Mobius Investment Trust (LSE:MMIT) — Investor Presentation

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the MOBIUS INVESTMENT TRUST PLC investor presentation. Throughout the quarter presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged, they can be submitted at any time by the q and a tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives in the meeting itself, however the company can review the questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you to founder and portfolio manager, Carlos von Hardinberg. Good morning to

0:31 you, sir. Good morning to all of you, and thank you very much for dialing into our webinar this morning. We are, yet again, going through a period of global uncertainty. We are going through a period where external factors are driving sort of a risk on risk of environment changing almost every every hour. So nothing has changed to that extent compared to what we experienced over the past couple of years. And I would like today, to focus on the opportunities which this type of situation is providing.

1:17 I would also like to spend time today on the INVESTMENT TRUST and how we invest, what type of companies we believe are best positioned to deliver returns over the next five years. And, of course, the environment is requiring special attention to external risk factors, to geopolitical factors, to macroeconomic drivers, which are determining the value of currencies in emerging markets, the value of commodities, the the appetite for riskier assets. But I would also say... Like to say right at the beginning, we should never lose sight, especially in these times, of the actual opportunities, the idiosyncratic opportunities, which are being developed by entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

2:16 And these are the opportunities which are generating the the groundwork for business models we will read about and hear about more and more in the future. They are building fantastic teams. They're building fantastic models. They are expanding into new markets and emerging markets in general, especially in Asia, has more and more of these companies which are competing globally, more companies of such nature than ever before, and especially in India, but across Southeast Asia as well, we are finding very strong companies which are in our pipeline. Now, of course, the big question is why emerging markets at all? Why why bother with this asset class? And, of course, all of us will have observed over the last decade that many developed markets, especially tech oriented markets, The US market, of course, have generated far better returns.

3:16 Not the whole world, not everything, and also it depends with what you compare it to if you include China, which is a big part of the emerging market universe, and include that in the reference, of course, the performance, especially over the last ten years, doesn't look very appealing. Now I would like to, again, take this time and this opportunity to focus on fundamentals. Number one, earnings growth. And and maybe before I do this, I should also point out that many emerging markets over the last five, seven, ten years have in fact generated outstanding returns, outstanding performance even compared to some of the best best performing developed markets.

4:02 It's just that the average and especially the inclusion of China has been dragging down emerging market performance over the last decade. We believe it's now time where we reached an inflection point where the combination of valuations, the combination of excessive valuations also in some developed markets, and the the continuation of operational performance of underlying companies in emerging markets coupled with strong and resilient macroeconomic conditions can lead to a decoupling and yet, again, a prolonged phase of outperformance in emerging markets. Of course, part of this will be also driven by flows, the return of flows into this asset class.

4:50 But having said this, let's just look at these main building blocks here, which we think will be the the ultimate pillars of strong performance. Earnings growth, so emerging markets just for 2025 and 2026, we are seeing 1416% growth in earnings on average, which is far outpacing developed markets. Of course, you know, GDP growth, after the prolonged period of difficulty under COVID after sort of Trump 1.0, we have seen that GDP growth across emerging markets is recovering. So pretty strong numbers, especially compared to The US, of course, also Europe. So we're looking at double, if not triple, the growth numbers.

5:36 Demographics are well understood. A young population, very large, and dynamic populations, which are in the most fruitful part of their sort of age bucket. Overall, also important, the prospects of weakening US dollar. We've seen the first phase of this with the beginning of the Trump administration. So year to date, the decline of 6% and emerging markets tend to outperform in periods of dollar weakness. I wouldn't suggest that it is necessary and essential for the US dollar to... For emerging markets to only perform well if you... The US dollar weakens, but it's certainly providing providing help.

6:23 The... What is, however, more important and a real driver is innovation leadership, and that combined with attractive valuations. So I have to say that, you know, we just returned from extensive trips in Taiwan, Vietnam, South... Across Southeast Asia, and we were deeply impressed again by the type of companies we are seeing. My colleague Swati just came back from India. Again, they are the type of companies we are discovering. They are highly innovative. They are profitable. They're run by brilliant talents, and those are the businesses we are really interested in. And, of course, we are seeing that right now emerging markets continue to trade at very attractive valuations.

