Tristel (LSE:TSTL) — Preliminary Results

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the TRISTEL PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time via the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Chris Lee. Good morning, sir.

0:30 Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. Hi. My name is Chris Lee. I'm joined by my colleague, Anna Vassell, our CFO, and it's a pleasure to be able to present the TRISTEL PLC's audited results for 2026. I'd like to start by just drawing your attention to the disclaimer, which you can read at your leisure. And while while you're doing so, I'd just like to tell you a bit about TRISTEL and what we do. Yeah. We're we're a we're a chemistry company who operates in the high level disinfection space with a proprietary chemistry in chlorine dioxide. And our whole mission is to prevent powerful biocide... Using our powerful biocide with chemistry is prevent the transmission of microbes either from an object or a person to another. As I'm new to the business, this is my third month with the company. I thought I'd just do a brief introduction of myself.

1:22 I've been in the med tech space for over thirty five years. I started my career at Johnson and Johnson, where I spent eighteen years across multiple specialty segments in in both Europe, The US, and Asia, ended up my career there running the FCOM franchise across Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Since then, I've worked in multiple SME type of organizations across across the globe. And my most recent one was the CEO of Summit Medical, which is a UK based private equity backed medical device group. This is also my third public company that I've worked for as a c f... A CEO or as a deputy CEO. I've I've extensive experience, particularly in The US, around customers, distribution models, and channels and and and leadership of teams. And it's an absolute pleasure to be here as a a member of the TRISTEL team.

2:21 And although they're not my my numbers, I'm delighted to present what's gonna be an outstanding set of numbers for the business.

2:28 With that, I'd just like to say that the board remains unchanged. Obviously, Anna joined the board a year ago, which... Just over a year ago when she joined the business. And the the rest... I've just joined the board, and the rest of the board remains as it was previously. And I'm grateful to them for their support and contributions to the business. I'd like to hand over to Anna now to talk about the financial performance. And in doing so, I'd also like to just thank the entire TRISTEL team for an outstanding contribution over the last twelve months to bring us to this point. Hannah? Yeah. Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone. Let me tell you about a few financial highlights. Our TRISTEL team has delivered an amazing year with a double digit growth, 10% growth in top line.

3:13 Our revenues reached a record £51,100,000 and grew across the world. In The UK, our home market, by 5% and overseas by 13%. And Americas sales tripled. And of course, I will spend more time on on these figures in later slides. Our adjusted PPT grew by 15% to $11,700,000 adjusted EBITDA to $15,700,000 and we have reached a great, very high margin of 31%. Adjusted EPS grew by 6% to 18.19p. In terms of cash, our operating cash flow reached $11,000,000 was up 8% over last year and resulted in a $16,000,000 balance at the end of the year of cash and short term deposits.

4:02 We remain debt free, and we're planning to pay the final dividend of $9.23 pence per share, which we will pay in December of this year. And that will mean that the total annual dividend will grow by 5% year over year. I will now spend a bit of time on key performance indicators, which show our continuous strong track record. This last year, again, as I've mentioned, we have grown 10%. This mostly came from volume. So 4,300,000 out of 4.6 of additional sales came from volume, and the remaining with from price. That means that we've reached 10% CAGR of 11... Sorry. Ten years CAGR of 11.6%. And in terms of cash flow, since I've already mentioned the figures in the previous slide, but what you can see here is this continuous strong growth, which gives us plenty of optionality for investments and progressive dividends going forward.

5:02 Our profitability, very high with 31% of adjusted EBITDA remains very well comfortably above our commitment of 25% margin. I will walk you through our summarized p and l, summarized income statement here. I've already touched on the top line growth, but what I would like to highlight here is that actually the 10% growth year on year looks even better when you look at the individual segments. So our medical device disinfection products grew by 11%, our surface disinfection by 27%, and it's actually our legacy products which decreased year over year. Our gross profit increased... So gross profit margin to 82%.

5:47 That's reflecting the savings realized from bringing in house the manufacturing of Trio Wipes, which was completed and announced previously, and as expected, brought solid savings in the second half of the year. And, of course, we'll continue delivering those going forward. Our gross margin for medical device disinfectants grew to 85% because of that project, and our surface disinfectant grew to 61... Margins grew to 61%, mostly due to volume. Our administrative and distribution expenses grew by 8%, and this is largely driven by increase in employees with 18,800,000 of our staff costs. That's related to increase in headcount. And as we've announced before, we continuously invested in commercial expansions.

6:39 So it brought sales heads into the organizations and a few more sort of clinical focused employees as well. And we will continue doing these investments in '27. Our depreciation, amortization, impairments line, you will see this increase to 3,500,000 by forty eight percent, and this is largely driven by one off impairment of some of the intangibles related to surface line, and that was £800,000. That brings us to adjusted profit before tax of 11,700,000, which is a 23% margin, very, very solid. And finally, the tax line. So you will see here, we have the tax expense has grown from 1.8 to to 3,000,000 by 69%.

