Hvivo (LSE:HVO) — Interim Results

0:01 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the HVIVO PLC interim results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the q and a tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd just like to submit the following poll. And as usual, if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from HVIVO PLC. Moe. Steven, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you for that introduction, and good evening, everyone, for joining us for our first half of twenty four update.

0:52 Thank you for taking the time out and listening to this presentation. I hope it's useful and beneficial to you guys. And, you know, we're here to report an an amazing first half performance by everyone at HVIVO. And I wanna start off by thanking every team member of the HVIVO and the men life sciences team who has contributed amazingly into delivering the results as well as the operational changes that we have executed in the first six months of twenty twenty four. We go to the regulatory disclaimer. As I'm sure most of you probably aware, I'm Yamin Mohan, CEO of HVIVO. I'm saying my next to me is Steven, our CFO. I'm going straight into the the company background for those of you who are new to HVIVO.

1:42 We are the leader global leader in conducting human challenge trials and consist of two subsidiaries. HVO being one with headquarters in Crane Wharf in London and with a focus in conducting human challenge trials. Second subsidiary is VALIFE Sciences to provide early drug development consulting services. Our mission the company mission really is to deliver today's health care by empowering tomorrow's innovation. And what we mean by that is that using the fairly new concept of human challenge trials, we want to expedite and speed up the deliver delivery of vaccines and antivirals to the patient much faster. And one of the examples where this has come true is in the Pfizer RSV vaccine that's currently available for for patients.

2:34 And the human challenge trial play crucial role in expediting the development of that product and getting to patients at a much faster rate than it would have done without this. We use Flukem as a brand to recruit our healthy volunteers to participate in clinical trials, and we thank our volunteers for, you know, being so atroistic in in taking part in in trials for the benefits of others. And we've also recently launched or we'll be launching very soon HLAB as a not only as a lab that does the urology immunology testing for human challenge trials, but also as a standalone business in delivering urology immunology services for standalone clinical trials that are not linked to human challenge trials.

3:20 Financially speaking, we've had a record number on a number of financial parameters. So with regards to revenue, that's sitting just under £36,000,000 for the first half of this year. That's a 31% year on year increase. Not only that, we'll deliver that revenue at the 24.5% EBITDA margin, EBITDA of GBP 8,700,000, that's a GBP 68,000,000 year on year increase. So for both the key financial parameters, it's been an amazing achievement for the company. We have a cash at the end of June of GBP £37,100,000 and Steven will give you an update of where we stand on that in a more recent time frame and a £71,000,000 in the weighted order book. So the demand for our services remains strong. And EPS also has grown at at 0.81 p.

4:15 But that's only one part of the story because in addition to delivering these really amazing financial numbers, we've also transformed the company this year by moving to a new state of the art human talent facility, which is the largest of its kind in the world in Clenium Wharf and that is now fully operational. So the whole build out and the move is complete and we are now running clinical trials in that facility. We've also been able to expand the outpatient facility at Plumbers Row, and that's actually completing this week. So we're ready to deliver our largest field trial to date at this new facility. So it's really great timing that we've got a facility that's ready to be utilized and now we have a contract that we can actually where we can utilize this facility.

5:03 Our main focus of the core business will always be human challenge trials, and that will remain so. So we are looking to not only continue to build on what we have on the especially on the on the flu and the RSV challenge agent, but we're looking to build on some new challenge models. And and here on the bottom left hand side, you can see some of the key highlights for this year where we've signed some new contracts and also looking to develop some new challenge agents. But one of the the new initiative we as a company have undertaken recently is developing new revenues here, and some of these I'm gonna go through later on in the slide. And on top of that, our second subsidiary, Better Life Sciences, has also had a a great six month of the year. And not only have they successfully grown grown the revenue, but they've been able to sell some of the new services we've added in AT and P and QA consultancy recently.

5:57 So that's a kind of an overview of the first half of the the year. Steven will now go through some of the financial parameters in a little bit more detail. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. So it is without words, small words saying it's a record H1 revenue for us. We've never delivered $35,600,000 before and it is a strong performance. It is all coming, that growth is all coming through from human challenge trials in the period year on year. Part of the reason for the huge growth is that we have contracted with a couple of clients to deliver studies within a certain timeframe. They will have requested to receive data from their trials in Q4 twenty twenty four.

