Welcome to the EKF Diagnostics Holdings plc preliminary results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press Send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and I would now like to hand you over to CEO Gavin Jones. Good morning to you.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for the EKF Diagnostics preliminary results for 2025. In the room at the moment, I've got myself, Gavin Jones, and our CFO, Steve Young, and just behind me, who you can't see, I'm hiding him, our Executive Chairman, Julian Baines. Today I'd like to present to you once again the strategy. I think it's important for us to really keep hitting on that point. I think everyone would have seen this slide many times. Certainly we've seen it internally a lot, because it's really important for us that it's understood where we're going and how we're going to get there.
Targets 2029 to be number one in point-of-care hemoglobin, number one in ketone testing, BHB laboratory and point-of-care, which would be something new for us, and to transform our EKF Life Sciences entity into a truly positive contract development and manufacturing organization. From a point-of-care point of view, we're really working hard on developing the U.S. blood bank business, expanding our NGO access, certainly in Africa and other markets, and developing certain new territories in LATAM and APAC. From a BHB or ketone testing point of view, we are continuing to develop our BHB LiquiColor product with improved performance criteria, new manufacturing formats, and we will be launching a new dual-use point-of-care platform in the very near future.
From the Life Sciences side of things, I think it's, you know, I've been one year in now as CEO, and I've taken a lot of time during that first year to get a true understanding of where we are with the Life Sciences business. I originally came from the Point-of-Care side of the business, so it's taken me a little bit longer to get up to speed with that, but I think I'm there now, and I really understand that business and where we can take it and what we need to do to take it to where we need to go.
A lot of that is gonna be refining our offering to better suit the customer needs that we are getting a lot of inquiries from at the moment, new leads coming in, certainly from the pharma and biotech business. The other side of that is going to be expanding our existing diagnostic enzyme production with new enzymes and reformatted versions of our existing enzymes to manage our partners moving forward. All of that will lead to our target 2029, which is to have an increased revenue over GBP 80 million with an EBITDA of over GBP 20 million. 2025 was really an important year for us.
I would say that obviously as it was my first year, but it's important in terms of setting that foundation of the strategy, making sure from a strategic execution point of view that everyone within the company understood what the strategy was and how we were going to make it successful. I think we're pretty much there now. Like I said, everyone has seen the previous slide so many times, I think that they can't help but say that they know what the strategy is, and they know how we're going to get there. Really now it's about execution as we move into 2026.
We did start to deliver in 2025, so we delivered a 5% increase in our point-of-care hemoglobin testing, which is a good base for us, as that is key to delivering on the strategy. We also drove BHB growth by a double digit, so 10% growth there, which is really positive for the business because it's very strong, high margin business. From an operational point of view, we did complete the simplification of the product portfolio. I think it's always important to keep coming back to that. It has taken a long time, but that was always going to be part of the case. I can say that it's pretty much done now.
Well, we have completely taken the clinical chemistry product range out of our portfolio now, so there is no more revenue there, and that has delivered improvements in our profitability. We will now finalize our hematology analyzer sub-assembly outsourcing that's helped us to deliver increased volumes of analyzers into this market space, which we'll talk a little bit about on the next slide. We have kicked off our hematology consumable capacity increase project, something that's gonna be really important for us as we move forward through 2026 and into 2027. From a financial performance point of view, we have increased revenue by 3% to GBP 51.6 million. I think we can do better. We know that we can do better.
Some of that is around timing and some of the challenging conditions within the geopolitical climate, but we will keep working on that. Profitability has significantly improved, 51% gross margin versus 48% in 2024, and we did achieve our EBITDA target of GBP 12.4 million. I'm very happy with the financial performance of 2025. I think it's important to keep coming back to what the board expectations were for the year to show what we achieved and what is still ongoing. We had two very simple capital deployment, really, expectations from 2025. First was to deliver sustainable growth and unlock and realize potential, and then the other was to implement a share buyback program to improve earnings per share and deliver value back to shareholders.
On the first element, you know, we have kicked off the investment in operational excellence to increase production capacity, but also to improve the efficiency of the existing production facilities that we have and then start to implement new forward-looking technologies. That is ongoing and will continue to run through 2026 and 2027, but will really deliver new value for the business and allow us to operate in a completely different way. We've completed the expansion of the commercial team to drive further growth in the key areas of hematology, BHB, and fermentation. Some of that was around splitting our U.S. team to give them focus in point of care and life sciences.