7:11 Now just a few words on on us. We are now around for six years. We've kept our asset base quite stable over those six years, highly differentiated returns. We continue to focus on less covered names across emerging markets. The portfolio continues to be concentrated less than 30 names. We use our network, and we have a very strict risk management with regards to both idiosyncratic risk but also macroeconomic risk, which we are willing or unwilling to take into the portfolio. So 44.4% return since inception, which is far better than the benchmark and makes us also look very good against competition.

7:59 We've had tremendous issues and volatility this year, as you know. It's not a good year for us. February, March, we're... A month where we are really challenged, but we had those periods before in the past, and we think we will come out of this and recover very strongly all to to make sure that also the sort of the short term performance numbers move up again. In terms of our track record, we've seen, you know, lots of lots of periods over the last decade, of strong and weaker performance, but, it's it's always worth to stick to your guns and to focus on quality and focus on on management teams and not create too much turnover in your portfolio to get through these these periods just like this year. That has actually allowed us to generate over 10% outperformance against the MSCI emerging market mid cap index and almost double the performance of the MSCI emerging market index since inception.

9:04 You can obviously only generate this if you also invest very, very differently. So we have a very high active share. There's hardly any overlap between the strategy and the benchmark. But that also explains, when you look at sort of the more traditional sectors, banks, telecom, commodities, if there is a recovery rally in those segments, we will, in relative terms, have difficulty beating at least the benchmark in this phase. But we continue to believe that over the next ten, fifteen, twenty years, you have to look at more innovative businesses than, you know, diversified wholesale banks and emerging markets.

9:50 But that's still 15, 70% of the benchmark. At the same time, we've been very careful in China, and we continue to be very careful. And we do not compromise our focus on governance, transparency, and minority shareholder protection. That is the... That is... Those are red lines for us where we don't make any compromise. Now if you look at MMIT against the peer group, the trusts listed on the London Stock Exchange over the last five years, my old shop is here as well,, fidelity, Barings. So we've clearly outperformed them over the last five years, and we are working very hard to ensure that we will be able to generate the same type of performance over the next five years. Now if you look at the broader...

10:39 Just broadly at at sort of the the the the playbook, the the universe we're focusing on, I have to say 80%, if not more of our time, we focus on Asia. We spend a lot of time in Asia. We spend at least four months a year in India. We are blessed by having two very talented Indian partners in the firm who's... Who spent a lot of time there, but also myself. We spent a lot of time in South Korea, Taiwan, recently Vietnam, Thailand, and those are the those are the the the... This this is the the hotspot for us. Turkey has been an interesting region for us since inception. We've lightened up our exposure quite significantly over the last couple of weeks as we see more opportunities elsewhere, and we have actually increased our exposure to Brazil.

11:38 In Brazil, we've had a couple of really good investments. We didn't get everything right, but we got enough right to generate really good performance there. I think Brazil is one of those markets where you will see a a very strong and positive development across different sectors because of strong macros, strong exports, the dividend they're generating from the commodity space and and resources space in general. Of course, there's huge interlinkage between Brazil and the rest of the world, especially China, but we've invested in more domestic plays and, again, technology oriented companies. Now the the universe itself is reduced from about 40,000 names to 8,000 names because of the focus on certain market cap, certain liquidity, and we exclude also a lot of the industries which we simply don't have very high conviction in. So it is manageable. The team is very busy focusing on generating new ideas.

12:42 I guess the edge, just in summary, is the network, the fact that we focus really on a concentrated portfolio. Our competitors have doubled, if not tripled, the number of stocks. We have a lot of co investment in the fund. All of us are invested in the trust. That's all public. And we don't compromise on the level of detail which we deploy when we, build our research. The philosophy is really all about quality. It's all about uncovering moats, uncovering competitive strength, ideally businesses which have no competitors. I'll talk about some of them. And at the same time, focusing on brand leaders, on investment teams, and management teams which have a strong and positive reputation.