6:44 And so to make sure that we deliver these studies on time, we pull forward some of that revenue into h one. And that's part of the reason why we've had such a record performance in 2024. And it is also with these clients, because they've asked us to accelerate and deliver within a certain time frame, that we have extracted an acceleration fee, which we have used to fund our facilities, our new facilities in Canary Wharf. So some of the dynamics behind that and the details is that we did deliver a record number of volunteers for in in h one. It was 56% up on h one twenty twenty three. And so and that is delivered across six different studies across five different viruses. And that's important in the sense that it allows us to deliver quite more quickly, a lot more efficiently to get volunteers onto the study because we have five chances of getting a volunteer onto a study in a short period of time.

7:47 It's worth noting that Venn accounts for 11% of our total revenue. Its growth rate was 1% in GP terms in GBP terms and just under 5% under the euro currency and their local currency. It has had a good year. It's off the back of a 30% increase in last year. So last year, they grew 30% in the same period, and this year they've grown somewhat less. But what's very interesting about this business, it is very sticky. So the clients that they have won, they have retained and they've continued to doing that work. So they've maintained their revenues. We're still very optimistic in this business and we expect long term growth from this business of at least 10% on average. So as I explained, this H1 weighted because we've accelerated the study work and delivered in H1, but also because we had a small cancellation as we announced in April in q four twenty twenty four.

8:45 So that's why we are h one weighted. It is all worth noting that we did sell and contract a field study that has been delivered in h h yeah. H two h four twenty twenty four. So that has softened the blow to some extent. And then don't forget, if a client does cancel, we retain a cancellation fee, which would be recognized in q four twenty twenty four. So just to remind everybody, we are maintaining our 62,000,000 full year revenue guidance. So with the increase in volume of work, yeah, revenue grew up 31 percent, costs grew 20%, and the difference is obviously flowing straight through to the margin, and so margin jumped up to 34.5%.

9:36 So it's greater volume of work across all the facilities. It allows us to better utilize our recruitment efforts and our clinical operations. And so we're sweating our assets much better and getting great utilization from the team. An interesting statistic is I just mentioned that we our volunteers grew 56% from year to year, but the advertising spend did not increase. It was flat. So and despite the increase in volunteers, the advertising spend to attract those volunteers onto studies was it was flat compared to h one twenty twenty three. So a very strong performance in recruitment. It's worth noting that, obviously, we are a growing business. We are fixing you know, refreshing some of our models. And so the cost doesn't the margin does include some one off costs.

10:30 But we are growing business, and so we always have an element of one off costs in our margin, but a very good result for this year. So this remains for me to point out that our EBITDA margins expected to be at the upper end of the market expectations. And for that means, at the moment the market when we did the presentation, it was between 2224%, and the midpoint would be 23%. And if we're looking at the upper end, you're looking between 2324% is where we expect to land for the full year. Cash has grown from 31,000,000 to 37,000,000, and it's a strong cash position. We're quite happy with it. We did have an increase in working capital. It's probably worth just going to the next slide, I think.

11:18 And this just shows you the cash generated in the period. So at the beginning of the year, we had $37,000,000 At the end of the period, we had $37,100,000 You can see the $7,600,000 is cash generated from operations. We did have a negative net working capital movement in the period, and this is because we accelerated our revenues and our our study performance in h one. Particularly, these clients are big pharma. They pay us sixty days no. They have sixty day payment terms, and so we received all that cash in in July. And so it's mainly timing. You what you gotta understand is that these payment terms are quite significant. The the the amount at least the the the milestone payments with that were triggered were very significant. They are at least, you know, a million or just over a million when we hit these targets.

12:13 And so the delay this is just a a delay. It's just a a point of timing. And the other point is that we did sign a contract in mid June, and the booking fee for that contract was received in early July. So the if you look at trade receivables, that was a key key driver between the network and capital movement, it grew from 9,000,000 to 14,000,000 at the end of June. At the end of July, it's back down to 9,000,000. So there's no really concern there at all. Purchase of PEE is the investment and the costs of spending and developing Canary Wharf and building up the new facilities, it's a net figure. So appreciate that it's after cat a contributions from our landlord.