That element has been completed, and it's delivered value already with that increased focus on the U.S. point of care element, certainly from a blood bank point of view. We are continuing now with our new product development. That's run well through 2025 and will continue to run in 2026 and 2027, with scheduled launches in 2027 and 2028. From a share buyback point of view, we have utilized cash reserves to implement this program, and that has been ongoing throughout the year.
We did just under 20 million shares at an average share price of 25.08 pence per share, which cost the business around GBP 5 million, but it did allow us to buy around 4.4% of the business back, which we do think gives significant value to existing shareholders. A deeper dive on the point of care hemoglobin side, we were able to grow the LATAM hematology business by around 57% versus 2024. This is always a key market for us and one that we're looking to expand in. We've seen fantastic improvement by our partners in Peru and then also new business in Brazil. We do have plans to expand in the rest of LATAM and really accelerate that business in 2026.
We've had much greater focus on the U.S. hemoglobin market, specifically the blood bank space. Due to that dedicated point-of-care commercial team now, they're really able to spend a lot more time on this, and something that we know will deliver value for us moving forward. I think everyone will have seen or hopefully will have seen the announcement we put out around the new agreement with the Blood Centers of America. This is an independent organization with around 60 members of all the independent blood banks in the U.S. They've got, you know, 360 physical sites spread from coast to coast with around 1,000 mobile units as well. This agreement allows us access to all of those blood banks and allows us to really push that forward in 2026.
There won't be a quick conversion there. It will be over time as their existing contracts lapse. We are well-positioned now with the support of the BCA to really start to take that business. We've also really focused on establishing new links with NGO partners in Africa. We know that that's gonna be key to kind of getting access to those large anemia screening programs. Those very much needed anemia screening programs across that region. We have made some good progress there, not just with the NGOs themselves, but also with the distributors who are used to working with those NGO partners. In terms of the hematology analyzers sold, this was another key element to the strategy. Hemo Control, we got just over 5,700 devices out into the market, which is around a 53% increase.
Total 16,000 for our hematology analyzers, which is a huge uplift versus 2024. A lot of those were going into LATAM and then Africa. DiaSpect the same, just over 10,000 analyzers in the market due to, you know, tenders that we've placed, but also then really trying to uplift the programs that we've got, make sure that we're making full use of the distributors we have out there, looking for new opportunities, selling devices into new spaces and ensuring that we've really started to seed the market. That's an important part of the strategy. If we don't have analyzers out there, then we're not going to get the consumable consumption, and really that's where the high margin element of our business is in the consumables. The HemataStat is kind of lagging behind, but it always has done.
It's a much lower used product, mostly used in the U.S. Favored quite a lot by plasma centers in the U.S. We're in most of the plasma centers there, but nowhere near the same sorts of levels that we would see from the Hemo Control and the DiaSpect, which is why the focus is on those products and not the HemataStat. From a test point of view, we have started to sell a lot more in the test space, certainly for the Hemo Control. Eighteen point seven million in 2025, which was an 11% uplift. We probably could have done more if we'd had that greater capacity that we're currently working on. That's why that's important. We are starting to get to the top end of our capacity there.
That just demonstrates how important it is from a strategic point of view to really focus on that operational excellence element. GBP 40.6 million in DiaSpect cuvette sales, highest in the hematology product portfolio. Again, we don't have capacity challenges here. I know we can do more, and we will see, given the number of analyzers we put out into the market in 2025, we will see an increased pull-through in 2026. That's something that the sales team are very focused on, is ensuring that we've got full utilization of those devices. HemataStat and UltraCrit are still delivering around 1.1 million tests. Again, while they're not necessarily the focus of the strategy, they are actually delivering an important contribution to the hematology business overall.
We will start to see a conversion from the UltraCrit to the DiaSpect in blood banks, and that's something we're actively pursuing now, and I think it's going to be really important for the market as we move forward. The U.S. business, the HemataStat's mostly sold into the U.S. So the U.S. gets an understanding of the DiaSpect product, and that's gonna really help the other blood bank business that we've got there. It's obviously important for us to still talk about the rest of the other point of care products that we have that are outside of the strategic focus. I'm really pleased to say that we have seen an improvement in the diabetes business. The Quo-Test and the Quo-Lab, when you put them together, has had a 7% growth versus 2024.
