Itaconix (LSE:ITX) — Interim Results

0:01 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the ITACONIX PLC Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted anytime by the Q and A tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Click q and a, scroll to the bottom, type your question, and press send. Company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, company review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. These will be available via your investment company dashboard, and you'll be notified once they're ready for your review. I'd also like to remind

0:32 you this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll, and I'd now like to hand you over to John Shaw, CEO and Laura Dennis, CFO of ITACONIX PLC. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. We are happy to be here. We're actually broadcasting, presenting from our headquarters in Stratub, New Hampshire. I'm John Shaw, the CEO. My name is Laura Denner, and I'm the CFO. We look forward to giving you an update, on our company and our results, and our prospects here.

1:06 Do there is a cautionary statement here and disclaimer regarding anything we, anything we present here. The we will review our business in terms of polymers for better living, our development path, our financial highlights, our use as key ingredients in consumer products,

1:28 our work with the London Stock Exchange on the green economy, Mark, customer pipeline, operational progress, financials and outlook. We are Polymers for Better Living. We bring plant based polymers that are used as key ingredients in consumer products that deliver performance, price and sustainability to bring great value to both the brands and the customers that use those brands. Our focus is on a $75,000,000 target that we have within our current $750,000,000 addressable market potential within the scope of what we currently do in detergents, odor control and personal care. Our products are already validated in a wide range of formulations where we are delivering value to our customers and to end consumers.

2:22 We are scaling globally, both ourselves and with our partners, with Croda and Neurion. And our value to the as an advanced material has really enabled us to have a much broader role and emerging role in the low carbon economy. All of our polymers are based on plant based carbon. The carbon comes from capture is captured from CO2 that then is comes into our product through the fermentation of itaconic acid where the CO2 becomes the carbon in the plants that are used as the fermentation feedstock for itaconic acid. We buy idaconic acid in the open market, bring it into our plant here, run it through our production process so that when we get out into an ingredient in consumer product, we are delivering plant based carbon for that.

3:18 That carbon remains sequestered and does not return it back into the atmosphere until our products degrade, which varies by product and by application. But in doing so, we are actually contributing to the decarbonization process by capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide while our products are intact. We are key ingredients for disruptive products, meaning new buying behaviors. Each one of our areas right now, it's important that our ingredient is needed for a brand to get a certain claim that's important to the success of the brand based on consumers' desires. Within the scope of our engagement with customers and with our existing products that we have, we are engaged with the market with our current ingredients for $75,000,000 revenue potential within our $750,000,000 addressable market. That means that we don't have active projects for $75,000,000 We have $25,000,000 in active customer projects, but we do have contact with a wide range of customers with our current ingredients that can enable us to hit that over

4:33 time. It'll take a number of years to get there. But what we need to do is get more uses and uses by more brands. And that's what we're doing. We are adding to our customer base with more uses and more brands every month. And we look forward to go into some more detail on that today. We've got we are kind of in our second phase of development as a company. For the most recent one is we from 2016 to 2019, we really established our proprietary proprietary technology base of our polymers for itaconic acid to allow us to pursue the $750,000,000 addressable market with our initial products with a unique value and sustainability that our ingredients bring.

5:18 And very importantly, we established commercial production capabilities here at our plant in New Hampshire, where we have a large capacity to get upwards to 10,000,000 to $15,000,000 in revenues off our existing asset base. From the last two years, we've developed a growing range of customers, where we are the go to ingredients, for a new generation of home and personal care products. We're in certain market segments, if you want a certain claim, you need to use our ingredients. We are growing the base of ingredients used and the brands that are using us, and we have a large pipeline of customer

6:00 projects to accelerate our growth. As we enter and kind of exit this phase, it's more to a growth phase. One is to continue to grow towards our $75,000,000 revenue target and also to start look selectively expanding our proprietary technology base for even larger addressable market opportunities. So to cover some of the h one twenty twenty one highlights from our most current release, We continue to manage and maintain an attractive economics of our business that we've established as a high margin, capital effective business. And as you can see, we have had revenue grows growth h one twenty twenty to h one twenty twenty, one.

