Private equity, water rights and other alternative assets with Dania Zinurova | ASX Week

Bryce: [00:00:15] Welcome to another episode of Equity Mates, a podcast that follows our journey of investing, whether you're an absolute beginner or approaching Warren Buffett status. Our aim is to help break down your barriers from beginning to dividend. My name is Bryce and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy, Ren. How you going? 

Alec: [00:00:30] I'm very good. Bryce really loving this ASX week with up to our third episode we're halfway through. I learnt so much and we've got some great episodes to close the week out with. 

Bryce: [00:00:42] We do. We are back partnership with the ASX Investor Day, which is a day designed to provide investors of all levels with practical tools and knowledge to help improve their investment strategy and build their investing confidence. Those in the Equity Mates community know full well that we've partnered with the ASX Investor Day in the past and this this time is no different. We've got a week of great content where you get the chance to hear from some of the best investors from around the country in their field of expertise. Ren What can we expect this week? 

Alec: [00:01:15] So we've kicked off the week with Lauren Jackson from Fidelity, talking about key megatrends driving global markets. Yesterday we had Rachel White from Vanguard talking about the changing face of investing. Today we're joined by Dania Zinurova from Wilson Asset Management sharing some of her top investment insights from around the world. And then the rest of the week, tomorrow, we have Anthony Doyle from Fire Trial, also sharing some of his top investment insights from around the world and then closing it out, as we always do with a buy, hold and sell episode with Adam Dawes from Shaw and Partners. Five Superstar Investors with a big week. 

Bryce: [00:01:53] What a week. And if you like what you hear from the experts this week, then you get the opportunity to see them in the flesh. You can join them at the ASX Investor Day's around the country. Brisbane kicks off this weekend, 14th of May at the Sofitel. Melbourne is the 21st of May at the Grand Hyatt and then closing out in Sydney on the 28th of May at the Hilton Ren and I will be there in Sydney on the day talking rubbish as we always do, roaming around, taking some videos and having a bit of fun. So if you want to come and have a chat to us, as well as all the experts that will be there on the day, head to the ASX website to find out more information and register and grab your ticket for the ASX Investor Day. But without further ado, it is our absolute pleasure to welcome Dania Zinurova. Welcome. 

Dania Zinurova: [00:02:43] Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

Bryce: [00:02:45] So Daniaia is a portfolio manager for Wilson Asset Management's Alternative Assets Fund. The ticker is W M A listed on the ASX and we're going to be chatting all things alternative assets today. So let's kick it off. 

Alec: [00:02:58] Yeah. Daniaiel, let's start at the very beginning. Alternative assets, people may not be familiar with that term. So what is an alternative asset? 

Dania Zinurova: [00:03:07] Alternative assets can be a very broad definition. And you would find that investors across different geographies might include different asset classes when talking about alternatives. For us, for Oma's portfolio in alternatives, we include investments in assets that are tangible. And those tangible characteristics they define the value of the assets. We include asset classes such as private equity, infrastructure, real estate, real assets that would include agriculture, water rights and other more niche asset classes. The key objective is really to look at the risk premia and see what are the risk premiums from just equity risk premium we can get from those asset classes, because one of the key benefits of investing in alternatives is the classification.

Bryce: [00:04:08] So you mentioned the real assets, private equity, real estate, cash. So let's chat about real assets which make up 40% of the of the WAM alternative asset portfolio, the majority of which is in water rights. Yeah. What are water rights and why are they such a big portion of the portfolio? 