Albeit most of that is with the Quo-Lab, which certainly has proven to be much more robust due to the low-cost nature of that device. It's a semi-automated versus the fully automated Quo-Test. We're still seeing really good pull-through on the Quo-Test consumables, but maybe not so many new analyzers going out into the market, whereas the Quo-Lab, we're seeing both. It's good to see the Biosen, which has always been the workhorse of our diabetes and sports performance areas. That's really started to show growth. We launched a new device towards the end of 2024, and we've seen that now grow in 2025 as new devices have become available. Seeing a 14% growth there versus 2024.
Certainly, some of that is down to the Russian market opening up, which have always been heavy BioZone users, and that certainly helped both in terms of the number of devices, the consumables used, and also kind of to a certain extent, FX has been beneficial there as well. Lactate Scout has been broadly flat in terms of revenue. We have seen a reduction in the number of analyzers going out, and we do have plans on how to turn that around. That has also been offset by, you know, pricing improvements in the consumables that we sell and also then selling direct in Germany with our new web store, which has been pretty successful. To focus a little more on the ketone testing BHB business, the second strand of the strategy.
We've achieved 12% growth in our top three BHB LiquiColor distributors in the U.S., while overall growing the BHB business by over 10%. A lot of focus has been spent on the distributors. They are our important partners, and they work diligently to ensure that BHB is sold everywhere it should be. I'll talk a little bit more about those individually on the next slide. We have made significant progress in the product improvement project that was running throughout last year. We do anticipate that will finish up this year, and we will be able to submit to FDA in Q3 2026 with a Q3 2027 launch. Those numbers, those dates, I should say, are conservative at the moment. I wanna make sure that we can meet those.
We have given ourselves a fair amount of time to get those in. The reason being is obviously there are elements out there that we don't have control over. For example, how long it takes the FDA to come back to us. We know that currently there are some backlogs there, so we've mapped that out to ensure that we don't fall behind. We've also been working closely, so having our German organization work closely with our life sciences business to really develop a new sensor-specific BHB enzyme, which is great. I think it's really important to see this sort of vertical integration between the life sciences for enzyme production and then now moving into our point of care development, something that we've not really done in the past.
It just goes to show how the life sciences division can be used in other ways other than just being contract manufacturing organization. From a market point of view for BHB, like we said, we've grown that 10%, so fourteen point two million in the BHB market space, most of which came from our BHB LiquiColor reagent. But you can see that the STAT-Site WB is also contributing to that success, growing at a rate of around 15% versus 2024. We're really pleased with that. It started from a very small base. It has grown and gone from strength to strength, and it does so each year, and it does make that contribution. In terms of our top three customers, you can see here that we have seen significant growth.
The one in the middle is Fisher, which has grown around 18%, which is great. We've seen a huge focus on that market and that particular distributor as they took on the own brand labeled product last year and also in the year before. It was on us to really help them make sure that they made the conversion to that home brand label product. That's pretty much complete now in terms of what they expect to get from that, so we should see that go from strength to strength in 2026. Also seeing other, you know, good growth, maybe at lower level, but from a higher base, in our other distributor, Cardinal.
you know, an even greater growth in our third top distributor, but from, again, from a low base, Medline. When it comes to our Life Sciences business, we understand that, you know, this is a really important part of the business. I think it's important to remember that the Life Sciences business isn't just fermentation, it is contract manufacturing, it is the BHB business, it is the raw enzyme, and also the, you know, the work that we do with Roche. But what we're trying to do at the moment is try to understand how we can be that truly, you know, focused contract development and manufacturing organization. I think the first step to that is really being a true CMO, and then the development side of things will come at a later date.
We do want to work with more higher value pharma and biotech businesses, and we did make some progress on that last year. We had quite a few discussions around that and good opportunities which we went through. Some of those were in the pipeline, some of which dropped off, some of which are still in our pipeline for 2026. We've got about a $1.3 million pipeline going into the year. We did bring in a significant new diagnostic enzyme contract last year, and we're just about to deliver the first work package for that.
Although I think we don't talk about this enough, which is the contract manufacturing element of the life sciences business, which has shown some growth, although it looks broadly flat in 2025, actually it has improved, and we do have even higher demand shown in 2026 with good forecasts with strong partners. We are expecting some really good growth in 2026 for the life sciences business, albeit it may come mostly from the contract manufacturing as the fermentation will take time still to scale up to where we need it to be. As I said, fermentation is slightly lower than 2025. Part of that was because some of the projects that were running in 2024 were finished, so they weren't carrying forward into 2026.