6:47 This has continued, to maintain our attractive margins. We did bring down, about 38% gross margin into our gross profit. That showed about a 30% increase in what we expected in our gross profit, and that was really due to the product mix that we had. We were able to, advance our odor control application area. We did see a lot of growth in that area. We do continue to manage our expenses, and you do see a little increase in our adjusted EBITDA, but that was, to increase our investment in our revenue development efforts. So to go to the next slide and just kind of touch on what what what happened with our revenues. We did have higher volumes in our odor control, as as we said.

7:36 Our detergent revenues and our hair care revenues, we continue to grow the pipeline. That didn't reflect in our revenue numbers for this period, and we'll go into the the pipeline development in a couple of the later slides. We did come into some temporary issues with the pandemic, which we've covered off in a couple of our r and s's. There were some inventory pipeline, issues that we had. But overall, the business maintains a a great great economics as we continue to progress our revenue development. The key metric that we look at of hitting our $75,000,000 revenue target is, when we look at the three sixty household three sixty million households in Europe and North America is our target is $0.20 per household per year.

8:26 We are advancing on that. It's a big goal. We have the capabilities to do it. But in in what we did in the first half, we continued to expand, our uses in terms of new applications. We expanded the number of brands we were in. And compared to the first half of twenty twenty one, first half twenty twenty one to first half of twenty twenty, we did have higher revenues, per household. We are particularly focused on advancing, the revenue per household in North America, which is actually above the $01 per household per year run rate that we were at over the last twelve months, and use that as a leading, leading adoption, to be able to take off into other geographies. Now, all the dynamics in our other areas have done well. I'll go through each one in some detail here.

9:17 First of all, our lead areas in detergents and cleaners, where we are a, both for performance and sustainability, a leading replacement for phosphates and detergents. And we built up more uses and more brands using our product. In terms of important ones is we had over five new dishwashing brands launched in the first half using our new detergent polymer, our TSI-three 22. Important with that is a new green brand that launched in North America that set a new standard for bio based content and performance. That has gained tremendous attention within the market. And we are as we announced recently, we have now have our first European order for TSI-three 22 for a brand that, again, we think will help establish a new brand new standard for performance and sustainability within the European market.

10:21 What these lead products do is attract a lot more brands to come to us to work with us on their formulations to achieve the results that are possible with ITACONIX TSI-three 22. And we are building more brands adopting our product both this half we have additional brands adopting it and we expect that to continue at a good rate. We are very pleased with the rate of adoption that we're getting in automatic dish detergent. Equally interesting is some work that some of our customers are doing in surface cleaning. This is an interesting area that actually our customers are finding for the use of our products. Two that are noteworthy is one leading brand in North America brought out a new award winning line of surface cleaners based on our polymers.

11:16 And equally interesting, Sensitive Home has launched a new brand, surface cleaning brand that especially for consumers who have sensitivity to chemical exposures. This is a heavily certified product line that has both safety certifications, bio based content certifications, support from various dermatological groups in terms of supporting the use of that product. So these are all very exciting adoptions of our polymers and growth in our base business here on the detergent side.

12:00 Even more exciting has been the growth in odor neutralization. We launched our latest odor neutralizing product about two years ago, our Xenador 35L, which is marketed by Croda. That process is coming that launch process is coming to fruition with a growing range of new brands that are coming out. So what we do is we our product offers unique performance for odor neutralization without leaving a residue on fabric, skin and hair. We have a wide range of new product launches in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. You can see a number of the examples here of air fresheners, fabric fresheners, underarm deodorants.

12:49 And an interesting area for us right now is actually in pet care. Tremendous uptake in the use of our product in pet care due to its efficacy of immediately eliminating odors on hair. So this has been a very strong area of growth for us. We're actually ahead of expectations for the year and we expect continued strong growth in this area.

13:19 We also have great value in hairstyling. If you want weightless hairstyling, where you don't get a crusty film on your hair, but still have very nice curls, curl retention, frizz control, our ingredient does do that. We it's sold through Nurion as Amaze SP SP is a leading product within their product line. They're a leader in, worldwide leader in hairstyling polymers, and we are growing a list of brands using it. We, also are getting expanded use into skincare, both as body serums, makeup fixatives, which really this is where the sustainability aspect is critical. So we we allow brands to get certifications and labeling.