Dania Zinurova: [00:04:28] Water rights is a pretty unique asset class to Australian investors. So if we take a step back and look at the global markets, there are probably two key markets for investors to consider and think about water rights. US and Australia and Australia is considered to be a very well regulated, sophisticated, developed market. It's been maturing over years. It has good level of liquidity. Water rights are entitlements that give their holders the right to a consumptive use of water derived from different sources. In Australia there are over 140 different water sources, one of. The key words when you talk to water rights investors are the water sources attached to the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia. Water rights are transferable. It's a liquid assets. So it's, you know, easier to access for the broader investor base, not only institutional but also retail. It's an asset class that has very strong diversification benefits for an investment portfolio because it has negative correlation to most traditional asset classes and even to some real assets, alternative asset classes. There are other characteristics such as quite attractive risk return profile. So when we think about water rights investments, we're thinking about capital appreciation, basically the value of the water allocation itself and how this value appreciates over time and it's been appreciating over a decade and longer and the income component. So in other words, you as an owner of the water allocation would go and lease this water entitlement to a person who needs to use the water to irrigate their permanent crops or for other purposes, basically mainly in agriculture. So historically, when we look, let's say take a period of 2012 until 2018, water rights delivered stellar returns to investors. There are questions why is it happening? What influences the returns in the water rights? And a lot of this is, of course, correlated to climate and weather conditions. So we've now have been for over two years in what we call a La Nina cycle, and we saw increase the amount of rainfall. It does affect the water entitlements pricing. So the more water is available, the more it affects negatively the price of the entitlement. On the other hand, all this rainfall led to crop producers really benefiting from this, and many of them started growing their arable land, growing crop production. So the ones who are preparing for the future, they started buying more water allocations, which leads to increasing value of the water allocation. So when we think about the portfolio construction in water rights, it's really important to think about balancing the portfolio between the crop growers. So let's say annual crop grows, they rely on seasonal rainfall. So for them, the current rainfall is great unless it's a flooding event for the permanent crop growers. When we talk about almonds or citrus orchards, they need water throughout the year. They can't rely just in seasonal rain. So by having a portfolio diversified by crop users, we can also think about having longer leases attached to the permanent crop growers and being less dependent on the weather conditions. When we think about the returns within the portfolio. 

Alec: [00:08:55] Tania people often ask what role does active management play in a portfolio? I think I'm just going to clip that answer and give it to them because I can I can pretty confidently say that level of expertise on water rights is something that I'll never have. So I'm glad that you're doing the work that you do. But so water rights is the lion's share of the real assets in your Alternative Assets fund, but there are some other real assets there. Can you talk about what are the other real assets? And if you have an explanation similar to water rights where you can share some of your insight, that would be great. 

Dania Zinurova: [00:09:33] Look, the, you know, water rights is is quite a significant part of the portfolio. And it will be rebalanced down the line because as a portfolio manager, I do want to see more diversification. When I look at the income returns, when I look at the growth opportunities before I go into what's in the portfolio, I just wanted to say that when I think about portfolio construction, I think about this in a very holistic way. So I have a very broad mandate, alternative asset classes. It's a huge opportunity set. I don't set strategic asset allocation. Targets and say, okay, 25% of the portfolio needs to be invested in private equity, 13 infrastructure, etc., etc.. I think about this as a total portfolio construction approach where my decisions are driven mainly by macro economic fundamentals and the long term megatrends. In other words, when I think about investing in something like infrastructure, this is a very illiquid investment and you as an investor would be locked in for ten, 15 years, sometimes longer. In other words, I need to have a very long term view on what are there any strong tailwinds, what are those strong tailwinds, what are the macro fundamentals? So may follows those four megatrends. One is digitalisation. Another is climate change. Third one is growing ageing population and finally increasing demand for food. And within those megatrends I'm looking at private equity, real estate, infrastructure, etc., etc. The rest of the portfolio outside of REITs is invested in private equity, which includes venture capital, private equity growth, mid-market buyout. We have infrastructure, we're committed capital to infrastructure and this capital will be deployed this year. So we will get exposure to a well diversified portfolio of infrastructure assets in Australia that would include transport, renewable energy, some digital infrastructure and other sectors. We have real estate within real estate. There are also different strategies in different sectors, for example, industrial healthcare, commercial property and they would be all slightly different risk, return, profile, some of them mature assets, some of them with development potential. Within real assets, we also have exposure to agriculture and this includes a variety of assets such as apple orchards or apple storage and packaging facility, grain milling facility. We have vineyards, we have citrus orchard. So pretty well diversified by crop, well diversified in terms of where the asset is in the supply chain and also by geography within Australia. 

