Cambridge Nutritional Sciences (LSE:CNSL) — Interim Results

0:01 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Omega Diagnostics Group Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab. Just situated on the right hand corner of your screen, type in your questions at any time and press send. Company will not be in a position to answer every question given the attendance on today's call. However, the company will review your questions today and we'll publish any responses on the Investor Meet platform. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company will be most grateful for your participation.

0:31 And I'll now like to hand over to Jack Graw, CEO. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mark, for the introduction, and and good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us this afternoon for our interim results presentation.

0:45 My name is Jack Gruel. I'm the chief exec of Omega Diagnostics. I've been with the company for about eleven and a half years, previously in commercial roles and Natalie, managing director of the health and nutrition business. I've been in diagnostics for quite some time. I'm passionate about diagnostics and the role that it has to play in health care.

1:07 And I'm Chris Lee. I'm the CFO. I joined the business about fifteen months or so ago. This is my third, English company. Most of my time over the last year or so has been dealing with primarily the global health division and the cost base in Alba to get us to the position where we find ourselves today.

1:27 Okay. So we'll head straight into the results presentation, and then we'll take questions at the end of the presentation. So brief introduction. We're aware that many of you online will be familiar with Advocate Diagnostics, but there may be some of you who will be less familiar with the business. So a little introduction to the business, and really outlining a new vision and strategy for the company. And as it is results presentation, there will be first half operational and financial highlights, a core business summary, and more importantly, a go forward growth strategy for the organization. So for those who aren't aware, now as we stand today as a company, we are focused in one single area, and that is diagnostics around personalized nutrition and identifying issues around gut health. And then, really, this area now, is a very important area in the area of medicine.

2:28 It's largely responsible for incredible range of chronic inflammatory diseases all around the world. We are a leader in health and nutrition testing, primarily based around food sensitivity. And as I'm sure you're all aware, we discontinued over this year our global health business via divestment of a number of loss making divisions. That said, even though they were discontinued, it was important to find particularly one particular product, which is our c d four product, a new home, under which it could flourish and ensure that it could deliver really important diagnostics for HIV patients in lower middle income countries.

3:14 And we're very pleased to to report that we did find it at home, in the prior half year and successfully you know, hopefully, that product line will flourish under new management.

3:28 And just as a recap in terms of the business that we have today and our sole focus is in around health and wellness testing centered around gut health, our typical customers are everything from government hospitals, clinical laboratories, reference lab, commercial labs, but ultimately through to nutritionists and naturopaths who would be our health care professionals, who are then treating, health care consumers who either suffering from chronic long term inflammatory conditions or those wishing to maintain health and wellness. It's a business that's been with us for a long time. We have a leadership position now in over 85 countries globally.

4:13 And it's a business that's grown, over the last couple of years, and we certainly believe has huge opportunities for growth going forward.

4:26 Our products and our product brands in the marketplace are centered around these four principal areas. Food detective is a an entry level, in clinic point of care test that can identify antibody reactions to 59 common foods, just in forty minutes. So a very simple test that can be run, at a point of care or near patient testing setting. Our prime product for laboratories is our food prep system. This is a microarray based system which allows, reactions to be measured and quantified for over 220 different foods of just a couple of drops of blood from a finger prick, allowing a much greater, and better patient experience, as well as a novel technology that's currently trusted by over a 150 labs, worldwide.

5:22 We also sell food ELYSRs, so they are basic laboratory tools, that allow smaller panels of foods to be tested. And here in The UK, we are direct, as opposed to the rest of the world where we sell through a distribution model. But in The UK, we have our own testing laboratory, CNSLab, that services health care professionals, primarily nutritional therapists, and their customers and their patients, here in the country.

5:54 In terms of key highlights, for the business, as I said before, the business now is centered in one core area of health and nutrition. In the past, we've been distracted, in chasing other technologies and other markets. But after a year of restructuring and quite a lot of change for a company, we're now focused in this one core area. K. The the big event really for us during the course of the first half was the conclusion of the sale of our c d four business. We put this up for sale in March. We had a number of offers for the business, and we managed to conclude the transaction with Accubio, who you may recall acquired the Alpha site from us back in March for a a a consideration of roundabout £6,300,000.