14:08 So we are a Cosmos certified ingredient so that consumers can get our customers and brands can get EcoCert labeling onto their products. As you see here in the lower right hand corner is a product that has that EcoCert. It is a continuing strong uptake. We expect some exciting updates by some global brands in the coming nine months as the breakthrough is there. As we mentioned, there have been some inventory adjustments of relatively flat sales, but the underlying growth and dynamics in terms of uptake and adoption of the product is very exciting.

14:50 The high bio based content in the our ability to capture and sequester carbon is a key factor in decarbonizing in decarbonization of the low carbon economy. We're very proud that the London Stock Exchange is taking a lead in the green economy and highlighting companies that are contributing to it. We're excited to be a member, to be listed on the AIM and within that to get recognized as we did last May for our contribution to the global green economy. This is based on our revenues Over 95% of our revenues are based on come from bio based products.

15:39 In terms of look the outlook of where we stand, we have $25,000,000 in customer projects in our pipeline, give you a little bit of a flavor of it. The top across the top is the types of revenue potential that we're picking up from our success in detergents that success breeds success. We do have a potential new account for an existing use in dishwashing detergents. It's a very large opportunity. We think that would take about two to three years develop if it's successful, but we are excited about the work we're doing there. Within our existing brands that we already have our the brands that we are already in, the next stage of development is for them to get big wins out in the retail market to get listings and more retailers.

16:29 So as we grow so the next level of growth there, about a $5,000,000 opportunity, is just the growth of our existing brands of of kind of existing of our existing accounts with existing uses to expand out into more brands, into more retails on it. That's what that's where the fastest growth will come, and it's really determined about by the retail listings that our brands get. We are working on a new account on a new use of hygiene applications. This a relatively new development for us. It's at a production trial stage. We can't disclose any more specifics than that. We expect over the next nine months to get a better idea of how production trials and the potential for success in a very large opportunity for us.

17:18 As I said, on the areas of accounts where there's more $2,000,000 a year is a number of the current detergents and brands and accounts that we're in is growing their usage of it. They may have started with reformulating one product and getting it out there, finding success, going back and reformulating another product. Often it could be a two to three year cycle for someone to fully reformulate their product line. That has potential growth for us. And then interesting and kind of very new areas for us, we have an we're in production trials with a new account on a new use in sustainable fashion that's exciting for us. It's an area that we've looked at in the past and now have a customer working through production trials on that with possible revenues sometime in 2022 on it and with some nice potential as that grows. And then we also have a new account heading towards production trials on a new use, fundamentally new use in odor control.

18:19 So it really we have expanding use within our current ingredients and we customer base and a lot of exciting potential within our customer pipeline. From the operational progress, we do have the growth in the customer base that I've talked about. From the management development standpoint, we did add a new VP of Operations, who is hired in enhancing our production capabilities, kind of doing continuous improvement on our production line for better efficiency, uptime. It's been a great addition to the management team. One is it's allowed our Doctor. Yvonne Durant, who's our CTO and Co Founder, to redirect some of his efforts back into innovation and development with, I think, some exciting developments that will come out of that in the coming nine months.

19:15 We are managing our raw materials in finished goods inventory around supply chain delays. We maintain both raw material and finished goods inventories to make sure that we can keep consistent in terms of our fulfillment to our customers. We did complete a $1,500,000 fundraise. The key one in that was to bring in a new institutional shareholder as we look to rebuild our institutional shareholder base in the coming twenty four months, and that was a great addition. And then we did appoint, FinCap as our new broker.

19:56 So just to go over the, income statement and some of the other financial statements, we did see a nice increase in our revenues h one twenty twenty to h one twenty twenty one. This did go down to our gross profit line where we did maintain our our good gross profit margins in the high thirties and the mid thirties. You know, we did have some increase in our development spending. As John just mentioned, we filled out our management team with a new VP of operations. So bringing on the new headcount, has allowed us to continue to to grow and develop the business, and, we're really positioning the business for good revenue growth in the near term.

