Hvivo (LSE:HVO) — Interim Results Presentation

0:02 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Open Orphan PLC Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged, can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab

0:19 company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. These will be available via your Investor Meet company dashboard. And again, we'll notify you by e mail when they're ready for your review. I'd also like to remind you that this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll. And if you'd be so kind just to give your attention, that would be most grateful. And I'd now like to hand over to Carl Hill, chairman from OpenOrtham. Good afternoon, sir. Mark, good evening. Thank you very much, and thank you, everybody, for turning up on the, Monday evening to listen to our latest update. What I'd further ado, first of all, I hopefully will make us slightly better. The last time I was on the platform, the ninth of August, Monday. After a lot of presentations, it's good time in history. My worst presentation of my life. Everything went wrong.

1:12 Audio went wrong. Visual, there was no visual. And then the questions, I ended up having a bunch of questions where all the repeat ones. I normally have the repeats reduced. So at least tonight, we're we're starting the better note. We've got audio. We've got visual, and I've got a proper set of pre submitted question. And please submit lots of questions then, and I'll do my best to answer most of them. Okay. Without further ado, I'm gonna take you through our update presentations, where we are, how we got here, and where the rest of the year is, and more importantly, how next year is looking. So first of all, let's move. So the usual disclaimer and where we've got ourselves. So this is really interesting. We we put together and this is why I'd say you've come on the journey with us, most people. We took then life science just over two and a half years ago and HVIVO just over a year and a half ago, put them together. Neither were profitable in our life. Neither, being honest, were particularly good at anything, but that insulted all the staff, I shouldn't say. They they were kinda struggling.

2:10 However, putting them together, clean them up, and on the back of the pandemic, we now have created the world leader in the test of vaccines and antivirals using human challenge studies addressing, and this is really important, the growing infectious and respiratory disease market. That market, traditionally, up until this year, is about a $3,040,000,000,000 year market. 90% of that market is your annual co is your annual influenza chart. By 2025, that market, all the are agreeing on one thing. It'll be about two fifty. That's three and a half years out from now. Imagine this could be fivefold increase, and we're there to test any and all of those infectious disease and respiratory disease. You may ask, well, where did COVID go? Well, hey. It's got in the market outside of here in East London, my chapel. COVID hasn't gone away. You know? It's still here. But the bigger market is that growing infectious, very predictable, big pharma. I'm gonna talk about both tonight to give you a bit of a color.

3:10 What is the plans for the rest of the year? What is the plan for not just next year, next couple of years? But I just think it's never been more exciting. We now have a real business in a real sector where we're the world leader at a glance. And, again, I've done a lot of presentations over the last two and a half years, but what have we? First of all and, I we've got a lot of flag. Well, Kyle, exactly how much revenue you did this year, exactly how much revenue you did the full year, exactly how much profits. Well, here we go. We're doing that today. First of all, h one, that was the first half of this year over last year, was 242% up. And Leo's gonna read through those exact numbers. At a glance, we've known nine challenge study models, and one of them, the latest one being malaria. And we have another one in the pipeline, and we're looking at TV tuberculosis as well, which is another good one. Strong pipeline of repeat big pharma clients. We now have the Pfizer's, the GSK's, the,

4:10 you name it, the marks. It's a hell of a business, and these people now are repeating. Traditionally, HVIVO get one of those every four or five years. I'll show you in a minute all of those either signed a contract or in contract negotiations. That's a pretty nice customer base. Really important. I've been saying for over a year, we're not just COVID, and we're not just COVID. The reason I've been saying that, I've always believed the vaccines will eventually work, and COVID will go away. COVID has been the pandemic has been good for the company, but it has created a monster market, this two fifty infectious disease market. But we can get the first half of the year, 75% of our revenues, and I'll come to the q and a where you can see them in, were non COVID. That's traditional influenza studies like we've done today. That's the third study we signed this year. RSV, we signed four of those. RV, asthma, all that good stuff. So that's the non COVID revenues.

5:08 EBITDA, people were a bit spooked to them in June and the where I spoke to them. Was like, how did you really make money in the first half of this year? And I was going, well, we can't say that yet, but we did. Well, here we go. 2,100,000 EBITDA in the first half of the year. Gross margin, 28%. It should be better. We'll come to that demand. 250,000,000 infectious disease market. We have 43 quarantine beds we own and control. That's 24 in QMB and are 19 across the road in the hotel. And guess what? We've also 19, which we don't pay any rent for up in the row free. But more importantly, we've proven over this last year how to take a hotel and convert to the quarantine unit. The hotel is 50 meters across the road. That's the Whitechapel Hotel. It's now the Whitechapel Kinney, And we can get away with converting that for less than 1,000,000.5. The client paid for it didn't cost us any money because we designated as an site extension.

6:02 Within 250,300 meters of our Whitechapel place, there's four other hotels we can pick and choose as site extension. So in case any of are worried, where are we gonna fill out more? We can repeat that exercise. It takes about three months. There's a number of hotels that fit the bill so we can play one off against that. So we will extend our quarantine facilities on the back of filling these out and on the back of demand. We're not gonna fit them out and wait for them to come. We get the studies, and then we'll get additional beds. So expansion is no longer a problem. First half of year, we'd six active challenge studies. And in the total year, we'll do 10 at a start or finish. HVIVO only ever did one or two. It's best. You ever did three. How come we're doing 10?

6:48 Because we're doing them faster, quicker, and we're charging a lot more for them. And that's the client doesn't really care about the price too much. They want the data. Pfizer signed the study in the twentieth of October last year. The previous study they signed with HVIVO was five years ago. It took them eighteen months to get the data onto the old management. We delivered the data on six months. That's what they wanted. And the CEO on Pfizer, during his q two updates, mentioned the four one of four things was our study. The first thing was the COVID, and the second was sensational results in an RSV Channing study that did name checkers, but we're the only people doing them, in London, and he says transform their RSV vaccine potential. We have our Paris office. We've got 25 people in Paris. Every one makes money, and every one is billable. We have no administration staff. They would keep it at 25.

7:40 50% of the revenue comes from supporting the data management, biostat and the challenge studies, and 50% is the big French Ipsen survey and all those good people. Breda, we've support London

7:52 as well. It's CMC, PK, and preclinical. That's consulting. Again, not a huge business. Between is about €7,000,000 in total. But guess what? Both of them now make a healthy profit margin. They'll grow incrementally by 20% per annum because it's a body shop. Every new contract, they bring in more consultants. Whereas London, new contracts, we've gotta fill the basic beds, and every additional one is jam on it. So, basically, you can scale London and make vastly bigger margins, but having pars and radar are very, very important. The market opportunity. I know you heard me talk a lot last year about COVID and say we're not purely COVID, but guess what? The market opportunity is sensational. And that's where I think as the market was falling apart today in London, we're in a bit Chinese, we're in everything else. Quite a few of brokers say, hey, Kyle. You you didn't really build a light side in your results, and your sharp price is up a bit as the market was falling apart. I know we've ended slightly down, but I think the people are looking at, wow.