6:42 So that's roughly 1,300,000 for the fixed assets and the inventory, 4,000,000 for the intellectual property, and a trailing royalty cap of £1,000,000 over the next four years. That sale, combined with the equity fundraise that we concluded in May and June, significantly strengthened the balance sheet. So when the cash proceeds come through from Acubio, in the next twenty four hours or so. We'll be sitting with around about £6,500,000 in the bank, a little bit of a lease finance of about 400,000 against some of the fixed assets, but essentially a much stronger balance sheet than where we where we started the year. In addition, when we were, talking to investors at the beginning of the year, we recognized the need to align management management incentives along with, shareholders and put in place a new long term incentive plan for senior management, but also a share incentive plan, which allows all employees within the business to participate in the in, investing in Omega shares.

7:46 We've also been working behind the scenes in strengthening our core business. So one core area that we've worked on, demanded by our laboratory customers in particular, is, automating the food print assay itself. The food print assay is a manual technique using our microarray in clinical labs. We're very pleased to report that we've validated, a piece of automation, an automatic robotic liquid handler that automates the assay, which allows, for greater volumes, in larger labs being conducted much more efficiently. And in recent weeks, as part of our menu expansion, program as well, we've signed heads of terms with two separate providers for microbiome and nutrigenomics testing, which expands our basket of goods into our existing leadership, mature sales channels all around the world.

8:47 K. So on to the first half results. As a reminder, these results represent the, the p and l for our continuing business, so our health and nutrition division as well as plus our corporate central costs. The dis the global health business is treated as discontinued operations, and that features the the line at the bottom. Our existing business, sales were 3,400,000, down from where we found 4,200,000 in the first half of last year, impacted by a number of events. Firstly, we had to reformulate our product under new regulations to remove a particular component called Triton x 100. That required us to reregister the product in certain jurisdictions to be able to make sales, and that has had an impact in terms of the timing of our deliveries to customers with the reregistration only really beginning in June this year.

9:45 Secondly, we've seen some, some phasing issues in terms of some of the orders that we've received from a couple of our large customers, primarily footprint customers in The UAE and Canada. And I'll talk about that a little bit later on in terms of what we're doing to bring to bring that back in terms of the second half of this year. The margin has fallen from 64 to 54%, in part because we've got a mix change going on where we have sold proportionately less of footprint, a higher margin product, and more food detective in the overall mix. So that's had an impact in terms of the blended margin. And also what we've seen is operational inefficiency, if you like, in direct labor, where we've had relatively low sales volumes compared to normal in the first half, and we've seen a higher labor content as a proportion of of cost as as a consequence of that.

10:35 We've also broken down the business between the health and nutrition business on its on its own and the central cost. The health and nutrition division itself has made an EBITDA around about 250,000, and the central cost around about $4.50 for the first half of the year. And, obviously, reducing those costs is work in progress as you can as you can imagine. Our c d four business lost 9,900,000 last year. We continue to operate that business for the first four months to the end of July when we completed the sale, and that business lost $1,400,000 in the first half. You will probably see some further adjustments coming through to that in the second half of the year as we close out the ledgers, collect the receivables, pay all the suppliers out and unwind all the accruals for that particular business.

11:21 Overall, though, from an EBITDA perspective, our forecast for 2023 remains unchanged at EBITDA breakeven, and we're confident in our sales before sales projections and our cost forecasts in order to be able to deliver that. So just summarizing some of those KPIs, sales down 18%, 4.2 to 3.4, the margin down 64 to 54. And what we have seen the month of September, for example, on that operational gearing point is when we have had high levels of sales, the margin has significantly improved. So in September, for example, with higher revenues, our margin was over 65% in that particular month. Overall adjusted EBITDA, you will see Health and Nutrition, as I said, 50 corporate costs, 50 giving us a net negative 200,000 or thereabouts at the group level.

12:18 On our regional sales, we're delighted to see The UK sales, from our CNSLIB increased by 68%. We've signed up a 134 new practitioner accounts. It was a real expansion into driven by our UK sales team. We've also moved into running a series of webinars with the likes of sports science and football clubs, etcetera, to be able which which is starting to get more involved in this particular technology.