13:33 Now I mentioned briefly the underground research, and then I'd like to spend more time on the portfolio. But this just shows you here sort of our more recent travel schedule, 2425. We spent a lot of time in China, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, a lot of time in India, so... In South Korea, and then again in Taiwan in the first quarter of this year, which was very revealing and exciting to be there as well. A typical MMIT business will be a company that has... That is, first of all, profitable. We don't invest in loss making businesses with strong margins, which is highly competitive. We... A company that has sustainable competitive advantages against its its sort of con... Within its context.

14:22 I mentioned brand leaders. I mentioned innovation. So those are factors which which are very important to us, and we don't invest in industries which are sort of in decline. We also think that mid cap stocks offer more potential, and there are a couple of factors to take into account here. Number one, these companies are often not very well covered by the sell side. It is difficult to get information about them. It is different. You can't just download, you know, 10 broker reports and then feel comfortable. Many of them are not covered by any of the large bulge bracket houses. So that is one opportunity angle in itself. At the same time, they increasingly have been able to compete for talent.

15:11 A lot of the young talent in today's world prefer to work for smaller companies. So we see phenomenal people here, phenomenal innovators in these small and mid cap businesses. And, of course, they're also growing much faster. So these are challenges. They are out there to compete hard. They are highly incentivized. Many of the companies in our portfolio have very generous ESOP systems or incentivizing staff to work hard. So that... Those are aspects we really like in in this small and mid cap segment. We don't compromise on liquidity. Many of these businesses... Hundreds of these businesses across the different stock exchanges trade $510,000,000 a day.

16:00 This is the portfolio. These are the top 10 holdings, which I briefly want to introduce. I'm gonna talk about two companies in a bit more detail. But as you can see here, most of these businesses are not really known by the wider investment community there, and they're also not part of the larger MSCI benchmark, maybe with one one exception here. But park system is a great example in Korea. Atomic force microscopy is really what they invented to to a large degree. It's a technology which today is used for inspection and testing also in the semiconductor space. Earnings growth '25 is about twenty two percent. Actually, recently announced that that they would beat this target, and we're expecting 32% next year. So they're rolling out their products.

16:48 And it's interesting to see that this atomic force microscopy is a new technology used in the semiconductor industry. So they created this industry, and they created their own market. The addressable market is exploding semiconductors are becoming more complex, as the nodes are becoming smaller. Also, the testing industry is changing and evolving, and they are sort of at the forefront. Maybe to mention another one here, three sixty one, number three in India. This is a business which is aiming to revolutionize wealth management services in India. So they like to think of themselves as of Julius Baer. They want to be the Julius Baer of India. Difference is Switzerland is probably 10,000,000 people, and India is 1,400,000,000.

17:42 And they are competing against Indian banks who are not independent. They're seen as not independent, and three sixty one is one of the few independent wealth advisory firms. Very strong in alternatives. Recently announced a deeper collaboration with UBS. UBS took a 5% stake in the business, and they're sharing certain assets and share... Certain access to services. So I would say interesting to observe what UBS is doing here in India. Another one which is exciting here, and maybe briefly, I'll talk about this. We have a case study with E Inc. Actually, let me let me talk about this in in a slide later. But, then we also have more classic businesses like an ATL Apollo number seven, which again has been to some degree revolutionizing the construction industry in India as they were one of the first businesses in India to come out with ultralight steel parts for the for the construction industry, which is used for infrastructure, public infrastructure, private infrastructure, housing, train stations, logistics centers, which are all built with ultralight steel. There's a migration from more cement based to steel based construction, which is also more environmentally friendly, and they have been growing market share very successfully in India. Again, a family owned business, family

19:14 controlled business. The father is spearheading the the operation. Two sons are in the in the business. And, of course, the addressable market is phenomenal with India's multi decade aim and ambition to build out better infrastructure. This is one company which is a relatively new addition to the portfolio. We are showing an excerpt here of the website, which may look familiar to some of you. It's basically a classic automotive vertical, like Auto Trader. You have those in every country. India is a very sort of nascent four wheeler, as they call it, market.

