Physiomics (LSE:PYC) — Full Year Results

0:01 Good afternoon, and welcome to the PHYSIOMICS PLC investor presentation. Throughout this quarter presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the q and a tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. And I'd now like to hand you over to doctor Peter Sargent, CEO. Good afternoon, sir. Great. Thank you very much. Hello, and welcome all, to our company, update. As many of you will be aware, my name is Peter Sargent. I'm the CEO here at PHYSIOMICS. And I'm joined here today, by Jim Millen, who is our nonexec chairman.

0:49 So as part of today's presentation, I will provide a a short overview of the business, certainly for those of you who are less familiar with PHYSIOMICS. And then I will provide an update on last year's performance from both a financial and operational perspective before talking more about the strategy and how we're progressing so far this financial year. We will then leave some time at the end of the presentation for q and a. I know some of you have already submitted some questions already, so we'll make sure we'll go through those. But I think there is also functionality on this platform for you to submit any questions you may have as I go through my presentation. So, for those of you who are less familiar with PHYSIOMICS, so PHYSIOMICS is a company based just outside Oxford here in The UK, primarily providing consultancy services to support organizations develop new drugs.

1:52 So over the last few years, or over the years, we've we've built capabilities across these kind of three main areas shown in the Venn diagram. So that is quantitative pharmacology. So this is being able to look at how drugs behave within biological systems, so within humans. Data science and biostatistics, so that's kind of the ability to analyse and interpret a wide range of data and derive insights from that data. And then thirdly, understanding of disease biology. So that's kind of understanding the underlying mechanisms of disease. And then we as a business have been able to apply these capabilities to support our clients with consultancy services such as kind of mathematical modeling and simulation, bar statistics and data science and bioinformatics, which I'll I'll go and describe in a bit more detail in the later slides.

2:49 But also, we've applied these these capabilities in developing more asset based products around the kind of the per size medicine and and dosing space, which kind of falls outside of consultancy services. And again, I'll provide a bit more of an update on that as we go through these slides. So drilling into the various service lines and trying to explain how we support our clients. So our core service is our mathematical modeling and simulation services. So up until recently, this has been kind of the main focus, as a business for us. And we've been able to to establish quite a strong brand around supporting a range of clients from emerging biotech to large pharma and also to research organisations.

3:41 So in this service we support our clients across the drug development continuum, so as far streamers, discovery as you can see in this slide, right through to the clinic, by developing mathematical models which will help them better understand firstly, kind of the disease biology that they're focusing their therapy towards, but also the behaviour of their drug they're developing. And then from this make predictions around kind of research outcomes. So for example, around this, one area which our services particularly support is that kind of translation of drugs from preclinical into the clinic. And we can help our clients predict what dose and dose schedules they should use to take into the clinic, really trying to de risk and accelerate their drug development and their trial design.

4:37 As well as supporting our clients in their research decisions, our modelling also plays an important role in kind of regulatory submissions. So as I we've we've kind of communicated a number of our announcements and it is an area which, you know, a lot of the regulators are are becoming more and more keen on on client on companies applying to, so things like the FDA, Project Optimus and some guidance, some new guidance from the EMA as well. But also helping our clients understand their drugs and potential effects is also important to supporting kind of investment decisions as well. So either internally supporting our clients decide which drugs progress in their programs, their drug development programs, or evidence in their drug's potential when speaking to, external investors themselves.

5:36 The other two services we offer as part of our consultancy service is biostatistics and data science and bioinformatics. The former, biostatistics, is a service actually we have been building over the last year. And as of last week officially launched this. So this is a service which leverages much of our existing expertise in kind of mathematics and applies it towards the design and conduct and reporting of clinical trials. So an example there, and a type of project we'd support our clients with, is helping them calculate how many patients they would need within their trial so they can be sure that if their drug works then this can be detected with statistical significance.

6:29 Because you wouldn't want to run a trial and only find that a number of your patients are responding to your drug and then to go back and find out when actually we haven't run it across enough patients to have that statistical significance. So one major reason for building this service is the fact that, you know, as well as it's kind of leveraging much of our capabilities, our current capabilities, biostatistics is an essential component of all clinical trials regardless of the therapeutic area. And therefore we see this as an opportunity of a much bigger market, open up a bigger market for us, making it a more scalable service perhaps compared to modern simulation, really kind of helping us with our kind of growth aspirations as a business.

