The investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged; they can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that's just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, as usual, we would just like to submit the following poll, and if you'd give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. I would now like to hand you over to the Executive Management Team from hVIVO. Mo, good evening, sir.
Good evening, Guy. Thanks for that. Welcome, everyone, to the hVIVO presentation for full year 2024. We're pleased to have you on board. This is our standard disclaimer as a publicly listed company. I'm Yamin Mo Khan. For those of you who don't know me, I've got over 30 years of experience working in the clinical research industry. I've been on board as CEO of hVIVO for just over three years now, and I'm very pleased to be here. We'll jump straight into our full year summary for 2024. This slide shows our financial performance of the company, and it's been a record year for hVIVO and also a transformational one with regards to operations. We generated just under GBP 63 million of revenue. That's a 12% year-on-year growth and a huge GBP 16 million EBITDA at a 26% margin.
The underlying margin was around 23% if you took out the facility fee that we were offered by clients to build out the clinical facility and remove the cost for running the overlapping of the various facilities. EPS, a 33% increase. Cash, a very healthy position at GBP 44 million, and we are going ahead with a dividend of GBP 1.4 million. For this year in 2025, we are giving guidance for full year revenue of GBP 73 million, and that's already contracted at 70%, and we're aiming to achieve an EBITDA margin of around mid to high teens. We are well placed to get to our GBP 100 million revenue target by 2028. I'm sure most of you are already aware that we did complete a couple of acquisitions earlier this year, and they're highlighted here on the right-hand side in the map.
You can see that in addition to the old hVIVO and Venn Life Sciences locations, we've now added three new locations. That's the two CRS locations in Mannheim, just south of Frankfurt, and in Kiel, just north of Hamburg. We also acquired a Cryostore facility in Greenwich, which basically adds on to our biobank capabilities that we already have near Cambridge. The three key factors that we are focusing on or have been focusing on over the last two or three years, and we will focus on as we move forward, really, is optimize, scale, and diversify. We don't use these slogans for the sake of slogans. We do have tangible efforts behind them that we look to achieve.
When we talk about optimize, what we are talking about is the fact that we have built out a purpose-built facility in Canary Wharf that's sole purpose is to run human challenge trials. As part of this, some of the key attributes of the facility allow us to run human challenge trials much more efficiently than we have ever before. A couple of key items I do want to point out. One is, for example, the two-way call center that we have established communication with our healthy volunteers and the nursing and the physicians that are overseeing the clinical trials. Previous to this, at the older facilities, the healthy volunteer would knock on the door, and our staff would wear the full PPE gear and then go and meet the needs of the volunteer.
Now we have a two-way communication center so the healthy volunteers can speak to the clinicians without our clinicians having to wear the full PPE gear. We have a new pneumatic chute system for transporting all of the clinical samples from the quarantine floor to the lab floor below. Previously, in the old facilities, we had a lab on one location, and we had one of the quarantine facilities in different locations. The lab technician would go down three floors, walk across the street, go up three floors, take samples, and then reverse that journey back into the lab. As I say, now it takes 10-15 seconds for the lab samples to be shipped from the quarantine facilities to the lab where they can be analyzed. We also have more automation. We've invested in technology starting last year and beginning to implement now.
This includes the volunteer management system, which tracks and manages our volunteers. It also includes a new laboratory information management system, or LIMS for short, that helps us to automate the different parts of the processing and handling of the laboratory samples. We're also looking to install and implement an electronic health record system later on this year. With regards to scale, you know, I'm sure you already know we have moved to the world's largest facility for human challenge trials, a 50-bed facility at Canary Wharf. This gives us now scope to expand to many more trials than we've ever had before. As part of the move, we moved from the upper floor in our Plumbers Row facility to Canary Wharf, and instead of the corporate headquarters, we've added more beds and doubled our screening capabilities. The new lab is two times bigger as the old lab.
We've also added 120 beds in the two CRS units, which I'll talk about in a second. In addition to that, with the acquisition of Cryostore, we've added additional storage capabilities for clinical and biological samples. You can see the scale has increased immensely since or even just over the 12-month period. Diversified. We diversified our services across the board. If you focus on the human challenge trial sector, we've added new challenge models. For example, the HMPV model going live this year, also the Omicron BA.5 model going live. We're trying to do more and more different viral challenge trials than ever before. We've also signed a letter of intent for a phase three human challenge trial and also a bacterial challenge trial.
