ASX : AGM addresses by the Chairman and the Managing Director and CEO

30 September 2020
Australian Securities and Investments Commission	ASX Market Announcements Office
Mr Nathan Bourne	ASX Limited
Senior Executive Leader, Market Infrastructure	20 Bridge Street
Level 5, 100 Market Street	SYDNEY NSW 2000
SYDNEY NSW 2000

AGM ADDRESSES BY THE CHAIRMAN AND THE MANAGING DIRECTOR AND CEO

Attached is a copy of the addresses to be given by the Chairman and the Managing Director and CEO at ASX Limited's Annual General Meeting today.

Release of market announcement authorised by:

Daniel Csillag

Company Secretary

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20 Bridge Street

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ASX Limited 2020 Annual General Meeting

Chairman and CEO Addresses

30 September 2020

(Check against delivery)

Let us now move to a discussion of ASX's performance in FY20.

Performance overview

Fellow shareholders, no one needs reminding about the extraordinary challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic this year. As a community, we are continuing to grapple with them. We sincerely hope you, and your family and friends, remain safe and well.

ASX delivered a strong result for the period, particularly given the challenges in the latter part of the financial year. Our core businesses performed well, generating solid underlying profit growth. And our critical systems proved resilient, helping to keep our markets open and available. This allowed ASX to manage the periods of record volatility and volumes.

This achievement reflects the strength of ASX's diversified business model and the investments we've made to fortify our risk and technology foundations. It is also a credit to the skill and hard work of our people, who maintained ASX's operational integrity, even as up to 95% of them were working from home. This gives comfort to me and the Board that ASX's culture is healthy.

On your behalf, I congratulate our people, and I thank our customers. And on behalf of ASX, I thank you, our shareholders, for your support during this strangest of years.

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Turning to FY20 financial highlights … our statutory net profit after tax grew 1.4% to over $498 million - up $6.6 million year on year. And underlying net profit after tax rose 4.4% to almost $514 million - up nearly $22 million. This was driven by strong revenue growth.

Earnings before interest and tax were more than $652 million - up 8.5% on last year.

Earnings per share grew for the eighth year in a row. Statutory EPS was up 1.4% to more than $2.57, and underlying EPS was up 4.4% to over $2.65.

Our dividend for the second half was more than $1.22 per share, fully franked. This brought total ordinary dividends (interim and final) for the year to almost $2.39 per share, up 4.5% from last year. This is the seventh consecutive year of higher total ordinary dividends and represents 90% of underlying profit. The final dividend is paid today.

Dom will provide more detail about ASX's business performance for the year shortly. He'll also update you on some of the company's major projects and our customer-focused,technology-driven strategy.

Building an exchange for the future

Central to ASX's strategy and to creating long-term value for our stakeholders is the level of trust in our actions. Sustaining that trust is something we work at every day. It's something the Board closely monitors.

To that end, an important development during the year was the update to our sustainability framework. The new framework sharpens our focus on how we create long-term value for all our stakeholders. It links our activities to manage ASX's non-financial risks, operate as a responsible corporate citizen and influence our external environment. It includes operating infrastructure that's resilient and providing markets that are efficient. Binding them together is a high level of trust in our actions.

• Trust extends to the relationship we have with our people: they told us during the height of the pandemic that they generally felt comfortable and connected, well informed and safe. Their wellbeing remains our primary concern.
• Trust includes how we respond to our customers impacted by COVID-19: for our customers we variously offered fee relief, eased resourcing pressures and provided temporary rule flexibility to deal with capital raising needs.
• Trust is vital to the important economic role exchanges like ASX play: having resilient operations and keeping our markets open supports price discovery, capital allocation and risk transfer. These are critical in periods of uncertainty and high volatility.
• Trust underpins the cooperation we have with our regulators, particularly ASIC and the RBA: we work closely with our regulators, and not just during the crisis, on a range of measures to maintain the market's efficiency, stability and integrity.
• Trust, resilience and efficiency all apply to the way we develop products and services to meet the market's needs: on this point, I want to touch on the best-known project we're working on - the CHESS replacement project.

As shareholders know, ASX has been working on this project for several years. The business case is straight-forward: we're replacing a system that's more than 25 years old - just like we have done with the equities and futures trading

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systems in recent years, and which we will continue to do with other systems when required. Importantly, CHESS replacement is being funded through our own capital expenditure program. In fact, we have made it clear we will not increase fees for the CHESS services we currently provide when the upgrade is delivered. And we hope to see the digitising of CHESS statements and other benefits flow as soon as possible.

The volume and volatility challenges experienced during the COVID-19 period imposed strains on back offices of most market participants and others across the industry. That's why installing the next generation of technology to support the digitisation of Australia's equity market is a priority.

As you would expect, ASX has a governance framework in place to replace CHESS in a safe and timely way. This includes our own Board, committee and audit processes. The project is subject to the extensive oversight and scrutiny from our regulators. We receive valuable input from multiple industry and customer-based forums. And numerous independent reviews are conducted on different aspects of the project. We have many years of experience replacing our core systems. Ultimately, as the licensed operator of the clearing and settlement facilities, ASX is responsible for replacing CHESS. The obligation is ours and will not be outsourced or delegated.

We will do our best to listen to and consult with all of our stakeholders. That's been a hallmark of the project from day one. It's a complex undertaking, and we are mindful that there will be competing interests and different perspectives. We have heard and understood the diverse views of CHESS users, and we are acting on their feedback. It will take time to get right. And we are learning along the way.

I believe ASX can be trusted to deliver a system with the capabilities to serve the market for the next decade and beyond. A system that will place Australia's financial markets at the forefront of technological innovation.

CHESS attracts most of the headlines but it's by no means the only ASX project of significance. There is an extensive range of other initiatives, many of which have been, or shortly will be, delivered. I'll leave it to Dom to elaborate shortly. Like CHESS, they are about ASX's work to build an exchange for the future.

Board skills and experience

Turning to Board matters … quality leadership is always critical. Never more so than during a crisis.

We work hard to ensure the ASX Board has the right mix of skills, diversity and experience. This proved invaluable as 2020 unfolded.

In January, we welcomed Rob Woods to the Board. Rob has over 30 years' experience in financial markets. This includes a deep understanding of ASX's businesses and regulatory obligations, having served on our clearing and settlement boards. Rob is standing for election at this meeting.

Seeking re-election today is Damian Roche, who has been a director since 2014. Rob and Damian will speak in support of their candidacy shortly. Both candidates are unanimously endorsed by the Board.

Also unanimously endorsed is our gratitude to Peter Warne, who is retiring from the Board at the end of this AGM after 14 years' service. Peter joined the Board in July 2006 following the merger with the Sydney Futures Exchange. His contribution has been enormous. We thank him for his wisdom, expertise and dedication, and wish him the best for the future.

Conclusion

This year has been more complex than most. The next year could be equally testing. I am confident ASX, including its Board and Management team, is well prepared to deal with the challenges and to capitalise on the opportunities.

Having a reliable, well-capitalised and trusted company at the heart of Australia's financial markets has never been more important.

I thank my fellow directors for their continued commitment and congratulate all our people for their hard work over the last 12 months.

Finally, I also express my gratitude to you, our loyal shareholders.

I now invite Dominic Stevens to address the AGM.

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