7:18 The third service, that's kind of data science and bioinformatics. This is actually a capability PHYSIOMICS has had for some time now as as a it's kind of a critical component of things like the modeling and simulation. So within our modeling and simulation services, we generally have to select data and curate data from very disparate kind of sources to be able to extract the kind of parameters needed to develop the model. So it's something which we've been doing for for some time. However, you know, there is an increase in volume and complexity of data being generated, generally across r and d. So the ability to select, curate, analyse and kind of visualise data and then drive an insight from that is actually becoming a much needed capability in the market.

8:09 And we actually see this as more of like a stand alone opportunity for for PHYSIOMICS. So, you know, going forward you'll probably hear us talk more about that as a kind of a standalone service rather than being an integral part of our modelling and simulation services. Another important point to make when considering all these three services together is actually these services have a lot of overlap. So for example, the types of outputs we generate through our modelling and simulation services are actually inputs into biostatistical components of trial setup and design. So for instance, as our modelling simulation may help inform what doses our clients need within their clinical trials.

9:00 The biostatistics will take that and then think about okay, how do we power, how many patients would we need with that dose to make an effective kind of trial design. So I hope this kind of helps you kind of better understand what what our drivers are for these services and developing these new services. And I hope being able to kind of offer a more integrated solution to our clients will allow us not only to, you know, open up a wider, bigger market for us, but allow us to have more opportunity for to follow on for follow on work with our clients. So kind of shifting gears a tiny bit and as I mentioned in the previous slide, in addition to our consultancy services, we've also been developing software based assets in the form of personalized medicine dosing tools.

9:58 So the dosing tool we've been developed was actually initially conceived back in 2017. And the idea behind this tool is to support chemotherapy dosing decisions personalized for each patient. The reason why we saw this as an opportunity is that typically when patients undergo chemotherapy, they're often given the same dose of drug as everyone else. However, as we all know, every patient is different. Therefore people end up with more or less of the drug circulating in their body and therefore the treatment varies between patients as well as the kind of the toxicity effect of that drug varies between patients. So the idea behind this tool is to kind of to help determine the personalized dose for each patient so that their treatment can be optimized.

10:54 So as I said, this was initially conceived in 2017 and the initial prototype that came out was evaluated in a trial based in Portsmouth, so the partner study which was funded by the NIHR. So it's kind of generating further information and data around that kind of initial prototype. We did then run that trial through the pandemic so unfortunately the trial did take a bit longer than originally planned. But from it we actually determined the second use case of the tool And that's it's used to support the dosing decision for an expensive drug called G CSF, which is actually used to kind of treat one of the side effects of chemotherapy and that's kind of neutropenia.

11:45 So this use case is what we are currently looking to trial in this latest study, which we announced at the start of the year funded by Innovate. And in collaboration with Blackpool and NHS Trust and Beyond Blood. So hopefully that is going to run until the end of next year, that's the end of twenty twenty five. So the data collected from that will hopefully be able to help us develop the asset further. So in parallel to these kind of trials and the continued development of the tool, we've always been thinking about how we ultimately commercialize it and what that ultimately looks like.

12:31 And this is where our partnership with, a US firm called DoseMe, comes in. So DoseMe has a, kind of a software platform already in use across The US and in parts of Europe that utilises kind of algorithms such as the one we're developing and provides it to clinicians as a tool. So they work in a variety of different areas from infectious diseases right through to oncology. So our tool will fit quite nicely in with their array of different tools. One of our announcements last year was actually the re engagement of DoseMe and the commitment to upload our tool onto that platform. Initially, we are well, I can provide a bit of an update in a a second with with my in my slide deck. But the idea is to initially upload this for kind of research purposes primarily so we can help evaluate the the the tool on their platform.

13:31 But the ultimate aim is to then implement kind of paid for functionality of the tool at a at a later date. So I hope that that kind of gives you a bit of a background to business and also how we've evolved so far. The next few slides I'd like to talk a bit about our performance as of last year before moving on to our kind of our strategy and this current financial year. So I hope you've all seen from the end of year financial report we posted just over a week ago, last year's total income actually dropped 6% compared to the previous year with both operating loss and loss after taxation increasing.