13:00 So we have spent more than what is suggested out there. But we're also just to comment is that our clients have paid for, you know, over 90% of that spend in total. So the spend of this of the facility of the Canary Wall facility will will happen in 2023 and 2024. We've got about a further $1,500,000 to spend for the rest of the year, which includes the Thames Road fit out to deliver a new field study. The dividends, are worth commenting on that and the 800,000 is interest earned on the business. Any other comments on the 37,000,000? Beginning of the year, the 37,000,000 was 21,000,000 company owned cash and 16,000,000 cash received in advance of client delivering on client studies.

13:52 At the end of June twenty twenty four, that 37,000,000 is broken down into 30,000,000 client owned money and 7,000,000 cash received in advance and client studies. So this last, just to highlight the new facility. I think one thing, if you haven't had a chance to visit, a number of you have we've had quite a few client visit client days and investor days to have a look at the unit. It is a fantastic unit. We were given a a blank sheet of paper to design what we wanted, and people who did did all the delivery and the hard work of designing the study were people who operated our existing facilities. They knew exactly what they needed and what they want to deliver these studies. So it's a great space, it's been very well designed out and will only enhance the quality of end delivery and our clients have loved it so far. But just to remind you, the financial aspects is that it is being 90% funded by the clients, as I've mentioned to you, we've accelerated and we've got some hard delivery timelines on client studies.

14:56 The revenue, the funding from the clients, unlike the landlord, is being recognized through the p and l. So it's additional revenue going through. These were acceleration accelerating fees that are being recognized in line with delivery of those studies. So being recognized across twenty twenty three and 2024. So we've increased our space by 31%. From that design, we are expecting really good clinical and laboratory operational efficiencies. We expect to see more of this coming through in 2025, but we are seeing signs of it now. The new facility unlocks new revenue streams. I suppose the most important thing here is that we're gonna have CL3 designated, We're gonna be able to do c l three designated pathogens in our unit. We're already able to do in the quarantine unit, able to do COVID.

15:51 The lab is being currently we're waiting for HSE approval for the for the new laboratory and to be able to do CO3. And Moe will talk to more about the benefits of this shortly in his presentation. So and the other point to highlight is that this new facility does increase our revenue cap. Previously, under these old facilities in in Q and B and in Whitechapel Hotel, we were limited to closer to about 60,000,000. And with this new facility, we can grow and get organic revenues up to $90,000,000 And I'll hand over back to Mohit to take us through some of that. Thank you, Stuart. So as I'm sure you all agree financially, I mean, we've achieved significant revenue growth at at market beating EBITDA margins.

16:42 And on top of that, you can see a high percentage of that EBITDA is being converted to cash. So from a financial point of view, it's it's a very well run business. The sustainable growth that we have promised on a number of occasions, we're actually seeing that in provision. But one of the things we're looking at really really is where do we go go from here? So what what future growth do we have lined up? So there's different revenue streams now we are we we are looking to execute. So I'm gonna go through each one on the on the preceding slides, but, really, we're looking at remaining at a core human challenge trial service provider. That's that's really key for us in building that. Adding ancillary services in the under HLAB for virology immunology lab services by specimen provision, and then using our outpatient clinic and flu camp to recruit patients either for third parties or for our own field phase two, phase three trials. And then on top of that, of course, continuing to develop the the drug development services that a very large science subsidiary is an expert at. So taking these one by one. So first of all, it's building on our portfolio of challenge agents.

17:58 So you know majority of our challenge agent work comes from RSV and and flu, but we're looking to expand both the RSV portfolio of challenge agents we have as well as flu. On top of that, we're seeing now we have a c r three capability. We now have the potential to run challenge trials in c r three pathogen, for example, COVID or or dengue. On top of that, we now have the scope in our expanded laboratory in to be able to run bacterial challenge trials and basically cater for the bacterial laboratory assets in the same facility. As the market continues to grow in the vaccine front, we are looking for the market to go into the next generation of vaccine, which include mucosal vaccines or inhaled or tablet type oral vaccines, as well as bivalent or multivalent vaccine, which basically means that one drug that works on multiple viral pathogens. And then on top of that, we're looking to potentially build a model for transmission studies where you you study the percentage of infection rates that have been transmitted from the person who's infected to a noninfected patient population. And that's something we're we're building for for the long term future and seeing what we can do. And the the the new facility is built with with these studies in mind. So we we are future proving to a certain extent the new facility and how we can diversify the the talent agent portfolio we have as

19:28 well as the type of studies we we are going to run. HLab is something we are really keen to develop. So, historically, hLab has run all the the lab assays for the challenge trials, but now we have the capacity to run standalone trials for each lab. So these are lab work that we are running for clinical trials that are run by third parties. So they they could be phase one, phase two, or phase three trials. We we've doubled our our lab space where we tripled the capacity. And and the way we've done that is historically, our lab space was very inefficient the way we had lots of corridors between the labs. There's a lot of dead space. So now we completely revamped that, of course, the new facility, which is fit for purpose. So we tripled the capacity.