8:51 This infectious disease market is booming post pandemic. It's gonna grow to $250,000,000,000 annually every year by 2025. Every major pharma company, Pfizer, GSK, J and J, Merck, Sanofi, etcetera, have now rolled out multiple new non COVID vaccine programs in the last twelve months. Guess what? We either have signed a contract with every one of those or in contract negotiations. Isn't that pretty cool names to have? And multiple, they're coming back. What's going on? Big pharma and governments are restocking and replenishing thirty years of underinvestment in infectious disease products. Would be one of the biggest gold rushes in the history of pharmaceuticals. Oncology, gene therapy, none of them ever passed a $100,150,000,000,000 a year in market size. This is two fifty in rising.

9:40 Even our friend Biden in the White House is making a big deal of 65,000,000,000. What they all realized is at least 17,000,000,000,000 worth damage done to the world economy. So the governments, big pharma know they need to spend hundreds of billions to ensure we never have a pandemic again. And beauty about this, every one of those new infectious disease products have to be tested and test them in a challenge study. Six months can tell them have they a winner or a loser. So that's where we sit. Customer pipeline, making it really clear. In the first half of the year, people say, well, where's your COVID revenues where they wanna top it? We had 5.4 in the first half, and it was 16.5 in real revenue. That's other challenge studies that will repeat, repeat, repeat. We have a significant pipeline for the world leading pharma companies. The names are there.

10:34 Pfizer, J and J, Sanofi. You name it. We have them. And it's a pretty cool place to be. Operational highlights. I don't wanna dwell too much in this because we really want to, as Leo, to give the financials, and then I'm gonna bring people through a lot of questions because I think a lot of the where we're going, what we do will be handled in the q and a. But first of all, we've increased chance to the capability. The Whitechapel Clinic, we converted 19 bedrooms. There's another nine there we can convert. We didn't convert all 29 beds. Roll free 19, q and b, the original one we have, volunteer screening, and we continue to diversify the lab and service office. Now you might ask, rightly so. We'll call what about COVID? Well, here we are. The COVID work is dependent on finishing the characterization study, and they're all free. If you read carefully, there's so much we can say and say, dude, because it's government controlled in burial university.

11:32 But if you read our RNS, we said the work in the role free

11:36 is not completed. That means the characterization study completed. That means we can now finally look at potentially signing large contracts. The contract we signed this morning for an influenza, the one we signed with GSK for 8.1 from a for asthma three weeks ago. We signed them, and then we seek approval from both the MHRA, that's our regulatory in The UK, and the ethics panels. When it comes to COVID work, the reason we're saying we're not gonna do much the rest of this year, it's been pushed to next year. A lot of those big studies, we now have to line them up. We cannot sign contracts because that would piss the regulator off seriously. Hang on. Let just sign it. Each one of our COVID studies, we go back to the UK ethics panel and the UKHMRI, and we seek permission. When they get that, we'll make an announcement. So all of them say in the COVID studies, we're trying to be very realistic, say, look. We know we'll do 50,000,000 next year in real revenues in non COVID. We'd hope to do substantially more.

12:34 On top of that, we've baked in already 5 or 6,000,000 in existing ongoing government COVID work. And I my belief is any additional COVID revenues will be on top of that. So we want people buying in. What can we control? It'd be remiss of me to say that COVID's over. The there is the new variants. We've grown a lot, and there will be always a need to test them quickly. And I think what's going on at the moment, the actual current vaccines we all know, the Pfizer, the Astra, the rest are working pretty well. But there's a whole wave of other products coming through, antivirals, monocloniums, and other vaccines. And how are you gonna compare? And this is the big issue, I think, our friends in Valneva went bananas and people like that went bananas. It's very hard now to compare a new vaccine to one of the existing ones when everybody in the world is vaccinated. So the only way, and this is genuinely the only way, will be in a challenge study. We're biding our time.

13:30 We're the only people who are working COVID challenge study in the entire world. And guess what? I think we're gonna have an exciting year, but I want every day to focus on what we can deliver, and that's the existing challenge studies, the respiratory diseases, what we can do, and Leo will talk us through now where we've actual visibility on at least 50,000,000 next year and more on top of that. Why was the profits not higher? We wanted to come out early. We didn't want every whit in the Chinese say, oh, we didn't quite make the numbers. We wanted to be very clear, set expectations, and beat them. That's what we're trying to do today. Yes. Our brokers powered her back a little bit, but it's only a small bit on the overall scheme of things, and we think we can easily exceed the expectations that have been set from today. Leo, over to you, please.

14:18 Thank you, Karl, and it's great to be here and to speak to everyone tonight. I want to just give you a headline overview of our financial performance in H1 versus last year. And big picture, this is really the culmination of the work that we've been doing for eighteen months. It's the promise that we have made to investors in terms of our work plan. And the results are very satisfying. Firstly, revenue is up 242% year on year at 22,000,000 in the current in H1. Our gross margins have grown from 6% to 28% in the period. And those combined to really turn around the loss making position of last year where we lost €4,000,000 in terms of EBITDA, now we're making a profitable €2,100,000 And importantly, we're continuing the trend that we started in Q4 last year.

15:22 And a couple of elements just to draw your attention to. Clearly, part of this turnaround of performance is driving overall yield, leveraging fixed cost base that we have on the business, which has held us back. So in the six months, our revenue per head has more than per employee has more than doubled. We have more than doubled our utilization in our facilities. And that's factoring in that we've actually increased our facilities through the Royal Free Hospital and through the Whitechapel Clinic. We are very satisfied with the growth in margin, but we know we still have work to do. 28% is good, but we want to be targeting over 30%, ideally on our way to 40% in terms of margins. And I'll touch on what we're doing on that in a moment.

16:22 Cash is a critical part of our financial measures. And at the half year, we had £15,000,000 approximately £15,000,000 in cash. The trajectory since year end reflects normal working capital movements because we had significant client prepayments on our balance sheet at the end of December. It's also reflecting some timing gaps in terms of receiving R and D tax credits, and it's also reflecting investments that we've made to enable spinouts, one of which, Poolbank Pharma, we completed in June this year as well as normal CapEx that we do to replenish ourselves in the labs and across our business. Our outlook for cash is that we will be in line at the end of the year with our H1 balances. So no concerns that we're bleeding cash as we drive the business forward.

17:17 We touched on the capital share capital reorganization, which is really the technical changes to our

17:23 balance sheet to enable us to do a dividend at specie, which we did to enable Probate Pharma in June this year. I want to touch briefly on the key value added initiatives. And the first key initiative really is how we drive revenue. And we've touched on it when we at the half of the full year review. Driving closed contracts is one the key leading indicators of our performance and really sets the scene for future periods. Already with the deals that we've just signed in September, we've exceeded the overall value of deals that we signed in 2020, and we still have three to four months to go with some really big agreements under negotiation with major pharma players. So that augurs very well and sets the scene for our revenue growth in 2022.

18:29 We're continuing to make smart investments in our platform. We're investing in malaria, pneumococcus, tuberculosis, all about broadening the challenge model, not just to rely on the historic models that we've had. We're also investing in getting improved accreditation in our labs so we can broaden our services to big pharma and to other CROs who don't have this capability. Finally, linked to my point about margins.