12:45 The product changes in May 2022 have impacted the phasing of some of the customer orders, and we've seen that in particularly The UAE and Canada, which are the two main, shortfalls in terms of first half year on year. And we've we've started to see that renewing in the second half with orders starting to come through, and the Triton delays in terms of the product reregistration starting to unwind.

13:11 We said that FY '23 will be h two weighted. This is not new news. This is something that we we informed investors about when we put the year end results out in early September, and we reaffirmed when we put the trading update out at the timing of the AGM. Just for the for the record, just showing that the sales trend in terms of our two core products, our footprint and our food detective sales. And as you can see there, the mix effect that's had the impact on margin with food print down 24, but food detective, the lower margin product, only down by 4%. So that certainly had an impact in terms of the blended margin that we've realized in the first half. One important point to raise, we have put prices up with effect from the beginning of November.

14:01 So there was a three month lag in terms of our contracts before before we could actually implement a price rise that was notified a number of months ago. And now we're starting to see 4% price rise coming through in terms of our sales for the second half of the year.

14:20 In terms of c d four, we ran a competitive sales process. We had, I think, three bids overall. The best bid by far was the bid from Acubio. Accubio were the acquirers of our Alva site back in February, and they had a slightly competitive advantage insofar as they didn't need to relocate the product into a new facility and go through the reregistration process for the product in a new facility under the WHO regulations. We sold the business for $6.6300000, 1.3 for fixed assets and inventory that was received in early August and 4,000,000 for intellectual property. That money was, was authorized to be released by Accubio to Omega yesterday, and we're just waiting for that money to hit the bank.

15:11 The 4,000,000 was contingent on the successful outcome of a clinical study in Kenya. That study concluded in September. The performance of the of the test was as we expected. There was a slight issue raised around suggestions for improvements in the leaflet that goes in the box for the test, but very much feeling like that was raising something for raising something's sake. So the WHO are very happy with the product. Accubio are very happy with the product and are not willing to wait for the WHO to conclude their process, and hence, they've authorized the release of the full £4,000,000. At the DHFC, you'll be aware we have been in dispute with the Department of Health since December last year when they first intimated at the end of the contract that they were looking for repayment of the 2,500,000 preproduction payments that they'd made to the business back in the spring spring and early summer twenty twenty one to fund the expansion and the preparedness for manufacturing lateral flow test scale for the Department of Health.

16:18 The company's position remains unchanged. We don't believe there is an obligation for repayment based on our legal advice. The correspondence with the Department of Health is continuing, albeit at a very slow pace. We have yet to receive responses to the questions that we raised back in February concerning their ability to license the necessary intellectual property. The Department of Health was supposed to license the IP, sublicense it to us. We'd make the samples. We'd move to manufacturing, and they never got past first base in terms of negotiating or securing a license for the intellectual property. And they're still choosing not to answer our questions in terms of who they approached, when they knew they couldn't license it, when they claimed to have told us that they couldn't secure the intellectual property in order for the contract to move forward.

17:14 The deferred income balance of 2,500,000 remains on the balance sheet as a liability because there is no mechanism to release that through to profit until such time as the dispute has been resolved. We are not, however, forecasting to cash pay that. We don't believe that will be necessary and certainly not necessary in the near term. I can confirm that the government funded equipment, which is round about 2,500,000 pounds of of government owned equipment that was relocated onto the Alva site, has finally been removed from site. That went in September, about six months after we we requested that it be moved. The company has now, though, advised DHSC of our of our counterclaim. We're we're moving towards mediation.

18:01 Mediation is likely to take place round about February or March 2023. And ahead of that mediation, we have now tabled in principle our counterclaim, which is in excess of £1,000,000 over and above the 2,500,000 that we've already received. We don't intend to go into detail in terms of the basis of this claim or the correspondence going backwards and forwards between the two parties on the basis that we regard that as prejudicial to the discussions that we are having with the Department of Health. But as soon as there is something to advise, we will obviously communicate that to investors. Thank you, Chris. And we need to look forward, really. I think it's probably an understatement to say this year has been extraordinary.

18:49 But when myself and Chris, with the support of the board, took charge at the beginning of this calendar year, we set ourselves a plan to recover the business, to cut losses, and to ensure we had a business that was focused and pointing in the right direction, not chasing technical dreams of markets that we weren't in today, but focused on a market that we already were in, whether we existed in, that we led the market in diagnostics, and there was potential for growth going forward. And some of that growth, I want to outline in the next couple of slides. Our growth opportunities for our health and nutrition business now can really be categorized in three core areas.