20:18 Not only that, we also have a c f three lab. We have a new LIM system, which I'll I'll eventually draw on. But all of this helps in selling our lab services to our clients that we will be launching a a HLAB dedicated website later this month. Under the banner of HLAB, we will also be expanding our biobank services where we're looking to offer biospecimen to a client using either retrospective samples we have or the prospective samples we we are going to collect. And we are already an approved vendor at the scientific.com website, and we have we have received the relevant tissue biobank approvals and ethics of the approvals that we need to be able to act as as a biobank service provider. In addition to that, we're using our Flukem brand not only to recruit healthy volunteers into human challenge trials, but also this year, we've launching a three tier service for third parties so we can recruit volunteers and patients to third parties. So for example, if a global CRO is looking for patient to recruit at their site, we can help them provide either essential or advanced or a premium service for them. So this basically means that we can either just identify the patient and book them into their facility, or we can identify the patient. We can consent them. We can do all the physical examination and all the lab screening and give them a patient that we know fits their their requirements. So this level different tiering would

21:48 mean that we can give different level of service to to meet the client's needs. And we got we have already signed a contract in this. Of course, these will be, especially at the beginning, small amount, but we look to develop long term relationship with our customers and provide repeat business on an ongoing basis. The clinical side services, I mean, will always aim to get field studies, the Phase two Phase three studies and with the expansion of our facility at Columbus Row, we're able to do this. In fact, we can only run the the recently signed field trial that requires us to recruit 1,000 healthy volunteers in a in a phase two influenza vaccine trial that after the fact that we have expanded the facility, we doubled the the capacity. And by the way, we can only do that because we have moved the offices from Plumbers Road to Canadian Volt. So the move to Canadian Volt has already been a huge success.

22:43 So we've on the back of this move, we've been able to sign a large field study, which we couldn't have done otherwise. We've been able to sign a nominal characterization study because now we have the c r three capability, and we've been able to sign three standard on that contract. So the if there was any kind of reason to justify the move, I think we have already done that and long may it continue. Then life sciences has also had a a a really good year in 2023. The first half, they had a 30% growth. On top of that, they now had a a 5% additional growth in revenue. And the pleasing thing about the life sciences, and this is what basically need the most in a way that when we launch new initiative and new services, then you start to see the returns. I'm pleased to say that the new AT and P service and the QA consulting services, now we have signed contracts in both of those service line.

23:41 And in addition, we opened a very small office in Leiden in the middle of the Vitek Park in North Netherlands, and that has already kind of resulted in a number of contracts through the local networking events that we we have participated. So it's really good to see that very large sites continue to develop their own standalone services as well as take active part in executing the human challenge for us HVIVO runs. One of our key goals has been to continue to improve efficiencies. So we achieved this by having all our staff or the majority of staff under one roof in Gray Wolf, and that's gonna have its its own outcome on that. But in addition, we're looking to automate wherever we can. So the lab laboratory information management or LIMs is something we're looking to implement to improve our lab delivery so that the the first phase will be delivered towards the end of this month, and that will continue as proceeding stages going into 2025.

24:41 The volume management system is up and slide and it's working. We are always looking to add new capabilities to it. So for example, volunteers can self book. They can they can change their their booking. We're looking to introduce web chatting into this as well as well as manage the outpatient field trial all within this one system. So we we we want to get to a state, to be honest with you, where we are able to give clients anonymized access to a portal where they can internally look at the the the database that we hold. So when they're applying the clinical trials, they can look at the database and then know how many patients we have on a database that will fulfill their eligibility requirements. And that's about the goal which we're hoping to achieve in 2025.

25:27 The final part of this automation is the esource. So is basically taking our paper based medical records and converting them into an electronic record. So at at at from January onwards, we will be introducing the the first phase of this, which will include the electronic consenting of individuals. So when the volunteer comes in, they'll be handed an iPad, and they'll give consent of the iPad. And that will create a patient record in the database, so then we will be able to collect all the data electronically. This will improve our quality of the work we run. It it will increase the speed of how we run the work, and it will reduce the cost base because it means single point of data entry. The market overview. So I think most of you are are aware, especially, you know, our loyal holders who've been attending these presentations before.