20:41 The attractive part of our business is that we are a low cap business. The amount of revenues we can generate on our capital expenditures is is very attractive. We we did complete the fundraise John just mentioned, so it leaves the company in a good cash position as we exit the period. And we continue to use, that cash to invest in working capital. As you can see, our inventories remain high, but that is because we are the sole source supplier of this these products. And, we want to be able to supply our customers and provide, continued support. So we maintain a nice level of finished goods and raw materials.

21:26 To cover off the cash flow, our net operating expenses, we did use our cash to kind of fund the business and continue to support the working capital of the business. We did complete the successful fundraise to change our investor base to being a conclude institutional investors, and we did end the period in a nice cash position.

21:54 So in terms of our outlook, our plant based ingredients platform is finding increasing opportunities in the low carbon economy. Retailers are facing increasing pressure from consumers in government for more sustainable solutions. That's allowing us to build a strong foundation for a profitable based business with our existing products and our existing pipeline and our existing engagement with the markets. Our revenue opportunities are growing in terms of how favorable the forces are in terms of both the performance that we're delivering and the sustainability that we have. We are extremely pleased with the rate in which ingredients are being adopted by consumer brands, particularly in the automatic dish detergent area and odor neutralization area, really some tremendous momentum in adoption of it.

22:50 Near term orders are recovering, and we think the effects of the pandemic, on buying patterns, will linger, some. We are keeping a close track of how they're recovering. Our order volumes have picked up, but we expect some lingering effects of that into the first half of next year. But new customers and new applications that we're bringing on will further advance our ability to continue to build out our revenue growth towards our goal of $0.20 per household per year.

23:30 So in summary, again, we are key ingredients for disruptive agreements disruptive consumer products. We are being used in more brands, more uses. We have performance cost of sustainability to generate more. We have excellent low carbon metrics in the ESG investing area that's substantiated by our green economy mark from the London Stock Exchange. We have strong demand for our existing products. We are very much on the road to a profitable base business with large potential for new products and excellent operational gearing in terms of the economics, both the operating economics and the capital investment capital spending economics of our business.

24:18 So we're very excited for the future. It's very bright for us. That's fantastic. John and Laura, thank you indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, do please continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while the team take a few moments to review those investor questions submitted already. Like to remind you the recording of the presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard on the Investor Meet company platform. I'd also like to remind you that your feedback is important to the company. And immediately after the presentation has ended, you'll be redirected to the opportunity to provide feedback in order the company can better understand your views and expectations. John Lawrie received a number of pre submitted questions. And perhaps if I can hand back to you to address those key things from investors to start the q and a session, and then we can move on to the live, q and a just by clicking on that q and a tab and reading out the question where appropriate to do so. Thank you.

25:13 Yes. We did. Thank you for, everyone who submitted, their questions ahead of time. Laura and I went through them and kind of deciphered. There's some, ones that were, repeated a little bit. So we've kind of deciphered those down into some key points that we saw, with the questions that were submitted. First, around the H2 twenty twenty one outlook, we are getting new volumes from new brands and from the order volumes and and order control being particularly strong. So there is new order volume coming in at a steady rate from new brands and new uses. The issue for us is order volumes from our major customers are recovering, but we are not certain of when they are going the volumes for those major customers are going to be returning to historic volume rates on it. They are not there right now.

26:14 They are recovering. We're just not we don't have a certainty of exactly when they're going to get there on it. We do believe but with that, there's underlying the underlying use of our at the consumer level, we believe, remains strong on it. In terms of there's questions around our fulfillment capabilities. I know that's something we regularly address. It's always a good question. One is the availability of supply of idaconic acid and also what our production capacity is. We buy, idaconic acid out of the open market. It is readily available. There is plenty of plenty of capacity available to meet our needs from our suppliers for the near and medium term.

27:07 Our production capacity, we have invested in our facility here as we've stated in the past, depending on the mix of business, has a good $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 of revenue capabilities that we can do out of here. Some of our odor neutralization products actually involve some contract manufacturing so that that's like an endless capacity. In odor control, we have like an endless capacity of revenues, based on, the nature of the product that we're making on it. So we think we're in a very good position on fulfillment in terms of both the supply of our key raw material and the capacity that we have in place. In terms of new product, there are questions about new product development.