The new projects that we brought in in 2025 run through into 2026. It's really just about timing there. We are looking to bring in new customers this year. Again, they do take a long time to get up to scale. This isn't the same as our point-of-care business or anything else. It does take a long time. First of all, bring these customers in, get them up to where they need to be, and then to actually get to production scale. This is long-term partnership, but it will deliver then long-term value. Contract manufacturing has grown. It's about GBP 1.5 million, but this year alone we've got new contracts in place.
Sorry, not new contracts in place, extended contracts in place with, you know, in order to work for $1.2 million just from one partner, dollars that is. Definitely we will see an improvement in contract manufacturing in 2026. I think it's important to remember that, you know, the life sciences business, as well as the BHB side of it, does make a, you know, a steady contribution to the EKF story, and that we, you know, we know that actually anything we add to that is all going to be added value. It's an important part of the business and we will continue to invest and ensure that the strategy we have in place is the right one to deliver on those high-value customers that we are targeting.
The objectives for 2026, again, we're keeping it relatively simple in terms of that commercial development in strategically important markets and product areas. Also a focus on operational excellence with a strong CapEx plan to support future success. From the market point of view, we are expanding our distributor engagement events in key strategic markets, the first of which is gonna be in Peru next month. The Accelerate LATAM event is going on there, where we will.
Well, we already have invited our full distribution partners in the region to come join us at our partner in Peru, where they have a fantastic facility so that we can engage with them, talk to them about their markets, but then also talk to them about what we've achieved, certainly with Diagnóstica Peruana in Peru, why they've been successful, and try to replicate that right through the Latin American market. We truly believe that this is gonna deliver good value for us moving forward, certainly in the hematology area, but also potentially within the diabetes market too. We will then continue that with further engagement in the U.S. market. We've got AABB coming up, which is one of the biggest blood bank events in the world.
That delivered quite a lot of value for us last year and actually led directly to the BCA agreement, because of demand coming from that space, and we're looking to really build on that in 2026. Even though we completed the enhancement of the commercial team, we do recognize that in order to deliver the value we need in Africa, we do need to spend a little bit more time on the commercial team there, and we will be bringing in new people to support the hematology business in our African market, partially to grow into new spaces and also to assist to manage some of the existing business we have there. What we do hope is that in 2026, we will have completed the life sciences strategy realignment.
We will relaunch the business as a truly value-enhancing CDMO focused on the diagnostic and pharma market, which will really improve the situation moving forward. It's all right. We'll come to the last slide. Thanks. On the operational side of things, we will be working on delivering the new technology to improve our efficiency on our production lines. I think this is really important. Like you said, we're almost at our capacity from the Hemo Control line. We do need to enhance that, and that will be a key part of the strategy moving forward. We do have a plan in place for that in terms of the CapEx.
We do have a project that's already running, and we know that, you know, execution, good execution of that is going to be key to making sure that we can continue to deliver right through the length of the strategy. We will re-look at the, you know, the outsourced subassembly component of our manufacture. That's been really successful for us in 2025, we'll look to see what else we can do in that space in order to ensure that we get as many analyzers out there in the market, continue to seed that market space. I think it's important to say that, you know, we now need to build on the foundation that we built in 2025. 2025 was very much a transformational year for the business.
It may seem like a low level growth, but I think, you know, I've seen the business look and behave in a very different way, and we're certainly getting more access to the key areas that we have identified in our strategy. You know, having that many analyzers out into the market, it's important for us now to ensure that in order to meet our, you know, our goals, we get full utilization of those analyzers and that they start to drive that high margin consumable sales. The whole sales team is very much focused on this. They know that this is what they need to do. We also, the second element of that is to ensure that we capitalize on the blood bag market, certainly in the U.S., to really start to drive. I think it's important to remember this is new business.
Even though we have a very strong blood bag market in the rest of the world, this element in the U.S. is new business for us, and we do believe that we can do real value there. We'll look to continue double-digit growth in our BHB sales in the U.S. market. We will be working with our key distribution partners on our own brand labeled products to ensure that we continue to grow that business, but also then to bring in new customers, certainly within the hospital space where we get new opportunities. And those happen slowly but surely, but we have really good access to that market space, and we just wanna make sure that when they're ready to convert, they convert to us. We hold their hand all the way through that process.