19:00 This year was around turning around the financial performance and getting back to profitability. Going forward, we want to really optimize our profitability so that we're performing in line with our peers or the top performers in the market. So we're focusing on cross selling. How do we connect with our customers in the other sides of our business in Paris,

19:24 in London and in Breda, so that we the cost of selling actually comes down? How do we focus on driving increased productivity in our business by implementing smart technologies, by simplifying the way we work. Right now, our goal is we need to get above well above 30% in gross margins and that gets us on the right track to be in line with our peer group. Finally, we need to be continue to be very, very disciplined in terms of our overhead, managing our cost base. So that if we can grow our revenue by another 30%, 40% and more, but keep our overheads flat, then we're getting significant operating leverage to drive improved margins to the bottom line. And that's the program of work that we want to continue now that we're all we're basically profitable, but we want to drive ahead on that.

20:22 Let's talk a little bit about the outlook. Rahul has alluded to it. And I think the big picture here, there's a couple of big strategic points that we want to call out here. And it's really looking at the trend line rather than focusing on very short term headlines. It's very clear. We could have done better than the numbers that we're that we could have done we could do better in 2021 had we got a COVID deal across the line. But the bigger picture is if you look at movements in the infectious disease market, if you look at the adoption of challenge studies as part of the armory of CROs and pharma companies, there's a huge opportunity to broaden the traditional our traditional business.

21:08 So we're guiding right now CHF 40,000,000 for the end of twenty twenty one, and we're guiding full year profitability for 2021. But as we look forward, even if we just focus on our non COVID business, The deals that we have already signed, plus the pipeline of deals that are in advanced negotiation to layer on top the recurring businesses that we have in Paris and in Breda, we are well on track to deliver in excess of GBP 50,000,000 in revenue for 2022. And that's not factoring GBP 5,000,000 of revenue that we have already contracted for COVID.

21:57 So the message we want to give is the trend line is very, very positive in terms of our traditional business. We are not relying on COVID to be our engine of growth as we go forward into 2022. But you must remember, COVID remains a really good opportunity to give us upside on the numbers that we're talking about today. There's already CHF 5,000,000 in, but that could easily be 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 depending on the nature of the trials and the timing of those trials. And our hesitation around calling a number is because there is uncertainty about when these trials would start. As Cath alluded to, regulatory clearance is an important enabler to get these trials started.

22:45 So we want to give you real comfort that the base traditional business is a very, very strong engine of growth. We're not relying on COVID, but COVID could be a really strong source of upside as we go into next year. So in summary, we're satisfied with the results that we're sharing with you and you've seen today They're the culmination of the work that the journey we set out on eighteen months ago, but we're not satisfied to rest in our laurels. We're resetting our goals in terms of driving long term performance of the business, and we see a really strong opportunity linked to growth in the market. Carlo, back to you. Leo, thanks for that.

23:31 So look, in summary, folks, we could have the we all know we have made no COVID challenge to the announcements. Read between the lines on earth. It's ready. So going in next year, we will do COVID work, but I can't emphasize the if it had come in this year, we would hit the magic number of 50 and a much bigger profit figure. But we are for everybody on the call tonight, we're emphasized today. Guess what? We're finally profitable for the first half of the year, the full year. We're pointing out the cash. That cash will not drop. I know that in the June and August, right, disaster presentation, August 9, people were worried, hang on minute. You guys are burning cash. So the big message today is we're now in a business that's generating cash, and we're now in a business we're gonna continue handing these dividend species back. So let me take you to those. Cool Bank Pharma, we're a small team. Like, we're probably I get into trouble because I'm a bit too hands on, and we don't like spending too much money. But we're worried if we build up this big structure of CEOs and people, how do you get rid of them? They run the company for themselves. So at the moment, we've got a relatively lean and mean company. Pull back, we did it. Most people thought we didn't. We got a pre money at 25,000,000.

24:41 We raised that was 90 odd percent owned by open office shareholders. It's a dividend species to the better work and time with advisers to find the structure that we could give you and myself and everybody else shares that we didn't pay income tax. And we had to do it at HMRC strategy demerger to get their approval. So that means it shows you got there's no income tax. You pay tax on the capital gains. Yes. They're locked up for nine months, but guess what? We've done very little news flow over the last two months. The share price hasn't gone down. It was up 30% at one stage. Watch the news for the next three or four or five months. And I think by the time the nine months come around, it'll be in a very, very different place. The beauty about pullback, it's got clear trajectory to go straight onto Nasdaq very, very quickly. I imagine well before that nine months. I know people are worried.

25:32 We'll have situation under control that the the the freeing up is not going to damage the share price. The next one, we control a 100% of disease in motion. We've done all the work. We did spend some of our cash earlier this year, get the malaria model up and running, and not alone getting pulled back, getting some getting the structured, but getting disease in motion. So there is no more money we'd spend on disease in motion. It is ready. It's a matter of now going through the process. We probably won't get it done this side of Christmas, but we'll get it done very early in the New Year. So I had hope, but around the turn of the year, we'd be giving you who knows the valuation? I originally said we didn't know what pill that. I think disease in motion should in turn a bigger pre money. It's more sexy and exciting. It's in an even the people are asking. It's about infectious disease as wearables, big tech. But guess what? We have a model coming together. It's gonna be tools, everything to do with running clinical trials because the big tech, the wearables, the watches, the iPhones are trying to help.

26:34 But we've got a whole series of tools to give them in indicating post trials, and, also, it's gonna be a really cool CRO tools company, and I think that could grow very fast and very extensively as a totally standard loan company. Bear in mind, each of them, pool bag is only one full time employee. That's Jeremy, the CEO. Everybody else, we've got about eight or nine staff, fifty fifty. So that means we reduce the overall head headcount cost in open orphan, and pool bag gets new resources. We share the rent. So there's a lot of so, basically, the benefit of having these spin offs, they're actually very good for the parent company as well. Imutex, you know, I'm frustrated, but, hopefully, there's a dialogue underway. I think our friends in the seat group are now much more attuned to where we should go with this. And trust me, I've been I keep saying trust me.

27:29 I shouldn't say that. Work in progress. We will deliver a result in the. Likewise, All I can say, we want them all done by Christmas, but by hell, we'll have them all done by early next year. And we're gonna go into early next year as a pure CRO world leader in testing vaccines antivirals. And guess that, where do we go next as we're already looking at pool bank to Nasdaq. My previous company, Amrit Pharma, has gone on Nasdaq. It's worked out pretty well. It twitched briefly Thursday the a billion dollar enterprise value that was $7.50 market cap and $2.50 in bonds. That's my ambition for all of these companies, open orphan. How do we get open orphaned in Nasdaq? Very simply. We're probably a little bit in the small side. We may, at some stage over the coming months, get into bed with a much larger company who can't go to Nasdaq, but who would love if we put the two of them together. In my view, if we did successfully, got get in the bed with something bigger, merger, some form of that, then we can go to Nasdaq faster and swiftly.

28:33 And on Nasdaq, not alone do we believe we're worth two x at current share price. It's quite easy to have three x. As I keep saying, we're a services company, but we're designed for Nasdaq. That's where we're going. So that's the plan over the next twelve months. And a key part of that will be cleaning up, handing back to non core to shareholders. So, hopefully, that gives us summarize where we are. Those are work in progress. Yes. We could move faster, but, hey, the infectious disease market's not gonna waste. Sometimes we rush them out. We might have got x for AMETEK six, nine months ago. We might get two x between now and Christmas for it. But look. It's work in progress. Final slides. I really want to get in. There's a lot of questions. I'd say we've got a lot of presubmitted questions. So in summary, 242% increase in h one over h one last year. We're EBITDA profitable. We're profitable first half.