Bryce: [00:12:47] Well, Dania, you mentioned private equity there, so let's turn our attention to that. The next largest portion in the portfolio is the private equity portion of about 26%. So just like we asked, why water riots? Why is private equity such an important part of the portfolio?

Dania Zinurova: [00:13:05] Look, private equity is to some extent very similar to public equity, i.e. when we look at the investment returns, the key risk premium is equity risk premia that drives the return. But once we start looking deeper, we'll look at other benefits like illiquidity premium. So the fact that we as investors invest in illiquid assets or in businesses that will need 5 to 7 years before we can realise the value means that as an investor you can expect the premium versus when you invest in public equities within private equity, we can also achieve some diversification benefits in terms of getting access to businesses or sectors that wouldn't otherwise be available on public equity markets. And we saw in the past that some of the companies like Uber and Spotify initially, they you know, they didn't go to IPO, they didn't do IPO. They raised all the capital from private sources. And so if you are predominantly public equity investor, you will be missing on those exciting growth opportunities. And private equity is an asset class that also would be less volatile than public equities. So when we look at the equity markets now, you know, I talk to my colleagues and they wake up in the morning, they look at the market and they get some trust happening. I come to the office, you know, I start my day with reading some research papers. I don't stress about the market because valuations hardly change year to year in private equity. Independent external valuations are done on the assets most of the time only annually. So as investor, you take a long term view, you don't see the. Daily volatility, a daily change in the value. So for the investment portfolio, it's definitely beneficial to have this type of diversification. 

Alec: [00:15:21] So one thing Bryce and I often talk about when we talk about private equity is just the amount of money flooding into the space. I think, you know, it's multi trillions of dollars in the last few years have been reallocated to the space and we often wonder when does it get too crowded? Because if a fund is giving a private equity player that money, they expect that money to be deployed. How do you think about that dynamic of the opportunity set in private equity and the amount of money chasing it? 

Dania Zinurova: [00:15:50] You are absolutely right. Look, I think some of the figures that I saw over the past few years, we accumulated about 14 billion in dry powder. In other words, the capital that is ready to be deployed, and that comes from private equity and venture capital, because venture capital in Australia is now booming as well, with some people saying we are like the next Silicon Valley. The history is that pre GFC Australian market had about 30 to 45 private equity players for the GFC. When you look over the period of 2008 to let's say 2018, there were about ten private equity players who would predominantly serve Asian institutional investors. Wholesale or retail investors in Australia had big challenges to access those asset classes. In fact, even some institutional investors in Australia couldn't access them because the capacity was limited. Now the market itself, when we look at the opportunity set, how much capital we can invest, can easily absorb 15, 15 billion or more over the period of 12 to 24 months because Australia, an Australian economy and when we look at the gap, there is a significant portion of GDP driven by small to midsize businesses and this is often where private equity operates in the space when we think about private equity growth or venture capital. There needs to be a bit more analysis rather than just saying there is a lot of capital chasing private equity. It is true. But the market is also evolving, with more private equity players coming, creating more competition. Healthy competition. The market or the valuations in the private equity in Australia, they are within their historical levels. So I don't see that the market is really overvalued and in terms of the different types of strategies investors can also choose, and that means that capital will not be deployed all into one strategy but will be spread. So you can look at venture, we've talked about this, you can look at private equity growth, you can look at mid-market buyout, large market buyout. We can look at special situations, turn around transformation strategies. The opportunity set is there and I am really glad that there are more names coming to the market. There are structural changes. You know, generational shifts happening within private equity industry is a really exciting asset class to be in in Australia right now. 