19:40 One is organic growth, the next one is geography, and the third one is menu. Organic growth really is doing what we do today, a very successful business model that probably has been underinvested in over the past several years within the organization where other shiny new toys have taken precedence in terms of investment. But we've grown that business on a shoestring, in the past. Now we have a little bit more firepower in our business to support what is a very exciting area in terms of gut health. We believe through our leadership position today and building that scientific education and and brand awareness, we could continue to exploit the growth in gut health testing and personalized nutrition, which is now occupying a lot of health care professionals and health care systems as we grapple with the linkages between gut health and the wellness, which is so important to many populations around the world.

20:44 We're also moving into more of a digital area, and I'll cover that in the next couple of slides, to enhance and differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. And, obviously, we want to automate the food print assay so it's much more convenient and much more efficient for our laboratory customers to run our tests over our competitors' tests. Geographic expansion continues. We're now present in over 85 countries globally. We've been upskilling and addressing vacant markets as well as optimizing and restructuring existing sales channels to increase our sales output in the markets where we felt that was necessary. As Chris said, China is an important market for us and the, Chinese partner for Food Detective that was registered a number of years ago.

21:37 And after two year hiatus, largely down to COVID lockdowns in China as well as a bit of a a lag on adopting a novel technology is now back ordering those kits, and we will ship 50,000 of those units to our customer in our final quarter of this financial year. We also wish to address The US markets, which on its own is the single largest market for, health and well-being and particularly gut health testing. And we believe with our unique selling propositions, coupling our food print system and our app and the other things we do around education and scientific, awareness, we can address that market and differentiate ourselves in that market compared to the competition.

22:29 And then there's the menu aspect as well With existing well equipped sales channels in many countries globally, we're able to add to our basket of goods and add microbiome and nutrigenomics to our customers who are demanding these tests to better manage our patients on a global basis.

22:54 And the first step in that journey is really what we call connecting to the customer. It's the ability using our digital platform, which is an app based system, but so much more, allowing our health care consumers, our patients, as well as our health care professionals around the world to better manage their patients going forward. My HealthTracker, which is now on the Google and Android, and iOS platforms, will be a tool that will sit at the heart of a health care professional's practice in managing their patients going forward. It will allow test results to be uploaded from the chosen laboratory.

23:40 It'll allow them to interact and manage their patients going forward and do so much more for that patient, in the future. We'll be first to market in this segment with a digital platform that will transform that patient experience and, more importantly, those patient outcomes, in the future. We're currently undergoing final beta testing. In fact, myself and Chris have been guinea pigs for this, and have literally bled for the organization to to run the app and the CVAR test results accordingly. And we're hoping to then, once this testing final testing is done, is launched in the New Year starting off in The UK before expanding to other countries.

24:30 As I said, the benefits that this platform brings is not only a digital platform that will allow results to be sent to practitioners and patients, but really, as I said, sits at the heart of a of a clinical practice managing a patient. So that's so important going forward, not only for better patient outcomes, but for better commercial outcomes where we deliver, you know, much more greater satisfaction to ultimately the health care consumer who is spending money for these tests. But more importantly, it gives us a much better handle and much greater visibility on our business at a global level. Today, I can't tell you how many food print tests were run last month in Dubai, for example, and how many of those tests were positive for milk that were linked to symptoms that could be migraines.

25:29 Imagine having that information at our fingertips to better understand our business, not only from a a scientific point of view, but also from a a commercial point of view going forward as well. And what that enables us to do is further differentiate ourselves from the competition and provide a much greater level of value to our customers, retaining our customers, care professionals, and ultimately, consumer, but also being able to increase testing, either repeat testing or additional testing based on an initial set of results that, that are done by that laboratory. So we have a greater and improved customer experience.

26:15 And as you can see with that diagram on the bottom right, we currently operate through multiple layers in different markets. We sit in the middle. We often work with a business partner or distributor in a particular region who would then sell to a laboratory, who would then sell to a health care professional, who would then ultimately work with the consumer, or the patient. And what this allows us to do is slice through those layers, truly understand our business, but more importantly, understand what that consumer is doing and what their purchasing habits are, which allows us in the future potentially to go more direct in key markets, stripping out some of these layers and thus improving margin, in our business going forward.