29:21 We're be profitable full year. That's clear. 75 percent non COVID. Look at 75% non COVID for most year. We're guiding $40,000,000, pounds starting for the full 2021. We are hoping and planning on exceeding it. We want to reset those expectation because there was one very large COVID study. Pfizer CEO had signed off on it. And our friends in the just couldn't get the bloody characterization model finished in time. I emphasize there's tons of COVID products when down the road. It's gonna be very hard to test them in community. We saw even that last week, Valneva complaining. It's really hard to get a good result when half the world's already vaccinated. So that brings it back. The only way to test, not the only one of the main ways to test new COVID products is in the challenge study because we control the environment.

30:12 Next year, 50,000,000, and we're targeting that, and we're intend to exceed that substantially. That's non COVID revenues. That's challenge studies that we've signed influenza today. Two already this year is our third one. Asthma, few weeks ago. Previous one was years ago. With four more influenza studies, influenza is the new COVID in in this business, basically. New challenge study models. We've had malaria, and we're bolting them all now on a very low cost basis. So the next challenge we're looking is TB in prisons all around the world. That's becoming a huge issue. We've increased recruitment capacity with and then we've done the first spin off. So what I'd forward to do, I think it's time I started to answer questions. I know people have a lot of questions, so let let me we've had over 60 presubmitted questions. Or I think is Mark going in there at moment?

31:00 Are you gonna say I was just gonna give you a small pause, Carl Hill, because as you say, a number of questions have come in. It'll give you a chance just to have a look through some of the live questions. But ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while Carl Hill and Leo take a few moments to review investor questions submitted already, I'd like to remind you that the recording of this presentation with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via your Investor Meet company dashboard, and we will send you an e mail when they're ready for your review. I'd also like to remind you that your feedback is as important as ever to the company. And immediately after this

31:32 presentation has ended, we will redirect you for the opportunity for you to provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. Car Hill, I'll hand the floor back to you if I may, Saul. Obviously, you've got those pre submitted questions. And then if I could ask you to open the Q and A tab and read out the live questions as you can, sir. Then I'll pick up Absolutely. From you Thank you. I've been reading the q and a as Leo was talking, so I could see them coming in. First of all, with 60 presubmitted, quite a lot of naturally their their duplication. So we've reduced them down to 22.

32:04 There is four around results and financials, seven around the spin offs, two around the services non COVID, five around the services COVID, three around general outlook, and actually only one about the share price. I'm gonna go through them pretty quickly. Our colleagues in on the platform are both Wallbrook and InvestoMe, but they're doing there's lots of questions on the right here. But quite a few of these questions are almost duplication what we have. So I'll do I'll get through these 22. Leo's gonna answer a few of the financial ones, and then our colleagues will delete the duplication. And the remainder of questions remains unanswered here that's coming in tonight. I'm gonna answer do your best to answer every one of them. I will try and wrap up around seven. I want people thinking, bloody hell, when will these guys shut up? So we'll try and hard stop around.

32:50 Okay. Kicking off. First question about financials. Can you give an indication of the current full year forecast, both top line and bottom line? Where can we expect to finish? I think that's over to you, Leo. But I think really rather repeating, you've kind of done that full year 40, is it? Anything you need to add? Yeah. That that's about right. And I think while we're not guiding explicitly on the margin on on on EBITDA profitability, it'll be broadly similar margins as we reported for h one. I think the most important one for everybody on that one, full year profitability and the cash pile not getting smaller, increasing slightly. It would have increased substantially if we had pushed through the full, 50,000,000 we're hoping on, but we're trying to be modest. We might still we might still pull up pull up few surprises between now and Christmas on the revenue line.

33:38 Question two, we've been told the dividend will be paid by Christmas. Is this still the case? Yeah. Look. It's work in progress. We'd be more interested in getting the dividend species out first. And then as that cash builds up, then, of course, a dividend. And bear in mind, I've been buying shares. I paid 300,000 earlier this summer at twenty seven and a half year share. I'd be the first one who'd welcome a bit of cash back because, as you know, I cannot have no intention of selling shares anytime soon. So, yes, a cash dividend would be welcome. But I think the focus is get the dividend species which are vastly bigger. Bear in mind, pool bag was 25,000,000 in real shares handed back. And if that performs anywhere close, we think it'll it's a three x that becomes 75,000,000. Question three, the last audit report treats currency as a risk as a risk as a key audit matter because of your slim profit margins.

34:31 Why are margins slim? I think, Leo, that's for one for you. You've got a couple. Yes. This is a typical question that our auditors will ask as part of their going concern review, and you'd expect that. I think it's really looking back at the shape of our business a year or so ago when we had slim margins and there was very little room to manage major swings in currency should they happen. So there's two points on that. Firstly, H1 show that we've actually significantly improved our margins. Our gross margins are now up at 28%. We're now EBITDA profitable. That gives you nominally gives you headroom to manage currency risk if it happens. But the other side of it in terms of our operations, we're generally hedged quite naturally in terms of our sterling and largely euro spending.

35:21 We typically fund our euro activity in The Netherlands and in France and all of our key sterling spend is in London where we get our sterling revenues. So generally, we're quite well hedged in terms of currencies. We've no dollar or other no material dollar exposure or exposure to any other currencies. Got it. Question four, the last one on results and flagship. Please, will you release the full year results in a more timely manner, I e, February or March? Yeah. The one issue of the results is they're subject to an audit. We have three companies, one in France, one in Holland, and one here in London. So it does take results or subject to an audit. So it generally takes three months to get all that signed up. So end of March, early April, and Fortune is the time the earliest a company goes. Because bear in mind, PLC is just the audit takes a little longer.

36:14 But three months post year end, that brings us into February. Next question, spin offs. Very quickly, question one, why is Jeremy Skillington not bought any pullback shares? It's a very simple answer. Jeremy came in very late, literally the weeks and days before the IPO. He he basically didn't really get an opportunity to invest, But don't worry. Jeremy's gonna have lots of opportunity in the months ahead when we get a an open period, and he intends investing, so that'll be taken care of then. As regards to disease and motion spin out, when do you envisage to be done weeks or months away? I've got a guidance. I've always said around the turn of the year. Is that before Christmas, after Christmas, generally speaking, probably more like after Christmas this day given where the markets are, but it won't be long after Christmas.

36:59 Three, are you the previously tech and wearable company still showing interest in the open orphan data? I asked the question because in the previous presentation, it's been mentioned that it's offered to pharma companies. Absolutely. Look. We've got the world's largest infectious disease progression data. Everybody's interested. Disease in motion is gonna be really cool. It's gonna be providing data to the wearables, but more importantly, the wearables is one market. But all clinical trials need this data, so we're putting algorithms together that

37:30 we can sell directly to any pharma company world doing any trial. Here is algorithms. Here is data that will speed up and give you a better outcome to your trial, and only a company coming with its roots in the clinical trial can do that. So I think the the whole disease emotion spend is gonna be super exciting. Question four. Also, do you have a potential CEO in mind here? Yeah. The work in progress. We probably should've got the CEO, Jeremy, much earlier on Pullbag. We had one lined up and, yeah, just somebody contributed and somebody made a better offer. So, again, we're in the business of making offers. We don't want to give away. Some CEOs want a massive slice of the spin off. I believe the spin offs are owned by you and me. I don't believe in giving away a ton of them. So the work in progress, we have a spin off, a a c or two in mind.