26:22 We create our own market when it comes to human talent growth, and we'll continue to do that. And so one of the key reasons why scientists are fully involved in in in in the sales process. Over the new revenue stream of values, you can see here on the slide that the market value of those is is huge. So in in these cases, we're not looking to create a new market. We're looking to penetrate an existing market. So we have many vendors that we will be competing against on all of these new revenue stream, but I'm I'm keen and I'm impressed by the team that they can deliver this because we have already such to convert opportunities into into contract, and they are now actively delivering this. With regards to infectious diseases, we listed below some of the different nonprofit and government agencies that have invested in infectious diseases quite significantly.

27:19 And this basically means for us that there's a great interest in infectious diseases, in vaccine development and antiviral development. We will of course tap into this and help our clients develop their vaccine antibodies much faster to take them to the next state. But equally importantly, if the vaccine or antibody does not work, we're able to show the lack of fixing at the very early stage without the customer spending a $100,000,000 plus at a phase three stage before they realize the drug doesn't work. The order book. So as at the end of June of this year, the order book set up the weighted order books are at £71,000,000, which is a really good number considering we're going after a 62,000,000 revenue target.

28:06 As you would might imagine, this is dominated by challenge trial, but we look to expand that stock, the greens, smaller segment of the pie chart. In addition to the order book, we have around £40,000,000 of opportunities in the pipeline that we are looking to close into the short and medium. And the reason why we we're sharing this because I think people are expecting us to sign contracts on a regular basis. That's not the type of business we're we've seen before, do have a signature and suddenly, you know, three or four signature signatures in a in a very short time frame. So this 40,000,000 we're looking to sign in the short to medium term mostly consists of current clients, new clients, new challenge agents, well as old existing challenge agents, and we're effectively negotiating proposals and contracts with these clients that they there are hurdles for these clients to get to signature, and that's what we are working through. So I'm very pleased to say that the number of proposals that we're submitting to our clients by channel trial remains strong. So the market demand remains really, really good, and it's just timing of these changes which we will pull through. But you have to remember now that we are not a one trick pony. We will now also grow the nonchallenged revenue stream, which will supplement the the challenge trial pipeline we have here.

29:29 So as you know, goal is to get to £100,000,000 in revenue by 2028. And this slide shows you the different revenue streams that we need to grow by from £62,000,000 in base that we expect to get by the end of this year. So as an example, we look to add around £16,000,000 of revenue by 2028 in challenge trials, just over 3,000,000 revenue for WEN, a number of million for field studies and then we can see the rest and the amount we need to increase this by. We are very confident that we can achieve this. The final piece to this jigsaw puzzle really is to conduct m and a activity. And being the the global leader and having a huge market share in the human challenge trial basically means that there's no competitor or no service provider out there that fits 100% in in a in human challenge product bucket. So we actually be a little bit more smarter in how we identify and pursue m and a targets. So what we're looking to do is leverage what we already do and put have a bolt on acquisition. And this could be a phase one unit, a patient recruitment company, a clinical non clinical consulting company, or a laboratory.

30:43 But the key goal and I and I hope you are patient with us on this is that we will wait to get the right target rather than rush and and and conduct m and a activity for the sake of it. That's not our goal. It's really important for us to be strategic about this and have a long term view on making sure that whoever we go for, that they fit really well into our current strategy and in our goal to deliver the 100,000,000. So that basically concludes our presentation. I hope you found the the presentation useful and beneficial and we are very happy to answer any questions. Perfect, Steve. And that's great. And thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can all be accessed via your investor dashboard.

31:43 Moe, Steven, we obviously received a number of pre submitted questions ahead of today's event. And as you can see there, we've also received a number of questions throughout your presentation this evening as well. So firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. Guys, at this point, if I may just hand back to you just to read out those questions and give your responses where it's appropriate to do so, and then I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you. Great. Thank you. So so mean, so many questions. So thank you for your interest. I hope I can get through as many of them as possible. So let's start. There was a press release from the Department of Health and Social Care of Office for Life Sciences and some MPs on August 28 that the UK government will be investing £400,000,000 in a joint public private venture in boosting clinical trials in The UK.