14:18 This was primarily due to kind of increased investments in the business not quite being reflected in our increase in revenues. This did mean that by the end of the year our cash was at just over 190,000, which meant that we were we we needed to go back to the market and and raise some additional funds in in July so we can kinda keep the moment momentum going within the business and continue investment in those kind of key initiatives we feel are necessary for growth. So just to kind of expand a bit more on those kind of revenue levels compared to the previous years.

15:04 Even though last year we had a record first half, which I I reported in our interims, early in the year, the second half was significantly affected by delays in in contracting. As you might have seen, we were awarded two major contracts in kind of May and June time, which we had hoped would have been signed several months early and we were in kind of discussions with those clients for quite a few months. Another point I wanted to make is around our sales cycle. So it is typical for modeling and simulation services to have quite a long sales cycle. So that is the kind of the time it takes from initial lead through to kind of contract signature.

15:50 And this is usually because we are often very much is dependent on the client's drug development programmes which are often also affected by delays. So quite often we are starting to speak to clients when they are conducting their clinical development plans for instance. And then it does quite often take some time for them to actually finalize their clinical development plan and then contract with us. This has also been a particular problem for some of our smaller biotech clients as they've been certainly kind of affected and are at the mercy of over the last few years by some of the issues around the capital markets. Since the sales cycle is typically quite long, so six to kind of upwards or kind of eighteen months long, the investment and efforts we have put in since the start of the year are only just starting to bear fruit and hopefully the next few slides we'll be able to articulate that.

16:49 It's just been quite frustrating that we haven't been able to kind of realize some of that investment into kind of revenues sooner. So as I mentioned, kind of the last year's revenue figures are disappointing, but we are seeing, that the refresh strategy investment focus, we're we're making are showing kind of green shoots and positive signs. So last year, as you can see, hopefully by the top right of this slide, was our record, our best year for the kind of total value of contracts won by quite some way compared to the previous five years. And we signed last year over £1,100,000 worth of new contracts.

17:40 And we also, in addition to that, we ended the year with over £500,000 worth of contracted revenue left to recognise. This latest later figure actually is a reflection as well of kind of the impact of those delayed contracts shifting revenue from last year into this year, which is kind of, again, a bit frustrating for last year, but it puts us this year in a good strong position to meet our revenue targets. Last year, we did still have a very busy year from a consultancy perspective. We delivered on 11 projects. We had an increased investment in kind of conferences and attendance to help kind of drum up kind of the new business, as well as a renewed focus around our marketing and science publications with both are, you know, very much instrumental in our kind of marketing efforts and business developments.

18:41 We also delivered on projects in new areas of drug development, both upstream in kind of discovery as well as kind of more pure data science and bioinformatics play. But also in other therapeutic areas outside oncology. We ran a project last year in the dermatology space. And as many of you would be aware, we kicked off our biostatistics service line build initially from both a kind of an organic build perspective. But last year we also started exploring kind of more inorganic strategic options around how that can be accelerated. So from a personalized dosing perspective, looking back at last year, as I mentioned in the previous slides, we we won a Innovate Grant back in November last year to continue developing the dosing tool and evaluate that G CSF functionality use case of our tool in the clinic.

19:46 And we're doing that with Blackpool NHS and Beyond Blood Diagnostics partners. That trial is in setup, but once going, we'll run until the end of twenty twenty five. And the data generated from that will be very much instrumental in helping us develop that tool further. Also last year we, as I mentioned, we reengaged with DoseMe in The US. So DoseMe partnership was put on hold for a short while previously due to the restructuring of their their business following their acquisition a couple of years previous to that. But following the reengagement last year, we did agree with them to implement a tool onto their platform, which I'll provide an update on in a bit.

20:42 So from more an operational standpoint, last year there's also been quite a few changes, kind of more generally. So firstly, myself starting at PHYSIOMICS, and my appointment as CEO and Director at the end of January this year and that that's led to Jim's subsequent transition to, nonexec chairman. Following this transition, we performed a, kind of a thorough strategic review of the business, which led us to restructuring the board, and identification of kind of skill gaps we needed to ensure that we can we can grow the the business and focus on revenue generation. This did lead to making the CSO role redundant and the strategic decision to to focus on recruiting service line leads who are kind of subject matter experts in the field and can help us drive those respective service lines.