7:28 And this is largely driven from... By by two two things. Firstly, by further reduction in patent box benefit, and secondly, by reclassification of our RDEK. So in the past, the r and d expense credit was recognized on the tax line as a redact tax liability. And currently, it has been reclassified since '26 to other operating income, so above tax line. And since we consider that RDEK is not truly dependent on on TRISTEL's actions and it's just dependent on HMRC policy, we decided to adjust it out from our adjusted profitability measures. I will move on to balance sheet KPIs where you will see that our net working capital remained at very healthy ratios at around 15.

8:19 And over the last two years, as we grew the business in total by 22%, The net working capital only increased by 16%, releasing a lot of cash into the business. Our return on capital employed is... Remains very robust at 27% in last year, speaking to our high operational performance efficiency and our ability to create long term value for for stakeholders. And finally, our progressive dividend, which as I mentioned, will increase by 5% and reach 14.91p per share in the year.

9:01 I have a balance sheet slide here, but to be honest, I will spend very little time on it because it really serves more as a reinforcement that we have a very healthy and strong balance sheet, which remains debt free. We have seen 25% increase in cash and short term deposits. Our liabilities remain quite low, and that gives us plenty of capacity to support our plant investments and growth initiatives. Now I would like to spend a little bit more time explaining where the growth came from. So UK, our home market grew by 5%. But similarly to the group level, the growth has actually been better when you look at the individual segments. So our medical device disinfectants grew by 8% in The UK and 21% for surface disinfectants with the legacy products declining.

9:54 When you look at Europe, Middle East, and Africa, overall growth was of 15% to 24,000,000, and that really came from a range of of markets. So starting from Germany, which grew by 8% in medical device, the the contamination products despite emerging competition on on the market. We go to Italy, growing by 16%, also in medical device decontamination primarily. And that market grew significantly despite the fact that quite a few tenders have been delayed, which means that most of the growth came from increased adoption by... Among our existing customers and moving the products to new departments, such as ENT and cardiology.

10:40 In Italy, we have also seen first signs of increased dual ULT usage following the clinical studies and publications around around HPV transmission with the use of ultrasound devices. That's really clearly an area where our strong cooperation with key opinion leaders and work on clinical studies helps us to raise awareness around these issues and to really influence the clinical practice. If we move on to France, also grew double digit in both medical device and surface disinfectants. We've seen significant gains, especially in surface disinfectant portfolio, where we have seen in a few hospitals, where in difficult outbreak situations, we have... Chlorine dioxide products really outperformed competition and allowed us to transfer the cool surface disinfection practice to our products.

11:37 Overall, we see that the surface disinfectant products globally have grown very strongly. And what we see there is that they differentiate very nicely, not because... Not only because of higher efficacy than competing products,

11:50 but also because of simplicity of use. So we we have one contact time for all the different microbes, while competition refers to different contact times for different types of microorganisms, which in practice means that it's quite difficult to use the product to its full effectiveness. So we're really happy with development there. Our Middle East team has also performed very well with 24% growth year over year. And in APAC, we saw a similar performance to the first half of the year where it was quite a varied picture. So in our mature markets such as Australia and New Zealand, we've seen quite flat performance over the last year with some competitive headwinds in Australia.

12:37 In New Zealand, the medical device decontamination portfolio actually grew slightly. However, the legacy products declined and sort of dragged the whole growth down. In Southeast Asia, Malaysia and Singapore grew very strongly, 2116%. So very happy with with that performance. And if you look at Americas finally, they... In Americas, we've reached 800,000 in revenues. And I would like to spend a bit more time and explain the different revenue streams related to America's business. So first is the direct US product sale. That's the line where our newly launched OPH product is reported, and you can see really great growth there. So the £340,000 is mostly consisting of the growth in in OPH product.

13:27 And the second line, which is the royalties line, that's related to Parker's sale of TRISTEL ULT. So these are our royalties that we receive on that sale, and that that, of course, flow through our income statement at 100% gross margin. Our distributor sales in Americas coming mostly from Canada and Chile grew by 54%, and that overall meant that Americas grew 202%. And now I would like to pass to Chris who will tell us more about The US performance. Yeah. Thanks, Anne. Yeah. The US has been obviously one of the high priority markets for us, and there are two parallel segments we run-in The US, one on the ultrasound business and one on the ophthalmic business, and I'd like to touch on both for you now. So with the ultrasound business, we obviously work with our strategic partner, Park Laboratories, and our royalty income has grown to $355,000 in the last year. And procedures have grown from 300,025 to 736,000 last year. So it's a very significant increase in number of procedures we're we're now we're now having tried cell products used on.