38:18 Five, Imutex spin out is still delayed. Please update it. I got covered Imutex. It's work in progress. We are now in good conversations with our. I think they've heard my views publicly, and that's work in progress. So please bear with us. It's a good time to do something with that product. Five or six, we've been told multiple times you will conduct spin outs by Christmas. Is this still the case? Look. It's work in progress. I keep having said we're keeping our team small and focused. We're not building a massive cost structure. Some of these things do take a little longer. That contract we signed this morning, like, again, we're a small team. There's not many companies banging out 5,700,000 contracts nearly every month as we go forward. There was a lull over the summer because not a lot of happens in pharmaceuticals for June, July, and August. But, hey, we we did 8,100,000 last month. We've done 5.7 this month. There's no reason why we won't do one of those each month between now and Christmas.

39:13 Seven, do you see the costs will do you see a cost that will impact profits and spinning off non courses? Absolutely. None. We spent we built up some costs. We said earlier part of the year, the reason we did consume a little cash before the end of June was getting the spin

39:29 offs. Not one, not two, three, but four ready, getting the malaria study ready. So there is going forward to the rest of the year, there's no more cost consumption. So that's where Leo's guiding. We will end the year with the same cash within June and, hopefully substantially more, but no less. That's the spin offs.

39:50 Services business non COVID, we've got two. Carl, with the new millennial chim being accessible for November, is the company developing any more chimps? If so, and when will be available to clients going forward? I think I left the cut out of the bag earlier. TB is the next obvious one. It's very simple. There's a ton of products coming down because the world is afraid. Well, could TB come back in? So any of these things, terribly, I say. TB is rife in prisons, especially in Russia and China. They're creating a demand government will pay for. So, yeah, the next one will be TB and malaria, and we're hoping to sign a few that watch this space between now and Christmas on malaria. Two, shareholders were led to believe that a major contract will be signed by Chinese state. What happened to this? Well, I think most people know what happened to China. Cameron and China were best buddies. Xi was best buddies of Americans.

40:39 China's got a little bit more difficult. The politics have gone away. But guess what? They, more than anybody, wants Chinese studies. The Chinese want a they have a huge problem with influenza, a huge problem with pneumococcus. So all of them say it's taking a little longer. Unfortunately, it's a bit like our French friend politics gotten away with the old sub in Australia and our friends ourselves here. I like my British passport winding up some of our French friends and the colleagues who said, you weren't good enough at building subs. But yeah. Look. Unfortunately, China, things are taking a little bit longer due to international politics. And this is services business COVID. Carl, has the company been in talks with any clients regards to COVID nineteen contracts? If so, when will it commence and roughly and when? Absolute when and roughly. I guess, very important. This is almost a planned question by myself.

41:30 When will these COVID studies commence and where we site? Well, the good news, first of all, is we know COVID has now become almost epidemic. We can run them in q and b. We can run them in hotel. We're not stuck between the role free. We can continue to access the role free. The government pays for it, but we're in extensive conversations. There is actually more inquiries than ever because every midsize pharma company with a COVID products in, how do we test our product? Because half the world's been vaccinated. It's a interesting problem. How do you test the product for COVID if you can't find people getting sick particularly well? Challenge studies has never been more important. The reason we're emphasizing on our split the revenue day, it is taking time. COVID is still scary for regulators. COVID's got it we're saying fifty million next year without COVID, and COVID's on top of it. Is that $10.20, 30? We don't know. It'd be wrong to say how much. Other than, I genuinely believe there'll still be a lot of COVID work next year. It's just gonna take a little bit slower, a little bit longer, but it's a bit like COVID itself. It hasn't gone away, and it seems to mutate and change.

42:40 Second question, when will the characterization study be completed? Will there be interest in COVID studies, Ben? I think I've answered that. The study is completed. We've had a lot of academics. One could say, I could use the f word around and messing around. Customers don't like seeing academics hanging around these studies. They never know when they have enough data. It is finished, and and you're covered. There is probably more interest in COVID studies now than there were six months ago and twelve months ago. Yes. The Pfizer's of the world have their products, and they're rolling them out and making gazillions. But guess what? There's over 2,000 COVID related products in the clinic in some forms of trials. So many of them are targets for a challenge study. Three, our big pharma goes straight to phase three with comparison studies and therefore do not need us. Absolutely.

43:26 Some of the big pharma will do comparison studies, but, again, they run into problems. Like, last week, how do you find COVID naive? How do you test it? And that's the issue. They're all saying, oh, it's not fair. Pfizer got to test their vaccine when there was no COVID in the community. There's so much COVID or when there was no vaccinated people in the community. There's no it's very hard to find people who are not vaccinated. So that's where we're in that regard. Next question. The government COVID chance that it seemed to have stalled awaiting for their sign off decisions. When is this now expected to start? What are we waiting for? Yeah. Actually, look. Again, I think we're dealing with governments. You know what it's like. It it's difficult to get sign off. It's difficult to get decisions. That's why we're emphasizing non COVID, but it's not going away. Britain is the world leader in vaccines and the rollout of the. And Britain is the only country in the world that has decided to do a COVID challenge study. So my belief is bear with us.

44:24 They'll come through. It just might take a little longer. With the 40,000,000 UK contracts is to be delivered into I'm sorry. Will the 40,000,000 UK contract be delivered in '21, and will the full contract payment be seen in the '21 books? Okay. Leo made it very clear. There's 8,000,000 of COVID revenue in the first half of this year. There was some last year. There'll be 12,000,000 for the fall of this year. Yes. There's a substantial amount more COVID revenue outstanding when we get around to working with the government. And more importantly, we've also three slots, 7,500,000. They're use them or use them slot. One this year, one next year, one the following year. The government can't pay for slots and then not use them. It's literally use them or lose them slots. So I think, look, that has been an interesting contract. There is still quite a bit of work outstanding and quite a bit more work. But bear in mind, it's all on a cost plus basis.

45:17 We got that. General company outlook. So now we're into the I can start switching over the online ones. I'm down to my last four questions from the presubmits. So it's about the general company. I've been I can't see in the company's pretty well much booked to the end of twenty two. Are you still looking to expand the footprint? As surely the new gym onboard is limited revenue wise without this. Look. The beauty about it, I said, we went from a year ago, one point in the QMB. We expanded up to Roll Free, and we managed that entirely from here at Whitechapel. And then we converted to Whitechapel Hotel. We can easily now convert another hotel down the road. There is four within 200 meters, all of which will be defined as a site extension.