21:44 So I guess to build on those kind of service line leads, those heads will lead their respective business units so to speak and and have ultimate responsibility for driving business in their respective parts as well as driving operational excellence and kind of efficiency. So ensuring that project delivery and the consultants are delivering the projects to a high standard and quality, as well as kind of maximizing kind of utilization of consultants so we can ensure that we can maximize the amount of revenue based on the kind of the our cost base. And I'll update a bit more on these these heads, the the position where we are with kind of recruitment in in the next few slides. Outside people, the kind of the updates around kind of people, we also moved offices as a starter last year, moved into kind of more flexible working space in Milton Park.

22:40 And also we invested in a variety of new technologies and processes which we felt were required to really help position us growth. So that was last year. So kind of shifting gears a tiny bit and looking more towards the future. So many of you will have seen this slide before as I've used this in a number of other presentations I've given. But I hope this explains where we are focusing our efforts with regards to kind of growing the business. So again, to kind of recap, the business is split up into the consultancy business or consultancy arm, which at the moment is where all the revenue is coming from, and then our product business and where we are kind of focused on developing on the personalized dosing tool. So the product business does at the moment bring in some income in the form of grants, but at the moment it's the consultancy business which is driving primarily all the revenue in the business.

23:44 Folks name on the consultancy side. So this part of the business is split up into two service lines currently. So the first one is kind of mathematical modeling and simulation, which also includes data science and bioinformatics. And the other one is biostatistics. So the first one, modeling, we have made the decision to kind of obviously carry on focusing this. This is a core area for us as a business. And actually it's an area which we see there is a lot of opportunity in. You know, I mentioned earlier on in the presentation about, the regulators, kind of releasing new guidance, pushing drug developers to make more use of modelling and simulation as part of their drug development. And I think this is, you know, this is just highlights the opportunity for us to kind of push and keep driving that service line.

24:37 So therefore the aim of that service line will continue to try and grow the pipeline, but also focus on how we can accelerate and and increase the conversion rate of that pipeline. Going back to our long sales cycle, you know, we're very conscious that we need to try and push this to kind of reduce the kind of the lumpy revenue we're often seeing as a business. We're also looking to broaden our offering across modeling and simulation. You know, I mentioned about having some, delivering some projects upstream in discovery as well as looking at different therapeutic areas. So that's something which we're we're very much keen to kind of, maximize that and kind of build upon. And also the expansion into kind of data science and biostatistics.

25:25 For the biostatistics element, sorry, data science and bioinformatics. For the biostatistics service line, we are aiming and actually we we we have completed that as of last week, launched the service and start marketing that towards our both existing clients and new clients, which we've started doing already with some very positive kind of feedback. Whilst we are, at the same time, still trying to kind of build our capabilities within the team. From a personalized dosing perspective, personalized dosing tool perspective, you know, we are committed to continue developing this tool to support chemotherapy and G CSF dosing.

26:12 Whilst at the same time, you know, we are also very conscious of we do need to extract value from this tool. So we are looking at ways we can commercialize this tool and realize value to support the business' growth. We also intend to explore other avenues of this tool along with this kind of potential use, perhaps in kind of its evolution into kind of looking at different therapies which we can use to support kind of dosing decisions on. I guess just to build upon that previous slide and explain how we intended to achieve those various aims described on it and where we are focusing our investments.

26:59 The first area is to kind of recruit a head of service line for modeling and simulation and data science and bioinformatics. That kind of first service line I described in the previous slide. This person will be a subject matter expert in the field of modelling and simulation with broad networks across the industry. So this is, we see as an important role to help firstly, kind of drive operational excellence in the consultancy services, something I kind of mentioned in the previous slide. But they'll also have responsibility for driving and broadening these services. So the areas we're looking at again is kind of in data science, looking at supporting clients, interpreting these kind of real world evidence and data and providing, you know, more of a broader service.