14:34 There there are approximately 50,000 procedures in The US in this space, which just gives you some measure of the potential that we have ahead of us here, and we're looking to see how we can exploit that further. The way the way The US works in this space is that new accounts start with small volumes as the infection prevention clinical teams trial develop training protocols and update procedures and observe for competency and performance before they get rolled out, and then it becomes a management practice after that time to utilization. So to give you a good... A working example here, one of our biggest customers in Florida

15:14 had had 10 user sites in in 2024. There are now 33 user sites at the end of this financial year, and a huge amount of work has been done in order to drive to drive adoption and growth in that particular institution. So that that gives you a sense of the time it takes for us to take an initial interest through through to exploitation of the technology across multiple sites within the hospital. What we have done in the last year is we've managed to increase our pipeline significantly. So we we added a 190 new user sites in the last six months since the March report, which means we now have 275 open opportunities in the pipeline with a 175 in different stages of completing value analysis and are in trials and implementing training.

16:05 So I'm I'm very, very excited and confident about the future of TRISTEL PLC in The US with Parker as as our strategic partner over there. I'm also encouraged by the feedback that we've had from our customers on the ground with the testimonials. And you can you can revisit your leisure, but I think if I was to try and summarize what these customers say, the three things that come out across the board here is, one, is the convenience that that TRISTEL offers them. Secondly is the time reduction that it takes. And thirdly is just that the the impact it has on their on their systems, on their compliance, on on on the joint commission and the overall approval, which makes this a very easy technology for them to adopt. And and we're absolutely delighted to receive these glowing testimonials from our customers.

17:05 Now moving on to the OPH side, the ophthalmic side of the business, and this has been a huge success for us in the last twelve months. So if I look at the, revenues here that have increased to $260,000, which have exceeded our initial expectations, with a 111,000 customer procedures performed, across this marketplace. So a very substantial increase with some very significant institutions by bio institutes and major hospitals who have adopted this technology, which gives us great encouragement for the potential for this product across The US. The... Again, the significant number of new accounts have been opened, 73 at year end, are now using the product.

17:52 And we have three zero four open opportunities with two zero seven at trial and evaluating with 97 of those currently engaged. We have strong partners in advancing eye care and Kiela, and we are looking to add a further distributor to our ranks very shortly. It will be very much focused on the the government opportunities around veterans affairs and the military, which is another significant strength to our vote that we're hoping to... Hopefully, able to open up. Just to to graphically show you what that looks like for the business, a year ago, this this gives you a a a visual representation of where our live users were across The US and the pipeline that we had built behind us. And if you now overlay what that looks like at the end of this financial year, you can see the huge increase we've had across both the pipeline and live users.

18:46 And this is largely as a result of the recruitment that we've undertaken. So we have a two new sales reps, one in the Midwest who's been with us for about seven months now and one on the West Coast who just joined recently. And I draw your attention particularly to the Midwest where you can see a a vast number of new accounts that have been established or opened and more trials taking place, and and we can see directly the impact that our clinical specialists are having on on the marketplace. We also have got more strategic partnerships with the device manufacturers, and we've now got compatibility with some of the major providers in this space that also significantly helps us to drive adoption in this particular area. Finally, I just want to share a bit about the multicenter study that we've been carrying out, that we've been supporting to create best practice recommendations, reprocessing, and ophthalmology.

19:42 This study has now been complete, and the lead authors are looking for an appropriate place to publish this work, which, again, I think will be hugely beneficial for us as we look forward to driving future growth in this space. And once again, some nice testimonials from from very significant institutions in The US that have highlighted just how convenient it is for TRISTEL OPH to support the ophthalmic high level disinfection opportunity at point of care use, which has not been available to The US before, and it gives us huge encouragement for this segment moving forward. With that, I'd like to pass back to Anna, who will talk about progress made in a couple of the areas of the business that we've been focused on. Yes. I will tell you about some important developments, and I'll start with education.

20:39 In July, we have launched TRISTEL Academy. And why have we done it? Well, we believe that buyers who understand our chemistry are our best defense against competition.

20:49 And even though, you know, our chemistry is clearly extremely effective, it is very complex, and it requires explaining. We have launched this this academy as a virtual virtual initiative to turn published studies, clinical studies, published articles into very specific kind of practical guides for IPC leads, practical answers to questions they may have. You know, it's not only about our chemistry. It's also about guidance, disinfection regulations, which are quite complex. And we believe that by explaining and educating, we can truly build better understanding for for how... Why TRISTEL is the best product in the market.

21:36 We have currently been live on eight... In eight regions, but we are planning further further expansion. And we have seen so far really great engagements. So we see a lot of interest in the sites, and we believe that this has been truly a very good step forward.

21:52 And now I would like to present to you our new product, which is called UniFoam, that's a product addressing hospital drains. So hospital sinks and drains are now recognized as a major reservoir of bacteria and track track resistant bacteria in hospitals. Why is that? Because there is biofilm forming in drains, which is sort of a protective slime layer that allows the bacteria to live and thrive, and which makes it very difficult for chemicals to to to kill them. It's not a theoretical problem.

