I propose resolution six as set out in full in the notice of annual general meeting dated 04/10/2025 that LIMITED be reelected as a director of the company. Resolution seven. I propose resolution seven as set out in full on the notice of annual general meeting dated the 04/10/2025 that Nick Timberlake be elected as a director of the company.

1:09:27 Resolution eight, I propose resolution eight as set out in full in the notice of annual general meeting dated the 04/10/2025 that the directors be authorized to allot relevant securities. Special resolution. I now move on to the special resolutions that are proposed. And in order that a special resolution will be passed, not less than a 75% majority of the total number of votes cast for and against the resolution is required. Resolution nine, I propose resolution nine as a special resolution as set out in full in the notice of annual general meeting dated the 04/10/2025 that the company be authorized to allot shares up to a maximum of 20% in the company and grant grant rights to subscribe.

1:10:19 Resolution 10. I propose resolution 10 as a special resolution as set out in full in the notice of annual general meeting dated the 04/10/2025 that the company be authorized to make market acquisitions of up to 14.99% of its own issued share capital subject to certain conditions. Resolution 11, by proposed resolution 11, there's a special resolution as set out in full in the notice of annual general meeting dated 04/10/2025 that the company's articles be amended to update the months of the company's redemption point from December to November. And can I please now ask everybody with a voting with a voting card, sorry, to complete it and submit it to Javez as soon as possible?

1:11:12 And if you've done that, please hold it up and Javez will come and pick it up from you. Thanks, Javez. And in and in conclusion then, are there any still to be collected? No? That's it. Thank you to me. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the business before us. So I do now declare the meeting closed. And I would really like to thank you all so much for coming here today. I know that James Cross is quite the normal track for company AGM, but we're absolutely delighted to see so many of you here. And GROWTH FUND LIMITED, BISHOPHIRE, be available to talk more about it. And I hope very much that you'll join us this week to eat and drink on the other side of that glass window.

1:12:06 So thanks so much again.