Our therapeutic expertise increases by adding the CRS capabilities, which brings on board cardiometabolic, immunology, dermatology, and renal hepatic impairment population studies, which we never had the capabilities to run before. On top of that, of course, we've got the continuation expansion in the H lab and the field trials that we're currently running at Plumbers Row. On top of that, of course, CRS offers a first-in-human phase one and phase two trials. I hope you agree with me that over the last 12 months, we've worked hard on optimizing our facility so we can run our trials to a much higher level of quality and much more efficiently. On top of that, we've been able to increase scale to be able to get to our 2028 target of GBP 100 million in revenue. Of course, the diversification is important.
That is not to say that we will lose focus of our core business, which is and will remain the human challenge trial business. A couple of slides on the two different companies we have acquired. We announced this in January of this year. CRS is a very old, 45-year-old facility running phase one, phase two clinical trials. The Mannheim facility runs mostly phase one, phase two trials, single and multi-ascending dose, as well as proof of concept trials and BE or bioequivalence trials. They have 96 beds, and they have been going on for more than 40 odd years and running a lot of trials. They have got some really good customers. They have a very strong team, good technical expertise, and I think it is a great asset to purchase at the price we achieved. The Kiel facility is a smaller facility.
It has 24 beds, but its key attraction really is the fact that it focuses on this niche technical type of trials, which are the renal and hepatic impairment trials. Now, this is a very hard-to-recruit patient population. It requires technical expertise to be able to run these trials. Together with what we have with Venn Life Sciences and hVIVO, we're now able to offer a much more fuller service to our clients. Cryostore, of course, is a much smaller organization. It's a single-site organization with three employees based in Greenwich. We know them very well because we have worked with them for the last 15-20 years. They've been one of our vendors that have helped us to store some of our clinical samples and some of our viruses. It's great to have them on board and being fully integrated into the hVIVO group.
They have a very good pipeline of work. They have a fantastic 90%+ repeat business, and we hope to use their market share to expand their capabilities, including bringing our own biobank that we have near Cambridge into the Cryostore business. Very pleased to have them on board. They are immediately accretive to revenue and EBITDA. Both acquisitions are fully complete, and I'll give you a little bit of an update later on where we are with regards to the integration, especially with CRS, which is the bigger organization. On that note, I will hand over to Stephen.
Thank you, Mo. Good evening, everybody. For those who haven't met, I'm Stephen Pinkerton. I'm the CFO for hVIVO. I've been with hVIVO for about eight years, and I'm very pleased to present to you guys tonight. Mo has really covered quite a few of the key metrics, and they are all records for this business, and we had record revenue, and we are expanding our services even in 2024. Just a couple of highlights on the factors behind the growth of the business. We grew from GBP 56 million to GBP 62 million. One of the key contributors of that growth, 12% growth, was field trial revenue, which contributed 6% of that growth, so half of that growth. The other growing factor was challenge revenues. They grew 13%.
That does include the fees that we received for accelerating a study in the year and which we used to develop and pay for Canary Wharf. Even if you strip that out, you still have a good, strong revenue growth underneath on challenge revenue. Our consultancy business, our early clinical consulting business in Netherlands, it had, I think, a robust year, given that their performance in currency terms was level with previous years. I think that's a pretty good result given the backdrop to sort of slow biotechs, sort of lacking funding and coming to the market. I think it was a sterling performance that they have achieved. This has offset the strong performance in the first on field trials and challenge revenue has offset some manufacturing revenue.
Certainly in 2022 and 2023, we signed up a number of full-service contracts, and that obviously led to a lot of manufacturing revenue, and that has halved compared to 2023. Another factor here is you look at the pie charts on the right-hand side, you'll see the little yellow sliver, which is lab revenue. It is less than $1 million. That really highlights sort of an opportunity. One has to remember that during the year, we moved the laboratory system, the laboratory from QMB to Canary Wharf, and we literally had to shut down laboratory work for about three weeks, recalibrate all the machines, redo some of the assays to make sure everything was working well in the new facility. Obviously, we weren't going to achieve significant amounts of growth in 2024, but the opportunity is there.