27:52 The role will also lead on solutioning with new clients, driving that kind of technical sell. And hopefully, this will help us in turn kind of drive conversion to pipeline and accelerate conversion. This support will also kind of help kind of our head of business development to kind of focus more on early phase kind of pipeline as well as so she can then support kind of on the other service lines such as Biostat and kind of starting to drive those those business lines as well. In addition to the head, we will continue investing in BD and marketing across both service lines. So that's modeling simulation and biostatistics, really trying to help drive the growth in the kind of the pipeline, keep on pushing for business with new clients to complement our high levels kind of our repeat business and accelerate the growth of our kind of biostatistics services.

28:52 These activities within BD will include kind of updating our website, which you'll see we've we've we've started doing, broadening our kind of marketing content and then running kind of more kind of strategic campaigns around specific services as well as obviously continuing to attend some of those kind of those partners' essential kind of partnering and scientific events which we are required to develop new business. For biostatistics side, in addition to kind of driving kind of organic growth in the service line, as discussed previously, we exploring strategic options to enable accelerated growth. So whether that is through kind of partnerships, strategic partnerships or through some sort of kind of business combination, that is something which we are very much actively exploring at the moment.

29:46 And finally, we will continue investing in the development of our personalised dosing tools, certainly around progressing the current INNO2VATE trial. So that's the trial with Blackpool NHS Trust and Beyond Blood and Diagnostic, but also exploring routes to commercialisation, leveraging our partners such as DoseMe. So that's kind of our, I guess, more aspiration, kind of our strategy going forward. You know, just to give an update on where we are and how we're delivering against those initiatives and investment areas so far this year. Over the last few months, in addition to kind of winning additional contracts, we're now in the final stages of recruiting our head of modeling and simulation experts.

30:34 And we hope to be able to announce more details as to their backgrounds and their start date in the coming few weeks. As of last week, we also announced the official launch of our biostatistics service line, including kind of updates to our website and kick off some kind of various marketing campaigns. We also have some key annual conferences coming up where our head of BD will be attending, one of which actually the AICR EORTC event. We have had a scientific poster accepted at. So one of our technical team will be joining our Head of Business Development to present that poster, as well as supporting kind of drumming up hopefully new business for PHYSIOMICS.

31:29 We're also progressing a number of scientific papers at the moment to the point where actually three of them are, well two of them actually have been submitted back to the journals, their respective journals and one actually is about to be submitted, which is very exciting for us as a business because being able to kind of credentialize yourself and your technical skills through peer reviewed scientific journals is a very important and very useful kind of marketing tool for us. So hopefully we can announce the publications very soon and then look to deliver kind of marketing campaigns off the back of these. On the personalized medicine tool perspective, we have also successfully implemented our dosing tool now onto DoseMe's newly launched platform.

32:27 And as you can hopefully see on the right of the screen, I've pasted in some screenshots of what the platform looks like on their platform. I guess the next steps for us, regarding this is we have been given PHYSIOMICS has been given access to the the the platform and and the newly implemented tool. So we have some work to evaluate that tool, ourselves. But then we are now, we are in the position now of exploring with DoseMe options around rolling this tool out across key clinical sites in The US. Actually So clinicians can help us evaluate the tool in kind of real world setting. Finally, the PredictOnc trial we're just going through the final stages of ethical and regulatory approval with the research nurse being hired in Blackpool NHS Trust so we can all be ready to get going with that trial.

33:28 And we hope to announce the official start of the trial very soon. So I guess just to summarize, you know, I hope you can see, you know, positive steps are being made within the business and some green shoots are already starting to show. But just to kind of recap, for the financial year ending June 2024, you know, our revenues decreased compared to the previous year, primarily down to kind of contracting delays and long long sales cycles, meaning that's kind of, you know, some of our increased efforts and kind of investments are delayed in kind of realizing into revenue. Earlier in the year, we carried out a strategic review of the business, leading to kind of restructuring the board and our operating staff, positioning the business around kind of two consultancy lines and kind of revenue generating activities.

34:28 Off the back of the strategic review we also made the decision to increase investment in our BD and marketing and even though it's yet to make an impact in in revenue, it is showing significant signs that we are tracking in the right direction with record year for value of contracts won and then starting this year with a record level of revenue already contracted. As for this year, we're already seeing progress in kind of the year with, you know, selecting a new expert for our to lead our modeling and simulation service line, which we we hope to announce soon. We have officially launched our BioStats, an expansion of our data science service line. We've implemented the dosing tool onto DoseMe's platform, as well as win a new contract, a new consultancy contract.