27:07 And talking about going direct, in more markets, clearly, we previously indicated that we wish to be direct in The US market, arguably the largest, most established market for not only food sensitivity testing, but consumer testing, people that are used to paying out of pocket expenditure for laboratory tests and gut health tests as well. We held back that charge in in that marketplace awaiting for those c d four c d four funds to be received. I think it was a prudent measure to do so. While in the background, we've been teeing up our strategies to enter that market accordingly once funds have been received.

27:54 As I said, China have restarted to order food detective as that market opens back up, and that's a very important market for us, a very large potential market for us going forward. But we've not ignored our core business either. We have new installations of food print systems in various markets, including new territories as well, taking our overall coverage around the world to over 85 countries.

28:27 And as I indicated earlier on, we've been working with a US company called Dynex. They're one of the market leaders in providing the biology automation to clinical labs globally. This is a ubiquitous tool found in most labs, around the world. And what we've done is we've worked with Dynex who have, adjusted their software, and we've then validated this platform to be used with our food print system. So what was previously a manual technique in a lab tying up, labor resource in a clinical laboratory, it can now be automated, allowing for much more efficient processing of our tests and, more importantly, greater volumes of testing, in those very same labs, without a a big impact on turnaround time or operational efficiency.

29:26 And then the as well as the geographic and organic growth, the the menu aspect of things are very important. Our market is demanding greater information around the assessment of gut health. Today, we deal with immune function. That's looking at the reaction of antibodies to a variety of foods that indicates leaky gut syndrome and something wrong with the gut health. But what's also being required, by our health care professional community and our customers is information on the microbiome, which is your gut flora. And microbiome is being discussed and being evaluated. It's a hot topic in medicine. It has a major impact not only on gut health, but many, many chronic inflammatory, conditions globally.

30:18 It's a big massive potential area going forward, and us having a place not only with that, but linking it to the immune function is key going forward.

30:29 You've also got your DNA, something that is very personal to everybody, very unique. People's DNA and and, mutations in genes that are responsible for metabolizing food are also key to understand gut function in a particular individual. And if you combine these three elements together, it really provides a first to market unique, assessment that could be marketed to our customers from an existing base of existing sales channels, providing a very compelling value proposition in the testing industry and, more importantly, differentiating us from the rest of the competition. All of which needs a foundation, to to build on. We've got great potential for growth as a health and nutrition business.

31:25 A business, however, that's been housed in a building. That's the same building that we've been in since Omega acquired the business in 2007, and yet since then, the business has grown tenfold. If you look at the image on the right hand side, it's not all that it appears to be. It looks like a a wonderful new home and building for us to move into, but there are still, a number of unresolved issues with that building and the ability to correct those issues with a lack of funds by the landlord, and the developer. We've appointed surveyors to act on our behalf to identify those remedial remedial works going forward. And at this point in time, following meetings literally this week, it's not certain that these issues can be overcome to our satisfaction.

32:21 What we don't want to take on is a new set of premises that may either commercially hinder us in our growth plans going forward or, arguably more importantly,

32:33 hinder us operationally going forward where if there's a defect in specification in what is a controlled environment for manufacturing medical devices, that could cause us some problems in the future. So with that all in mind, we've been very prudent in terms of looking at the current facility that we're in and extending the lease by two years to June 2025 while we seek to resolve these issues going forward or look at alternative plans to house our business. Because with our growth plans, we certainly need a foundation, of, operations to make sure we meet our future demands in terms of operational capacity.

33:22 So in summary, we have a very different business than we had at the beginning of the calendar year. We're now exclusively focused on personalized nutrition testing. Myself and not just myself and the board, but all of our teams in the company are very excited by this. This is a huge area of interest clinically and medically. Nutrition and gut health is in the news every day. It is linked increasingly to a huge range of chronic inflammatory conditions. And, you know, for the first time, we're growing and investing in a business and not moving into a new market channel that we don't exist today.