Again, you know, the life science business, we do need to provide a new service offering, potentially new branding, and present ourselves in a different way in order to make sure that we are delivering the value that is expected, and also to make sure that we have the capabilities that is expected from the type of new business that we're going after. You know, a lot of this, I think we had some questions earlier from a previous meeting about what does that actually mean. It doesn't mean huge amounts of capital expenditure. What it means, we've got really good facilities. It just means that we make sure that we are meeting the requirements.
Really kind of it's a lot of paperwork ensuring that our product offering really suits those high value pharma customers, and you know, we give them confidence moving forward. You know, Q1 trading is looking to be in a good position. I feel like we will be able to deliver in 2026. Obviously, geopolitical climate is a bit of a challenge for us at the moment, and this is a challenge for everyone, but we're working around it. You know, we are able to still deliver in the Middle East. We've got good business in the Middle East, but luckily the majority of that is in Egypt, which at the moment seems to be mostly unhindered by the current challenges we have there. Let's see what goes on and how it moves forward.
At this point, I'd like to hand over to Steve to talk through any of the financials in a bit more detail. Steve?
Yeah. A couple of the financial guidance I already mentioned. A couple other things you can see where the revenue has increased. Gross profit and gross profit margin has increased. EBITDA is in line, as Gavin mentioned earlier, with our expected target. You see the profit before tax number has improved. I'll come on to the profit after tax number, which I'm sure people will be interested in, a little bit later on. You can see our cash generated from operations slightly down on last year, mainly driven by working capital and mainly inventory, where we've increased our inventory holding, mainly in devices, because we can be ready to act or respond quickly to large tenders. We've probably been a bit guilty in the past of probably keeping stock levels too low in terms of devices, in terms of finished devices and subassemblies.
The group cash has ended the year at GBP 15.8 million, including cash in our Russian subsidiary, which has actually gone up in the year. The 15.8 million is after the GBP 5 million which was spent on the buyback, share buyback. The next slide then relates to the revenues, which you've probably seen from the release this morning. You can see Point-of-Care and Life Sciences, this discontinued product, I think Gavin touched on earlier. That is just our clinical chemistry range. In 2024, there was GBP 1.1 million of sales in sterling. Last year, only GBP 200,000. That's gone completely now out of our range. All that's clean moving forward.
If you come to the income statement again, which is on the next slide, you'll see the detail there in terms we've covered where we are with the revenue, the gross profit margin going up. The admin expenses are a little bit higher than we would have thought, but there is some accelerated depreciation in there. We've got the EBITDA number at the bottom, which you can see, is up on last year. What isn't in that, the slide there is the tax point, which may be raised by some of you when you can ask a question about that. The tax charge for the year is higher than we expected, and that's really come around in the last month or this month.
Really we had to make a provision for tax in our German entity related to historic tax situation related roughly 50/50 to two areas. One is withholding tax on license fees paid to a customer for COVID-related product. Really the bulk of that relates to 2020, 2021 and 2022. That can be recovered, and we've discussed that with our customer. We will be expected to pay that over some time later in this year when we get a demand, but then our American customer can claim that back and then return that money to us. The only issue we've got is that the amount of time that will take is currently unknown.
We've been advised by advisors in Germany that it could take 20 months from the time we paid it over to the time we get it back. The second element of the tax provision, which is in this year, relates to transfer pricing between our German subsidiary and our partly owned subsidiary. That one is a little bit more unusual where the German tax authorities have claimed that the subsidiary, the 60% owned subsidiary is making too much money, and that money should have been thus, therefore, the profitability is too high. That profit, because it is too high, should have sat within the German subsidiary, and they're going to effectively put a tax charge on us, on us for it. Their initial calculation they made was that the 60% owned subsidiary should only be making 5% EBIT.
When challenged they said, "W ell, just make it 11.5%," which seemed a bit of an unusual thing to do. That area is going to be challenged moving forward. It seems an unusual calculation for them to do, and it does smack of them just trying to chance their arm to get tax out of EKF in Germany. That's where we're working on challenging moving forward.
Perfect.
That's great. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation, guys. I'll just turn on your camera back up. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed by your investor dashboard. Paul, at this point, if I may hand over to you to take us through the Q&A session, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you.