27:53 We do have in odor control, we expect to launch a new odor control product in the fourth quarter. In personal care, we have a new product under development that may get launched at the end of this year where we have some we have a very diligent process we go to before we launch a product. It may be by the end of this year. If not, we expect it to be in the first quarter of twenty twenty two. In superabsorbents, I know that we've had an ability to make 100% bio based superabsorbent going back for many years. There is now new interest in it. It's something that we are looking at and for potentially meeting some new customer needs in that area and it has an interesting potential for us.

28:50 It is something that we are taking a look at on it. In terms of new potential above and beyond this, looking into 2022 and beyond, we are working on new chemistries to expand our technology platform for a much larger addressable market. We think that it will take some time to do that, but we but Doctor. Durant is looking at some new chemistries that we think have interesting potential for us, really in the early discovery stages on that. Around applications, we do expect to have a new we are in production trials on a new odor control application. As I said earlier, we have our production trials on a new sustainable fashion application.

29:40 And we have a new potential application coming out in a just an entirely new area of application that we are in discussions with a potential joint development partner that might we're looking to go into production trials on that. We have not specifically mentioned bio Asterix. That is a broad area of products and chemistries that we're is in development. As we mentioned in our trading updates back in July, it's a very these are very long lead time projects. We are engaged with companies that make biodegradable packaging. It primarily is looking at additives that we could put into those biodegradable films for certain properties or the replacement of other ingredients in the compounding of those products. That's the major area of our focus and we've worked with more than one company in that area.

30:38 We have looked at paints. Do have an ability to make a bio based paint. There is increasing interest in paints and coatings. We have not we have had some discussions in those areas, but not do not see that as an area of priority at this time relative to the other areas of where we think our ingredients bring unique value. There are other and within that, there are other applications where we think our idiconic chemistries do have very high value just from their functional structure, even without necessarily being sustainable. And we are continuing to have discussions on new application areas. Again, these won't be until don't expect those until major ones until 2022 on that.

31:30 Lots of questions because we do some announcements around new applications and new customers. I know that's a can be a frustration for people that for investors that we don't disclose our customer names and we don't disclose the nature of the specific nature of the arrangements with them on it. That those products, when they do come out onto the market and we can look them up and the that our ingredient is in the material is listed as an ingredient, then it becomes public information and we can talk about it. But prior to it being public information, it really customers really very would be very annoyed with us if we start getting into that level of detail of exactly who we work with. It's just not how it works when you have a proprietary ingredient like we have.

32:27 In terms of supplier arrangements, we do it's very rare that we have a fixed contract on a supply. We supply our purchase orders. We will have, with a number of customers, some volume pricing agreements where they get a certain price for a certain purchase volume or running purchase volume. But in terms of fixed supply agreements where their take or pays, that's not as a specialty ingredient, That's really not the way those arrangements are done. Nor do I think it would be favorable in our instance because the concessions we would have to give to get some sort of take or pay would be not as favorable to us than the flexibility that we have. Remember, we are a sole source supplier of a key ingredient.

33:14 We are not competing we are competing against alternative formulations. We are not competing against a specific alternative ingredient that can do what our ingredient can do in these formulations on it. Regarding collaboration partners, we do have very good relationships with Croda and Neuron, Croda in the home care for odor neutralization and Neuron and hairstyling. There's a continual reference to some old historical reference to partnering with Solvay that was under a licensing agreement for a technology that we are we we just went ahead and transferred. Some while ago, we just transferred the technology to them.

34:01 We do not use a licensing model. That's not our business model. So what we have had, there were some remnant licensing models that we've generally just they were not particularly financially significant. So we've just usually taken transferred the technology to them. So Solvay not an active partner with us. We are looking at new potential we are always looking at new potential collaboration partners. We have two that, in particular, that we hope to bring forward in the not too distant future in it. There are questions about there's a wide range of industry efforts around sustainability, renewable chemicals.