34:10 We lead this market today. We have a strong position in this market globally, and we seek to exploit it, through the growth opportunities that I outlined, as well as, the digital aspect. And for the first time in, certainly, my eleven and a half years, I'm not at the wrong end of an overdraft or spread too thinly in investing across a wide wide range of initiatives. We have firepower now, within our bank balance, still awaiting our 4,000,000. But once that comes in, we'll be able to press, our foot on the accelerator and really transform this business into a global leader in gut health testing, targeting new geographies, building out China, and really moving from being a diagnostic manufacturer to actually being a digitally connected service provider that improves patient health through improving their gut health.

35:13 So that's our summary and and the direction of the business we're going in. We're now happy to take some questions. That's great. Jay, Chris, thank you very much indeed for updating investors. Guys, I'm just gonna bring up your cameras. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of the screen. I just want Jay and Chris Jack and Chris take a few moments to review your questions submitted already. I'd like to remind you the recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via your Investor Meet company dashboard. Guys, we received a number of questions from investors ahead of today's meeting, along with a number throughout today's presentation. And given the interest of time, I'll take some of these and and throw these at you if I may. First question reads as follows. What is happening with other, companies that got provided with equipment from the government?

36:02 Surely, you should get together and maybe sue the government collectively. Don't know you can give any comments to that. Alright. I'll I'll I'll take that one. I I I guess in reality, the circumstances of each individual company are slightly different. The contractual positions that each that each company has with the Department of Health will differ from company to company. So whilst we're aware of some of the issues within the industry and some of the people in particularly the COVID space. I don't think there's a direct read across from one company to another, and we're much more interested in being able to resolve our own issue and dispute with the Department of Health to our satisfaction if if than than getting involved in other people's issues, to be perfectly honest. Great. Thank you. A number of questions around really The US opportunity in terms of expansion into The US and perhaps, you know, focus on really when you think that this might happen?

36:56 Yeah. I'll take that one. Thank you, Mark. We we've held off investing in The US. As as I said, we want to be prudent and make sure that we have the 4,000,000 in the bank before pressing, buttons on on investments, in The US. And as described before, that investment will include setting up a lab of our own, potentially house even with an existing laboratory provider or another health care provider, going forward. There'll be there will be some investment in setting up that lab, getting the relevant approvals for both the lab and also the the test platform itself, which is required, in The US. However, we haven't been sitting still. We've been working in the background to ensure that once we did get that money in, we were in a position to start rolling that project, forward. So we've been working with a number of potential providers and also people who could represent us and work with us, in The US as well. In terms of time scales, obviously, once we get the 4,000,000 in, we'll start pressing buttons on some of those activities.

38:04 But it would take about sort of three to six months to get our approvals done anyway before we're live, operating and commercializing our tests in The US marketplace. And that's why we just took some of our forecast numbers down just to show that we were just deferring some of those revenues and investments to be fair in The US marketplace pending, getting our, 4,000,000 for c d four and then ensuring we were managing expectations going forward. Thanks, Ken. Number of questions talking to and around the mobile app. I guess if I was to summarize them, you know, are there opportunities to expand in this direct to consumer market, do you think?

38:50 Yeah. I'll I'll take that one as well. I mean, the the app and the dig I call it digital platforms. It's so much more than than an app. It's designed to work for the consumer as well as work with the health care professional. And that's the key linkage that we want to have in our business model. We don't really wanna be a direct to consumer, organization. There's a high degree in acquisition if you're just going after a consumer market. And, fundamentally, there are better health and commercial outcomes if you're working with health care providers who are managing those patients because you have the ability to have a longer term relationship with the patient as well as have the ability to sell other tests, and that's where our menu game comes in.

39:35 That said, I wouldn't rule out working with direct to consumer or DTC organizations, who provide maybe some of the clinical care. And and an an example of that has been actually in The UK, that part of our growth in The UK with our CNSLad has actually been through working with one of those organizations that is a much more, DTC facing organization through social media, outlining these tests and and driving it through their brand, accordingly. So wouldn't rule it out, but we are passionate about making sure we engage the health care professional to better manage the patient. That's great. Thank you. Just around the, I guess, menu expansion and, you know, is there development required to be generating new revenue from the menu expansion?