Thank you very much. A few questions have come in and we always get the same question each time. Why don't we deal with it now, and maybe I could ask Baines, Chair, to answer this. Do you think there's a chance that Harwood would put in a low offer or even look to take the business private?
No. Christopher has got no interest in taking EKF private. However, I think on this occasion, he's getting more frustrated about the valuation of the business and the progress that Gavin is making. And the company is making very strong strides in progress over the next five years. Everything is moving in the right direction. As you know, we've continued a share buyback. I know with a lot of people it's frustrating. They'd rather we didn't do that, but where the share price is at the moment, we are actually increasing shareholder value by doing it because we managed to buy 5% of the company virtually back for GBP 5 million.
Christopher, as is well known, is looking to do potentially, he hasn't finally decided yet, a Rule nine whitewash where he doesn't have to sell his shares into the market at a low valuation to continue to do the buyback. That is something he is contemplating, but that does not lead to taking it private. Also, there's another reason behind that. He greatly values our shareholder base, both small and large. We are an unusual company in that over 70% of our business is owned by five funds. We're not your normal AIM business. He is very aware of all shareholders and that buying this on the cheap would not be a beneficial thing for him to do personally, reputationally. Will he increase his stake in the business? That's yet to be seen.
As I mentioned, he has mentioned about a whitewash. Is he going to take it private? No, absolutely not. He has not indicated any intention to me to do that. He wants to continue to see Gavin deliver the five-year plan.
A question for you, Gavin, here about the share buybacks that Julian's just mentioned. Why does the company continue to do that rather than investing the money in developing one or more new products, you know, whether the product portfolio is looking a little weary?
Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think obviously there's kind of two questions there really in terms of why do we continue to do the buybacks, which is one element, and then, you know, I think we've already talked about why we continue to do the buybacks because we do believe that that delivers shareholder value with that capital that we have available to us. The other side of it in terms of instead of investing the money in developing our new product range, well, we are actually investing in developing our new product range. We do have a good CapEx and R&D program. We are focused on, one, updating our existing products. So we have a number of different projects there to look at the hematology business, but then also, the BHB business. I've talked a little bit about the BHB side of things.
I suppose we don't really talk too much about the hematology side of things, but there are a number of different programs there to update the existing products. We do have new product development ongoing as well. This new product development I alluded to with our, you know, dual analyte point of care system, that's a platform system, so that's not necessarily just a one-and-done project. That's something that's gonna deliver value moving forward, and that does constitute a large part of our R&D program moving forward. It's a fair question, but I think it's one that we can easily answer because we are actually investing in products moving forward, and we will continue to do so.
It's not a question, but there is another investor who's put a comment on there saying that they believe the share buyback is absolutely the right strategy at this valuation, and given the level of free cash flow generation, they believe it's a no-brainer. That's.
Well, it's a tremendous way up for us in terms of buyback and dividend. We get asked these questions almost weekly. The issue we have is we believe, and there'll be people who don't agree, and I understand that and fully take it on board, that people think it's better doing a dividend. We actually think we are creating more shareholder value by buying back, as I say, 5% of the company for GBP 5 million is ridiculous. While the share price continues to be around where it is, we will continue to do that. Also our buyback, albeit some people will see it as it hasn't grown the share price, with current market conditions we've pretty much stabilized it around where we are. People aren't sort of understand. Well, understand is unfair.
People aren't seeing that if we didn't do this, the share price would continue because of market conditions to suffer. We managed to stabilize the share price by doing it. It certainly hasn't been a waste of time. We bought 5% of the company back at a very low valuation, and we stabilized the share price. I do understand people also will argue dividend is better. As a board, we talk about it every single board meeting, what is the best strategy. As I say, the share price dictates that buyback is a better use of the proceeds as far as we're concerned.
Gavin, a few questions on life sciences. I appreciate you've addressed some of them in the presentation, but if you could.
Yeah
Just focus on these specific ones. What is being done to grow revenues for fermentation and contract manufacturing?
Yeah, I feel that is one I kinda covered, but I'm quite happy to go over it again. That's not the problem. I think, you know, from a fermentation point of view, I think really there obviously there's a couple of different elements to the fermentation side. There's the raw enzymes we manufacture for ourselves and our own products, and then there's the enzymes that we manufacture for our partners. That's continuing. We're looking to extend that as much as we possibly can, certainly from our BHB point of view, but then also with the partners that we work with and have done for quite a long time. The other side of it is going out and looking for new partners, and that's something that we're working on daily.