Bryce: [00:18:46] We keep hearing that from a lot of experts but it's like, damn, we can't get in there. 

Alec: [00:18:52] Well, we can go through funds like we can.

Bryce: [00:18:56] So down here with the big players now pretty active here in Australia Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle, etc., how, how do the smaller players, the Australian firms, how they actually really compete, pitch themselves to, to Yeah. Be competitive in this space. 

Dania Zinurova: [00:19:12] Yeah, they, they don't, they don't compete back home. They don't compete because the likes of KKR and Blackstone and others, they operate in a very different space. They would operate at the larger end of the market because there just wouldn't be enough capacity. If they start considering mid-market. Yeah, they would be doing one or two deals per year because in the Australian market it's not like the US, it's not like Asia. There are just not enough deals for them to be very active. Many of them actually did have teams on the ground in the past, but over time it kind of, you know, relocated more to Hong Kong, Singapore, and they would do fly in, fly out larger deals in the Australian market from the local private equity players perspective. Who would be their main competitors now? Outside the local market. It might be that some of the mid-market buyout global fund manager would come and have a look at the Australian market from time to time. But really they are not facing that much pressure from international players like the US or European market. 

Alec: [00:20:34] So we've mentioned, you mentioned a few different, I guess categories of private equity there and one that is probably the the sexiest part of that is venture capital. Like everyone wants to be a venture capitalist or be a Start-Up that's funded by a venture capital firm these days. How do you when you look at the Australian venture capital market, what do you what are you saying? You know, it feels like there's again, a lot of money in the system. But yeah, from your vantage point, how does it look? 

Dania Zinurova: [00:21:04] There is a lot of money. It's a good it's a good comment. It is relative, though. It's like a lot of money relative to what? Like if we compare it to the US market, it's a drop in the ocean. If we compare it to ten years ago, it's a huge growth for the Australian market and it's very exciting because obviously venture capital investors, they are very important in terms of supporting local entrepreneurialism, supporting local businesses and growing them. Venture capital is not for everyone. When you think about investors, you would need to think about your tolerance of risk and you would need to think about your overall return objective and what type of risk adjusted returns you expect to get from the asset class in 5 to 10 years. Because when we look at a typical venture capital portfolio, we would see ten plus businesses, ideally more than ten, 20 or more. And it's very skewed in terms of the losers and winners. It's typical to have 70% of your portfolio as losers and then 20 to 30 team as winners. So, you know, you have to have like strong nerves, invest in this asset class, but it does have very strong return potential. You would expect to receive excess return over equity markets. What is important to understand, though, we had or we've seen pretty strong returns from venture capital, also because the equity market has been so strong, because IPO is one of the key exit strategy for venture capital investors. So there is heavy reliance on how the equity market is going.

Alec: [00:23:10] I think we've seen that recently. I think Instacart cut their own valuation as they're preparing for an IPO. I think, Bryce, you were saying that one of Canada's big investors out there holding value of Canva. Yeah. So we are starting to say that the weakness in the markets, yeah. 

Dania Zinurova: [00:23:26] They should have they should have IPO had less. 

Alec: [00:23:30] Choice so he's decided hindsight. 

Bryce: [00:23:34] So down here before we turn to have a chat about the the other assets that make up the portfolio. We're just going to take a very short break to hear from our sponsors. We've spoken about real assets. We've spoken about private equity. So the remaining assets that make up your portfolio, real estate and cash real estate is about 6%. Cash, 27%. Let's start with real estate. What are you interested in in this space? How are you saying it at the moment? 

Dania Zinurova: [00:24:01] Real estate has been one of the key asset classes for Australian investors. Honestly, you'd look at any price for the folio. Yeah.

Bryce: [00:24:13] Sorry. It's all right. I was going to make a stupid joke.

Alec: [00:24:17] Carry on.