40:27 And, you know, how long do you think it would take to deliver? Yeah. I'll take that one as well. So Microbiomeutrogenomics, they are test service provision. So they have tests that are run today in in labs around the world, typically a a genetics or sequencing lab. But what we're doing is taking that laboratory information and putting it into a report. So that's the the two report providers that we signed heads of terms with. Those reports take what is quite complex information, take that into a format that, pardon the pun, is each easily digestible and and being able to action on behalf of of the patient through the health care professional. So there's no product development per se. And this is quite a change for Omega, where in the past, we've, you know, spent cash, raised money, chased opportunities that required technical product development like c d four, which always takes twice as long and costs twice as much money before you then commercialize, a physical test in the marketplace.

41:37 The the only development here is just converting these existing test reports into a specification that we would require, a specification that works already with our food print system, and then eventual integration into our app. So it's largely a a software exercise. We're looking to complete those filler contracts with these two providers over the next month or two, complete those reports, and then probably early in the new financial year is commercialize both those tests starting off in The UK, but very quickly expanding to our key international markets going forward. And I guess just to add, Jack, the the cost of development for us really is round about £300,000 across the two tests.

42:24 We think that's got the potential to generate a million pounds plus in revenues next year, and that 300,000 investment is is essentially prepaying for a number of tests that we will consume in the future. So it's not it's not a sunk cost. We will get value for that as the market expands. That's great. Thank you very much indeed. Look. I'm very mindful of time, and I know we you've got a follow on meeting behind here and and to to Chris, Lewis, Simon, Ian, Charles, Ryan, I can see your questions racking up there. So what I might do is just finish on this last question. If there's anything that we haven't touched on in the the questions from any of the other attendees, obviously, we'll provide those to you after the meeting. But maybe one to finish on, if I if I may, really about your outlook, and on the outlook and future performance of the business. What really makes you confident that you'll deliver on sales volumes? I think that'd a good one to to maybe finish.

43:18 Well, I guess, first of all, we were obviously a little disappointed to see the the first half numbers were were below prior. I think I can understand the reasons behind that in terms of the product the product re registrations and the phasing of the orders coming from customers. We did start the second half with a significant order backlog, which is has obviously set us off in in good stead. The Triton issues that we talked about before have kind of worked through the order book. So we're back up to speed now, and we've been going through a process of individual account reviews customer by customer to look at their spend year to date versus full year outlook to be able to get more confidence in terms of the detailed forecast customer by customer for the remainder of this year. As Jack mentioned earlier in the presentation, we do have a PO in hand for our Chinese customer, and that's $650 to be delivered in q four. So that obviously makes a significant difference into the second half as well. And we're aware that we have some discretion around some of the costs, so we could spend or not spend depending on how the sales profile fits. So I think when you put that package together, I think we're confident in terms of our overall number in being able to to get the business to at least EBITDA breakeven for this financial year and then kick on from there into f y twenty four.

44:35 That's great. Well, look, thank you very much once again. And, Graham, you wanted the screen to be full size, so so there you have it. So, Jack, I know and, Chris, I know investor feedback is important to you both, and I'll shortly redirect all of those on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations. But I wonder before doing so, if I may just ask you for a few closing comments, and then I'll redirect investors for their feedback. Great. Thank you, Mark. Firstly, thank you for everyone who's attended this afternoon and taking valuable time out of your day. It's been an extraordinary year. But as I said earlier on, at the start of the year, myself and Chris, with the support of the board, put a plan together, to recover this business and to really focus on, a division that really hadn't been highlighted or trailed before, but sits in a very exciting area of gut health, which is absolutely pivotal to medicine, going forward. I think what we've demonstrated over the past ten, eleven months is we highlighted the plan, and we delivered on that plan.

45:37 Sold a loss making site. We raised some money to ensure that we found a new home in a timely manner for c D 4. We sold c d four and are almost in the last throes of concluding that transaction. We said we would then build out on our health and nutrition businesses. We've already started working on the seeds of that future growth. But we sit now in a very exciting position focused in one core area, not distracted by a number of things. We are a cash generative, profitable business with growth potential and very big growth potential, particularly in food sensitivity, microbiome, and nutrigenomics, which coupled together will provide a very unique value proposition to our customers all around the world.

46:33 That's great, Jack. Chris, thank you once again for your time this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please, could I ask you not to close this session as we're now redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the company can better understand your views and expectations. So it'll take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Omega Diagnostics Group, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. Good evening to you all.