22:31 Those... There are real real world consequences and and outbreaks related to to this drain living... Bacteria living in drains. For example, what we have... If you just look at some of The UK headlines, there was an inquiry in Scotland related to infections in child cancer patients that were related to actually hospital drains. The UK Health Security Agency, which mandated reporting of of drug resistant organisms since 2020, has already registered twenty two thousand of such

23:04 such cases. The products that hospitals use today, it's a wide variety of of things. It's chlorine, maybe parasitic acid, hot water, cold water, different different measures. But they are really ineffective against biofilm. And uniform, there is really special a special proposition, quite unique, because, of course, chlorine dioxide as a gas as a gas molecule has a better ability to penetrate the biofilm and and kill the bacteria.

23:36 It's a product which which key opinion leaders have been asking for for a while. And here you can see Phil Norville, doctor Phil Norville, and who are some of the very recognized voices in The UK in this in IPC community, really asking for a product which could be used consistently to to make a difference and prevent the creation of biofilm or destruction of it once it builds up. And and therefore, we are very happy that we have done a soft launch of the product already in September in UK conference for IPC, the IPS conference in Leeds. And we've seen great interest from from customers there with 14 NHS trusts registering for trials just on this conference itself.

24:24 The trials are ongoing, and we believe that in January, we will bring to the market the first phase market. So a few core European markets and The UK, the product will be launched then. And then, of course, as the registration and regulatory approval continues, it will spread to to more countries. And finally, I would like to spend a little bit of time on three t. You have seen us presented before, and what has happened there. The product has really developed tremendously in the last year. So as you know, hospitals have had to evidence there the contamination process for years, especially in The UK, especially in some markets. And we believe that, you know, they've obviously found a way to log it, whether it's a manual log or digital log. We think that just offering a digital log is not enough anymore to to be a true differentiator.

25:18 And that's why three t is aimed at becoming more of a real virtual member of the IPC teams. And what does it do? Well, it allows to not only train and certify staff, but it also allows to to verify that the right product is used on the right device, that the product hasn't expired. It enforces the steps of cleaning and decontamination, and it can also track devices through its life and finally provide IPC leads with not only ability to monitor how different users disinfect and how the devices are disinfected, but also can provide dashboards and reports that they may want to use as preparation for audits. And, commercially, this is really important for us because as the compliance of the hospital rely more on three t, it becomes harder to switch away from our chemistry as well.

26:09 So what we've done in the last year, as you know, in the Capital Markets Day in July 25, we have said that we will launch the product in '26, and we have done so. So end of June, we have gone live with the product in the key markets that cover 80% of our current three t users. So that's UK, US, Australia, and New Zealand. And already now, the three t is a product which is quite widely used. So it's it's used by more than 270 customers. Just in last year, a quarter of the contamination cycles were logged in it, and 48,000... More than 48,000 staff or certificates were issued.

26:57 And we believe that now with the introduction of paid tier, we will signal the value to customers. We will, of course, encourage daily usage that will bring reliance and that will really build the product loyalty as well. And finally, the multiyear subscriptions can actually help us contract in a way the customer to continue using our chemistry throughout the years that they use in the software. So it's really kind of a reinforcing product. And with that, I would like to pass back to Chris, who will tell us more about the outlook. Thank you, Anne. So I think TRISTEL is in a in a fantastic place. I mean, not only have we developed a proprietary chemistry, which underpins a great business that's been built so far, but we operate in a space that's highly attractive.

27:51 If you just take ultrasound as as an example, a lot more of the ultrasound is moving to the point of care well well beyond what used to be all centrally reprocessed through imaging departments. And there are more image guided procedures being

28:07 done with pros that need fast, compliant, high level disinfection either close to or at the bedside. And all of that builds a bigger marketplace for us to play. The other key significant thing is guidelines. Every time guidelines are altered or changed where chlorine dioxide or TRISTEL is named, that that opens the space and the opportunity for us to grow our market. And just over the last year, we've had three more guidelines that have been released. We've had the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine who have specifically mentioned chlorine dioxide as an approved method for high level disinfection of ultrasound probes.

28:52 We have the American College of Emergency Physicians and the Maternal Fetal Medicine Society as well. Both of those have referenced chlorine dioxide as a technology for the for the disinfection of the space, and TRISTEL has been named specifically as well. So these are all hugely beneficial for us as we seek to expand and get adoption across the marketplaces that we play. Infections remain extremely high profile. Ever since COVID. There has been a much greater awareness and knowledge around infection prevention. And with the antibiotic resistance growing, with one in six infections now being resistant to antibiotics, it keeps compliance a real focus, and therefore, guidelines changing contributes to our opportunity.

29:47 We've we've also added a further 20 device manufacturers to our list of devices that have been approved for compatibility. So we now have 72 mobile device manufacturers that we work with, and that relates to over 2,150 actual individual models of products, whether they're scopes or ultrasound probes, that have got compatibility with TRISTEL, which means the consumer, the customer has got confidence that the product not only works, but it's safe and efficacious to use. When budgets across many health care systems in the world are becoming tighter and more difficult, Capital projects are becoming harder to find, and therefore, point of care and high level distribution is a very viable alternative that's been attractive to our customers.

30:43 So in terms of in terms of the outlook, I think we've got huge opportunities that we can focus on. We'd certainly want to make sure that we exploit the significant opportunity in The US where where ultrasound and ophthalmology remain significant growth opportunities, not just this year, but over the coming years. And we're we're looking to try and accelerate that and put more headcount in to drive that growth as we as we move forward. In addition, we're looking at all of the markets that we currently play to see whether, a, we can grow faster in the existing markets, or whether we can actually enter new markets, that may take longer time because of the revenue perspective to enter, but ensuring that we've got medium to long term growth opportunities around new markets that we enter.

31:35 We like to underpin all of that with a program of work that looks at TRISTEL having a a clinical leadership position, across the globe with key opinion leader engagement, podium presentations, and clinical support that wraps a halo around the business that demonstrates that TRISTEL is a significant, partner in the infection prevention space, and and that we're supported by the professional bodies, and by the clinicians who operate at the highest level within within that market space. Within our existing opportunities, the markets we currently play in, some analysis has demonstrated to us that there there is a significant opportunity just by bringing all of our direct up to the median distribution of the number of products bought by customers.

32:30 That would give us an opportunity somewhere in the magnitude of 40,000,000 just by focusing on that piece. And there's further opportunity up to 60,000,000, from our own internal benchmarks by looking at the markets that we operate in with a range of maturity levels if we were to focus on driving more more more revenue potential through existing customers. This is probably the fastest single way for us to grow the market alongside the new market expansion that provide longer term growth and the r and d pipeline, again, which is something that we'll be looking at for long term growth potential organically. Anna has touched on UniFoam and 3T Pro.

33:15 These are both new revenue streams that we're excited about. Uniphone is in a completely unmet space that has enormous market potential and opportunity, and we're very excited to see what that does. And the development of three g Pro has given us a whole new opportunity to both offer our customers,

33:35 additional features and benefits around not just compliance, but also education and learning, and also is a huge protective barrier for our business going forward. And finally, we'd like to fuel our future growth by having a much more robust R and D pipeline. And in and in that context, we're looking to put a team together that is much more connected from a product development perspective to our customers and to their needs and understanding so they can be translated through our development teams and our scientific teams to develop products that will give us a future pipeline of growth both from our organic pipeline and from our existing portfolio. So I think from terms of our financial commitments, I think we can firmly commit to the financial commitments we made out to 2030 of revenue growth that's not less than double digit on an annual basis, an EBITDA margin that exceeds 25%, and and currently is significantly above that and a progressive year on year dividend growth policy.

34:45 So in summary, I think results remain in line with expectations, and the business is firmly on track to meet its financial targets. We're con... Committed to The US growth, both with our partners and with our direct team, and are looking to put accelerated investments into that marketplace in particular that will allow us to get there quicker than we've been able to achieve so far. But we are encouraged by the performance of the last twelve months. We expect to increase penetration across selected existing markets, and that our new product launches and our digital platforms will give us significant new growth revenues as well in support of that. So all in all, I think TRISTEL is well positioned to deliver long term shareholder value.

35:32 With that, I would like to say thank you very much indeed for your attention and for listening to our presentation today, and we'll be delighted to take any questions you might have. That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions 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. Paul, if I could just hand over to you just to share the q and a, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you very much. Chris and Anna, we have a couple of questions pre submitted regarding competition out there. So how would you... Or how do you compete against TROFON?

36:18 Yeah. Trophon and NanoSonics is clearly a very established competitor, but I think it's important to remember that it very much operates in in the disinfection space in capital systems. They don't really operate or play in the the manual high level disinfection area, and they continue to grow their business and and help the industry generally by establishing disinfection across multiple sites in the hospital as as the standard care and norm and that compliance of that grows for all of us and grows for the market. And we've we've had a lot of success with moving

36:56 the high level disinfection to the manual operation. And some of that has been an expense of some of our competitors, but a lot of it as well is just bringing bringing high level disinfection to areas that were either employed low level disinfection previously or or or not complying in any way before as well. So I think there's plenty of room. It's a big enough market space. It continues to grow as I as I alluded to, and we're very comfortable with the position that we've been able to achieve in the marketplace, and we'll continue to focus on what we do really well. And then what about other technologies?

37:28 So ultraviolet lamps and other technologies regarding sterilization, are they beginning to impact you? Yeah. I think I think UVC... There's a there's a lot of interest in UVC and the potential for these systems. But I think there there are some well known shortcomings that have been identified identified in studies that have been done with UEC. And I don't... I I think there's a lot of... The jury is out, and there's a lot of questions remaining just about the the viability of of UEC. Because inevitably, with these static systems, they they, cast shadows around the environment with which they operate, and it's very difficult to establish just how in the real world environment how well they work and when they're actually performing the task at hand. And I think a lot more work needs to be done. We're certainly working on a lot of studies ourselves to show our efficacy and what we've improved without without high level disinfection technology.

38:22 And we'll... We look forward to more evidence as that as that arises from that space. You've had a bit of time to get your sort of feet under the table. One of the questions is, have you identified anything having come on board that you would like to change or would like to implement? So so I've I've I've identified two things that we're already doing that I'd like to do faster and then do more of. And and those are the... I'd absolutely like to drive acceleration of of The US opportunity. I think we've had a very encouraging year. You know, our confidence level in the ophthalmology business is huge right now given the the success we've had in the last twelve months. And we're really looking to see how we can enhance the outstanding team we've got there in The US to drive a a much superior performance.

39:10 On the ultrasound side, I have a recent visit with Aaron and myself to The US and met with our strategic partner, Parker, there. We're absolutely aligned on the potential of the opportunity there. And we're currently discussing ways we can drive growth across the board both with additional clinical specialists, but also with a much more robust clinical platform to support the business going forward. So that's one of my areas that I think we can really do more of. The second one is... Relates to the second part of that is that globally, we identified before my time that that we should be a stronger clinical advocate for for infection prevention and that TRISTEL is a leader in that space. So we've hired a dedicated clinical director.

39:57 We've hired a team of clinical portfolio leads. And and across that group of people, we'll be looking to connect much closer to the customer, produce more clinical evidence, in support of infection prevention using high level disinfection and chlorine dioxide, and also to get a much more prominent place at conferences and meetings on the podium in presentations, in clinical presentations

40:20 around TRISTEL and its overall performance and contributions to that area. Thank you. A few questions on cash, so probably for you, Anna. Obviously, it's not gone unnoticed by many of the investors that you've generated quite significant free cash flow at these set of results. So there are questions about, you know, what are you gonna do with these cash reserves? The first question is, you know, are you considering another special dividend?

40:44 Yeah. So as you said, we have closed the year with a record high balance in cash. And at the moment, we really want to keep the optionality for our investments. So, you know, we we do have some needs around them investing in commercial areas that Chris has already mentioned. So increase in commercial plan in The US, increase in clinical kind of clinical outreach and engagement with with key opinion leaders and sort of clinical generation of clinical evidence. So that will be our key investment areas. We will also have some need for capital... For CapEx going forward, and that would be related, for example, to Uniform, our new product that I spoke about. We currently are planning to produce it on our existing lines, but, of course, if the product is as successful as we hope, we will be building... We will invest it in a separate line.

41:40 And, of course, there are other potential opportunities. Maybe, Chris, you want to mention a little bit more on your views as well? Sure. Yeah. I I think one one of the obvious areas, you know, is there is a potential for TRISTEL to engage with more more m and a activity. Historically, we've had a track record of growing markets very nicely with with with competent distribution partners that we've then engaged and brought into the TRISTEL family. And and that's that's served us very well in terms of the growth, what we've achieved at this point in time. They they remain an important part of our our business going forward. But I think we'll we'll obviously have a diminishing return and a limited opportunity to be able to bring more of those on board. So we would like to look at technologies that are either adjacent or in our space, whether that's chemistry or whether that's other products that would be additions and complementary to our portfolio or or potentially even enhancing our market entry into certain tricky markets like Japan or China or Brazil, for example, where where we could get a a better foothold quicker by making some investments in those spaces. So we're actively looking to see what could be done at this period of time to complement all the other investments that we've touched on. So I think you answered answered a couple of questions that we've already got on here, but there was a specific question about the priority of those. Are you able to give an idea of priority? And, of course, as well as the word special dividend buyback also comes back...

43:08 Comes up in many of the questions. So is there a way to prioritize at the moment? And are buybacks on the table? So let let me touch on the priority piece first, and I'll let Anna talk to the buyback. So, yeah, the the prioritization process... And I'm I'm in in my tenth week, and I've had a chance to to get around all of the business and speak to all of our teams. And we're formulating a good idea and an understanding of where the opportunity lies for us. And that's exactly what we're doing now is is doing that prioritization of those opportunities. But I'm I'm absolutely certain that will incorporate more more folks that are tension around our existing markets where we think we've got significant opportunity for growth, both with our existing portfolio and those new products that we touched on.

43:54 And and we'll be looking at how we can accelerate that growth in those markets. And clearly, The US, the biggest medical device market in the world with some of the most attractive prices in the world as well. We've we've made good progress, but we think we could do an awful lot more. So I I would say those two are the most significant priorities with with thirdly, making some bets around long term market entry and building an R and D pipeline that gives us long term growth. Yep. I can address maybe the buyback part of the question. So, of course, we, you know, we get this question quite often from investors whether we are planning that. You know, some people may say that arranging for a share buyback actually sends a message that the management thinks the shares are undervalued, which we can definitely confirm that is the case. But on the other hand, it may also mean that we believe that we don't

44:45 have a more attractive way of investing it ourselves that would generate even higher returns for shareholders. So, you know, we we believe that actually being a... To be able to move a needle in terms of share price, we will need to spend significant amounts of cash. And that would really limit then our ability to to to have the options to invest. And actually, it's not even a given that that the share price would be really impacted. And we have a great example, actually, of our competitor, we referred to before also on this call. They have gone... They have spent significant amounts of cash last year and this year on share buyback, and they continuously run a share buyback program. And their share price is for... Currently at 40% below last year's. And why is that?

45:32 Because the market values more the ability to to deliver on the the results on the guidance in line with expectations and deliver growth rather than the share buyback itself. So I think it really gives us a strong feeling that we need to invest in the business. Thank you. But but but I I would just add that I accept the shareholder view that that capital deployment needs to take place. Yes. And that's absolutely uppermost in our mindset of how we utilize that in the best possible way for shareholder return. Another question comes back to the point you made earlier. You obviously... You were talking about priorities and about how investing in The US growth opportunity. There was a question here about would you add people in The US in the next twelve months, and would they be sales, or is that just Parker's job? You know, would you put more TRISTEL feet on the ground? We we would we would do both.

46:22 I I think... Yeah. Yes. Yes. Part... The the ultrasound side is Parker's job, and we've we've had a very open dialogue about how we grow that business faster. They are absolutely supportive and open to further investment, in particular, around clinical specialists who can help drive adoption. I refer to my example area with the Florida institution where we we built a very nice business across multiple user sites. We believe addition of clinical specialists would help us drive that faster. And that's certainly one of the areas that we're looking at. But, also, unquestionably, the confidence we have in the... Of founding opportunity, we are currently looking and surveying just how we could accelerate that with

47:05 more both both sales specialists, clinical specialists, and marketing support in order to drive that forward even though we've already put three additional heads on the on the ground in the last twelve months. Thank you. Do you mind if we stay on cash, Anna? There was a question about where do you keep your cash? In terms of cash reserves, you know, how how do you hold them? Yeah. We we invest in short term, medium term deposits, so really kind of with different different maturity dates. Yeah. We, you know, we we we really focus on our core business, so we don't spend time investing. It's not not what we are paid to do. It's not our core competency, but we do make sure that we take advantage of the interest rates that are on the market. I have a question from a shareholder just regarding the number of shares in issue. So could the management please explain the recent increase in shares outstanding and the reasons behind the dilution?

47:58 How much of this relates to the employee share scheme, and what measures are being taken to limit future dilution and protect existing shareholders' earnings per share? Yeah. So so it is true that the number of shares in circulation increased, and it's true... It's driven by the employee share scheme. So there has been a employee share scheme in place, which was launched a few years back, and there is a couple more years that it remains valid, where the longer standing employees will still have a right to to to to receive shares. However, we don't have a current new plan in place. So going forward, this this dilution will will decrease.

48:37 Yeah. So that's that's really the main reason for the dilution that you have seen in the market. Just a question regarding future expansion plans. As your products get stronger and world war... Worldwide markets are sort of increased, would you have any consideration to manufacture directly abroad, or would you always continue to use companies who manufacture on... In country like you do with Parker? Yeah. So, I mean, the Parker is a great example. Think they have a really great strategic partnership that works really well where we provide the chemistry and the support, and the manufacturing, assistance from The UK, but everything is done on-site, including, in this case, the commercial end of the operation as well. I think, local expertise of manufacturing expertise is crucial in this situation, particularly when you're dealing with chemicals.

49:31 At this stage, I think we'd much more likely to enter into strategic partnerships and joint ventures than we would setting up TRISTEL owned manufacturing operations overseas. Yep. Looking at the slide that you had regarding the training academy Mhmm. One of the investors suggests, does that slide mean that your protection is needed against copycat competitors? And are there other competitors that would use carbon dioxide chemistry?

50:01 So I'll I'll I'll address the second part. Okay. Yeah. So as of right now, we are the only player in the high level disinfection... Manual high level disinfection space with the chlorine dioxide technology. You know, a lot of work has been put in by the company to developing that over many years. You know, we've got a raft of of patents and an application that covers across multiple countries and an awful lot of know how that goes with that. I mean, there is nothing novel per se about chlorine dioxide, but but the the formulation and the way the company has managed that makes it extremely hard to replicate. And and we continue to drive the outreach of that proprietary technology into the marketplace.

50:48 That's not to say we're complacent. I fully expect there will be other parties who will try and enter this space with a similar type of technology. But as of yet, we've seen nothing that

51:02 that exists in the chlorine dioxide space. So this is... It's the wording on the slide, I guess, the way it says about competitors positioning look alike products. Mhmm. I mean, how much are you seeing that? Yeah. So there are there are other competitors selling wipes. Not not... Like, as Chris said, none of them are reliant on chlorine dioxide chemistry. We have one example of a company in Germany that's that's... Makes a lot of claims, claiming that their effectiveness is as high as as our product. And that's where we believe that it's really important to educate the customer on the strength of what of what chlorine dioxide brings. Thank you. This is a great question, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to answer or quick to answer. So how do TRISTEL, Cache A or Cache and three t fit together?

51:51 What does this mean for TRISTEL's future strategic positioning and growth opportunities? Where does UniFoam fit in with that portfolio, and what other innovations do you have around your core technology? So so it's it's a pretty broad question.

52:07 Wow. Yeah. That's... That is a broad question. Let let me try and address at least some of it. So I I I think the... Yeah. The the the medical device segment and the the surface solution segment, TRISTEL surface solutions, are are clearly two distinct areas of of the the business and have different focuses for us. I I think the three t technology sits, you know, extremely well into any space where compliance is required or where you need to record any kind of disinfection process or protocol that's in place. And presumably, that's growing. There's, you know, more and more need to actually record it. Absolutely. Historically, that would have been either not recorded or would have been manually recorded, which I provide a very easy solution for our customers, not just to record traceability and compliance, but also to get other layers of of features from that site that provide education and support beyond just the compliance piece.

53:10 So so I think three t as an underpinning technology sits nicely across that that part of the business. The the the the drains, the uniform product is absolutely firmly sits in the in the the the surfaces portfolio. What... Whilst you may not think of it as a surface being a drain, it it absolutely sits in that in that portfolio and and is, I think, a very innovative approach to addressing an unmet need that that currently offers variable opportunity out there for for customers to deal with that right now. And and I, you know, I have huge confidence that that is gonna be a significant project for us in our surface solutions portfolio as we move forward.

53:55 And it and it also, I think, has given us the encouragement to look further afield into surfaces where we think we... Chlorine dioxide in particular can make a difference with new innovations. But that's that's the cut. And this is the question that was was being asked was about future innovations. I realize you... From a competitive point of view, you you don't wanna say what you're doing before it launches, but presumably, that is what you're looking to is to have new innovations, new products coming out, investing in the next set of products that come out. I remember you saying earlier about when you're dealing with salespeople, they want to have new innovative products. But I presume there is a pipeline there. Yeah. Absolutely. And and whilst I'm not... I can't talk about individual products, what I would say is that, you know, we have a a highly talented team of scientists and and and development people internally.

54:46 They're absolutely committed to bringing the next generation of of TRISTEL products to market. And what we've introduced in the last twelve months is a team of people that sit between that group and the customers, our clinical portfolio leads who each own one of the segments that we operate in, and those people are dedicated to working with customers to translate ideas and unmet needs to our scientists and development teams. It'll... They can hone their expertise and skills to bring out more relevant products to give us a much more robust pipeline so we can see more products coming through that pipeline over the coming years ahead. Couple of more questions. One was regarding the changes in inheritance tax on... And the impact on AIM equities.

55:33 The investor is asking, have you seen an exodus of of private investors? Certainly, from our experience, as your PRYR company, we haven't seen that. Yeah. That's not the only But unless you're No. You... You've not experienced that, and I don't think there's been any impact on your institutional shareholder base either as a result. Nothing evidence that we've seen at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And then, Chris, the last one is, you know, you've come in as as the new chief exec. What is it that excites you the most about TRISTEL? This is the last question. Yeah. I'm I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. I had a very high regard for TRISTEL and and what the former leadership achieved and the business they built here around their proprietary technology. And I think that excitement has only been, you know, increased tenfold over the last three months.

56:20 When I look at the scale of the potential and the opportunities that we have, both in selling more of our existing portfolio across across existing markets, entering new markets, and really extrapolating the value out of The US opportunity. I I think all of those... They're they're they're endless. What we need to do is be much... Very, very focused and strategic around the opportunities we go after and make sure that we we we get the best return on our investment. I'm also absolutely, you know, blown away by the quality of the team we have at TRISTEL, the the experience, the knowledge, the commitment.

56:59 I I... I've I've never felt more certain of a team of people who are, you know, motivated and driven to continue to drive the growth story forward. And, yeah, I'm very excited looking forward to the next twelve months. Thank you, Chris, and thank you, Anna. Chris, you may just be echoing very similar comments to what you've just said then. But in terms of... I will hand over to you for some closing remarks. Perhaps you could talk about, you know, your view of the results and the outlook, and I'll leave it for you to close. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. No. I I... It's an extremely encouraging set of results. I think it build... Builds on the platform and the financial commitments that we've made. And I think it's just a, you know, a huge endorsement of of TRISTEL as a business and and the space that we play in. I think it's absolutely clear as the business grows, it becomes more difficult to keep achieving those same financial metrics.

57:54 And we're working extremely hard as a leadership team and as a company to ensure that we make the the right investments, that we use that cash that we've accrued wisely, and that we give, you know, the shareholders the return that they expect and that we continue to see the growth trajectory of the business as we move forward over the strategic plan horizon. Thank you.

58:15 That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.