46:02 So I think we're not going to have a problem with capacity at this stage going forward. We don't need to go abroad. And the more we cluster activities around each other in Whitechapel in East London, the more efficiencies and the bigger margins we'll make. Two, do you intend to do a list open orphan in Nasdaq as well as absolutely. My plan, look, at the moment is, you all know, I'll if we clean these companies up, fix them and sell them for 50,000,000, and then we say we'll sell them for a 100,000,000. Well, guess what? I think we will get multiple x uplift if we get our way onto Nasdaq. We'd have to stay dual because we have a lot of institutions as well as a lot of family offices. So we'll always stay dual, a bit like Amrit Pharma. That's the other company I cofounded. Amrit is now successfully on Nasdaq.

46:47 Amrit will do 250,000,000 revenues this year. They're close to 200,000,000 last year. That's a nice number. That was a little oil and gas shell that people laughed when I said it was gonna convert it into. I still have a good stake sitting in it. And, yeah, Nasdaq's the place to go. I've said earlier, we probably need more scale. And all I'm saying is watch this space over the coming months. That is absolute work in progress, and we'll be mad not to be trying to be on Nasdaq in the second half of next year. Three, once spin outs are complete, would you consider selling the core company? I think my answer to that earlier. Everything's for sale. I think we'll get a vastly bigger, uplift if we ended up joining up with somebody else. Not somebody channel studies, but somebody who needs channel studies. I think that's where we're going, and it's very important. I'm gonna switch. That's all my presubmits. I'll take it from the top now that the questions that have just come in. Bill m, at the last week, one of the reasons for a lagging share price is due to a large investor selling. Why is the reason? Look at folks. I think what happened is the end of June, yes, we had a large legacy shareholder. For some reason, he started dumping shares, didn't contact us. We blamed Tony Richardson wrongly.

48:02 He sold a small amount. His lockup was gone. He's agreed, and he's not selling anymore, and he seems to see so far so good. So I think any other big sellers will try and manage them. The overall market, we all know. I've had a good bit of money in small cap companies myself. That's why I give them manage with a hard time. Anytime over the years, I'd spare cash. I don't take it out of my little family office companies called Ragdon Road Capital and invest, but I think we all know the whole market had a pretty crap summer. I'm very optimistic because we've been to the between now and Christmas where the market's gonna go. Mike p, revenue looks good, but profits and cash a little disappointing. Are you seeing the cash position being equal to h one at the end of h two? Will not be affected by spin offs of the IMUTEX? And will these happen this year? If so, will you use a similar model?

48:48 Mike P. Absolutely. Leo has made it clear. The cash will increase. We've said it's not gonna drop. We're not gonna dig in that cash. The money was invested. We got the pool bag model right. The advisers are paid. We use the same template going forward again. Dave g, are you are you open to selling Immutex rather than listed NASDAQ as a pro? Absolutely. The three spin offs, disease and motion, we own a 100%. We will IPO that. Absolutely guaranteed. The other two assets, we will extract the biggest price possible we can get from, and that might involve hey, presto. There's an awful lot of companies who I think now who have gone up to tens of billions and little rounding figure to take Invitex off our hands. I spent fifteen years of my previous life selling companies of corporate finance guy. So I think if we know who's selling the techs, it's ourselves.

49:40 Graham w, how do you reconcile your h two guidance of 18 revenue with comments you made in the past on Queen Mary's facility maxed at 40,000,000 a year just by itself and basically full. Bookings will not translate. Yeah. Look what we're saying there. If you look at our numbers, we're gonna do close to 40,000,000 a year. We have the hotel across the road. The hotel is not we're saying jammed to the guilds. QMB is jammed to the guilds. There's windows, bear in mind, each study lasts six or eight weeks. What we had said before and again is my my, I would say, cluster, once they what? August presentation, I'd say, the typical challenge unit, 80% capacity is close to a 100. You can never get because there's after every challenge today, there's a two week sterilization and cleaning out.

50:26 But as we approach 80%, that's close to a 100% numerically. That's we need spare facilities. I think we were very clear. If even half this market material is at 250,000,000,000, we we have the dry run. We need to be able to free up more capacity. And guess what? The capacity is down the street, a 165 meters from us, another site extension. If you try and set up a new channel city unit zone anywhere across London, anywhere in the continent, it's 25,000,000 because you have to have all the facilities, the lab, everything else that's in QMB. Uncle Neil, if he's listening to me, Whitford, spent 25,000,000 establishing HVIVO as a quarantine unit. We now use that as a kind of the spider in the center of the web. The hotel across the road is a site extension, another hotel, and that saves tens of millions. And, again, the staff can move on between them.

51:18 David h, revenue wise, where can you scale sorry to get revenue wise from David h. Where can you scale to over the next couple years? Is there a revenue ceiling, or can you easily scale to a 100,000,000,150? Look, David, I think where we really scale, there's huge synergies. When we do a challenge study, we get asked, can we do a phase two in the field and phase three? No. We can't do them. We need to be in bed with a CRO. We just phase two and phase three. So I think you know my logic where we're going there, and then we go to Nasdaq. So, yeah, you could sell it today and get an interesting price, maybe two times. Why do that if we if instead we hold on a little longer and get three x? Now we've fixed the company. We're driving it. There's nobody get my salary is 146,000.

52:03 There's nobody in the company getting past that. Otherwise, they have a target in their back. So that's we'll keep the costs under control and keep growing it. Pat k, are you still confident that CHIM studies will take place in '22? If it doesn't, do we keep it oh, absolutely. We said there's three of them, 7,500,000. We have possession. Use them or lose them. That's what we treat the UK government. They're very nice. We're all taxpayers. But if they give us if they take three slots, use them or lose them, folks. And we by using them as a Leo grabs them each year. Cha ching. But my view is there will be COVID studies next year. But, again, the government has to bring them to us. If we find them ourselves, that's a whole different, ball of wax. So if we get COVID studies next year, the government needs to come to us for their studies, and not us going work with it. So those three slots are government slots, and that's all I can say there.

53:01 Can you please give a firmer guidance on revenue and marketing costs so that we have a clear understanding of this? I think we we've covered that one pretty well. Leo has gone through the revenues and costs pretty well. Where else? Some of these are duplication. Let me see. Yeah. Last webcast here, you answered to question consensus. Maybe this one, don't substantially see 21 sales of 50,000,000. What went wrong? Well, that was consensus now is $40. The consensus now is $42.41, £42,000,000. We do want bear in mind, we're now planning those deck. It is quarterly. If we're gonna do something exciting the next three or six months, we don't want we come at the end of January, resetting things.

53:47 So we're setting expectations at the moment that we will exceed by year end, not expectations we're just gonna scrunch through. So I think at one stage today, we were one of the few shares who was blue. Okay. It's come off a little bit, but I think what we're trying to do there is set expectations we can beat, not struggle to get. What else? I hope somebody would nice to me here. I know I talk too much. John g, thank you very much. What a performance, Kyle. You must be very proud of what you achieved in such a short period. Can you remain independent? Absolutely. Look. I'm the biggest shareholder. I'm not rushing. As we say, can you stay independent? I think being listed on Nasdaq and AIM keeps us independent. Maybe it's part of a bigger entity. Who knows? But, yeah, look. We've we've been busy. I think a lot done, a lot more do. And I'm learning. Sometimes I I do get too excited and maybe set expectations too close, but, hopefully, in the round, we try and deliver most, if not all of them. James c. Hi, Carl. Do you foresee a time when you'd rather than do a challenge study or fulfill models made by or of the third parties who then run them with challenge studies? No. I'd see that long term.