35:23 So I hope you can see that there is some positive momentum and myself and the board are looking forward to you know, keeping that momentum going and and growing the business further. So maybe at that point, I will stop there and, we can move to questions and answers. Perfect, Peter. Thanks very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab, which is situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments through the questions that have been submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have had questions come through the live event, and we have had a number of pre submitted questions as well. And, Jim, if I could just hand over to you to chair the q and a, that'd be great, and then I'll pick up to you at the end.

36:14 Yep. No problem at all. So thanks all for your attendance today and your interest in in PHYSIOMICS. We had some questions come through before the event, and we'll answer the ones that that that we can. And then I can see there've been a a also a further small number that have come through during the presentation, and we will we'll try and slot those in also. So, Pete, first question, you know, what is the deal with revenues having been booked for 2025 and and beyond? I think you've covered some of this, but maybe if you just wanna pick up on the key points again. No. We actually see this as a a positive point. You know, this is primarily down to kind of the nature of some of the consultancy contracts.

37:03 You know, a lot of the the projects we run around supporting our clients within their clinical trials. So this is developing models to help support the design of their trials, but also support decision making as the trial progresses. So quite often when we run our contracts, we'll run through the duration of that clinical trial. So say if a clinical trial has as a couple of our contracts last for up to thirty six months, our support would become you know, continue through that that period. So that's why some of the contracts now, which we've signed, will actually realize revenue, you know, in in later years. Great. Thanks, Pete.

37:54 There was a question that came in during the presentation, which is on a similar sort of topic. So maybe we'll take that now. And that was despite record contract wins, the total income decreased. What caused this, and and how will you ensure revenue growth matches contract wins? I I think that's a timing issue primarily. But Yeah. And I and I tried to mention this, you know, cover this in my presentation. So I think, you know, the main cause of the decrease in in revenues this year is is around, like, kind of the delay in those those two big contracts until right at the end of the year, which is obviously disappointing for the year ending 2024.

38:42 It's a positive, therefore, as going into this this next year. I think how we can ensure this, you know, we we don't face this going forward. This is, you know, certainly, hopefully gonna be, you know, resolved by us keeping a focus on growing the pipeline so we have more opportunities coming through kind of a bit more continuously. I think, you know, having the you know, recruiting a head of, modeling simulation, an expert, in the field with, you know, extensive networks across the the market in this area will help us increase the conversion rates or some of these opportunities. So, again, smoothing out these these revenues. But also the development of of new service lines. You know, I think biostatistics is is gonna be a a good opportunity for us at PHYSIOMICS.

39:34 It's a, you know, arguably a a much larger market for for modeling than compared to modeling simulation. You know, hopefully with these things, you know, we we'll be able to bring in a more continuous kind of flow of of revenue. Great. Switching to biostatistics. There's a question that came in before the presentation, which was essentially, you know, can you shed some further light on on who's running it currently? And is biostatistics being run together with bioinformatics and data science? And, again, I I think the latter part the latter question you you you did cover in one of your slides. Yeah. But but perhaps you could speak to that. Yeah. No. Completely. So at the at the moment, both service lines, that's kind of modeling simulation and bioinformatics.

40:26 So I'm sorry. Modeling simulation and bioinformatics are being led by by myself. For the delivery of these projects, however, you know, it's not myself delivering delivering them. I I don't have the specific expertise to deliver the projects. So we have a a structure, kind of a kind of an operating model whereby we have experienced senior consultants leading each of the projects with junior team members underneath. However, myself at the moment is providing, the kind of operational governance of those service lines. So I think that's that's the first question. I think that's been Yeah. I I think you I mean, your proposition, the fact that that that but the bioinformatics will be part of the core Yeah. Modeling modeling and simulation business unit, and the biostatistics would be a separate business unit, but there would be synergies. So I think we've we've covered that.

41:30 There are quite a few other questions on biostat satch actually, not perhaps not surprisingly. So a couple of related questions. One, you know, can we just clarify the relationship that we have with doctor Michael, Gabriel? You know, is he the head of biostats? Is he the principal? And then, there was a related question that was which which was following a recent post on x where we said that that, you know, for BioStats, we had expert support. So maybe you could you could do that altogether. Basically, what is our BioStats resource, I guess, they're asking, and and how is it coordinated? So so Michael, joined us as of, a couple of months ago. So he he joined us not as a head of biostatistics, but as one of those two contractors.