We have so many meetings with potential new opportunities, and like I said, those take an awfully long time to invest. I think the good thing about those is they are very, very high value. When we land one, it's very positive for the business. It just takes a long time to land one, and they actually take a long time to deliver that value. It's an ongoing process that's developing over time.
Staying on life sciences, are those revenues net of the production of your own products? What is the spare capacity that you have in the business? What level of business could it sustain currently?
Yeah, I mean, it's a fair question. We've looked at the capacity side of things quite a few times and tried to understand what it is. I mean, I think everyone knows we're not using the 10,000l at the moment. We are using the 3,000 and below quite regularly for our own products and those for our partners. I think we probably, if we wanted to run every single week on every single fermenter, we're probably only at around about 5%, somewhere between 5% and 10% capacity there. Whether we would be able to do that with the current team, well, we couldn't do that with the current team. We'd certainly need to invest in the resources we have there. It also depends on the type of partner you bring on.
For example, some of the fermentation products that we have to produce, they really do need to go through the process. For example, you might need to seed them in a 3,000l and then go to the 10,000l or the, you know, further down that scale. It's a challenging one to say what capacity you're at because it depends on the type of product that you have. Certainly we think that we could probably, you know, deliver revenues in that. If it was at full capacity, somewhere in between $20 million-$30 million dollar range.
Still on Life Sciences, I don't know whether you are able to answer this question, but what are the gross margins on BHB sales, and how do you expect them to evolve over the next few years?
I mean, we have talked about BHB margins in the past. I mean, it's not necessarily appropriate to talk about our margins on particular products, especially when we have partners in that space. We're, you know, somewhere, let's say somewhere in the 70%-80% margin range. In terms of the evolution question, do they mean, do you think they mean in terms of how BHB sales will evolve?
No, I think whether margins are likely to improve with scale.
I don't think we'll see much evolution in the BHB margin as it is. It is pretty much where it could be.
Okay. Thank you. Do you think you're making progress on overcoming the technical scale-up issues that you had highlighted previously?
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I do think we're making progress there. Are we talking about the life sciences aspect there?
I think Life Sciences in terms of analyzer production. I'm assuming that's where that question has come from, where you were looking to build up capacity there.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're in a we've got a good program there. We know what we're doing. I mean, analyzers, I mean, Steve alluded to this in terms of, you know, we are building it for inventory now. Not only are we able to increase the capacity, but we're actually holding more stock of which means we'll be able to be more responsive to the customers who need our products quickly. Then the program for the capacity on consumables is ongoing. It will take time to deliver that one, but we have a good program. It has started. We know what we're doing. We have a good team working behind it, and we are working with good partners there. Yeah, I'm confident.
A final question on the hot topic of buybacks. Maybe Julian you
Yeah.
Is that required because some of your shareholders suffer redemptions on their funds?
The answer to that, Martin, is yes. I can see who's doing it. Some of the share buyback is protecting against redemptions that we have. We have one big fund manager who owns 9.7% of EKF that has had redemption issues in the last 12 months. The buyback has greatly helped us in terms of stabilizing, as I mentioned, the share price with that. Not everyone has redemptions because the other side of that, shareholders have been buying and others have been buying as well. We have had a few, quite a few. Certainly in the last quarter of last year, there was a lot of redemptions that we had to overcome. They have all quieted right down now.
We've got one small Italian fund which we are dealing with, but apart from that, we're not seeing such big redemption issues as we were in Q4 last year.
Thank you, Julian. Thank you, Gavin. Thank you, Steve and Julian for answering all of those questions. That's addressed all of the questions that investors sent in. If I could hand over to you, Gavin, for some final remarks.
Okay. Thanks, Paul. Yeah, I'd just like to reiterate that, you know, 2025 was the launch of our strategy, so very much the foundation year. We weren't expecting huge growth in that first foundation year, but we do expect that moving forward, and we do have high plan, you know, strong plans for 2026 and beyond. We do think that, you know, the execution of the strategy now is going to be vital and, it's gonna be important for the business moving forward. Stick with us because you are going to see big things moving forward, albeit over the full five-year stretch.
Fantastic. Thank you all very much for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.