54:51 We'll be doing phase one, challenge study phase two, conventional phase two, phase three, doing the whole package, and that's you can see, we'll be part of our organization. Our colleague, Brenton Buckley, who cofounded the company with me, he sold his company to a little Irish tech company called Icon eight years ago. Icon eight years ago had a market cap of 600,000,000. Today, it's the world's second largest CRO with a market cap, I think, odds enough 22,000,000,000. The CRO, we get an exceptional growth. Poolbag, the reason I'm so excited about it, there's only one company in the world similar to Poolbag. It's called EVOTECH in Germany. I'm not great at coming up with original ideas, but I love copying. The reason we put Poolbag together, that unique model, get a lot of products, pop them through phase one, and our clients are selling at EVOTECH. And the only reason to find about Elena Sullivan's on the board as a nonexec director of.

55:43 She's also on the board of the IP group in here in London, which is the board of EVOTECH. EVOTECH had a market cap of 500,000,000 about four years ago. They switched from doing clinical trials to this pool bag model, have lots of things in phase one. And guess what? It's got a 10 x uplift. ICON has had a 10 x uplift in the last seven years. Why should we not look at getting the 10 x uplift? We won't get that by selling that too soon, but we could get 10 x by going to Nasdaq as part of something bigger. Giles w, it would be good to get more clarity on why the r and d tax credit is negative in the cash flow statements, please. But I think that's Leo, overview. At the timing difference, we get the cash next year for the R and D tax credits that we recognize this year. So we expect very shortly to get the cash for the credits we got. The cash this year for the credits we earned last year, just it's an accounting and tax tax payment difference.

56:41 Okay. Thanks, Neil. I'm gonna be naughty. I've I've scrolled just to keep our platform people. I'm now going down to start the questions from the the latest ones at the bottom of the chat one. So I've got a our friendly platform people are deleting the questions as I answer them. So James f, they came in at 06:54. The very last one came in. I'm gonna work my way back up. So when I I've taken the early questions. Now I wanna take the bottom ones and work my way back. There's about don't worry, folks. I will finish up pretty close to seven. I might overrun by five or ten minutes. We'll guillotine at ten past seven. I know you all have lots of things to do with him. Right. James f committed six fifty four. How much are you expecting to be charged for any additional hotel facility, not the cost to convert? Cost to convert is just over 1,000,000. The beauty about it in Whitechapel in East London, we all know post COVID, there's too many bloody hotels room in the world. People are not traveling as much.

57:33 There's four hotels that suit. We're playing one off against the other. It's a rolling six or twelve months contract. So don't worry, James f. We won't be paying too much. It it's very modest. That's all I can say. Rosita s came in at $6.50. For your malarial trials, which institutions do you work with? London School, anti malarial, CDC, and which countries do you are you doing your trials in? Rosita, we're very much and the goes bananas. There's worse. I have a British and Irish passport. So I'm more British than British themselves. That's the problem with giving me a passport. We're trying to do as much as we can in The United Kingdom here in London. Keep it all close. You have the most famous schools, universities in world, London School of Tropical Medicines, Cambridge, Oxford, and Burial. Why would we go abroad? Let's keep it all here at home, and we can do it. Where are we gonna run the trials?

58:19 Guess what? The malaria trials will be held in our hotel around the corner in QMB or in QMB or one of our cities. So we will do the malarial studies, everything here in East London. Glen d committed six fifty. You keep mentioning increased capacity convert in your hotels. What is the range of that? Will you have to buy them, or do you lease the rooms? Do you pay the hotel? Very simple. We've done in the other one. We go to the hotel and say, we will give you x, not a take the big sum of money, and we'll take out our floor of your hotel or your full hotel for a year. We want an option to have it for a second year, guaranteed in case we need it. And we want a break clause that we can walk away, give you six months notice, and give your hotel back. It's very simple. So we don't build capacity. We can't fill it.

59:06 No. Let's fill everything we have at the moment. Like, enemy is smart. Look. We're not looking for capacity anytime soon. But if this market comes anywhere close to see it going going through the roof, we will need capacity at some stage next year. But the trick would be fill every the gills. We have three facilities. Let's fill up the gills first. David w committed 6 49. Do open orphan on the data generated to characterize it, and is this being captured on DIM? Well, believe it or we put wearables and all that good stuff in. The data is jointly owned by the partnership, but I'd say, live out what we're pretty good at commercializing data. Our more important data would be influenza data, RSV data, asthma data, and that's been built over twenty five years, the company. That's the real data.

59:57 So the COVID data is interesting. It's part of a partnership there. Connor h came in at 07/2001. Firstly, congratulations on the great progress you've made. With us expand with The US expanding, is it easy to acquire staff and to run you? Absolutely. Lots of people. We were we should probably publicize more. We don't do it. HVIVO PNPH was in The Wall Street Journal three times this past three weeks. We will be in the walls New York Times later this week. We were in every scientific publication. Staff love coming here because they say, wow. HVIVO PLC all that. And we we push I'm a mouthy, talkative CEO, chairman, but you never catch me talking to the scientific Catchpole and our scientific push them out. So they say, wow, Carl. You're sharing the love, and you're making a lot of scientists famous interaction. Google Andrew Catchpole's name. He's all over the web. He spoke Chinese TV, Russian TV.

1:00:51 So have no problem getting staffed. When can we expect this merger '21 or '22? That would be I haven't said we're merging. I'm saying we've got plans. We have to have plans, big plans, and the plans is get big and get the Nasdaq. So let's see. Richard c, wouldn't it be beneficial to get some revenue streams coming in for GM prior to spin off to get investors to the market confidence to launch? I just think we've proven we can do it very well with Open Orphan or with Pool Bank. Leave that one as it's work in progress. We will have no problem IPO on DIM. That's all I can say. Trust me then. We should be very careful. If we signed up, bear in mind the model, we've got a spin off a new co. It has to be 90% owned by you and everybody on here tonight by open orphan shareholders, and that's part of the tax planning. The management team do get a small, so the new CEO will get a little bit. And some of the team here work harder, myself and Bill, we get a small bit of it. That 90% is then owned by the open orphan shareholders.

1:01:49 If we do a deal with Fitbit, Google, Yahoo, and all those people in Amazon as an open orphan, the monstrous problem So we're keeping them warm. I said none of are going away. And it's one of these things, it'll take a little longer, but we'll get there on it. And rather than rush, get small amount of money now, why not go for the big money over the coming months and years ahead? Graham w, is there a delta variant characterization study underway or complete? Do you need a delta variant challenge by before starting your COVID studies, or would you go ahead? Look. It's very clear. We're already growing up. I think we're nearly finished. We're growing up the delta variant because we're the only people in the world that seem to know how to grow viruses. Imperial engaged to do it. The welcome trust is paying for this particular one. UK government's not. So, yeah, there will be a characterized delta variant in the not too distant future, and that will be would be available for chance studies as well.