42:28 We we we we we mentioned in one of our in in our previous announcements. So he's joined us as a principal consultant in bar statistics, helping us from both a strategy perspective through to kind of new client engagement and kind of marketing. And as we bring in new contracts for for around biostatistics, he would also support the the delivery of those those projects. That is also in combination with, Hitesh Mistry, who you've many of you would have have heard of before. So Hitesh, as well as been, supporting us and still supports the modeling simulation, he also is supporting us from a biostatistics consultancy project perspective.

43:18 And both Michael and Hitesh, bring a huge amount of experience in biostatistics, supporting a range of different clients and and projects in that area. Great. Thanks, Pete. Okay. So still on biostatistics, there is a question which is simply, you know, when might we expect a first project in in biostatistics that that came in during the presentation. And somewhat related to that, a question that came in prior to the presentation around, you know, how will we what will be the the, you know, the commercial model for biostatistics, you know, what will we charge.

44:06 So, yeah, first revenue and and sort of commercial model. I I think that's those are the two key elements of the questions. Yeah. So I guess when our first contract, you know, as I mentioned, we have just recently launched Biostatistics. We've we've already started having positive conversations with, with some existing clients, and are starting to reach out to potential new clients for this service line. So as for for when, I'm hoping very soon. You know, until we sign those contracts, though, you know, I can't give you a specific date, but we're we're we're very positive about, the momentum and the feedback we're we're getting so far. As for how much we'll be charging for this and kind of the the kind of commercial model, kind of biostatistics will follow a quite a very similar consulting model as as modeling the simulation.

45:05 And that will be kind of, offering a a wide range of two main not a wide range, two main types of kind of contracts to our clients. So that'll be the fixed term contracts for discrete piece of, consultancy work or kind of more time and material type contracts, if people want us to kind of provide a bit more of, a advisory support support over a longer period of time. From a a pricing perspective and kind of the the kind of the marketing insights we've gained so far, I think the charge out rate will be very similar to kind of modeling. That's kind of from an hourly or kind of day rate perspective. However, the projects will will vary will vary in in size. So, you know, I I envisage that some of the BioSats projects will be very discreet, few days, bits of work, supporting them, supporting clients with things like, kind of working out the the number of patients they need in a in a trial right through to kind of longer piece longer projects, longer kind of support, like analyzing and kind of helping to manage data coming out of a a a trial.

46:17 So very similar to the modeling simulation kind of commercial kind of model, but, you know, a very wide range of kind of project sizes. Yeah. I mean, just to echo something that PYC said a bit earlier, you know, we do think that the biostatistics market is significantly larger than the modeling and simulation market so that we think there are just more projects to be had. Obviously, you know, there is perhaps more competition as well. So so that, you know, that that's the other side of that coin. The other thing is that I think a lot of biostats projects you know, there are a lot of biostats projects that can be quite long term. So if you're analyzing the data from a clinical study, for example, you know, you may have an engagement that lasts a year or or or even a couple of years.

47:08 Whereas, typically, our modeling simulation projects are, you know, three months, six months, something of that order of magnitude. We obviously have long term relationships with some clients where we get repeat business over many years, but that is made up of of smaller individual projects, which typically last, you know, you know, less than six months. With BioStats, you know, we we're learning and we don't have experience of our first project yet, but what we anticipate based on feedback from the experts that we've hired is that some of the BioStats projects may be, you know, large and last longer. So that's certainly something that we would aim for.

47:55 A question on strategic opportunities in biostat. So, Pete, you mentioned that in addition to organic growth, we're all also looking at, you know, other opportunities to grow the Biostat's business. One question that came in while we was while while you were speaking was, you know, what what sort of criteria might we use to assess potential partnerships or or acquisitions aligning with the the longer term macro vision for our business. Perhaps you'd like to share your thoughts on that. Yeah. There's a there's a couple of, areas which we we're we're been exploring. Firstly, the kind of strategic and a more strategic partnership perspective, so where we can build relationships with companies with very synergistic kind of services as as as as.