19:59 Used to be dominated more by the tok toks and two wheelers, and now increasingly, they're moving into a modern infrastructure. And, of course, the car industry is all over it. And a car trade is actually originally from a industrial family, which is in car dealership... In the car dealership industry, and they have been now consolidating and establishing the... Themselves as the leading platform. Interestingly, the founder of Auto Trader sits on the board, so they work with internationally experienced partners. Founded only in 2009, they do have a multichannel market, a multichannel marketplace in India. They are focusing on new end used car sales processes and have gained market share quite successfully. It hasn't been listed for too long, but the growth opportunity here is phenomenal.

20:58 They also recently made a very smart acquisition and bought OLX, which is another classified. So they are really a leading classified operator with different verticals in India. Still fairly small, less than a billion market cap, and we believe that this can become a multibillion dollar business in in India. Now I'm not suggesting you should eat classic salsa sauce. I'm not even allowed to buy mayonnaise at home. What I'm trying to show here is the price tags at the bottom. And as you can see, they they are now also in dual color. They actually recently came out in multicolor, which brings me to another company in the portfolio, which is the world's only and leading, thereby, developer of electronic shelf labels.

21:53 You have them in The UK. You have them in China. You have them in The US. Walmart just rolled them out starting last year. Aldi in Germany has been rolling it out globally. And they created this market. They created the technology, the industry. It's called e ink, and it's an essential part of the portfolio, electronic display technology, which started with Amazon Kindle. This was the first really a breakout, industrial breakout of this technology. There were lots of speculation about this technology being adopted also by the smartphone market. We haven't seen this yet in a large scale. They do exist, but not large scale, but that's another potential.

22:43 Fast growing addressable market, and you can see it's... It has different applications, e readers, e notes, electronic shelf labels, laptops, phones, wearables. But also, we are now seeing the rollout of so called large display technology within the retail, especially retail industries, larger retail shops, but also in quick service restaurants such as Burger King, etcetera. The in... Indoor signals, indoor signs are made of this technology. It... The big advantage is it uses almost no power, and it's very efficient to utilize. So, again, this, is an essential part of the portfolio, very successful, business.

23:35 Tariffs so far had a relatively limited impact, especially on the portfolio. It had close to no impact as we are moving a lot into and always had a focus more on asset light businesses, more services, and companies with deep molds and competitive advantages. So those are the ones which can pass on pricing. They can pass on higher cost. They can pass on our share tariffs to a large degree.

24:03 So as you can see here, across the portfolio, especially the software part, had had, of course, very little exposure to tariffs. At the same time, the... If you look at the revenue exposure, domestic versus foreign, 93% domestic exposure is also another insurance policy baked into the portfolio, so a lot less dependency on simply exporting to The United States. In terms of engagement, as you know, for every business that we invest in, we try to actively engage and create sort of a a a a conducive, productive relationship between us and management team so that they can benefit from us sort of seeing things improving across the whole spectrum and enabling companies also to learn from developments in other markets. We are focusing on environmental aspects, social, especially governance, especially culture, and capital allocation. That is part of our sort of day to day exchange with companies. We are in constant dialogue with with portfolio companies.

25:18 In terms of the outlook, and we're coming to... Towards the end of my prepared slides today. As I said at the beginning, the emerging market index has actually done extremely well over the last twenty, thirty years. It had a decade of weakness against developed markets between 2010 and 2020 with the world index outperforming emerging markets significantly. Of course, I would say 85, 80, whatever, plus 80% of this is magnificent seven. And the rest is if you take that out, it would look quite differently. If you would take China out, it would quite... Look quite differently. We believe that the current juncture is one where emerging markets can yet again enter into a prolonged phase of outperformance.