That is clearly highlighted by the fact that early in January, we signed a GBP 3.2 million laboratory contract for a field study. There have been a couple of other contracts that we have signed, but we have not sort of disclosed because they are quite small. We do see this as a great opportunity. This is also where the Cryostore biosample revenue will come through as well in the service line. The site revenue, which is the field study, which we signed in June, and it is the first field study of volume that we delivered. 817 vaccinations were achieved. One mustn't forget that this was delivered in six weeks. It is not only just the vaccination visit. They also have follow-on visits, up to about four or five follow-on visits that have to be accomplished in a very short space of time.
A high volume of work in a very short space of time. When we acquire, as we have acquired CRS, this is all the type of revenue that they will deliver, but obviously in Germany. Recruitment services, it is worth mentioning. It is not featured on here. It is very small at this stage, but it is also nice to know that we have been able to sell some recruitment services. This is us passing on our volunteers to other CROs. The revenue is very small. It is not worth mentioning it, but I think there is opportunity there as well. Further, we have developed and continue to develop our new models. I think you may remember at the very beginning of 2024, we announced a cancellation. Actually, it was HMPV. The biotech that was supporting that decided to shut down because they were acquired by a big pharma.
Actually, come to hold, we have now sold, got another biotech to take on that project and finish it off and potentially run a study with us. Similarly, with SARS, we did sign a study in the beginning of the year, and then they're completing the model as well. What I'm trying to highlight here is that challenge revenue is three quarters of our business. It'll continue to be a key part of our business, and we're strengthening that revenue stream by adding more and more models. Going on to EBITDA, not much more to say. This is pretty much what we said in the trading update, but just highlighting it in writing here. We delivered 26.2% margin, an EBITDA margin of 26.2%. The underlying is 3%. This is taking out the facility funding and the overlapping facility costs, leaving us with 23%.
That 23% is a robust 23% in the sense that it does also include quite a bit of continued investment in models. Not the HMPV or the Omicron SARS study that I've just mentioned. We have also in the year, not 2024, and we'll continue in 2025, have manufactured and started characterization of two new models, what we call our house models, an RSVB to replace RSV because we ran out. And so we had to replace this virus because our clients are still demanding it. As we've just signed another RSV study in the first quarter of this year. Three and two left over from the last strain. The new strain allows us to recruit much more easily. For example, if you currently in our existing H3N2 strain, if screening tests, only about 15 will be eligible to go into a study.
Now with this new strain, we will get around about 35-40 will become eligible for a study, for a flu study. That just obviously leads to more efficiency going forward. We have continued investing in these opportunities. It is worth highlighting that our recruitment and operating efficiencies have been felt. Despite operating across three different sites for a while and increasing the volume of volunteers going through the system, the field study, as well as the inoculated human challenge trial volunteers, our operating costs were, certainly recruitment fees were perfectly in line with last year in 2023. Our clinical operating efficiencies reflect a very small increase, nowhere near the scale of what they have delivered. We are definitely seeing some of the efficiencies already coming through there. Cash, we continue to be a strong cash-generated business, GBP 37 million up to GBP 44 million.
About 29 million of that is hVIVO cash, cash that is not, based on saying of the 44 million, 13.1 million is upfront payments that we've received and relates to our order book. It's cash we paid upfront from the clients, which is non-refundable. If the client cancels or postpones, that cash is ours anyway. We are debt-free. We are paying a dividend, and we'll come on to that a little bit more. We'll pay the dividend in 2024. On to the next slide, it gives you a sense. There are a couple of things here to talk about. We often talk about cash conversion. I think various people measure it in different ways. The way I generally measure it is cash operations plus working capital, less lease payments as a percentage of EBITDA.
In the past, in the last couple of years, those have been exceeding well over 100%. This year, it is lower than that. It is about 60-65%. One of the key factors here is the working capital was negative in the past. I have highlighted that the working capital movement should be generally positive with this business, but it is open to some fluctuations depending on timing of new deals and things like that. How it has been affected in 2024, at the ending of 2024, is we had an R&D tax credit. This is the 2023 tax claim, R&D tax claim that we made. It was received in January, 2nd of January, and it is worth GBP 2.6 million. Unfortunately, we received it out of a period on a like-for-like basis. That is adding to why the working capital was negative.
Further, the delivery of the field study was concentrated, highly concentrated in November, December. We had to work with the CRO that we're working with to agree the units delivered before we could invoice and get payments. It was such a high volume. We met so many milestones at the same time that we just couldn't process it fast enough and get the cash in for it. Because a field study, it doesn't have an upfront payment like the HCT trials. That is adding to the working capital. I would still guide that generally on a normal like-for-like basis, year-on-year basis, I would expect working capital movement to be positive. It is also impacted by the lower order book, which was GBP 80 million, and it has come down to GBP 67 million. However, we had some benefits as well in Canary Wharf. We obviously didn't have a rental-free period.
Our lease payments were just over GBP 900,000. In previous years, they were about GBP 2.2 million in lease payments. We expect in 2025, they'll go back up. Quite nice to note that our net interest received was GBP 1.8 million. The actual interest, that's net of some FX and interest costs or FX costs that we've incurred. The underlying interest received was GBP 1.8 million as an average. If we looked at our average cash throughout the year, that represents 4.5%, which I think is a great job that the team have done in investing our cash and getting that interest in the business. Right, driving growth. I think we are definitely driving, providing our shareholders some opportunity of growth here. You can see that EPS, basic adjusted earnings per share, has grown over the last three years, 32% and 33% in the last year, from 1.27p to 1.69p.
I think that is a great trajectory to, and long may continue. Maybe not for 2025 because of the acquisition of CRS, but certainly, we should be back on track in 2026. Just worth noting that we are providing a dividend of GBP 0.002. Key dates would be the record date is 16th of May, and we're looking to make the payment on the 11th of June. Remember, this is a low cash, low dividend, you might say, or it's a high dividend cover at this stage. That is really because we're aiming for IHT funds. We do want to protect the cash because we do have plans to acquire and grow this business. We are holding the cash for that, and we're paying a dividend to attract IHT funds that require a dividend more than anything. With that, I hand over back to Mo. Great.
Thank you for the update, Stephen. We'll quickly go on to what we've been doing for the past 12 months. The first slide here really is going to give you an overall description of what the new hVIVO Group looks like. With the acquisition of CRS and Cryostore and what was in place before for Venn and hVIVO, we've really been able to now provide a much more greater spectrum of services to our customers. Right from providing preclinical consulting services from Venn to doing first in human phase one trials or proof of concept trials at CRS to doing challenge trials at hVIVO and then providing clinical site services. These are outpatient field trials that we will run at both German sites as well as the sites in London. It gives you a full spectrum of what we are able to offer.
Our whole strategy of M&A is based on offering services adjacent to our core services. We can basically offer a much bigger bundle of services to our existing clients, as well as new clients. This graphic just shows you a typical program of trials and how it could work. For example, a master protocol under which you have basically a phase one trial, which is run by CRS in Germany, and that's followed by a human challenge trial at hVIVO in London, all under one protocol. Venn Life Sciences supports both trials with regards to writing a protocol, developing the data management, the biostats, and final clinical study report. It's a very efficient way for clients to work with us and be able to get a full spectrum of services.
Especially with biotech, this is really important because biotech do not tend to have a lot of free resources to manage and oversee multiple vendors. If a biotech comes to you and you can offer multiple services under one contract and one quality and governance agreement, it helps them a lot in meeting their own guidelines and targets, as well as requiring a lot less resources from their point of view to manage all the vendors. This is something that we had always aimed to do. Now we have the capabilities to go from non-clinical all the way to phase three under one single contract, working across the different units within hVIVO. We started integrating with CRS right from the get-go at the beginning of February, basically. We have completed certain steps. We have done the full audits, including full IT and systems audit.
We have found no surprises, I'm pleased to say. Post-audit, we've already identified around EUR 800,000 of analyzed savings. We've identified EUR 1.6 million of potential cross-selling opportunities from CRS into Venn. This is basically the pipeline of work that CRS is currently working on, and they were going to outsource beforehand. Now, because they're part of the hVIVO Group, Venn Life Sciences can support those services in-house. Less amount of work is outsourced, more is done internally. We have plans, of course, to continue with the integration process. After completing the changes in the internal reporting lines, we're aligning departments across the different units. We will now work on the SOPs or the standard operating procedures. The sales and marketing teams are already merged, and they're working as one. We have to work on the marketing and the rebranding as we move forward later this year.
On top of that, we will look to implement the systems that we currently have at hVIVO into CRS. That is something we want to do. I know personally that CRS staff are very excited to have new IT systems implemented to improve their day-to-day working. With all this acquisition and the diversification of our services, we will not forget that our core service is and will remain the human challenge trial concept. We are the world leader in this. We have 90%+ market shares. We have done over 70 clinical trials, have inoculated over 5,000 healthy volunteers. This model we are developing is continuing to grow. We have signed the ILiAD deal, which is the phase three human challenge trial. We have characterized the human metapneumovirus, and that is something that will go live this year. The Omicron BA.5 that Stephen mentioned is ready to go live.
We have also been able to help a number of clients to get good efficacy data, effectiveness data for their vaccines and antivirals. On top of that, we have seen an increase in the typical size of a human challenge trial. You can see on the right-hand side, the chart depicts that the number of volunteers or subjects required per challenge trial has more or less doubled over the last few years. This basically means that our clients are using human challenge trials not only to determine whether their vaccine or antiviral works or not, but also potentially what is the most optimal dose at which it works best. In addition, they could be looking at different endpoints.
Whether it's a primary endpoint or a secondary endpoint, if you investigate multiple endpoints at the human challenge trial phase two stage, then at the phase three stage, where it's really important to select the right primary endpoint, you can use the phase two data to determine which endpoint you will use to determine the success or failure of your drug. For us, human challenge trials remain a long-term business. We're looking at expanding into mucosal vaccines. We're looking at expanding into bivalent or vaccines that work against more than one virus, transmission studies, bacterial studies. We also now have the capability to run CL3 or more contagious pathogen human challenge trials, such as COVID, for example, and also dengue. For the additional services that we launched late last year, I do want to give you a quick update. Our HLAB services are going strength to strength.
We've recently signed our largest ever HLAB contract where we're providing virology and immunology lab services to a phase two influenza trial. That seems to be taking off really well. We've hired a new BD person to solely dedicate to selling HLAB services. The Cryostore, of course, sits underneath and within the HLAB portfolio of services. In addition, the clinical site studies we're running, which are basically field trials, because they don't involve any of the quarantine facilities. Patients come in and they get screened. They come in again. They get dosed with the vaccine or the antiviral. They go back and then come in maybe after a month or so. These are outpatient trials. We were awarded a large contract late last year. We were able to contribute over 800 patients in just over six weeks.
Just to give you kind of a little bit of context, the total number of volunteers required for this study was around 5,000. That was going to be conducted in over 50 sites. We recruited around 10 times more than the average site. Our team at FluCamp and also in our clinic in Plymouth Road did an amazing job in managing the volume of the volunteers and putting them through the clinical study. We recently just actually completed the audit of this study, and the sponsor gave us five stars, literally, for doing a wonderful job for this trial. Taking a step back a little bit and looking at the overall market, I do want to talk a little bit about ILiAD.
We don't typically announce a letter of intent, but we thought this was important because it sets a precedent in the human challenge trial concept in that this was the first occasion where the FDA has provisionally agreed to potentially use data from a human challenge trial as a phase three pivotal trial. This basically means that ILiAD, the biotech company that is basically developing this whooping cough vaccine, they will run a human challenge trial, and the data from the human challenge trial will go to the FDA to prove whether this vaccine is effective or not. This has never happened before. No other regulator has agreed to such a concept.
We believe this is a very significant milestone for us as a company, having done 70 phase two human challenge trials to now doing a phase three challenge trial, but also for the industry in the fact that it could potentially open up other biotechs and other pharma companies who are working in similarly rare or erratic diseases that could open the door to use human challenge trials to get to marketing authorization. This is why it is a significant step and why we decided to announce it to all of you to kind of show you the progress of human challenge trials in the regulatory framework of drug development. You can see U.K., Germany sit very well with regards to the number of trials conducted by country.
The bottom left one chart, I think, is key because now this applies not only to hVIVO, but of course to CRS because CRS conducts phase one clinical trials. This is part of their marketplace. For hVIVO, the traditional human challenge trials sitting at phase two or the more phase one trials that are done, it's a logical step that more phase two trials will be done, including human challenge trials. The diversification of the therapies is given on the bottom right-hand corner. We're no longer just a respiratory infectious disease CRO. We can work across multiple therapeutic areas. The order and the pipeline, this is top of my mind all the time. We want to develop and increase the order book. We've had some challenges at the second half of last year. Beginning of this year has been extremely good.
We've converted some good contracts, and you can see the good diversification in the order book. The pipeline is stronger than ever. We've been getting new opportunities in-house. Of course, we want to speed up the conversion of some of these opportunities into contracts and into the order book. That's one of our primary goals. If you break down the pipeline by the human challenge trial pathogen, you can see again a really good rainbow of colors. This means that the new challenge models that we have developed in recent times are now showing traction within the market, and we are getting requests for proposals for a variety of human challenge models that are currently active with us. The GBP 40 million short-term opportunities I talked about, I think during my last call, are all but one have been now signed.
The only exception really is the ILiAD opportunity that was part of that group of opportunities. Having said that, we now have added new opportunities since then to the hopper, and we hope to close them in the near future. The weighted order book looks very good. Of course, it could be improved, but our team is working hard in getting the message out there. The number of challenge trials we think will go up. The size of them will go up. With ILiAD coming on board as a phase three client, that opens up a whole new paradigm of potential clinical trials for us in a human challenge trial setting. You're pleased to hear this is our final slide. Just to kind of give you a quick summary, we are expanding our human challenge trial models. This will remain our core business.
We are also developing standalone business service lines, especially in HLAB, inside services. We now have the foundations and facilities built to offer these services and to get us to $100 million. There are some current headwinds, sidewinds. I mean, winds coming from everywhere, to be honest, the way the macro climate is going on, especially in the U.S. I don't want you to feel that we are severely impacted by this. The tariffs don't apply to us because we don't produce any products or send any products to the U.S. The pharma clients we're working with, most of them are at an early stage of drug development, phase one or phase two. It'll be at least four to five years before their products go into the market. They're also not really impacted.
The RFK anti-vaccine stance, to be honest, it does change on a daily basis almost. I am not sure what the future holds. You also have to remember, worst-case scenario, all vaccines development stops. What you will see as a consequence is increasing infectious diseases across the globe and increase in the development of antivirals. Human challenge trial models work equally effectively in antivirals as they do for vaccines. I do not see that going to impact us. The outlook, GBP 73 million this year. We do think there will be a H2 waiting purely because of the delay in signatures. We are looking to get mid to high teens in EBITDA. 70% of this year's revenue is already contracted. Our key focus right now is one on sale. Getting to build up that order book.
Second is to complete the integration with CRS and harmonize that team into one single entity. The market volatility, it is what it is, to be honest. Our focus and our goal is to make sure that we give good, appropriate guidance, and we hit or beat our targets on an annual basis. That is what we here deliver. Finally, as we have announced in the R&S, our founding chairman, Cathal Friel, will not be standing up for re-election. I want to thank Cathal for all he has done over the last seven, eight years since he founded Open Orphan, effectively from two loss-making companies in Venn and hVIVO. He hired me around three years ago, and we have had a very good working relationship. The companies now stand in a very good place with three successive years of revenue growth, improvements in EBITDA margin.
I want to thank Cathal Friel on behalf of everyone at hVIVO for doing a great job. The nomination committee right now is out and looking for a new candidate for the Chairman of the company. With that, I will close the presentation. Thank you all.
Perfect. Mo, Stephen, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this evening. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab that's situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that have been submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can all be accessed via your investor dashboard.
Most, Stephen, as you can see there, we have received a number of questions that were both pre-submitted ahead of today's event, as well as those that have made their way through this evening as well. Firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. Guys, at this point, if I may just hand back to you just to read out those questions and give your responses where it is appropriate to do so. If I pick up from you at the end, that would be great. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I have seen there is a lot of questions that have come through on the platform.
I don't think, I know we will not be able to answer all of them, but we'll try and get through as many as we can and probably maybe group some of the questions because they have very similar answers, to be honest. The first one, and I think there's more than one question on this, it says, "Simple, why has the share price dropped 50% when you say you are doing so well? What are you doing to improve the share price?" and so on. The items we control really is making sure we deliver on the numbers we put out to the market. That's been our key goal. Hopefully, over the last three years, you've seen that.
Every time we've given out guidance on revenue, on EBITDA, and some of the other financial parameters, we have every time hit or beat all of those targets every year. That is the first thing. That remains key for us. We have to deliver on what we say we're going to deliver. We do manage the market as well as we can. There are some macro events that really we can't control. What's happening in the world with regards to Ukraine, Russia, or the tariffs, the depression in biotech funding, all of those play a factor in why the share price is repressed. I'm sure you all agree with me. Just like speaking to brokers and analysts all day today, they all agree that we are very much undervalued with regards to our market cap.
It is a matter of time before the market realizes the true valuation of hVIVO, especially with the numbers we bring out. I mean, for an A-rated company, we are in very good health. Not just in regards to revenue and EBITDA margin, but the fact that we have such a strong cash generation and built up over GBP 40 million of cash reserve at the end of last year says a lot in the way the business model is built and how the team has been performing and delivering on all the targets. Can you give more insight into contract status and future prospects, in particular type of size contracts? Generally speaking, for the human challenge trials at least, the contract sizes are going up. The sales pipeline, so these are sales requests we have received from clients, is bigger than ever.
The challenge has been, as I mentioned, in converting the sales pipeline into order book. We have seen some good news. Earlier this year, we started to convert some of those into contracts, and we are hopeful that we will continue to convert more. That is our number one priority. So far, after kind of slowness in the second half of last year, we've now seen some improvements. Okay, this is a long question. The share price has more than halved in the last few months, correct? A primary reason for this is the investor perception around the appointment of RFK in the U.S., and retail investors appear to be assuming that U.S. business will drop off a cliff, that hVIVO has little residual value. My hypothesis is that RFK's drive for transparency of data is likely to make phase two and three trials more expensive.
Therefore, hVIVO's service is even more compelling. You will clearly be talking to the farmers and the likely impact. It goes on a little bit more on this. You are absolutely correct. RFK does have an anti-vaccine stance. As I mentioned, I do not think that really impacts us considering we work both with vaccine and also with antivirals. On top of that, we work with vaccine at a fairly early stage. These vaccines typically will not hit the market until four to five years from now. By that time, who knows what the U.S. government will be like. On top of that, having reviewed the news on the fact that the FDA is reducing insights by 20%, a typical human challenge trial has around 5% of the data points that a phase three study does.
If the FDA was looking to review less data, much more faster, with fewer regulators, then a human challenge trial is really a great concept to get back on because the efficacy data, so the data that proves whether the drug is effective or not, requires the same number of people. And we deliver that. We deliver the same number of volunteers who have an infection as a phase III does. A phase III typically requires 10-50 times more people to be vaccinated than a challenge trial. For us, we can do the same data with less than 5% of the data points. For a regulator and for the customer, I mean, it's much more efficient. It's much more cheaper. It's also less riskier because you're exposing a lot fewer people to the vaccine you're testing.
This person, I don't know the name, has got it really on point that the new FDA, the new Slimline FDA, could actually be human challenge trials could be actually more attractive to them than they were previously. Dear Mo, as regards mergers and acquisitions, how optimistic are you of turning the two company fortunes financially around in 2026 as regards being financially accretive? Stephen, do you want to take that?
We have a very active integration program. We are targeting to turn it around this year. By the end of, for 2026, we are aiming to be accretive for both Mannheim and Kiel entities. We have already started in the sense that we have determined sort of GBP 800,000 worth of savings, annualized savings that obviously will impact full year impact will be for next year. I think we're on track for that.
I think that's our target. That's what we're pushing for.
Thank you. Are any more acquisitions planned or expected? Yes, but not in the short term. We are looking to focus on making sure that we integrate the two acquisitions we have carried out this year. We are keeping our eye open to add any other companies that provide services adjacent to what we already provide, like Cryostore, like CRS. How realistic are you of obtaining the 2028 forecasts as regards to GBP 100 million revenue? I'm very realistic. I think we're on the track. I never, from day one, thought that where we were back in, what, 2021 to 2028, now that it will be a straight line of growth. That's not how business works. The trend is strong and it's good. I am very optimistic that we will achieve the GBP 100 million target by 2028.
How many institutional investors are actually involved in holding company shares? Quite a lot, to be honest. I know over 40% of our share register includes institutional holders. It may be even a bit more than that right now. We have a very good institutional following right now. Some of the very kind of large blue chip institutions as well, by the way. Any interest as regards to the malaria challenge study? As you know, we did develop a malaria model back in 2021, I think. Malaria challenge models, to be honest, are very cheap to run because they're outpatient. They require very few patients too. Yes, we are, but it's not our number one priority. If it's up to me, I would really focus on more influenza, more RSV, more HMPV, more COVID. I think this is one for you, Stephen.
I'm not sure if you can answer this. Please, could you confirm the approximate cash position after the acquisition?
I think we both know, I mean, if you look at the acquisition, what we've paid for the acquisition is EUR 10 million, and we paid GBP 2.7 million for Cryostore upfront. That's effectively about GBP 11 million. At the beginning of the year, we were at GBP 44 million. We're close to just over GBP 30 million.
Of course, this will grow again by the end of this year. I hope. Please, could you confirm, okay, no, would the board consider doing a share buyback given the current share price? Absolutely. This has been discussed at the board. We are not doing it right now, but it's absolutely on the table, and we would consider it at the right share price. One for you again, Stephen.
Excluding CRS, why are revenues expected to fall by about GBP 10 million? Why are margins dropping to mid to high teens this year? Even with CRS, you are forecasting lower EBITDA than this year. What is the problem here?
Right. The core business is tracking to normal EBITDA rates between 20-23% is where we sort of range our EBITDA percentages for the core business. CRS is actually going to make a loss. It makes a loss of about GBP 1.5 million, and that's what we're forecasting at this stage. Combined, you're getting to mid to high teens performance. That's our guidance. It will turn around. It will change. Revenues, so CRS revenues in previous years was GBP 19.9 million. Our guidance has been EUR 20 million that's been accounted. That's full year, so that's not prorated for the period of ownership.
The underlying performance of the core business is pretty much the same as 2024, excluding the facility fees. I make that excluding CRS, the revenue is down on core business by about GBP 4 million. You are really looking at GBP 58 million plus CRS prorated, giving you your GBP 73 million.
Great. Thank you. Quickly, maybe a couple more. I read that the Canary Wharf facility was mainly paid for by your clients. This is correct. Do they then own the facility? No, they do not own the facility. If not, what is the quid pro quo? The quid pro quo was that we finished their trial in an expedited manner, and we did deliver that last year. You may remember the first half of last year, we were running three facilities, and part of that was to use the new facility to finish the trials for those companies.
There are no other commitments to these clients at all. One for you, Stephen, maybe. Why have you reduced the dividend instead of increasing? It's very disappointing that you have done this as a long-term shareholder, especially along with the share price down GBP 0.50 from its high.
Okay. On a year-on-year basis, I mean, 2023, we paid a dividend in 2024 of GBP 0.002, and we are doing the same this year. For 2024, we're paying a GBP 0.002 dividend. It's the same. It hasn't actually gone down. In 2022, we paid a special dividend. It was a one-off special dividend that we paid out in 2023, which was much higher than it is currently. We have set the policy that the dividend would be low. It would be nominal, and it would be really aimed at the IHT funds that require dividend.
What we're trying to maintain is the cash so we can grow this business and make acquisitions like we have just done, and there'll be furthermore. Obviously, if things go and we don't find the acquisitions that we want on a timely basis, we will be considering and having a look at share buybacks. At this stage, our policy has been set, and that's what the board has agreed to move forward on.
Okay. Maybe a final question. I think just does the waiting pipeline include ILiAD? No, it doesn't include ILiAD. There's a couple of questions about why should I continue to hold in hVIVO. I will come to that at the end. I will hand back to you now.
Perfect. No, Stephen, that's great. And thank you very much indeed for addressing those questions that came in.
Of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended. Mo, perhaps before really now just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, that would be great.
No, thank you for that. hVIVO is a very strong business with a very strong foundation now. You've seen what we've achieved over the last three years. We're in a unique position. Nobody else can do what we do. I mean that literally. We hold 90%+ of the market share.
The expertise we hold would cost somebody else around GBP 50 million just to set up the facility, the recruitment database, the challenge models that we currently have. Even then, they won't have the data or the expertise to run these trials and no pipeline of new opportunities. For that, I think we are in a very strong position. We are now being able to use the funds we have generated ourselves to add and diversify into new services and new stages of clinical development. Of course, when you acquire these companies at the prices we have acquired, CRS, for example, at 50% of the revenue, it does impact the EBITDA short-term, EBITDA margin at least. You would expect that. Our long-term goal is that CRS will become financially accretive in 2026. Our goals have always been to grow and diversify, and we have hit all of those targets.
I feel that at the moment, in the current climate, we are very much undervalued. Our trajectory is still going in the right direction, and I'm very optimistic for the future of the company. For those of you who have been shareholders for a long time, thank you for your loyalty. Rest assured, there will be a time in the future where we will definitely have an uptick. Thank you, everyone.
That's great. Mo, Stephen, thank you once again for updating investors this evening. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it will be greatly valued by the company.
On behalf of the management team with hVIVO, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. Good evening to.