48:48 So an example of that is working with, other consultancy firms, perhaps offering clinical development strategy, which obviously then modeling and biostatistics is a key component of. The other area is more of a kind of business combination type opportunity. And the way the the the types of businesses which we've been exploring are those of, similar kind of size to ourselves, with kind of, growth within their their their revenues, kind of proven growth, but also a a cultural fit as well. You know, I think it's if you're going to build a kind of long lasting relationship with another company or bring companies together, I think kind of cultural and complementary kind of expertise is is is very much a key a key component.

49:41 Great. Thanks, Pete. So anything else on biostatistics? I think that's everything on biostats. There was a question on the bio forward conference. Yeah. You know, how did it go? I think there was some flooding on that day, and and did that impact attendance? It was it was it was quite wet. I I remember driving through a a huge puddle on the way. Being a you know, as as the event I'm I'm not sure whether it was affected too much. I know my my first partner in meeting was delayed because the person I was meeting, was delayed themselves, I think, due to the the the weather.

50:29 But, you know, the event, I think, went quite smoothly. You know, as you know, at PHYSIOMICS, we are members of of OBN, the organizers of of BioForward. So we actually get a a free ticket to to go to the event. And it's a and it's a great opportunity to kind of meet and and kinda network with, similar, like, similar types of kind of businesses in kind of the local area, meet some clients and potential kind of partners, as well as gonna meet some some other service providers who can potentially support us as a business as well. So I think, you know, it's not a buy forward is not a key event for us meeting, you know, lots and lots of new clients, but it's it's certainly worthwhile event to to attend. Great.

51:15 Thanks, Pete. On personalized medicine, have we derived any financial income from the DoseMe collaboration, at the moment? Again, I think you you did actually cover this in in in your presentation, but perhaps you could just briefly Well, yes. Yeah. Just to just keep it short. No no. We haven't dropped any kind of financial income from from those collaborations as yet. We have recently implemented our tool on those meetings platform, which I presented in my presentation. And over the, you know, the the next few months, we're hopefully gonna be able to have the opportunity to evaluate that ourselves and then start getting clinicians to, you know, evaluate the the tool in kind of real world setting.

52:05 Once we've, developed the tool, though, on on the platform, we can then move towards kind of implementing kind of more of a paid for functionality, kind of leveraging that kind of platform in The US, but also in in other markets. So it's we see this as a a a really good opportunity for us to eventually drive income from from this tool. Okay. Great. Just looking down the list of questions. I think we've got time for just just one more maybe. Yeah. So so there's a question. Maybe we'll we'll I'll take this one, and then we'll we'll conclude. Is the company open to any m and a transactions to accelerate the organic growth of the company?

52:54 And I guess, you know, the answer is that you have to look at all of these things on their merits. If if we were approached by someone, then we would, you know, do the same sort of analysis that that PYC described as we're thinking about how to grow the the biostats business. If it's us looking proactively to enhance and and and add to the organic growth that we can create internally, such as we are doing in biostats, then it's it's as Pete described. You know, we would look for opportunities that are of an appropriate size, you know, would be value adding for shareholders where there would be some sort of, you know, synergy in the culture of the company and an opportunity to perhaps cross sell.

53:45 So, you know, that that it's hard to answer that question in general terms, but, you know, we are actively thinking about that specifically in the context of biostats. If there were other similar opportunities, then we would look at each of them on on their own merits. So and with that, I think we will conclude. I think we got to most of the questions. If we didn't get to your question, then then I apologize, and then perhaps we can cover it on another occasion. Thank you. Perfect, Peter. Jim, thank you very much for answering those questions from investors. Of course, company can review the questions submitted today, we will publish our response on the investor meet company platform. But just before redirecting investors, provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to you both. Peter, I was just wondering if I could ask you for a few closing comments. Yeah. No. Sure. Well, just to thank you all for attending and, you know, I hope you found the presentation in informative.

54:38 You know, we certainly you know, last year, there was there was a lot of change in the business. You know, I I personally see there's a lot of positive change in the business, and I know that we as a board are, you know, excited about the the future and the potential growth we we we will realize. So, yeah, just to say thank you. Perfect. Peter, Jim, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you know we automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, which I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of PHYSIOMICS PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.