26:16 Now if you look at the... And these are just averages. If you look at the valuations to very simple ways of looking at valuations, the S and P 500 is the dark blue. Look at the price to book ratio. It's now trading at a twenty five year all time high. If you look at earnings, it looks very similar, close to a twenty five year all time high, while emerging markets are trading at a dramatic all time discount to those developed markets. And once institutions begin to shift, that gap can close relatively quickly. Earnings growth, I did talk about this. India, of course, is leading here. Southeast Asia, following closely after India in terms of producing this type of economic growth, followed by China, emerging markets in general, and then developed market growth much below this. This, again, is well understood. And we, of course, see that demand is driven by a large and growing consumer class across Asia, and the share of the middle class is growing very rapidly. Consumer spending in emerging economies is also growing very fast.

27:30 China, of course, lagging at the moment. That's their biggest problem, but that's why we focus so much on on India. And then lastly, innovation. And just to show you, it's not just words. There is hard evidence. In 1997, 6% of the benchmark was tech. It's now getting closer to 25%, and we think this can double. Whereas energy and utilities or industrial and materials used to be dominant, which are now shrinking in importance. So it makes sense to look at those businesses as we think that this journey, we're not even halfway there. In terms of the other risks, which often relate to buying expensive currencies, that's clearly not the case in emerging markets.

28:18 Currencies across the entire universe in emerging markets are trading at attractive valuations compared to their own historical averages. So we are seeing... We're buying into these opportunities without having to overpay for the currency. Now this brings me to my last slide, and let me just go back to the very beginning. We're optimistic about earnings growth. We're optimistic about the broader economic conditions in emerging markets. We're seeing a lot of rational policymaking. We're seeing a lot less external risks. We are seeing that the demographics continue to be the driving force between earnings growth. And the, you know, geopolitical shift is also interesting to observe.

29:06 We'll see... I mean, Trump Trump's days, I would say, are numbered. So there's gonna... We have to look beyond this, and we think that the emerging market world per se is utilizing this now to its own benefit. So innovation leadership, getting talent, attracting the right management teams, competing globally is what we are seeing. The pipeline is very strong. Our team is highly motivated despite the fact that this year was certainly painful. We have seen this as a positive challenge, and we strongly believe in our portfolio. And days like today and last couple of days, actually, we begin to see also that performance looks to be heading into the right direction.

29:56 So let me close here and see if we can address your questions. That's great, Carlos. Thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions, and you can do so just by using the q and a tab that's situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. We have received a number of questions while you're presenting, Carlos. And we'll start with the first question here, which reads as follows. What's emerging trends within your target markets you're most excited about from a long term investment perspective? Yeah. It's difficult sort of to narrow this into just one trend or two trends, but I would say that what we are observing in India, and especially when you approach the market with a minds... With a long term mindset, It's very easy to get discouraged about short term valuations.

30:51 It's easy to get discouraged by

30:55 index... You know, sing... Singular factors which which could, you know, lead to this year sort of being a relatively muted year. But if you think about this, that the government and the private sector have jointly embarked on a journey which, to some degree is comparable to what we've seen in China starting in the late... In the nineties. There is this combination of an industrial policy, improving infrastructure, government deregulation, massive reform, and highest ever observed foreign direct investments into productive sectors, also export oriented sectors, I would say that this is a market where, yes, it's talked about a lot. Yes. They are... You know, it's like... Feels like every day there's a new India fund. But the good news is there are thousands of listed companies, and we are able to uncover businesses at a relatively early stage there. So I think this market is certainly one I'm very excited about, and it's also interesting to see.

31:54 You know, they're now talking about establishing ecosystems in other sectors such as AI, semiconductors, technology in general. Apple has has earmarked, you know, tens of billions of investments in in India. So that is a process which will bring about new business opportunities and new investment opportunities far bigger than what we can imagine or comparable to what happened when the founder... The actually US based founder, Morris Chang, went to Taiwan and established TSMC. So I would I would say that's certainly one area which excites me a lot. Talking about Taiwan, I was probably called this out second.

32:43 I'm not talking about Taiwanese politics, but I'm talking about... I'm just focusing on the types of businesses we are encountering in Taiwan, and they are often... I mean, in most cases, global businesses. They're they're born in Taiwan. They may be listed in Taiwan or not, but they're now competing and producing globally. And, again, here, this ecosystem, the combination of education and industrial policy, a highly capable private sector, very skillful managers are developing business ideas, and E Inc is a great example. Why why why why does this... I mean, why is it in Taiwan? Why is TSMC in Taiwan?