32:30 Do you see HVO benefiting from any of this investment? So not directly, but indirectly, yes. Because it's very timely in a manner. Because as we launch our our hate lab, our patient recruitment services, and our field studies, what we need and what we want is more clinical trials to be done in The UK. So as part of this investment, the NHS will open, I think, eight commercial units to run trial commercial trials much faster. So that will actually promote UK as a as a country to do more clinical trials in. And when that happens, we hope to be part of that that process. So so, yes, this should help increase the profile of The UK. I mean, UK, I thought I had a a great time in conducting phase two, phase three trials in recent times. I think Spain is now the number one go to country for clinical research in The UK.

33:22 I'm hoping this kind of investment and what we are doing, for example, in the in the phase two vaccine trial, we can start bringing UK to the number one destination at least in Europe for future clinical trials? Well, this is a direct question. Are you planning on recruiting a new chairman? No. We we're not planning on recruiting a new chairman. Garfield is our nonexecutive chairman. He's not involved on on day to day basis, but he he does give us advice and direction. And his experience, as you know, from even his open offer days, he has lots of m and a experience, and we we want to tap into that and hopefully use that experience and expertise to help us conduct our own m and a. So we're not looking to recruit a new chairman.

34:12 Has Cajal's share sale hurt your ability to attract institutional investors? Well, not at all. I mean I mean, you could argue it's actually it promoted institutional investors because it was an institutional investor who was after a large block of share, which then got offered to the institution and then purchased that. And then in addition to that, I'm sure for those of you who who follow us closely, you know, there has been a t o one even recently with regards to institutional holdings. And right now, we have more institutional holders than we've ever had, what, at least since I joined the company. And so I I don't see that has had any negative impact.

35:01 I noticed Cajal completely cashed out recently, which caused some retail investor banks. Can you comment on the timing of the given the very positive outlook of the business? I'm sure Gahad had his own personal reasons on that, but the timing was more driven by institutional demand. So when we have a decision who was already a sizable holder, wanted to add additional holdership, and then the timing was right. And that that was the the main reason that I know drove that decision. Carl was not actually looking to sell, but we have somebody who wanted to buy, and he was willing to accommodate that requirement. How solid is the 100,000,000 target for 2028?

35:50 There have been very few contracts signed this year. So, you know, don't get too worried about the very few contracts announced part of this competition. Look at the the order book. Look at the the kind of the advanced opportunities. A number we're looking to close in the short to mid term, that should give you some level of comfort. With regards to the 100 mil target, so we are currently on track right now. So the the the human challenge for our growth is on track. The new revenue streams are are on track. The only part missing at the moment, I guess, is the the m and a activity, and that's what, you know, both Steven and I are actively pursuing. I'll leave this one for Steven.

36:36 Can you give shareholders an update on immunohex? Does Haiti will still own 49 of concept? Concept violations have received funding from The UK and the US government recently. So what happens if they make a breakthrough? So a couple of things. Yes. We still own 49% of Immutex. The key thing here is that we're you know, we are very much Moe and I are very much focused on driving our CRO services in terms of delivering on human challenge trials, lab work, all that. So we're not really in the biotech piece, but we do have a good relationship with BioConcert that have keep us informed. We're aware of this funding. We're aware of what they're doing with the Walter Reed Institute.

37:23 So it's all good there, we'll see how it progresses. We still renew our patents. Immutex owns a number of patents around the two assets, and those are still being renewed and held. Thank you. And the the next question is on addressable market, my my my favorite question. I'd like to know what the company thinks its future addressable market is. At this look. To be very frank and honest, Nobody knows what the human challenge trial market size is. And I'm you a very good example. So we we talk to a client in the morning. They have no intention of running a human challenge trial. Our scientists talk to them, give them the arguments and the benefits of of a human child trial, and by the evening, they agree to do a human child trial.

38:11 So you could argue in the morning, there's zero market value size. And in the evening, something you had, I don't know, five, seven, ten ten million pound worth of human junk for us. So we know we are growing the market. We are creating our own market. And considering the now this is the third year now, you've seen a sustainable growth in our revenue and a very, very healthy pipeline and order book. I think that in itself should be sufficient evidence that this market is here to stay. In fact, we think continue to grow as we go forward. And the question is also goes on just to talk about the scale of the opportunity. So the scale of the opportunity in the human challenge trial, I that I'll But in addition to that, by adding the new revenue streams and those are just on the market going into brilliant. So I think we now have the benefit of one revenue stream where we are creating our own market and three or four other revenue streams where we are looking to penetrate an existing market.