34:50 There's many number of associations and efforts around it. The one we stay closest to, we we monitor all of them. We have relationships with a number of the organizations that are out there. The one that we are working most closely with right now, it's called the Alternative Fuel and Chemical Coalition based in The US. They have a conference coming up actually that I'll be participating in. There was a question I know there was a question, there's other ones out there. One is the Royal Chemical Society in The UK, has the polymers and liquid formulations, which is an interesting initiative. Because people think of polymers, they tend to think of plastics. And when reality, like the work that we're doing, a huge segment of polymers are used in liquid formulations.

35:37 And those have a whole different set of concerns around them, but they also need to be the concerns around need to be differentiated from getting stuck in the issues with plastics on it. So we do remain very active, selectively active in industry sustainability efforts. And then in terms of appointing we're excited to have FinCap on board. In general, looking at our capital markets and our capital base, we have a large base of investors in The U. S. We hope we have added an international investor, and we want to continue to grow our institutional base both in The UK and internationally. And we're excited about the capabilities that FinCap can bring to us with our efforts in that area.

36:30 So that covered, I think, I believe covers a pretty good range of the pre submitted questions. We're happy to go take a look at some of the new questions that have come in. Is this at the top? We can go to the top. There's a question from Ariel. Two questions from Ariel. One around expected profitability, foreseeable cash raise in the next twelve months. That's not I mean, we have a profitable base of customers on it. The a cash raise really would be related in terms of any new initiatives that we're taking new initiatives significant new initiatives that we would undertake.

37:21 Also, Ron, can you provide more detail on what the fall in adjusted EBITDA was spent on? So we did increase our our executive team with some significant investments there. So our the main increase in our cost base was around adding, particularly the Vice President of Operations. And that was to make sure that our fulfillment we were in a strong position in our fulfillment going forward and also to allow our cofounder and CTO, Doctor. Yvonne Doran, to go devote more efforts into new applications, new chemistry, new product development. Is there a danger of your customers experiencing falling sales?

38:14 Are their products very popular? We're I think this is when you were going over the surface cleaners when Ariel had asked this question. We're in a 120 different brands and growing. I think the experience is the the the you know, we have a pretty good idea of in some of the brands of how they're doing. I think the each brand has their own experience in terms of how successful they're being in the market. But our I would say that our core formulations within those markets are gaining customers across multiple brands. How sticky are our revenues? Once you're form it's kind of slow to get formulated into a formula and slow to get formulated out.

38:59 It can take many years to get formulated in. But once you're in, they're very high quality recurring revenues. In the long term, you expect to target Asia and Asia and other parts of it. We are targeting it right now with our global partners. Neurion and Croda have very strong presences through in all the markets throughout the world. And we are generating revenues as you saw there. There were some Indian we're getting use in India, use in China, elsewhere. In the detergent market, less so because phosphate detergents are still allowed in many of those areas and you really need the use of non phosphates need to be banned to create an opportunity there on it.

39:54 So we do monitor that, but we have a very good global presence in our both in odor control and hairstyling. Why have orders from major customers fallen off? I think we've explained that, that there's some inventory adjustments that have gone on. The when do you expect an initiation report from FinCap? We are working with them. I'm sure in the fourth quarter that there'll be an initiation report on it. The market is pricing in very, very strong growth. What are the plans to raise further capital? I think we already addressed that. For odor control, I understand the market is particularly strong in China. Will you be producing under license in China? No, we not produce under license in China. We do not license our product out for use. We do not license it out. We produce here and it gets shipped into China.

40:59 The cost position that we have with it is highly effective for the applications that we need in that area and we are picking up business. What is the approximate proportion of production cost accounted for by idaconic acid? Is our largest raw material cost. It is our largest raw material cost. In terms of further detail, in terms of what percentage it is, that's really it's pretty competitive sensitive information. But it is a you know, we are we make it from that. It's a it's a it's it's our largest raw material cost. Our inventory levels. Our inventory levels are important to service levels. Do raw materials or finished goods deteriorate?

41:55 No, they do not. Iconic acid is a dry crystalline. It's like think of having something that looks like sugar or salt. It's very stable, does not degrade. We give a two year shelf life to our polymers and really all we say is that we will retest it at that time. We've done that a few times and been able to recertify the polymer. So degradation of inventory is not an issue on either fronts. Are there any big contracts that you are expecting in the near future that will boost? Again, we don't operate on contracts. We operate on purchase orders where a customer works on it. We don't work on contracts.