Dania Zinurova: [00:24:18] But, you know, it's interesting because real estate, we don't just talk about office sector, industrial retail. You also think about hospitality, student housing, health care. You think about logistics. You think about residential aged care like it's on its own. It's such a fascinating asset class. And again, within that asset class, as an investor, you may want to consider, do I want to take on additional risk because I need excess returns or am I just interested in an income return if it's income return and some diversification benefits, inflation, hedge, which is natural inflation hedge within real estate, then you would be considering core real estate strategies. So we are talking about mature or established office buildings or prime regional shopping centres or high quality logistics, you know, assets that Goodman develops. These are the assets that you would invest in and you lease to the tenants most of the time. Leases would be linked to CPI on the annual basis, and you would be getting those fairly stable income returns over time, potentially some capital appreciation as the cap rate compresses over time, fairly, you know, low risk, moderate return strategy. Now the strategies that are more opportunistic are the ones where you take one development risk or some operational risk. Currently in Australia for a look at the core, real estate is really tricky to make a call because office as a sector is still goes through transformational changes. I mean, you guys rent your office space, some office assets in Sydney, they are struggling to attract new tenants because we see high quality new assets coming to the market like key towers or Barangaroo and others. And the incentives are getting to the historically high level at about 40% for the tenants, which to me this are all the signs this sector might be experiencing, experiencing some challenges at the moment. So long term, probably not a great idea to go in. Now, retail is a you know, is a new story. We'll probably can make a separate episode on retail because once the US retail about four or five years ago started experiencing challenges, I started asking property managers here and everyone was in absolute denial that we are not going to be impacted by online retail and then COVID hits and all this accelerates all those trends. And now online retail is at the centre of attention for retail sector. The most interesting now I'm going to cut myself short. The most interesting now is the last mile logistics. And that's because, you know, there needs to be more assets to serve online retailers. So new are distribution centres that are flexible, that are closer to urban centres because more traditional industrial assets that tend to be next to the airports or ports and it just doesn't work for online retailers. So that's a really interesting sector to be something like health care, real estate. Amazing because we are talking about increasing demand for health care services. So investing in healthcare, real estate is a very good way to place this theme over the long term. It's a very good way to get a more stable income compared to other sectors like office or retail. Most of the time leases would be triple net leases. They would have fixed annual increases for good assets. You'd have tenants like Ramsay and healthy, so good quality tenants as well. 

Alec: [00:28:34] I want to go to residential real estate because so many people in the Equity Mates community ask why there isn't a residential real estate. On list on the ASX and I actually don't have a good answer, but my response is always, do you want more buying pressure in the residential market? Yeah. But I have read that recently in the U.S. some of the private equity players are getting into residential. Do you expect Australia to follow suit? Do you expect Australian players to start buying residential as well? 

Dania Zinurova: [00:29:05] Yeah, I've been expecting this for the last five years. In fact, there were some large US players. By the way, U.S. market is very mature in that space. The concept of multi housing is very familiar concept for the US investors, for Australian investors. It's a much newer concept. Some of them, they did come to Australia and started establishing teams about five years ago but then they just saw they would need institutional backing in terms of the volume of capital in order to launch their strategies and institutional investors here. They were not there yet in terms of including it into their portfolio. I think there are also, you know, deeper reasons why it is not happening in terms of in terms of the investment in this sector, because so many Australians, like it's a very similar market to Germany where so many people they want to own, they want to own. So individually. When you think about yourself as an investor, right, you're a private investor and you think where to invest next. You might already have your mortgage. 

Alec: [00:30:25] I wish. 

Dania Zinurova: [00:30:25] Why you will. Why would you want to invest additional capital in residential? You are already exposed to the sector. 

Alec: [00:30:39] And given the size of mortgages these days, it's getting out of your portfolio. 

Dania Zinurova: [00:30:44] Yes. But look, I do think this sector will have a place. You know, maybe we are talking about something like 3 to 5 years time when we can sit down again and say, okay, what's happening in this sector? 

Alec: [00:30:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, hopefully they wait and don't add any more buyers to the market, at least until Bryce and I are in the property market. 