33:28 Why are all the IC design houses in Taiwan? It's because of this ecosystem. So that will be another one. Of course, I'm also excited about other markets. I I continue to be excited about Brazil, but the types of opportunities are slightly different and not as scalable as what we are observing in Asia. That's great. Thank you, Carlos. We've got another question here. How are you positioning the portfolio in light of ongoing trade tensions between The US and China, especially in sectors as opposed to tariffs or supply chain disruptions? That's a very good question, and it's... The answer is very sobering, or let's say the day to day experience is very... A very sobering one. So I think there are good companies in China.

34:17 I mean, whoever claims there are no good companies in China, I think is a very smart thing to say. So we've looked at various businesses. They are on our shortlist. They've been on our shortlist just as a sort of within the pool of ideas. Problem is for those companies, they they may even have decent transparency and good governance, but they are then in sectors where there is a highly... High likelihood of The US or even Europe to limit the ability of this business to export the

34:56 idea or to even go further and punish them by not allowing them to access certain parts and technology and know how and people. And so we just stay away, to be honest. It's tempting, and I see some competitors having done this, and they jump into it. But those are risks we rather avoid. It... You you know, you may look like a hero when you get this right and you make a return with a weak business and a and a a business which is fragile and in a fragile context. But I I... We, as a, again, as a red line, decided we we don't want any exposure to this. So we're focusing very much on companies which have close to no exposure or ability to deal with tariffs.

35:45 And, certainly, we... As I said, the number one, the rule is that we cannot afford to have a business which may go out of business because of because of those sanctions or or, you know, tariffs. Perfect. We we have another question here from an investor. Over 30% of your portfolio is in China and Taiwan. The value of this may go to near to zero in the event of a conflict in that region. How do you view this risk?

36:16 It's been discussed since October 2018 when we launched the strategy. I think the issue is that the value of many companies, including Apple, will go to close to zero when there is, let's say, if that case happens because every high performance chip is 85% of the global chips and every high performance chip is currently produced by TSMC in Taiwan. So if there is an impairment to this business or any supply problems, you will see airlines, you will see public infrastructure, you will see the entire semiconductor dependent industries, automated factories, everything sort of going to zero zero if you follow that thesis.

37:16 So that's... That cannot be our base case. And we continue to believe also China very much depends, of course, on on a functioning relationship here. We've been trying to still keep our total exposure limited here. We have close to nothing in China directly. We've been limiting our overall exposure to Taiwan. Overall, we have a lot less here than benchmark, for example. And we have businesses which are largely producing globally or which are essentially producing no physical products. These are IC design houses. They have... They don't produce anything apart from ideas. So that's also sort of one way how we derisk this slightly. But I wanna be very clear if

38:06 if if that's that's happening, you know, not just us, but the whole world will be in deep turmoil. Understood. Thanks for that, Carlos. We do have another question kind of on a on a similar theme. I don't know if you have anything to add, but what contingency plans do you have if one of your core markets undergoes a regime change with sanctions?

38:34 So we have no investments in any single country where sort of a regime change risk is anywhere close to possible. I mean, we have no no investments in the... In in any of the more fragile frontier markets and have invested in stable countries where you have often, you know, many decades of democracy. Of course, we have to be careful. We have to be able to react. A regime change is a is a very dramatic word. Even if there's a sudden deterioration in macro and politics, which can, of course, happen, We invested in largely or entirely only liquid tradable investments, which we can sell very quickly. Russia is a good example. We did have two investments in Russia, and we we sold about six months before the war broke out.

39:35 We have had... I mentioned this Turkey, which we sold basically or reduced very significantly in one day with no problems. And therefore, yeah, this is, of course, one lever by not being exposed to illiquid businesses. And, you know, at the end of the day, emerging market investing means you take macro and geopolitical risk. Question is, do you get compensated for it?