39:16 So we have a really a different sales and marketing process addressing both of those needs. Is there a reason that Canadian Wharf was selected as your new base? Do you wanna take that? Sure. I know a couple a couple of good reasons. One, Canary Wharf is is one stop from where we previously were in terms of QMB in our White Chapel Hotel. And second reason is that Canary Wharf is creating a health care health science, life science environment. So they have a very strong program of driving life sciences into that area. Third reason is we wanted to give something to a volunteer. They're coming in, they have to spend, you know, ten, twelve, fifteen days, and if it's a COVID study, they're gonna be seventeen days in a in a room, and so they have a a great great view, and it's a great facility. And it's a nice thing to come to is come to London. A volunteer is not gonna wanna go out to somewhere in the middle of the countryside, you know, on a single floor or a double floor.

40:24 So it's not as attractive, whereas here, the volunteers will travel afar and come into London, spend some time in London, enjoy the London, and earns, you know, and also participate in a in a trial. So it really is a beneficial move for the trial. The other and the last and probably the most important reason from my perspective, it was financially advantageous for us to move. And we got sufficient and really good pricing on the deal. It was a great great moment in time. Everything just slotted in moments in terms of, you know, our lease our leases were coming up for renewal on Whitechapel Hotel and KNB, and and offered us a great deal. So we're moved.

41:11 Good. Is that? What is the average lead time between a customer making an order and the trial actually happening? If a customer asks for a trial now, could we still accommodate that this year, or would it now be scheduled for next year? So, I mean, to be honest, that's the answer you won't like is is basically how long is the piece of string. We have clients that take four or five years from the initial inquiry to them signing a trial, and we have other clients that take two or three months. So it there's no kind of average because the the variability between the minimum and the maximum is is so huge. So hope it answers your first question. Secondly, so we typically require at least five to six months from signing a contract to getting all the approvals from the different bodies to get the trial ready for quality. So there's always that kind of lag anyway.

42:04 And we do our best to fit clients into the unit. But there are occasions where the client may have to wait. So we really gotta communicate the our vacancy rate in our unit proactively to our clients so they know exactly when they can fit into our schedule. And and most clients really commit to that, and this is part of our contractual process and the nonrefundable fee we charge our client because we we we book a slot of bed in in a certain time frame for our clients to be able to run their trials. Do you hold any part of the data that gets generated while running the challenge trials? So the actual challenge trials, that data is owned by our clients because they are paying and they're sponsoring that trials, which and and and and which is the right thing to do. For some calculation studies that we run to find the right dose of the channel agent to use in free channel trials, we own that data depending on who's sponsoring that. So this is kind of two different ways of of of looking at that.

43:09 Would you say there's been a slowdown in the winning of new contracts this year, and is this a concern? If so, how are you addressing this? So I think I I agree to your point to slowdown in the active signatures, but not in demand. So the the the the the pipeline remains strong. The the short mid term opportunity that we're looking to convert remains a really good number. So right now, that's not of concern. How are we addressing this? Well, to get us not that we are addressing this, but we're looking to supplement the additional revenue streams into our revenue forecast. So we're looking to say, okay. This is what the challenge problem will deliver, but what will recruitment services, what will labs and consulting services also deliver on top of that. The targeted bolt on acquisitions prerequisite to achieving the $100,000,000 in 2028.

43:59 Yes, I think that's been fairly transparent. Have any potential targets been identified? I wouldn't go far as being identified, but we are looking at a a number of assets as as potential targets, let's say. Do the potential targets need to be revenue and profit enhancing? Yes. And that that that that is the ultimate goal. And the ideal scenario for us is to be able to take a company that's making good profit margins, fit them into our infrastructure, and enhance that margin because of the existing infrastructure we have at HVO. The field study using the flu chem database looks very interesting. What sort of revenue do this study generate? So, I mean, that's again, they can go from tens of thousands to millions depending on what phase the trial is, how many subjects or patients or volunteers we need to recruit, what service that we're offering. So that is a complete variability in those projects.