Bryce: [00:31:07] Yeah, it's a catch 22, isn't it? Because having access to an ETF now you're just seeing all the headlines of what could have been if you own a house. 

Alec: [00:31:15] But yeah, getting access to. 

Bryce: [00:31:16] Getting access to that price movement. But then also, yeah, you don't want more people in there just splashing cash around. Yeah. Yeah. So, Daniaiel, let's turn to the cash component. 27% cash holding inflation on a tear. Interest rates about to rise. It feels like a pretty big percentage. Does this indicate that you're bearish in the short term and you're keeping some dry powder on the sidelines to take advantage of what might be coming? Or is there another reason that you're holding 27% cash? 

Dania Zinurova: [00:31:46] There is another reason I'm holding a little cash within our portfolio. First of all, the portfolio I had when when we started managing the portfolio, the portfolio had about 25% of cash. I started making new commitments, taking into account that level of cash. When we look at the structure of the portfolio, it's structured as listed investment company. So it's a closed pool of capital, perpetual pool of capital. And I look at the cash flows in and out over longer periods of time. So most of the illiquid investments in the portfolio, they were made in 20 1617, what they call vintage year, which means from last year, 2021, 2020 to 2023, I expect all those investments will be exited and the capital will be coming back at the same time. I started making last year new commitments to new investments, so we've committed capital to health care, real estate, infrastructure strategy, mid-market buyout, last mile, logistics. There will be more strategies coming. But when we talk about investing in alternative asset class, it doesn't mean that you can meet the capital. And from day one, this capital is fully deployed, right? You as an investor have to be patient, waiting for your investment partner to gradually deploy this capital into new investments. And you don't want this actually to happen in one go. You want it to be a very disciplined and, you know, patient approach. So W May portfolio is currently going through what we referred to the revitalise. Its portfolio rebalancing its portfolio exiting 20 1617 vintage year. Reinvesting the capital into new investment opportunities. Over these period, the level of cash would be slightly going up and down, up and down. So this will be, I expect, for the next 12 to 18, maybe 24 months. And what I am looking at as options to potentially help with this uncertainty in the timing in terms of the exits and new commitments is to have some new asset classes, such as private debt who have more liquidity. They don't have lock in for 5 to 7 years. At the same time, this is yielding investment opportunities and potentially having this investment also as a Treasury tool to manage this high level of cash. So I'm looking at different options. How to manage it. It is not my intention to hold that high level of cash within the portfolio or long term makes sense. 

Alec: [00:34:50] It's a fascinating challenge. You know, we often speak to public market investors about portfolio construction, and that conversation is really about portfolio weighting. But you have a whole other dynamic, which is portfolio timing. Yeah, I guess pricing I don't really have to think about because we don't have access to your opportunity set, but it sounds like a real challenge and I imagine there are moments where, you know, you start to like when the timing doesn't work and you have to not swing at certain pitches because you don't have the cash or you don't have the liquidity there. 

Dania Zinurova: [00:35:21] Yes. That's you know, that's why I do see it as a portfolio where we'll look in five years time and there would be like 5% of cash because that's exactly the point. Those opportunities, they come sporadically. Right. Tomorrow someone might call me and say, look, we are launching this or there is this deal available and it would turn out a stellar deal. And I don't want to miss this opportunity. So it's always wise in this type of portfolios to have some level of cash. When you look at some other similar portfolios that, you know, institutional investors manage, they would often use what they call a proxy within their portfolio. So instead of just having it in cash, they would, for example, invest in global listed infrastructure, global listed real estate and use it as a proxy for the unlisted and then gradually deploy from the from that allocation into unlisted. So different approaches available.

Alec: [00:36:29] Okay. That's fascinating. 

