Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Kromek Group PLC Final Results Investor Q&A Session. Throughout this recorded meeting, 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 probably show responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll, and if you 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 Kromek Group PLC. Arnab, good afternoon, sir.
Very good afternoon. Thank you for that. I'm Arnab Basu, just for a quick introduction, CEO of Kromek and I've got...
Hi Burgess, I'm the CFO.
Thank you very much. I hope you have seen the presentation that was put on last week following our results announcement last Tuesday. So I'll straight go into the Q&A, and I will read out the questions, and then either I'll answer it or I'll hand it over to Claire as appropriate.
So the first question: Have you sold your IP too cheaply to Siemens? Can you elaborate on the Siemens deal? I'll handle that question. Look, Siemens was a transformational deal for us, that enablement deal, and I'll go back, go into the little detail on the structure of the individual components within the overall deal that we did with Siemens. But Siemens enabled us to transform the business from where we were to where we are today.
Our revenues grew, we became profitable, and ultimately we were able to transform the balance sheet. We cleared off all our debts. So it was a pivotal moment for the business itself. Now, in terms of the value, we addressed two markets in the medical imaging space where this deal was actually done for. One is CT, and the other is SPECT. SPECT is a nuclear medicine modality, and CT is, of course, a very common modality for diagnostic imaging.
Now, SPECT is a smaller market than CT. As we quantify our addressable market in this, CT is about 15 times larger than SPECT. So the Siemens deal was constructed for licensing our IP for Siemens to use to manufacture CZT for use in the SPECT market, which is the smaller of the two markets.
When you look at the actual value of the deal, the $37.5 million, that was the sort of deal value for the enablement and the IP licensing. At that time, that was pretty much the market cap of the company itself. In terms of the value, I think we got a very good value for what we did in that particular enablement deal. Of course, when you look at the overall structure of the deal, there is a third component to it on top of the IP licensing and the enablement.
Is the supply contract. There is a supply contract which will be where we will be supplying CZT detectors to Siemens for their use for at least a four-year period for which we are contracted to at the moment. My expectation would be that may extend beyond that four-year period.
Three clear elements to the deal: the enablement and the IP licensing were $37.5 million over a four-year period. We have received $25 million in cash payment at the point of signature. Then we received a second payment for the second milestone of $5 million, and then there is another $7.5 million to get over the next two years. And the revenue recognition, of course, doesn't follow the cash, but that was elaborated in our presentation.
In terms of the overall structure of the deal, what we will get not only from the enablement piece but also from the supply contract, we believe this was a very, very good deal for the business and the shareholders. But also, it demonstrated a very key important piece.
What we have built over the last 20 years or so in terms of IP, in terms of capability, in terms of our product, we showed an ability to monetize that IP through this Siemens deal. And that's an important milestone, I think, for the business itself on top of the financial milestones that this deal helped us to deliver as well.
I'll move on to the next question. Is there another deal to be had that's similar to the Siemens deal? I'll take that as well. The Siemens deal doesn't preclude us because it is a non-exclusive IP and enablement deal. So it doesn't preclude us in doing a similar deal in the market.
We will be evaluating what the market is going, and as we have articulated within our strategy, the bigger of the two markets, the CT market, is where we are going to put a lot of effort in capturing that market. We already have the Tier 1 contract in that market in place. We are working with a number of companies in the CT market while we are supplying into the SPECT market, into SPECT and Spectrum Dynamics. So it remains open, and we will evaluate as we go through. But the Siemens deal, of course, doesn't preclude us from doing a similar deal to that.
The third question: The biological threat detection system has been in development for quite some time now. What can we see? When can we see the commercialization of these systems, and is there a real market for them? Thank you for this question.
Rightly, we haven't really talked about the biological security part of the business a lot over the last few years. Now, just taking a step back where it all started, we finished a very successful program with DARPA in 2018, a part of the U.S. Department of Defense, which is the innovation agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, where we supplied 10,000 detectors to which today are active in New York City, which is the main security system or information system against nuclear threats.
At that point, DARPA moved that program on to add a biological and a chemical detection capability on a network basis to have information or to prevent nuclear, chemical, and biological terrorism. So the nuclear part completed in 2018, and the biological and the chemical part of the program started.
We won the biological program in those days simply because of our track record of what we did in the radiological program with DARPA, so it started on a $1 million contract. Over the following three years, that contract enabled us to get to certain milestones, and about $10 million total contract was awarded under the DARPA program, and now, today, we have two programs that are running in the business.
One is with a U.K. government agency, which is a GBP 5 million program, and the other was a follow-on program from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DHS, which was a $6 million program. Now, both those programs are developing specific products for the user group that are funding us to develop those. The U.K. government program is a development but also a product delivery program.
What we are going to develop and what we have developed, we are going to supply certain units into the U.S. government agency, not for evaluation or trials, but for real field use, real deployment. And that program is coming to an end around the middle of calendar 2026 or early fiscal 2027. And that's where the commercialization journey begins because when you look at the revenue model of this particular business, it is a little bit like a printer cartridge model.
So we supply a base unit, and then each time a sample is analyzed for presence to understand the presence of viruses or bacteria. There is a disposable cartridge almost, which is where the testing is done. And each time, you have to buy a new one, or it's a one-time test for each of the cartridges.
Now, how we are different, the technology that we are developing under this program is very simple. Today, if you are looking for something, a specific item, a particular virus or bacteria, you can do a PCR test. Like if you're doing for COVID, you can buy a home kit or do a PCR test. Or even if you're looking for two or three things in conjunction, you can look at multiplex PCRs.
But the use case that these products, what we are developing, is where you don't have any knowledge of what is there in the air or the water sample. So you don't have any prior knowledge. It can be a novel virus. It can be a novel bacteria. It can be an unknown virus or a mutated virus.
So we are using the DNA and RNA sequencing technology, which means you don't have to be doing a targeted analysis, but it's a full broad spectrum. So if you encounter a sample in the field where you have got no prior knowledge of what you're looking for, it enables you to do that. And in the U.S. program context, where this is being done to monitor cities and the environment, both for bioterrorism but also for emergence of new and novel bacteria or viruses, this is, again, with no prior knowledge. So you need to know everything that is there.
And so we are developing a globally unique capability that is going into commercialization middle of next year with a very, very attractive business model. So yes, we haven't talked about biology very much, but all this IP, all these products, all this technology has been developed in a completely self-funded manner where we have not invested any shareholder funds to develop this but has been paid for by our end customers. And those end customers are the start of the commercialization program because they are quite large customers in the sector we are operating in. Hopefully, that answers your question on that one.
I think it's also quite important to say that although the shareholders haven't funded the development, the benefit of the revenue coming out of the development will come back to shareholders.
Absolutely. Absolutely. The next question is, are your sales teams seeing more CBRN inquiries from NATO countries' members as defense budgets rise? Let me answer that as well. Look, the defense budgets are rising, and we talk about the mega trends. So if you look at the mega trends within the CBRN, I don't have to tell you that the number of conflicts around the world are increasing and increasing in areas where there are nuclear-capable countries and nuclear material is freely available, like in the Middle East or in the India-Pakistan region or in the Taiwan-China region or the Korean Peninsula or anywhere else.
And that actually puts a real threat level from nuclear incidents or accidents or even dirty bomb terrorism incidents. The threat level is definitely higher, much higher than any time before, and we are seeing that. That is really what is driving the spend, not only just in the nuclear detection capability or biodetection capability, but the overall defense spending, of course, is going up. Even our U.K.'s strategic defense review talks about the threat from nuclear as one of the major threats, which I'm sure you have picked up.
Yes, we are seeing more traction. Our core markets of the U.K. and the U.S. are paying dividends as we have won the key contracts in the U.K. last year, which was the framework contract with the U.K. Home Office, the U.K. MoD placing the contract for the mainstream use of D5 into our U.K. Armed Forces, which is now the chosen radiation detector, the Blue Light framework contract, which we won last year as well.
On top of the IDIQ contracts we have got with the U.S. DOE and various other agencies in the U.S., so the core U.K. and U.S. markets, we have got structural contracts in place which will enable us to grow in that market. But of course, we are seeing increasing activity in this whole area from NATO countries but also from other parts of the world.
And to capture that, we appointed our Strategy and Commercial Director, which is Michael Stephenson , who joined us from Johnson & Johnson earlier this year, heading sales and marketing activity within the CBRN segment of Kromek. And he is reviewing, expanding his sales team, and we are starting to see the pipeline developing. And we already have a pipeline which is about GBP 300 million, as we indicate in the presentation, mainly from U.K. and the U.S. through programs that are visible.
But we have also made early sales in a lot of countries where the increased sales force is going to enable us to expand the sales opportunities within those countries and drive growth within this sector. The next question is, profit guidance issued last Friday seemed very positive. Crucial to Kromek's future results will be its gross margin on other revenue, excluding Siemens Healthineers. Assuming that those other revenues rise, does the company believe that it can also increase its gross margin? Claire, I'll let you answer this one.
Thank you. So absolutely, the underlying business, it's critical to the growth of Kromek as we move forward. The Siemens revenue will be recognized over a number of years. So this year, we have GBP 16.5 million. Next year, as in financial year 2026, I expect that to be around GBP 9 million. And then in the third and fourth year, that amount will reduce. But the revenue of the underlying business in that time, including revenue from the Siemens supply contracts but lots of other contracts that we've got ongoing at the moment, will then start to rise.
So we don't ever expect to see a dip in revenue as we move forward. We expect to grow, and our midterm forecast that we shared at Capital Markets Day will continue. In terms of gross profit margin, that's a really, really important question because this year, our gross profit margin was 81%.