45:05 Does the c l three capability give increased reputation risk in case of problems? How is this mitigated? So our team that we have is, I mean, fully trained in delivering c l three capabilities. There is kind of a number of levels of processes we have implemented internally to manage any potential risks. The facility in itself is basically built to kind of minimize risk. I mean, just to give you an example, that c r three lab, which is basically one room divided into three compartments, costs us a million pounds.

45:51 So that basically includes all the the the safety mechanisms in case of any any issues. And this is this is how we mitigate. So on top of our own internal management risk processes that we have, and Steven and I, for now, both have been trained on health and safety, we have been have a certificate of rule that we we attended that training. In addition, we get approval, a certification from the health safety executive of the UK to make sure that our facility is fit for purpose. Even the Metropolitan Police has a view and audited facility. Every client we work with more or less audits our processes as well as our facilities. So there's kind of a number of layers of systems and processes in place to be able to minimize that risk.

46:46 Any dividends on the horizon? We've committed to paying an annual dividend. It should be sort of similar as we paid out this year, that we paid out just under $1,400,000 and we have the same sort of ilk going forward. We do want to hold on to our cash. We are quite serious about looking at M and A opportunities and growing this business. So we expect to use that cash for driving growth in this business. Thank you. And do you see any of you are developing models for gastro pathogen, enteric pathogens such as CT, motorbikes, neurovirus, similar? That's a a very informed question. So I mean, the simple answer to your question is yes. What what we will look to do is to look at client demand. So we we're not looking to go and invest in developing these models. What we're looking to do is partner with the client who has an interest in these models and then basically and take that forward. So yes. So to your point, yes. But we're looking for a client to come forward who's looking to do a challenge trial in this.

47:56 And what else? Do you see HVIVO setting up screening centers under flu cap in other countries, world such as South America, Africa, South Asia to add more diverse antibody profiles to patients. No. So we are obliged to recruit only healthy volunteers and patients that have a registered to a UK based GP. And that's part of the the patient recruitment process. If we reach a certain stage, I'm a talk about challenge for now. If we reach a certain stage where we outgrow the number of volunteers available to us in The UK, we may then look to for that, we'll go to US and tap into a new pool of positive volunteers and establish a challenge product in the day.

48:46 But when it comes to field based studies, that that's something that's quite different. So if we have success in field based studies in helping patients recruitment for The UK, then that gives us the opportunity to offer the patient recruitment services to our clients in other countries. So that's why we look at to promote our Fluke brand in different, let's say, European countries start off with and have our clients recruit patients in those countries. Will HVO HLABS attend next year? Yes. We we attend every year, in fact, and we have both our sales and also our scientific attendee attend that conference because that's one of the main conferences for us to attend.

49:33 I think I'll I'll I'll wrap up there. Lots of other questions. Unfortunately, we we we can't go through them. So really appreciate your interest and your time and and your efforts in asking us this question. Hopefully, we we've answered quite a few. And, of course, please follow-up through our IR platform if you have any further questions. Perfect, Moe, Steven. That's great. And if I may just jump back in there, thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time and addressing all of those questions that came in for investors. And, of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll give you those back immediately after the presentation's ended just for you to review and to then add any additional responses, of course, where it's appropriate to do so. And we'll publish all those responses out on the platform. But, Moe, perhaps before really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, I if could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that'd be great.

50:28 No. Thank you, Brad. Absolutely. Please provide for for feedback and also answer the the poll question. I mean, look. On a personal note, I I joined HVIVO in February 2022, and I remember doing my first IMC. I was a, you know, I was a novice and and the very new to to public markets. And I said, what we expect from me really is being transparent and and honest and and frank about what we do, at the same time being conservative in in in what we're going to deliver. And each of the six month period since then, I think we have, as a company, met those promises and those targets. And that's what our ethos is going forward. And Steven totally shared the same details. We are conservative maybe, but we are also realistic.

51:18 We want to make sure that whatever guidance we give to the market, we keep to that. I wanna leave the last word as a thank you to the team at HVIVO. Delivering the the financial parameters is one thing, but also transforming the company into something that can really grow to something significant now, laying those foundations in in the in the first half of this year and now has been amazing. So great job, guys, and love to continue. And thank you for all of you holders, for your loyalty in HVO. And for those of you who are not holders, what's what's keeping you guys? Thank you very much. Perfect. No. That's great. And thank you once again for updating investors this evening. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can really better understand your views and expectations.

52:15 This will only 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 HVIVO PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good evening to you all.