42:46 Is operational gearing key driver of gross margin trends? Our gross margin trends are are tied to what our volume the volumes that our overheads, production overheads are spread over in our production plant in our raw materials costs. It sounds like you have a lot of products now out there. Why not focus on marketing and selling those rather than continue to develop more? We are in a we are in a solutions problem. You know, we are at the end of the day, we are here to solve our customers' problems.

43:34 You know, if they if they have a brand you know, they they they have a product that they wanna put out on the market to meet their particular positioning needs, And they come to us and say, what can you do to help us with our next generation products? We at at the core of what our sales and marketing is is to make sure that you have solutions available within your chemistry platform to deliver success to your customers. So our new product development is primarily tweak is our ability to tweak our chemistries to fit customer needs or to take an existing chemistry and show how in that application this chemistry will deliver results in that area. At the end of the day, as a specialty ingredient company, we are here to solve our customers' formulation needs. And we need to make sure we respond to what their unmet needs are because that's the fastest way to get a purchase order.

44:38 Seems like the share prices hit an inflection point. When do you see revenues hit in a similar trajectory? I think we've commented on terms of what our revenues outlook are in terms of the recovery in volumes, strong growth in uses and brands and then with our major customers or what the uncertainties might be. How long will it take to achieve 75,000,000 revenues? That's a long term target. We're not putting a specific date on it, but it is as many years out as we develop. Is you know, the first one is to turn that $25,000,000 pipeline to convert that into revenues. But that's like, you know, like more of a I I think in the past, like, I called it a I I put a the data, but I think of that as more like a ten year target within our current capabilities. It doesn't mean we can't we we aren't planning on coming up with high increasing our targets as we bring new products and new technologies forward. I think we've answered various versions of these questions. Questions. With the first half of the year, the quiet part, you said yourselves, what are your projections for the second half?

45:51 I think we've commented on that. In future years, do you see $75,000,000 growing further? The yeah. We do, we do in future years, we do expect to increase the addressable market. We certainly know that idaconic acid chemistries that we're aware of and have worked on have large very large addressable markets. And it's something we're going to continue to assess going forward. How many new customers do you gain every year? Is it in single digits or larger? We're at a 100 we we estimate we're at a 120 brands right now. We don't have perfect line of sight because when we sell it to Croda and Neurion, we don't get as much detailed information from them. But we think we're in about 120 brands right now.

46:51 We think we've added at least 15 brands so far this year. We expect to add at least five more, probably five more in the coming months, whether it's the end of the year or not. I'd say in total, we know of probably another 20 brands that are in the pipeline of coming out over the next next twelve months on it. So we you know, that's a still pretty strong that's at least double that's at least double digit growth in terms of the number of brands that we're in. And I think as usual, guys, you've been super generous and you've answered every single question that's come through. So, John and Laura, thank you very much indeed. If there are any further questions that come through from the investors today, of course, you'll have the opportunity to review those. And we'll publish responses on the investment company platform where it's appropriate to do so.

47:41 John, perhaps I could just hand back to you for a final snapshot before we redirect the attendees to give you some feedback. Well, when you think about why ITACONIX, we are a leader in sustainable materials for the low carbon economy. We're engaged in the market with a 75,000,000 with the products and customer contacts that we need for $75,000,000 within the $750,000,000 addressable market. We have $25,000,000 in our current customer pipeline, which we hope to convert a good percentage that into actual revenues as we meet the needs of a new generation of consumer products coming out. We're already delivering performance sustainability in 120 different brands out there. Every month, it's bringing more brands.

48:31 And with that, we really are through the product use and brands that we're in, we're building a very strong foundation for a profitable base business. But as the consumer world is turning to more sustainable, low carbon one, we more innovations, we are really good at that type of innovation of adapting our chemistries to meet those needs. So we're looking forward to finding larger addressable markets to pursue in the coming years. We're very excited about the position we're in, very strong position and excited about the future. That's fantastic. John, Laura, thank you again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session? It should be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that management can better understand your views and expectations.

49:20 This will only take a few moments to complete and is greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of ITACONIX PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session. Thank you, and good afternoon.