Bryce: [00:36:30] Absolutely fascinating. Unfortunately, we are almost at the end of our interview down here. But as Rand said, fascinating. I think we could have kept talking about this for another 45 minutes. And the good news is you will be talking about it more at the ASX Investor Day. So if you've enjoyed our conversation with Donnie today, you can see her at the ASX Investor Day in Brisbane on the 14th of May, in Melbourne on the 21st of May and then Sydney on the 28th of May. So head to the ASX website to grab your tickets and and come along to. To listen to more of this fascinating conversation. But we do finish our interviews with three final questions that we ask everyone. They're not scary or hairy. 

Alec: [00:37:09] Right. And you want to click it out. Yes. So the first question we like to ask, do you have any books that you consider a must read?

Dania Zinurova: [00:37:18] Look, I would say Ray Dalio's principles is a must read. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:37:23] Definitely book. Right. Investor this second question, forget valuation or you know, is it a good investment today or has it ever been a good investment? But just purely on company fundamentals, what's the best company you've ever come across? 

Dania Zinurova: [00:37:42] Dangerous questions. I'll get into this. Right? Oh, it's so there is one company or I would say one business that really fascinates me and in particular the strategy they run and manage. It's the fund manager called Equilibrium. They're based in the U.S. and one of their strategies is called Controlled Environment Food Fund. They would invest in industrial scale greenhouses. And we are talking about, you know, the size of 23 or more acres of land. They will ensure that a greenhouse is fully sustainable by using only renewable energy, by recycling the water, no use of fertilisers, much about the labour conditions, by raising the beds. Phenomenal technology use. And once it's ready, they would lease it to an operator without taking on operational risk and basically grow their portfolio across various crops, across various geographies. This this has been very popular in Europe. The US market was really behind on that front and that particular fund manager, they've been really successful in implementing the strategy, growing the market, helping the market really develop and get up to speed. What does it mean when we talk about sustainable agriculture? But at the same time, if you think about the Australian market, weather conditions are the main challenges for the agriculture sector. You're right, weather is so volatile, have bushfires, we have flooding, we have we use lots of pesticides, we use lots of fertilisers. Now if this model can be implemented successfully in Australia, I really think it can be a breakthrough and complete turnaround for the agriculture industry here. So I just really, you know, when I think about what what stories that you think are really success stories, I think that's just such a fascinating story because, you know, climate change is really important for investors in alternative asset classes. Right? We invest for long term period. We want to ensure when it's time to exit those assets, they still have value and they made a positive impact on the communities, on the society, on the environment. And this strategy just, you know, ticks all the boxes for me.

Alec: [00:40:33] I love that. I love this question because we always hear about new companies or new funds that we haven't heard about before. And this is a great example of that. It reminds me I used to be at Coles before we were doing this full time and Sandrock Farms down in South Australia is a company doing something similar. They took non arable land, just land that they couldn't grow anything on and similar built greenhouses, all solar panel built built their own desalination plant to, you know, use salt water and Coles was just like over the moon with it. It was our best time. It was on our marketing material, it was everywhere. But it's a really cool story and hopefully we see more of it.

Dania Zinurova: [00:41:13] I hope so. 

Alec: [00:41:16] And so final question, we want to say a massive thank you, first of all, for sharing your insight. So it's been a really great conversation. If you think back to your early days in finance starting out, what advice would you give to your youngest self?

Dania Zinurova: [00:41:32] Oh gosh, you know, I would just say be fearless. Like everything works out eventually in life, you know, take on risk, learn new things, learn new sectors, worry less, and yeah just be fearless. 

Alec: [00:41:55] Love that nice. 

Bryce: [00:41:56] One of our values here at Equity Mates be fearless are a great way to close out the interview. Dania, as we said, truly fascinating interview. I think we could have we would have loved to have keep talking, but we're looking forward to seeing you in Sydney at the ASX Investor Day and thank you so much for sharing your time today. It's been a truly inspiring conversation that I know a lot of our audience would have enjoyed. So thank you very much. 

Dania Zinurova: [00:42:19] My pleasure. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks.