Venture Life Group (LSE:VLG) — Final Results

0:02 Good afternoon, and welcome to the Venture Life Group PLC Full Year Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time using 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 it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would

0:32 like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Gerry Randall. Good afternoon to you, sir. Great. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome, everyone, to our presentation. You're joined this afternoon by myself, Jerry Randall, cofounder, CEO of VENTURE LIFE Sharon Collins, commercial director, cofounder of VENTURE LIFE and Danny Wells, our CFO. We're going to take you through the presentation of our results for the 2022 year. I'll start with an overview and some general points highlights. Then we'll move on to Danny, who will go through the financial areas of the business in more detail. Sharon's gonna talk particularly about the brands that we have and and what's happening there, and then we'll we'll wrap up at the end.

1:17 And so please, as as indicated, ask any questions along the way, and we'll do our best to answer them. So I'm going to start on our opening slide. And this slide deck is also available on our website to download along with our annual report. So we've had a great year in 2022. You see in the top left hand corner here, overall revenue growth from the group up 17% for the full year. That saw growth across all parts of the business and was a significant growth from the previous year. The 17% relates to a like for like growth. The 2021 column you see in that bar chart is reported growth. But we acquired some businesses partway through 2021. So if you account for that and look on a like for like basis, it was 17% growth in the year. The middle at the top there, our gross profit improved, gross profit margin improving up to over 40%, amount of gross profit over $17,000,000 And that gross profit drove through our operating costs in the business to deliver an increased EBITDA up to $9,000,000 adjusted EBITDA for the year. Very pleased with that and the EBITDA percentage indicated there. If you go to the bottom left, in our business, we sell products under either the VENTURE LIFE brands. We sell them under customers' brands. And the chart at the bottom left corner indicates that split. In turquoise, it's the amount of revenue that comes from VENTURE LIFE brands. They generate a higher gross margin.

2:45 And in the orange is the revenues that come from our customer brands where we develop and manufacture products for our customers that develop and generate a slightly lower gross margin. You'll see for 2022, the split was about 53% in favor of VENTURE LIFE brands. But we made an acquisition towards the end of the period of a company called HR Healthcare comprising the Eeroll products. And if we look at a run rate basis, so taking the full year impact of that, our VENTURE LIFE brands are generating just over 57 of our revenues compared to 43% of the customer brands as we stand. And we expect that percentage of the VENTURE LIFE brands to grow slightly during the course of 'twenty three. Operating profit is growing in the middle bar graph at the bottom. But significantly, the cash generation, as indicated in the bottom right corner, up significantly from last year.

3:37 That's as the business grows, develops more profitability and some of the working capital movements that have been in its favor. But Danny's gonna talk about that more when he gets to his section. So what are the key themes of of the year? Well, I've about some of them in these graphs, but obviously, we have the full year impact of the 2021 acquisitions, and we'll talk about individually how those brands are progressing. We have a strong order book. You you will have read in the RNS that our order book at the end of December is 114% higher than last year. It's more than double what it was at the end of twenty twenty one.

4:11 And just to be clear, our order book relates to around seventy percent of our revenues. So 30% of our revenues are generated in The UK. They go direct to retailers who order on a weekly basis. The rest of the business outside of The UK, either VENTURE LIFE brands or customer brands, is made to order. And we give customer lead times to that. The growth in the order book has come from a combination of organic growth of the of the business with those customers, But also due to the supply chain strains that we had last year, we ask customers to order further ahead so we can both lock in the price of the raw materials that we're buying and ensure supply of those. And the supply chain chain team that we have in Italy who run all that for us across the group have done a fantastic job last year. Very difficult supply chain situations.

4:59 They did a fantastic job, kept the factory running at all times. And it's probably fair to say we're we're probably over the very peak of the worst part of the supply chain. So slightly off the top, but it's by no means over. And we have to continue to monitor that very carefully to make sure we protect margins and can supply customers. We acquired the HR Healthcare business at the end of the year, November 30, and I'll talk about that more in a few more slides' time. We still have spare operating capacity in our facilities. That's both in Italy and in Sweden, and we'll talk about that later in the presentation. So the organic growth that we're expecting to see this year, we have plenty of capacity to deal with that. We're still considering M and A opportunities that come in. We're not being proactive to look for them at the moment. We've made three good acquisitions in the last eighteen months or so. We want to make sure we digest those. And there's a lot of opportunity within our brands and portfolio, and we want to focus on the organic growth of our business this year. So you'll see that coming through again in growing margin and cash generation.

6:03 We had two new board appointments this year. Paul McGreevey joined us as Chairman and Mark Adams as a nonexempt director and chair of order committee, and they've had a really positive impact on the business as we drive it forward. I'm going to give you an update just on those three acquisitions that we've made. The first is the acquisition of HL Healthcare. We completed this acquisition at the November 30. We paid £13,000,000 for the business. That was an EV to EBITDA multiple of about six times in our hands with synergies. It included three products. Over 90% of the revenues come from the main product, Eeroll, which is for reducing earwax ears. And it dissolves, loosens, and helps the earwax to come away either naturally or through assisted with earwax cleaning.

6:53 Also, there's a product for swim, which includes some other components to help you protect your ears if you're swimming in the chlorinated pools. And then another product called Serenase for which is a saline nasal cleaner. But both of those other two are quite small, over 90 of the revenues are from the main aero products. You'll see the graph on the right hand side, the revenue growth over the last three years, compound annual growth rate of over 30%. That's even before we've acquired it. So in the dark blue in the top charts, you'll see the international revenues where the product sold under the Vaxel brand internationally. And in the blue the light blue, excuse me, is The UK revenue. So we see significant opportunities with this brand to expand distribution in The UK, to expand distribution overseas. There's a lot of the European markets are still available for that.

7:41 And it's a very nice profitable business. As you can see in 2022, 5,000,000 of revenue, million of EBITDA profit. We'll talk more about the brands and the products and what we're doing with them later. In terms of our two previous acquisitions that are BBI Healthcare June 2021 and the Healthine Oncology brands in August 2021, just a quick update on those. Both of those still growing. The BBI revenues brand's growing very well. We'll go into those individually later to explain what's happening there, but a good compound annual growth rate over the last three years. The acquired brands from Helsink, they've been a bit flatter, but these are products that we don't sell direct in The UK. We only partner these out. So the first year or so of our ownership is about getting new partnership deals in place, and that will precipitate further revenue. So 2023, you'll see much, much stronger revenues from these brands because we completed some great deals 2022, and Sharon will talk about that as we go further through.

8:42 That's it as an overview. So I'm gonna pass over to Danny now, who's gonna take you through the financial overview of the business. Good afternoon, everyone. So I'll just talk you through the 2022 financial headlines to begin with. And so here we are. Revenue is up 34% to 44,000,000 last year. Gross Gross profits grew by 36% up to NOK 17,700,000. And in that, the gross margin percentage also improved from 39.6% in the previous year to 40.2%. So a slight improvement year on year. And we'll talk about the mix and the ups and downs of what happened on gross margin in a few slides' time. Adjusted EBITDAs were up significantly, up 36% to 9,000,000 off the 6.6% in the previous year.

9:27 And operating profit was also up as well significantly, up 622% year on year. And, more importantly and pleasing to see for the board this year was that the cash generation really came through strongly in the business. So our cash conversion, and that's our EBITDA, how it converts to net cash from operations, increased from 29% in 2021, upward to 69% in 2022. And we'll see some further progress on that in 2023, and we'll talk about that in the cash flow section later on in this slide deck. Cash generation in pound note terms then seeing how that cash conversion improvement played through can increase significantly over 200% increase from 1,900,000 cash gen to 6,100,000 cash gen in 2022.

10:14 K. This is a slide that I think a lot a lot of investors will have seen before from us, which we present regularly, showing how the business has evolved since it was floated back in 2014. And what you've got here is in the turquoise bars, the VLG brands revenue. And this is the more profitable products that we sell in our portfolio generating margins between 45 to 70% in different parts of the portfolio, blends of around 50% on those VLG brands. The orange bars at the top, that's our customer brands business. So CDMO revenue served from our site in Italy, to third parties, and those brands generate around 28 to 29% gross margin. So what we're showing here is that over the, eight year period, to the end of twenty twenty two, revenue CAGR is 25% across all of the business. But if you look into 2022 on a stand alone basis and just break down that overall top line growth of 34%, you can see the customer brands grew significantly by 41% year on year from 14,500,000 to 20,600,000.

11:17 And that the, VLG brands also grew significantly on a reported basis, up 29% to 23,100,000. And, we'll talk more about the brand's performance and what that looks like on a pro form a basis when we get into the commercial section later on in the deck. Just at the right hand side column, just to finish on this slide, we thought it'd be useful to show what the business looks like at the end of the year because we acquired HL Healthcare on the November 30. That only had one month of impact in 2022, clearly, and that was only 200 k on the revenue line. So we'll have a significant 4,800,000 of additional revenue on a run rate basis as we exit the year to reflect the full year last twelve months performance of the acquired business. So with that, you can see that the shape of the business is very much a sixty forty split going into twenty twenty three, 60% VLG brands, that being the more profitable element of our product portfolio.

12:12 And we'll talk what that means for gross margin later on. So just moving on to this slide quickly, Slide 11. This is just an infographic on breaking down what the VLG brands portfolio looks like today. And if I draw your eyes to the, right hand side of the slide on the pie chart for a moment, what we're showing here is that diabetes and energy and women's health accounted for over 50% of the VLG brands revenues. And these are the brands we've acquired from, BBI Healthcare back in 2021. And we're seeing, good growth coming through from these brands on a pro form a basis. And we'll talk more to what's driving that growth later on. So we won't take long on this slide, but just talking left to right as briefly as possible. What we're showing here is that energy management on the left hand side, that's the biggest therapy area we have within the VLG brands at the moment, accounting for over 6,000,000 of last year's revenues.

13:07 And in there, you can see the LIFE brand is 4,200,000 of that. And moving to women's health, Balance Active is essentially all of those women's health revenues accounting for 5.6 of the total 5.9. But this portfolio will evolve significantly going into 2023. So if I just draw your eyes to the ear, nose, nose, and throat section, we'll get the full year impact of those brands coming through into the portfolio next year. Moving on again. What we're looking at here now is a little bit of a closer inspection on how those VLG brands performed both on a reported basis and on a pro form a basis. So when we say reported basis, we're looking at, for example, on Balance Active at the left hand side. We've done 5,500,000 in 2022.

13:52 But last year, we only had seven months of that those brands in the business because BBI was acquired in June 2021. So hence, we've shown the gray bars as well depicting the pro form a performance. So that's as if BBI had been in place for the whole of the previous year. And if that brand had been in VLG's hands, you can see that on a pro form a, the growth of the brand has also come through an 8% growth on balance active at 5.5 from 5.1 the year before. But more significantly on the LIFE brands, you can see that's grown exceptionally from 3.1% to 4.2%, over a 36% pro form a growth from that brand. As we move further into the portfolio, you can see there's been a few more challenges on the oral care side of the business. And we'll talk to reasons behind that and how we see that business later on in the deck. But overall, a pleasing performance to see that the brands we've acquired are performing well.

14:44 And then although the oncology support products in this section here, under the middle of the graph at the top, You can see that GelClare, Pomiti and particularly been relatively flat year on year. You may have seen that we've secured some big new deals at the end of last year, which underpin visibility of revenue growth coming through in 2023. And I'm sure Sharon will talk more to that later. Moving into slide 13. What we thought would be useful to do here is as the business grows and VLG brands expands, we wanted to highlight the difference in the geography of where these brands are being sold and how those parts of the business are growing. So you can see that headlines for 2022 to begin with is that in The UK and EU retail, and when we say EU retail, we're talking about UK, Ireland and The Netherlands.

15:32 Okay? We are growing over 34% on a reported basis in the revenues from those geographies. And in the international space, that business has also grown by 27% year on year. So good growth coming through on both divisions within the VLG brands portfolio, and we certainly see further opportunities to internationalize those brands as we move forward with new deals that we've just reached at the end of last year. Moving on again now to Slide 14. This is just our focus on the pie chart here on the right hand side, just to break down what does that 23,000,000 look like today on VLG brands revenue in terms of where those revenues are generated. 60% of those revenues come from The UK and EU retail side of the business. Again, most of that is in The UK with some revenues in Ireland and around £1,500,000 revenue in The Netherlands.

16:25 So 40% of the VLG Brands business is the international space. Again, we see those opportunities to grow that part of the portfolio well underpinned for this year. Talking to gross margin next. So moving on from revenue. Here we have bridged the gross margin percentage, how that looks year on year and what's been the drivers and drainers of that. So you can see in 2021, the gross margin percentage was 39.6%. It's increased slightly to 40.2% year on year. Within that, there has been our challenges of course on increases to raw materials, packaging costs. And we summarize that as a 2.2% adverse impact during the year. A lot of that happens when the end of twenty twenty one we've had to pay an inflated price to make sure we got those materials and then secure the supply for our customers.

17:17 So those costs, although they were incurred and ordered at the end of 'twenty one, flowed through the P and L in 2022. So a lot of that impact was really in the first half of the year. We managed to pass on part of those costs to our customers. So 1.7% of the 2.2% was recovered through customer price increases. In The UK, that was a 14% increase on the dental brand into retail. But also in our third party brands and customer brands, I I mean, we were passing on price increases to our customers at the point of order to ensure that we could obtain the materials and protect the supply. Our customers were happy with that because they were happy to pay the additional price, I mean, because they could see that they were protecting the supply in a difficult supply chain environment. And we were

18:05 able to protect our cash margin by doing that, albeit taking a small dilution on the GM percentage. Utility costs, that's hurt us by around half a percent during the year. Going back around six to nine months ago, that looked like it was going to be greater damage than it has resulted in. So utility costs have calmed down a little bit in the second half of the year, we undertook some initiatives, particularly in our plant in Italy, to ensure that we were doing what we could within our control to manage energy costs and consumption. And Gerry will talk about that later in the ESG section. A key driver that mitigated some of those adverse impacts was, of course, the acquisitions we've made in the previous year. Higher margin brands coming through the p and l for a full year impact. The BBI brands and Helsink brands, both of those generating over 50% gross margin, generally higher than the, the previous legacy brands, if I describe VLG brands, which has had a positive impact on that bridge. But lastly, this is a key one, the mix impact overall.

19:08 What we're talking about here is a 1.6 adverse impact on margin, which has been driven by the exceptional growth of the customer brand side of the business. Now as we said at the start of this, and Jerry's mentioned as well, the customer brands generate a lower gross margin of around 28% to 29% compared to the VLG brands, which generate, as I said, up to 45% to 70% depending which products we're talking about. So as we move into 2023 now and those of you who have looked at the guidance from Singers and SENCOSS, we are we are expecting as a management team to get a margin improvement because the growth of the business will be more focused on the VLG brands product portfolio. And as I say, those are higher margin products, and that should see a nice accretion on the GM up by around one and a half percent cut for the back of the 2022 numbers.

20:01 Moving on again, we'll just touch base on administrative costs briefly to explain what's going on and how we see the business going forward. These are administrative costs excluding depreciation and amortization or exceptional costs. So they are operations required to run the business here. Looking at the bottom bridge on the on the chart, 6,400,000 to 8,700,000 year on year administrative costs. And the key driver of the increase year on year was the full year impact of the m and a. And what we're really talking about there within the 700,000 on the left hand side, around 500,000 of that is the full year impacts of running the site in Sweden. So the operations there, the overhead to run that part of the business. We've got an additional manufacturing facility through the acquisition of BBI.

20:49 There's a little bit of other investment that's come through from the health and brands as well. So just an annualization of the overhead to run those businesses. But as you can see also, we've invested in our marketing function, our our advertising. A lot of that investment has actually come from the online channels. Digitalization is a key focus for us in the business. We see bigger opportunities to expand online. In the year 2022, we grew our LIFE revenues by over 70% on Amazon, and and that is a reflection of having invested more online. But it's still small dollar value really in terms of what we have invested to date and where we could take these brands through further investment in the future. And also, we'll see some benefit in 2023 on the top line from investment made at the end of twenty two because the advertising efficiency from some of that spend in new markets, so like Germany, for example, the traction is slower to begin with, and the cost per acquisition is higher. But as we move forward, we get customer loyalty, repeat purchase, more organic wins on the online space, and that will help improve the efficiency of that spend and see the revenue grow and increase margin from that spend going forward.

21:56 Commercial and finance costs, we've also invested in our core infrastructure across The UK and Italy. This is to make sure that we can support the enlarged business. We're a much bigger operation than we were a couple of years ago. And we've acquired three we made three acquisitions over the last eighteen months. We want to make sure that we can organically grow those businesses and brands we've acquired, investment in brand managers, business developments, and also ensuring that the finance team is better supported to ensure that we can deliver the reporting both for ourselves internally, but also to the expectations of our stakeholders so that we can present the business clearly to them. And in the mix of all of that, we want to make sure that we've got proactive credit control and and investment on the transactional side of finance as well to ensure that we're not letting debts go into risk of overdue in this difficult economic climate, that we're focused on cash generation and operating cash improvements.

22:50 The last part of this is the other admin bridge. So you can see 0.7 on the right hand side of this chart. Just to break that down briefly, around 200,000 of that is investment in our supply chain and IT. Particularly on the IT side, we're talking about making sure we've got a robust cybersecurity framework in place, working with our IT suppliers and legal teams to ensure that we are well protected as cyber becomes a bigger, more prominent issue in the IT world. And also, that's a one off in one off cost in a sense. And then there's other increases in there, essentially additional provisions in the in the numbers as well, so noncash provisions in the year. Moving on, I'll skip I'll skip over the depreciation and amortization as I think we'll run out of time if I go into too much detail here, conscious, conscious, but we can come back to any questions on that later on. But I will touch base on finance costs briefly because to those eagle eyed investors, you will have seen that finance costs have increased from 0.4 to 1,500,000 year on year. We're looking at the top bridge on this slide. What we want to highlight here is that out of that 1,100,000 year on year increase, around 700,000 of that is actually noncash impacts.

24:02 So for example, the FX impact in the middle of the chart, you can see there, 400 k. That's, unrealized FX losses on translation of our, EUR euro borrowings on our lending facilities. Of course, with FX and sterling being weaker than where it was in the previous year, there's some adverse impact on the retranslation of those loans at the end of the year. But it's an unrealized FX impact. And, of course, while those while the FX is that way, we'll focus on paying off the e sterling borrowings on the facility ahead of the EUR so we can manage that number. Balance sheet timing is I'll just explain what that actually means. When we have the lending facility, we take our estimated borrowing profile on how we will use that facility. And going back to 2021, we weren't sure as a business and management team how we would use the profile of those borrowings in 2022.

24:54 So we have to readdress how interest costs are allocated to the p and l from the balance sheet. It's essential amortization of those interest costs. And in 2022, with the increased borrowing profile from the HL Healthcare acquisition, we're simply allocating more of those interest charges into the year. But again, it's a noncash impact, it's just a redress off the balance sheet itself. Moving on again, we'll just talk to what the business looks like today based on the inclusion of the HL Healthcare acquisition as just a reminder that we only had one month of HL Healthcare impacts in our 2022 numbers, which amounted to 200 k of revenue, 100 k of EBITDA impacts, a very small impact on the year. But it's important to show that as we move forward into 2023, there's a significant uplift in the run rate of the business as a result of that acquisition as we see the full year impacts on both top line and bottom line. And just to be clear, what how these run rate numbers are built, this is all based on the last twelve months trading performance of that new acquisition as of the end of thirty first of December last year. You can see a significant uplift in the EBITDA as a result of including that HL business. Depreciation and amortization will also increase because we've got more brands, and those brands have to be acquired sorry, amortized.

26:10 But we'll see a significant uplift in operating profit, reduction in exceptional costs and reduction in net finance costs because as you've just seen, a lot of that net finance cost in 2022 was noncash and FX related balance sheet timing. So although interest costs will go up in real terms of interest payable, they won't go up as a off a base of 1,500,000 as the finance cost spread showed a moment ago. So we'll see accretive PBT of a significant note, which will impact our earnings per share very favorably going into 2023 as we would expect, and you'll see in the broker's guidance. Moving on to cash. And what I would like to focus on here, because we've already touched on cash lightly at the start of this overview, But draw your eyes to the middle of the table.

26:56 And we're looking at net cash from operating activities. And you can see that there's been a significant improvement year on year. Net cash generated in 2021 was 1,900,000. That's increased by over 200% to 6,100,000 in 2022. Part of that is improvement in operating cash conversion. We've bought businesses with high cash conversion. BBI was over 90% cash conversion business. But also due to the timing of the revenues in our business, we have a lot of the back ended q four weighted revenues, which is typical of ordering patterns from our customers. And as the business has grown, we've seen more cash collected in q one of the following year. So high twenty twenty one q four billing being cash collected in 2022.

27:41 And we will get repeat of that, of course, again in 2023. But we're doing we're making efforts and initiatives to try and reface some of that, to try and cash collect more of that cash in 2023. And I'll talk more to that in a moment. What I want to highlight before I move on is that within the net cash of 6,100,000 that's been generated, if you look to the second line down on the table, there is an adverse working capital outflow of over 2,000,000, which has come from building our inventory up significantly. So our inventory levels at the end of twenty twenty one were 9,000,000, and they increased to nearly 12,000,000 at the end of twenty two. So we've invested inventory to secure supply, get raw materials and packaging in the door, make sure we can produce for our customers.

28:26 But, with that, our order book has also been up significantly as well. So it won't surprise anyone that we're looking at a lot of KPIs of how we monitor inventory management and performance and how that impacts cash flow as we move forward. And although inventory levels have increased significantly, our inventory days are coming down and our inventory as a percentage of our order book is being managed in line. So we're monitoring that closely. Not shown on the slide, but very worth highlighting as it's been a key theme of the last few days of the roadshows is free cash flow performance. So we just take that 6 GBP6.1 million, that net cash generated. If we translate that to free cash flow, free cash flow was GBP2.9 million in 2022. And just compare that to the previous year, we had an outflow on free cash flow of GBP1.5 million in the prior year. So a significant improvement in free cash flow. And if we look forward now to 2023 and in the guidance again with Senkos and Singers, you'll see that we are projecting free cash flow improvement upwards of 7,500,000 into 2023, based on the numbers that we have put together. And we've got a number of levers to help generate that. You can see that the cash conversion improved up to 69%, but we'll expect a further progression on that to somewhere near 90% cash conversion this year because of the impact of the new acquisition, which is almost a 100% cash conversion business, long standing customers, short payment terms.

29:52 So gives us confidence in our ability to materialize that level of improvement. And equally, I'm coming back to the second line of the table, and it's the last point I'll say on cash flow, I promise, is that the inventory, whilst we built it in 2022, we won't need to see another build on that in 2023. Inventory levels will normalize at around the 12,000,000 level but offer higher revenue. So we'll see we expect we will have a small positive influx on the working capital line on the inventory part of that this year, which all helps with our free cash flow generation improvement.

30:28 Just touching base one point on the balance sheet here. Sorry. Net leverage rather before I move on to balance sheets. If we just break this down for a second, I'll give some headlines. Net cash and debt to begin with, including the contingent consideration on the acquisition we've just made. I think Gerry's already described how that payment structure on our new acquisition, HL Health Care, has been staggered, 8,000,000 upfront in 2022, 3,000,000 deferred consideration and a loan note payable in 2024. Part of that deferred consideration that we expect that will be payable this year based on an earn out of that business. We've already paid 1,000,000 of that deferred consideration in q one of this year. But even having paid that, our net leverage has come down from 1.4 times at the end of twenty twenty two to around 1.3 times at the end of February, And we expect that reducing further down to around 1.0 times by the end of this year. And that's reflecting both

31:26 a growth of the EBITDA in the business on a twelve month rolling basis historically, but also with that free cash flow generation that I was just talking about a moment ago, we've got ability to pay down that debt facility at a rapid rate as we go through 2023, which is a key area of focus for us. Balance sheet, just very one briefly one point on this. I'll focus on the inventory line. You can see there that inventory has increased from 12 upwards from 9,000,000 at the end of last year to 12,000,000. Again, that was all around safeguarding supply, being able to ensure that we could give our customers what they require. I won't labor the point on the balance sheet because I'm conscious there's a lot of finance slides. So what I'll do there is I'll actually hand back over to Sharon next.

32:14 Thanks, Dani. The next few slides will be on the commercial highlights from last year focusing on the key UK brands, the Erol acquisition and also the progress made internationally. But the first product to talk about is Balance Active and this is part of our women's intimate healthcare portfolio. So the Balance Active brand grew by 8% on a pro form a basis last year. So the brand went from GBP 5,100,000 to GBP 5,500,000. Shortly after the war in the Ukraine broke out, we made a quick decision to actually not sell into Russia and Belarus. And as a result, this had an impact on revenue to the tune of GBP $05,000,000. In fact that growth should have been plus 16% and almost GBP 1,000,000.

33:02 When you're just looking at The UK market in terms of market share, we're now the number one brand by volume in the BV subcategory ahead of our nearest competitor Canis Balance. So our market share now stands at 51% and Canis Balance's market share stands at 44% and that gap is getting bigger. So not only are we the number one brand in this subcategory, but we're also growing ahead of the category and ahead of our competitors. And the chart on the right hand side helps to confirm this. So this is volume sales from Nielsen and it includes data from the supermarkets here in The UK but also from the health and beauty high streets so boots and super drug. And there's three different time points starting right to left so the last fifty two weeks versus the prior year and last fifty two weeks are weekend in the February 11 so pretty much all of 2022 versus 2021.

34:04 Also year to date, the first five weeks of this year compared to the prior year and then the last three months compared to the prior year, same time as the prior year. And as you can see momentum has started to build into 2023 and our growth levels are getting higher. And I think there's three reasons for that. Firstly increased distribution that we saw last year. So we had deeper distribution in the likes of ASDA. We also innovated last year on Balance Active. We launched three new brands. We launched the Balance Active value pack that you can see on the right hand side of the screen. We also launched a thrush product and we also launched an intimate foaming wash. Those two of those products, the foaming wash and the Balance Active 14 pack went into boots.

34:54 So I think the innovation helped to drive the growth last year and helped to impact positively the market share. And also the third thing is the cost of living crisis. We all know about it. It's been in the news and I think as a result people are searching for cheaper alternatives and when you look at our product Balance Active compared to the competition it is cheaper. So our seven pack in boots is priced at around £8.50 pounds Cannas Balance also has a seven pack and that's priced at £14.50 pounds So I do think that we're actually starting to steal shoppers from our competitors. Moving into the international markets of that £5,500,000 that the brand generated last year, 3,300,000 came from our international markets and that represented a growth of 14%.

35:46 I've already talked about Russia and Belarus and the impact that had but we have a key partner internationally and we saw some very good product launches into the likes of Brazil and Canada and over the next three to five years those product launches will continue as they continue to roll out into other territories. And the point to say there is with this particular partner we have a very good contract in place that lasts for ten years. It runs out in 2030 so just under ten years. And then the final point on the international side is that we launched Balance Active in Germany via the Amazon platform. This was our first step onto the Amazon platform in Europe and we will be expanding into the other three main EU markets of France, Spain and Italy and that will happen in May of this year.

36:38 And I think the final point to say on this slide is about retailer expansion post period end. So in the first quarter of this year we've launched Balance Active into Wilco and that's gone into 200 stores. And also importantly we've just had confirmation that Balance Active will go into Sainsbury's. We've been trying for the last eighteen months to get the brand into Sainsbury's and the previous owners had been trying for three years. So the fact that we've managed to get five of the SKUs into Sainsbury's is a really good step forward. Just moving on to LIFE, this is the second brand within the portfolio that we acquired from the BBI acquisition back in 2021 and this is a product that's targeted towards diabetics but also it's for energy management as well.

37:30 So LIFE is a product that grew significantly last year. We saw a 36% increase last year on a pro form a basis so the brand went from £3,100,000 to GBP 4,200,000 and almost all of that growth came from The UK market. And the chart on the bottom right hand side helps to show that growth over the last couple of years, so as you can see a 33% compound annual growth rate. So not only did we have a really good year last year but that was on top of a solid year the year before. So we saw strong growth across all channels in The UK and as Danny's already mentioned some significant growth in Amazon. So we saw almost an 80% growth year on year. So the brand went from £420,000 up to £750,000 We also launched the brand in Ireland. We signed a five year agreement in April of last year with partner and over that five year period we have minimum purchase obligations to the value of GBP 1,800,000 and we're well on track to do that and achieve that and in fact we will overachieve that based on the forecast performance of last year but also the forecasts that we've received this year.

38:45 And like Balance Active, LIFE is also growing ahead of the category and ahead of our main competitors. So this part of the category is worth £3,800,000 here in The UK and that saw a 13% growth year on year. And as you can see, the chart on the right hand side shows the growth and LIFE saw a 20% growth year on year. Our main competitor is a brand called Dextro. They only saw a 10% growth year on year. So very solid growth here in The UK for LIFT and we see that momentum continuing into this year. Post period end highlights we've also launched LIFE into Wilkinson. This is the first time that LIFE has gone into a discounter and we expect to roll this brand out into other discounters as we move through this

39:36 year and into next year. And then the final point on this slide is innovation. Last year we did some research conducted some research to understand really whether we could stretch this brand into other adjacencies. That research finished in August of last year and within two months we put together an MPD pipeline ready for this year and that innovation has started, it's underway and we expect to launch at the back end of this year, so SeptemberOctober time. What I would say is that it is a step away from sort of the diabetes area of the market and more into the sports performance market and certainly come September we'll give more of an update on that.

40:25 Moving on to our oral care brands so this is dental and Ultradex and as you'll see much more challenging this year, last year I should say compared to LIFE and Balance Active. So both brands collectively saw a 10% decrease so the brands went from £5,400,000 to £4,900,000 and almost all of that was on dental. There was some slight shortfall on Ultradex the brand decreased by £90,000 but the majority was on dental. And dental saw some really difficult market conditions that we had to contend with. The first point is to say we had to implement a price increase on January first of last year and this was because our supply prices went up and cost of raw materials etcetera had increased and we therefore needed to pass that on to our customers.

41:20 So January 1 we put a 14% in price increase through to our retailers. That had a significant effect on our EPOS sales and our EPOS sales are electronic point of sale and this is everything that goes through the TILs whether it's in the grocery stores or whether it's in Boots etc. We saw a 43 decrease in quarter one on our EPOS sales compared to the prior quarter.

41:48 After quarter one, so from quarter two through to the remainder of the year that dropped down to 10% But overall that represented a 21% decrease on our sales out. So that had a significant effect and a detrimental effect to that price increase. The second point to say is that we had launched in 2021 a brand called Dental Fresh Protect And the idea behind this brand was to have a low priced product. It was retailing at GBP 2 compared to the original Dental Dual Action at GBP

42:19 3.50. And the whole objective really of that brand was to try and capture that low end of the market that we're buying a sort of private label, a £1 private label and trying to trade them up into Dental Fresh Protect. We launched in Sainsbury's in 2021 and quite simply it didn't hit the rate of sale that was required to stay in store and so we saw a delist in the middle of last year. And then the final point to say is that Amazon each year for the last five years has done a bulk buy on both Ultradex and Dental to the tune of £250,000 This normally comes in November and December of each year. It didn't happen last year. It came in the second week of January. So whilst it did happen, it didn't happen in in the prior year and that had a detrimental effect of £250,000 across both brands.

43:14 There was some positivity for dental. We did launch in Wilco after a four year absence and we also had deeper distribution in B and M as a discount store. And then finally Tesco launched the new variants the dental advanced protection so this replaced the dual action product. But overall a very very difficult year for dental. As I said, Ultradex fared much better. There's a lot more loyalty to this brand compared to dental and also a lot less competition as well. When you look at dental, that's operating in a very saturated market with very big players. The top three account for more than 80% of the market share and that's Listerine, Corsodil and Colgate and whilst dental is the fourth brand behind those top three its market share is only 1.6%.

44:10 So with regards to Ultradex, a lot more loyalty as I said and we have retained our number one position market position in this subcategory. So the mouthwash market here in The UK is worth £150,000,000 and the halitosis subcategory is about GBP 4,000,000 of that. And as you can see on the right hand side, this is the latest market share this weekend in the 02/11/2023. So again, it shows our market position in at that time point in comparison to CB12 and the Breath Company and as you can see those two are fighting it out amongst themselves. Moving on to the international markets and China has been the market that we've been talking about for the last couple of years and as you know we've had a very difficult last two years in China.

45:03 We found a new partner, so a new partner called Samikans that we signed in Jan January of last year. And they're a UK based company with an infrastructure in in China. They also represent other key Western brands. And they placed an order in January of last year. They picked up. It got shipped to China and then China went into lockdown and all the major cities went into lockdown including Shanghai and the goods sat in the Shanghai port for many months. So what should have been a quarter one launch of dental in China ended up being a late summer launch. And even when China started to unwind and unlock there was still some caution in the market and as the point on the slide shows that the mouthwash market in China declined by 32% in quarter four last year compared to the prior quarter the year before and that's in value terms.

46:02 We will see some sales from China, from our partner in China this year but it will be below, way below expectations from us and also from our partner. And I think we need to approach China with caution. It is a difficult market to operate in. We know that. We've had brand dental in China for the last five years and it hasn't been straightforward and actually it's taken a lot of management time to dedicate to it. So I think really as we move forward, really what we want to do is maybe look at the APAC region much more broader than specifically focusing on China. What we don't want to have is this sort of or famine situation with regards to revenue. What we want to do is build much more sustainable revenue whether that means doing that in much much more closer to home such as in Europe or maybe in North America and South America.

47:02 I think the key thing for us is to build that sustainable revenue and it's not open to any volatility or fluctuations as it has been in the past. And the final point to say is that in the market numbers moving forward China's not accounted for moving forward. Gerry has already touched on this. This is the HL acquisition so ERAL that we acquired last year and this provides a new therapy area for us so ENT and as has already been said EARL is the key brand within this portfolio. And again you can see some very solid growth over the last three years and that growth has come not only from The UK but also internationally via our partner.

47:50 When you look at The UK market, it's worth £25,000,000 The UK ear care market and OTEX is by far the number one with 43% market share. E roll has 14% market share so we're very much the number two brand and we are growing at a faster rate than OTEX. I think that the important point to mention here is that 85% of audiologists private audiologists recommend EAROL and that's important because in 2019 and the NHS made a decision not to to make ear care or ear care ear syringe part of its core services and as a result now if you go as a patient to the doctor to have your ears unblocked they won't provide that service. Now there are exceptions to that if you're in an area where the population is quite elderly they may decide to retain that service but by and large doctors and GP surgeries will not perform this service.

48:54 It's all been outsourced to private audiologists and this is where the patient has to pay. And the good thing for EARL is whilst we were doing RDD before we acquired the brand we phoned up 20 private audiology clinics and asked them what brand that they would recommend to a patient and 85% of them said EARL. So we've got a very good endorsement from this community that we will leverage as we move forward. In terms of our focus for this year, there's been no marketing on this product ever. The previous and this is by the previous owners admission. The brand was launched in 2005 and we feel that we've got a real opportunity to really elevate this brand and whilst the brand has as you can see has very good a very good growth profile, we do feel that it's been unloved in some way.

49:49 So at the moment the brand is going through a revitalization phase. You can see the new pack that will be on shelves in the next couple of months. Research is being undertaken because when we acquired this brand the previous owner wasn't able to tell us who was the customer. So was it a sort of person who was 60, 70, 80 wearing a hearing aid or was it a 25 year old that was wearing ear pods. We are in research at the moment. We have gotten a very clear idea now who our consumer is and as a result that will help to guide our marketing strategy. The other focus for us this year is innovation. So we acquired this brand on the November 30. On the December 5 we had an internal strategy meeting and we had already presented our innovation plan for this year and next year.

50:42 The first product that will be coming to market is Baby Earol and a couple of reasons for that. One in three children from the age of nought to five years have ear wax problems and there's a gap in the market. When you look at OTEC's their recommendation is for their drops to be used on children five years and upwards. So we believe that there's a real gap in the market and we have a product that's ready to go as you can see And the team internally has already started to talk to retailers about this opportunity. UK and international expansion. There's a lot to do in The UK. The product isn't in any of the grocers and this is we really do see that it should be sat alongside the likes of OTEX because the brand is different. It has a different delivery system.

51:32 This isn't a drop it has an actuator so it's a spray and it provides a measured dose. So it has many unique features over and above the competition we believe. And internationally as Gerry said, this brand is working very well in Scandinavia but we have the opportunity to take this into other key markets in Europe and we are next week we have a new business development director starting within the business and this will be part of her remit to help out license this product. And then my final point is on the manufacturing opportunities. This is a product that's being made currently in The UK work is being looked at as to whether we internalize that manufacturing but I would say that the current manufacturer is excellent and we don't have any plans at the moment to move that into Italy.

52:30 Moving forward on to then the oncology support portfolio so this is GelClair and Pommiti and as the slide shows, we saw a slight decrease year on year but that was really down to order phase in so a 100,000 decrease. So the brand went from 2,900,000 to 2,800,000 last year. When you look at the customer base, we have 43 partners in this part of the business. The largest partner is Alliance Pharma in Chippenham. They place an order and have done for the last number of years a £400,000 each year. They didn't place an order last year. It came in quarter one of this year. So had that happened last year as it as was expected, then the brand would have been would have seen a 10% growth.

53:17 But I think what's more important is not the order phasing but but the new partners that were signed last year. As you will be aware we announced the deal in Brazil, Canada and Vietnam and Brazil and Canada as Danny's already mentioned and that will account for £700,000 this year and that will underpin the growth as we as we move through the year. So GelClare is now in 38 markets globally but there's still some key markets that we will go after. The US is still open and the product is already registered. It's got FDA approval and also the key main EU markets are still available and again that would be part of this new person's remit. And then finally Pommy Tea is present in 30 markets. We signed a couple of deals last year and again there'll be focus as we move through this year.

54:09 And then finally before I pass you back to Gerard, this is looking at our dermatology and nail and foot care range and you can see pretty much year on year it was flat and but what again what I would say is that there's opportunities to grow this business. So when you look at the products on the page, these are the nail fungal pens. We also have a nail fungal brush. We have a very good partner here in The UK that sells their own brand into the discounters. They've just been acquired by a Dutch company and we will be extending their rights from The UK market into the main EU markets and so they will be going after the EU discounters. At the same time we also signed last year new own label agreements with the likes of Boots, Lloyd's Pharmacy, Superdrug and that accounted for a couple £100,000 last year. We're going to see the same level this year and but even further growth because there's new opportunities that we're working on.

55:09 And then finally post period end upgrade of stronger claims on our nail fungal products and that's important to remain competitive. We did lose a partner in Germany last year, but we feel that we can recover that revenue through our new strategy of targeting the EU discounters. We also now have much stronger claims on PAC compared to our competitors. So just to finish up, all in all, I think we had some highs and some lows last year, some really good progress made with Balance Active and also with LIFE. It had a challenging time with with dental. And then we had some really good deals that were signed last year that will help to underpin the business as we move through this year.

55:54 Gerry, over to you. Great. Thanks so much, Sharon. I'm gonna pick up now on the customer brands business because Sharon's obviously gone through our VENTURE LIFE brands business. And customer brands is the business that we develop and manufacture products for other people. So we use our expertise, particularly medical device and development and manufacturing based out in Italy to generate revenue and profit for the business. And that's been a very strong growing business. You can see the bottom right hand corner how the revenues of that have grown since 2014 since being part of the VENTURE LIFE GROUP. That business had an exceptional year in 2022. Revenues were up over 40% compared with the previous year, an exceptional performance and contributed to our growth during the year.

56:43 Part of that growth came from some customers who were building the levels of inventory within their business. So we don't expect that to repeat. But even if you strip that out, performance of over 30% growth on revenue compared to the previous year. So a fantastic job there. We have a team there who go out and get new customers for us. We signed up seven new customers in 2022. But also, we saw growth from our existing customers, many of them long term. And a great job there by the team just encouraging those new customers in the development improvement of their brands. Italy is the manufacturing center for a lot of our products. So as well as this revenue on the right hand side, which is the external revenue, the £20,800,000 that was done in 2022, also manufactures a significant proportion of the VENTURE LIFE brand. So really good performance through that plant.

57:37 Also during the year, or just rather sort of post period end, you would have seen that a product developed by the business there initially was licensed out to a customer. It's a significant value. So the development team there is very strong. It is constantly working on new products for us. All our new product development is done there for the brands and also for other customers. Supply chain is based there in the customer brands business as well. So it manages the supply chain for customer brands and for the VENTURE LIFE brands. Very challenging year for them, but again, did a fantastic job. In that customer brands business, 10 customers provide 85% of the revenue. So there is a good mix, but also not too high level of concentration. And next year, as I've mentioned already, the inventory build that came through on some of the customers won't repeat. So in the market numbers, we're showing that there'll be a slight decline, a six percent decline in the customer brands revenues next year, but that's growth across most of that customer brands business. But obviously, I'm not seeing the inventory stocking again. So very good team out there. Did really well, and that's a good contributor to our business overall.

58:46 Talking about that, if we go over to the next slide, and this looks at our manufacturing scalability. So we have two manufacturing facilities. We have the facility in Basisio in Italy, which does a lot of our business. And we also have the facility in Nesta in Stockholm, Sweden. Nesta produces the balance active products either under our brand or under the Cannas Balance brand, which is sold through Bayer. And in the last twelve months, that business produced 2,000,000 units of products, and that's the orange Nesta relates to the orange bars on this slide. You can see BioCosmos, the Italian facility, produced 33,000,000 units of product. That's the turquoise bar. So the first column is what we produced in the last twelve months. The second column in, which has a total of 65,000,000 units. That's our capacity at those sites. And at the Italian site, that would involve some additional filling and moving around, but we could produce up to 55,000,000 units in Sweden. We're already set up to produce up to 10,000,000 units. So great opportunity for scaling the business as we organically grow the products.

59:54 Also in our Swedish sites, we're looking to put more business into that site. It's a very specific manufacturing machine for long neck tubes. We're already in discussion with some customers to put more volume into that plant to help with the utilization. And in Italy, again, as all our customer brands grow and as our VENTURE LIFE brands grow, we will absorb that growth into that plant. So beyond that, we can increase the footprint and grow even more. So those two plants fundamental to our growth, our flexibility, our margins and the management of working capital, and they've really contributed to the way the group operates this year. I want to talk briefly about our ESG work. We launched our project called Sustainable Life, which is our focus on becoming a trusted, responsible, sustainable business.

1:00:43 That's really important to the board, the management, and everyone in business. And in 2022, we established our team that are supporting us to work through that. We've got the leadership team. We undertook some consultation with stakeholders to shape how we look at this. We looked at setting our priority goals, and we're now working towards the measurement methods and the KPIs to move this forward. It's a very exciting time. We've got one of our people in Italy, who's heading up the CSG work. He's been a long time employee of BioCosmos, and he's now leading that work with support from other people around the group. And what what we've done is identify our priority SDGs from the 17 sustainable development goals that the UN set out.

1:01:29 We've identified our priority ones that are set up here on this page, and these are the ones that we're gonna focus on influencing within our business. We've already done a lot within the within the group, and we did a lot before 2022, particularly at the Italian plant where we've got solar panels that contribute to our energy production, where there's always work ongoing towards minimizing wastage and improving the utilization of energy and resource into that plant, but that did some great things during 2022. And there's a list on this page. I won't go through them all. But for example, the second bullet point, you know, our team in Italy have delivered a 77% reduction in carbon emissions from the transport. We use a lot of trucks, obviously, to take products away from our facilities. But in 2022, we moved a lot of that onto rail transport, and that significantly reduced the emissions, carbon emissions that were delivered as a result of our transport.

1:02:27 In the last quarter of twenty twenty three, we reduced the heat slightly in our facility. Employees were fantastic, and our team really worked hard with that. And that reduced our energy consumption in that quarter by 23%. And that was important both for sustainability, but significantly high prices. And, you know, the team are great in helping us to accommodate that. 18% of our waste material is recycled. We're undertaking a really good program we call out of the box, and it's it's one of the ways that we're looking to reduce the use of packaging and to improve the sustainability of our products. And in 2021, we reward the bronze accreditation. This is an accreditation that lots of our customers look at to see our level of sustainability.

1:03:15 But we haven't stopped there. We've got some great initiatives going on in 2023. So on the right hand side of the page, you'll see we're gonna be applying for the b corp status for our Italian facility. The majority of our people are based on that facility, about a 110,120 of a 160 people in the team work there. So we're going through that process now and expect to achieve that by the end of twenty twenty three. Also undertaking the carbon footprint analysis to go towards our plan to go to net zero by 2030. We're also undertaking the life cycle analysis of three of our key VENTURE LIFE brands, and we're gonna do that around the Italian facility in 2023 and then roll that out around the rest of the group in 2024. So really good initiative and really good support from the team in delivering that.

1:04:05 Finally, just an exit slide and some thoughts from me and about the business. So 2022 was a fantastic year across the whole group, really delivered strong growth. We saw growth coming from the businesses we acquired. We saw that being delivered across different countries, across different parts of the team, across different products. And that growth has carried on into the first quarter of twenty twenty three. 17% like for like growth, Gross margin improvement. Supply chain, as I said earlier, the team managing our supply chain in the business have done a spectacular job this year. They've really managed that well, tried to control the costs, and helped us to keep our facilities running at all times and to service the customers. Good cash conversion. We've got some debt in the business, and we're really driven to bring that debt down over the next sort of twelve months with our cash conversion.

1:04:57 Really good order book, again, across the business, done really well to make sure our customers order further ahead so we can ensure supply, ensure control of costs. Great acquisition of HO Healthcare, really good business, great products already performing in line with our expectations in the first quarter this year and investing in our team. You know, '22 was a hard year. Our team around the our sites work really hard, put effort in, drive the business. And so we've invested to to, you know, lighten that load and help them to cope with, you know, the great growth has delivered through the business. So the outlook going forward, obviously, we'll get the full year effect of the actual acquisition this year. Got a really good high visibility of the order book. That gives us greater visibility going forward, and it helps us to plan and manage our production.

1:05:47 That inventory build, as Danny said, will start to unwind slightly, which is great to deliver great cash conversion. And run targets to deliver our expectations for the year. So I think as a board and as a team, you know, we'd look at 2023 and and, you know, be cautiously optimistic. I think, you know, the globe's had two or three really difficult things to deal with over the last two to three years, and that's still ongoing. Inflation's still high. Utility costs are high. Interest rates are high. Cost of living crisis is there. So we can't be complacent. And you saw through our brands presentation that Sharon gave that we've done a lot to try and put more value into consumers' hands, you know, going through into discounts as bringing value packs, trying to bring down costs. So that's really important for us and and to do that in a sustainable way.

1:06:36 So, you know, I I thank everybody in the in the business who've done a brilliant job last year. They've done a brilliant job this year. Quarter one's kicked off really well. And as I say, whilst we're cautiously optimistic, you know, we look forward to the rest of this year. So that that's us done for the presentation. I see some questions have come in. So, you know, I'm very happy to to run through those and answer those. Jerry, Daniel, Sharon, thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please continue to submit your questions using the q and a tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. Jerry, Daniel, Sharon, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And I know you have a tight schedule this afternoon, but if I could just hand over to you to address those, you can. And, of course, any questions you don't get around to answer, you will be able to review post meeting and provide additional responses where appropriate to do so. I will publish those on the investment company platform.

1:07:28 Jerry, if I may hand over to you to address those questions, you can, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Yes. Of course. Very happy to. The first question we had was from Matthew. He said, great growth. What leverage do you have around admin expenses to increase the bottom line? I think just my comment there, Matthew, is we've obviously invested quite significantly. You saw in the admin costs behind our team and behind our commercial growth. So, you know, we think we run a pretty lean ship when it comes to our admin expenses. Obviously, there's an element of discretionary spending there on A and P and other consultants in that we do. So I don't think we're looking to squeeze the admin line to get our profitability. Our profitability is coming from growing revenues, growing margin, and and delivering that through, and we have a team to to deliver that. So, you know, hopefully, that answers your question.

1:08:21 Next one from James James s. James says consensus of 11,600,000 EBITDA for next year appears very low. Please clarify if we take the second half of twenty two's run rate and double it and add on the agent acquisition. That's 12,600,000. That implies a decline in 2023, exclamation mark. Also, when we're dividend star. James, if you followed our business for very long, you realize we have a bias to the second half of the year in terms of revenues, and that was seen in '22. It was seen in '21. So you can never double the second half of the year to give you a precursor for the following year. That's mainly due to ordering patterns of customers. We have a lot of international customers who might order sort of once a year, but the business has always been skewed to that half of the year.

1:09:13 So if you take account of that skew and you add in the HL acquisition, then I think the 11.6 is a good target to go for. You all know, the the secret with the city is to under promise and over deliver, and that's what we did in 2022. And so we'll set expectations that we think are challenging but reasonable. And I think that's a that's a fair reflection. You asked about dividends. As a board, we've discussed this, the dividends. And for the last few years, we've been investing substantially in the growth of the business. And as it becomes more cash generative as it is now and as this will be in the future years, we will consider beginning a modest dividend stream. Next question from Matthew, who seems to be quite busy on our questions.

1:09:59 He says, how much built in inbuilt growth do you have across the brand portfolio, I. E, expanding into additional markets? So what we've done in looking at our growth forward, we've looked obviously, this is the analyst forecast and not us going forward into modest double digit growth. And that's a combination of increasing the distribution that we have for our existing products in The UK, but also increasing the geographic expansion. And on the customer brand side of the business, providing innovation and support to those customers to grow their revenues and support them in that. So it comes across all those areas. And I think we're we're quite modest in in our aspirations publicly for that, but we see significant growth opportunities within that. Next question from Alan. What plans do you have to fill the factory capacity? Sweden is only at 20%. I think I covered this in the presentation, but we're already in discussion with customers to put more volume into the plant in Sweden because it's great facility and a great team there. And we expect to increase the production through that this year with a number of new products coming in.

1:11:07 Alan also asked, how has it performed in the first three months of twenty three? It's performing ahead of last year and in line with our expectations. So we're very happy with the performance of of that business. Another question from Alan. Last question. What are your projections for this year with new markets opening? Sharon, Sharon, maybe I can ask you just to pick up that question. Yeah. Sure. I mean, of course, we can't give any forecasts to to the market or to or, you know, publicly. But what I would say, and and as I said on my slide, we've signed some significant deals last year, particularly with Brazil and Canada. Those markets were both launched this year and we will see that revenue coming through this year. Also, there's significant growth that we can still go after. As I said, The USA market, France, Spain, Germany are also open. So I think that, you know, the future for Gelta is very promising.

1:12:05 It's a very, very good product with more than 22 clinical studies behind it. So we're very confident with this brand as we move into later in the year and beyond. Great. Thanks, Sharon. Actually, one final question that just came in from David. I believe he says I said the last one. There's more coming. David w says, when is the Capital Markets Day likely to be held? We are holding a Capital Markets Day in June. That'll be the June 6, and that will be publicized. Okay. I have a maybe his last point is, hopefully, I'll squeeze that question in. That's great. Really just as a think it's finished. Thank you everyone for for joining in.

1:12:52 Oh, hang on. Another question. Alan's pretty busy on his keyboard. What countries is the new Thrush product launching into? We can't disclose that at the moment, Alan. That's pretty commercially sensitive, but we'll give you an update on that when it when it comes through. I think the final point I'd make and maybe from it's useful from an investor's perspective is Danny's talked a lot about a lot about the free cash flow in the business. And that that's really important because the free cash flow is effectively, you know, the cash profit that's coming off the bottom. And, you know, based on our current market cap, you've got a free cash flow for yield in 2023 of about 17%, which is which is, you know, telling most observers that the market cap's pretty low. So, you know, we hope that will be an incentive for people to look at the business and understand the growth potential we've got.

1:13:38 So we're gonna wrap it up there. I think, everyone, thanks very much for joining. Obviously, at any point, and I don't invite all retail shareholders to do this, if you've got questions about the business, get in touch. We're always happy to to chat, tell you more about it. And, you know, thank you for your support. Thank you for Sharon and Danny helping me today. And for all the team back at base, you've done a fantastic job in '22. And with that, we'll wish you a good Easter weekend. That's great. Jerry, Daniel, and Sharon, thank you for addressing those questions, and thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to to provide your feedback in order that the Board 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 management team of VENTURE LIFE GROUP PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation.

1:14:30 That concludes today's meeting, and good afternoon to you all.