40:04 And so we we analyze currency risk very carefully. We analyze geopolitical risk very carefully before we take any of these positions. And some of the most successful investments we've made over the last six years, one or at least two of them were actually in Taiwan where we had, like, six, seven times return on our initial investment. Similarly, in India, even even in Turkey, in US dollar terms, we made a positive return. So it's also about choosing the right type of business, of course. That's great. Thank you, Carlos. We've got a question here around the discount. With the trust trading at a persistent discount, what steps are you taking to create a catalyst for rerating?

40:54 So it's... I mean, we've got a fantastic board which is analyzing the situation and is leaving sort of nothing to chance. We've considered buybacks. We're not convinced it will reduce liquidity. In conversations with our investors, the feedback was throughout the last six years, grow the vehicle, stick to your guns, offer something different, and rather focus on growing the strategy rather than reducing it by buybacks. And buybacks are often just a very short term cure, which when you stop... As you can see with Temit, Temit is, you know, spending hundreds of millions in buybacks, and the discount is still very sticky. It's more about delivering outsized investment returns. And, yes, we had very, very good years, and we had, since inception, outstanding performance.

41:49 But in a year like this year, not good enough. We have to do a better job, and we have to ensure that the strategy delivers even stronger performance. That will ultimately be the most powerful factor to address the discount because you create a market, you create appetite for your for your strategy. Of course, the other issue has been we've outperformed also the the... Our discount is much smaller than that of competition. But the reason why a number of investors are still somewhat on the sideline and decided not to invest yet in our strategy is because it's too small, and it's not liquid enough. So bit of a chicken and egg issue, but all these strategies started somewhere.

42:37 And this strategy has started in probably one of the most difficult periods emerging markets have experienced over the last thirty years. So we need to be also patient. We need to stick to our conviction, and we are very passionate about what we're offering. So I think there will be... There's a good chance that over the next two, three years, the overall conditions for EM will help us as well and will help to generate more appetite for for the trust. That's great, Carlos. Thank you very much. We've got one final question here for you before I'll ask you just for a few closing comments, and then and then we'll wrap the session up. The question is, if you're optimistic about earnings growth, is the fund geared at the moment?

43:26 It's something we've considered just before COVID. COVID then made things very difficult, and it's something we are just working on right now. It's... We can gear. I think it's a very powerful and useful mechanism, especially when you are at a period where you have such a tremendous opportunity lying ahead of you. It's just about negotiating the right terms and conditions, and that's what we have actually... The board is very much focusing on this as well, and that's what we are working on right now. So we have the redemption facility in November. We're very optimistic about sort of getting and seeing the right support from our investors.

44:12 And post this, we are very keen to explore the leverage leverage optionality. So if there are no other questions. No. There there are no further questions, Carlos, and thank you very much for for answering all of those. If I could just ask you for a few closing comments, that'd be great, and then we'll wrap things up. Well, I have to say I'd like to thank you for your interest today and for your support in case you are invested. I think, again, I I really would like to just make one final comment. Emerging markets have to be seen as a long term opportunity. This was our message in October 2018.

45:00 And if you just look back over the last seven years since we started or six and a half years since we started the strategy, it it delivered what we expected. Outsized investment returns by investing very differently, by not compromising on quality, by navigating in this difficult environment, but by... Essentially, you know, the people I have to thank the most over this period are the entrepreneurs who we work with and whom we backed in the portfolio. So I think the chance today is even bigger than it was in 2018.

45:38 The chance today for emerging markets to generate strong returns over the next five, six years are mainly driven by innovation, are driven by these type of business models, opening geographies for these markets, very strong export oriented industries. India, of course, is a huge part of this, but there are... Across Southeast Asia, these these opportunities which cater to AI, which cater to factory automation, which cater to innovative telecommunication and general communication technologies, but also things in the auto... In traditional sectors like automotive, autonomous driving, and the many different technologies needed to operate this are now coming from emerging markets. So stay tuned.

46:26 And if you do have other questions, reach out to our team, and we look forward to servicing you over the next five years as well. Thank you. That's great, Carlos. I'd just like to thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session? They should now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of management team of MOBIUS INVESTMENT TRUST PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.