1:02:44 Polo, where will you recruit volunteers for COVID studies given that most people have vaccinated? I personally got a fundamental problem going beyond recruiting too many COVID naive volunteers. I think any of them could be my kids. I'm 257 next month. Most of volunteers are 25 to 30 years. I've met most of them. And I just think that, look, we now have the characterized model. Why test it anymore? It's gonna be very hard to get COVID naive volunteers who haven't had COVID. Most of them either have the vaccine or have the COVID. So it's not gonna be a problem. Any of the COVID studies going forward will be previously vaccinated or previously infected, which means massively low risk compared to going in. Imagine the thoughts we had. We were actually given young guys and girls who never had COVID before to let be given. So that we had a UK government guarantee. We did it with Imperial College. It's all done. Not a single one got ill seriously or sick, but we've moved on beyond that. So future COVID studies will be much more like influenza. We'll be giving people something they already have or they're they're vaccinated against them.

1:03:50 Where will you recruit volunteers? I think we've done that. Luke, our I see receivables are pretty high relative turnover even so even more so profitable. Are you happy your January convert instead of profits? Leo, that's yours. Luke? Yeah. So at the half year, we did have a relatively high level of receivables because of the timing of when we could issue invoices to our customers, in particular, some big balloon invoices on the characterization study, so which we actually issued a little later than we had expected. What I can tell you is that a lot of that cash is now cycled into the business in quarter three. So I think our receivables are a little bit more balanced relative to revenue right now.

1:04:36 Thanks, Neil. Alan d, a possible JV to go to Nasdaq, question mark. Is it right to presume you would go with a JV with another pharma CRO company giving you one from it? Look. It makes sense. We're offering a piece of the pie. We could be much bigger, much faster by offering the whole pie, basically, and being the world leader. So all they say, let's not get carried away, that that's we wanna set the hell running back. I've said we'd like to be in Nasdaq. There's several ways of getting there. That's one of them. John c. Hi, Kyle. You mentioned before we may have two malaria contracts with Christmas. That's absolutely what's that space. We're actively working on malaria as we speak. There should be announcements. Polar for Leo, trade creditors. We've done that. Next one. What next one. Sorry. We've done that one.

1:05:23 Peer group. Who's your peer group? Believe it not, there's very, very few. We are we've created the peer group ourselves by the world leaders. So, yeah, the who's the peer group? Alan d, Kyle, great turnaround. Thank you. In the interest of our share price, but is there any way you can make qualifying date for any spin out the date of the RNS so it's made to other entitlement? Yeah. Look. There is we keep learning. There was there was mistakes made or like, with so many advisers. Bear in mind, the only other companies doing this success is EKF, and they didn't get the first couple was right. They have a model. One of our large institutions called it open office like a Russian doll. You keep open bringing the loan out. That's the plan. Let's keep bringing it up. But, yeah, there was things we learned there. We the the the let's say, the the recorded date, we'll have to work on that before disease emotion.

1:06:13 David t, Leo, can you explain why h one is lower than two x q four twenty twenty? Yes. So I think in H1, you saw a significant scaling up of our operations. We took on board the Whitechapel Clinic. We took on quite a number of extra staff to manage the characterization study in the Royal Free. So overall, while we trended higher, we were carrying a more complex business base and that translated into more cost. So the margins weren't quite as good as we had had hoped for, but the overall profitability level did rise versus the prior period. Thanks, Leo. And again, look, we're being very clear, David, is that we could have done better. We should have done better. We probably should have focused more on the monster market in front of us earlier this spring and summer, I.

1:07:11 The whole $250,000,000,000 growth in infectious disease and respiratory where we had a lot of focus on COVID. The money is invested in that, and we can crank it up now as soon as we this this study is completed. Sarah if a product and don't worry, folks. We're nearly we're down to our last four or five questions. So we will finish at ten past seven as planned. Sarah Kay, if a product comes along that provides protection from COVID for several years at a time, will there still be need COVID chance studies? That's a good question. Yeah. If a product works, it looks like no one product's gonna work well. I had a really good work colleague. He got double vaccinated. I've been very blase. I've traveled long flight every time for eighteen months, part two weeks in June, part two weeks at Christmas, kinda being careful. I was shocked to work colleague that double vaccine is quite ill at the moment. So COVID keeps mutating and changes. It's gonna be around for quite a while. I think if a product was gonna work, we'd have seen at this stage. I think it's gonna become more like influenza.

1:08:05 It's gonna be around, so I don't think we're worrying. But, look, hopefully, it'd be great if there is. But the big thing, even if comes along, Sarah was saying, we've got an enormous market in front of us from non COVID, and that's the infectious disease. David p, last four. David p, what IP do we have to protect Chinese cities? It's a really difficult market. You have to have 25,000,000 initiatives to build a challenge unit, then you have to do the challenge viruses, then you have to have the challenge model, then you have the viral laboratory and the staff. And up to recent years, there wasn't many of those staff except for ourselves. So, yeah, the the IP is is a difficult there's a barrier to entry in all of them. And the big IP is each challenge model is a characterization. We don't share it. They're private. They're patent it. Last two questions. Elrigal, what is each bed worth to the company, and what is the total capacity?

1:08:56 And are there any plans to increase? Look. We don't go into that in two d because that would guide people what we're doing, but each bed is quite viable. With 42 we own and control, we could scale up by 10, and with 19 up and all free, we scale it. So I think the ticket is that we will only increase capacity. We can do it really fast. We now have a model. It took us three months to get the Whitechapel Hotel compared to the clinic. We could do it again in three months, and it cost us a million and a half. We can do it next time rather than less than 1,000,000. Last question, and hopefully, on the button of ten past seven. Christian a, what to stop traders jumping for the free shares and they spin off and then selling? Yeah. That's an issue looking at some of the things we're not sure. They say, what's the stop traders jumping in for the free shares in the next then selling the next day so they get the free shares? Look. We'll have to think on that. We will give thought. That's where we're being careful. We could be charging down the road the moment, getting these emotion done this out of Christmas, and instead then have a lot of chaos. We're trying to see right that there is we won't get everything right. We try and get most things reasonably right. So that's work in progress.

1:10:02 Folks, without further ado, I've talked to Hakanil. We will talk now for ten past seven. We might guillotine it. Mark, what do you think? Carhill, you're spang on. You're one minute late, actually, but we'll forgive you. But thank you, Carhill, firstly, being so generous with your time and and also to the engagement shown by investors who have continued to submit questions throughout. Carhill, Leo, I know investor feedback is particularly important to the company, and I'll shortly redirect investors to give you their thoughts and expectations. But, Carhill, if I may, finally, ask you for a few closing comments, and then I'll redirect investors. Yeah. Look, Mark. I just think be delighted people to bear with us. I know it's been a bumpy three or four months. It's been a bumpy three or four months for every and all forms of market. It's gonna be a bumpy time, but I think I've never been happier. I've never been more excited. I'd say it's a as the movie says, a lot done, a lot more to do, and I really think we can really grow that icon. Why not? Pool bag, I have designs, the biggest show. Get that 10 x. Just look at EVO Tech. It went up 10 x, not three, four, five. The only way we'll grow open up from 10 x is getting to Nasdaq and becoming very big fast. We will hit limitations by purely a name, but let's see.

1:11:12 Perfect. Kyle, thank you once again for updating investors this afternoon or early evening, should I say. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as we will now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of OpenOrphan PLC, we'd certainly like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, and good evening to you all.