Last year, it was 55%. 55% across the two businesses with the product mix we've got is about right. I don't share the absolute gross profit for each of the divisions, and that's for a very strong reason. We want to make sure that we're protecting our customers, suppliers, and shareholders by not divulging that specific information, but the underlying gross margins of each of the businesses are staying consistent, and I expect those to stay consistent or grow as we move into the future. CBRN is a little bit more of a mature market in terms of, we've got that settled on the advanced imaging. As we grow and we grow the volumes, I expect that gross margin to start to increase over time.
Thank you. I think the next question is for you as well, Claire. It's why have you arranged an RCF if you are now profitable?
Okay. So RCF, for those of you that don't know, I'm sure most of you do, is a revolving credit facility. So we've negotiated a GBP 6 million revolving credit facility committed for a three-year period with HSBC on particularly favorable terms. The company is forecasting to be profitable as we move forward, and absolutely, we will do that. That will be cash-generative, but we have a lot of large contracts. And particularly on the advanced imaging side of the business, there's quite a lot of working capital involved.
So as we grow and we go through those cycles of working capital flows, even though it's going up in a trajectory, that revolving credit facility will allow us to manage the cash flows on a short-term basis within the business.
It's a revolving credit facility because it will go up, and then it will come down, and we will manage that over the next three years. We've set out now to make sure that the business is firmly underpinned for the next foreseeable future and that we are not going to be coming back to shareholders to ask for additional funds.
Thank you, Claire. The next question is, what experience have you had in doing M&A? When are you likely to do your first M&A? Let me take that. I think this question stems from we clearly stated our strategy during our Capital Markets Day where we stated that our clear focus will be on organic growth, capturing the very large CT markets where CZT is being adopted, and that structural change from black and white CT into Photon Counting CT is happening, and we are right in the middle of that change that is going on, so that is going to be a key focus within the organic growth,
and the second is expanding our footprint within the CBRN business where we are investing in sales and marketing, building that pipeline and everything that we talked about.
Now, on top, we have articulated that where we see opportunities in CBRN business, we are going to do bolt-on M&As, but in a very disciplined manner, and that discipline applies to both the criteria of the companies that we would be looking at for M&A, but also the fiscal rules that we have established for debt ceilings and so on and so forth, which we articulated in the presentation again.
Now, we actually have done two very successful M&As in the past. Of the two of our U.S. businesses we acquired in 2010 and 2013, we identified, particularly the one that we did in 2013 of eV Products. At that time, Kromek and eV Products were of very similar size. So we identified, we did the acquisitions at a very good deal, and then integrated, nurtured those businesses, and ultimately created value.
The Siemens deal is a demonstration of how we have extracted value out of an M&A that we actually did, which added to what Kromek already had. So yes, we have got some experience in doing it. We have got experience in identifying, executing, integrating, and ultimately nurturing and creating value. So the current targets will be smaller to start off with because these will be really bolt-on. These will be profitable companies either addressing gaps in our product portfolio or in the CBRN segment or really giving us access to markets.
So look, we see deals. We get visibility of opportunities coming across our desk quite regularly, and we have seen that for the last so many years. But we are going to look at those much more seriously now. There are plenty of opportunities in this segment where we can do really good quality M&As, which can be good for the shareholders and the value of the business itself. But we can't give you exact timings when the first one will be executed.
The next question, why is your share price so low? I have lost so much money after buying your shares. Look, this is quite an important question, and I think it's absolutely right to say that we are doing everything to ensure that the business is on the right path, and we are executing on the strategy that we have articulated. We have seen some positive reaction to the share price, of course, post-results, but we believe there's a long way to go. As the management of the business and, of course, the board of directors, we are very keenly focused on creating shareholder value.
What we can do and what you can expect from us is to deliver on the strategy that we have articulated: profitable, sustainable growth with a very clear midterm target that we have articulated in our Capital Markets Day. So we are on the right track. As I say, from growth point of view, we have demonstrated how we are going to deliver that growth and will be continuously executing.
And hopefully, we are going to come back to the market on a regular basis to update you how we are doing on that journey and keep you updated. So we believe that that effort and that execution will be recognized by the market, and the share price will follow.
I've got the next question. Sorry, I was late. So if these questions have been asked, in the latest RNS, we suggest that the Siemens deals impacted the sales cycle of other opportunities. Is this the case going forward, or are we now positioned to.
Provisioned.
Provisioned so pipelines are not mutually exclusive? It's a great question. Thank you. What actually happened in the Siemens deal is reasonably simple to understand. I think it's a very small sort of when we look at the AI market, the advanced imaging market for us, the medical imaging, the customer base is extremely concentrated. So it's a pretty small community of there are four Tier 1 players in Western, Tier 1 players in that market, and a handful of Tier 2 players.
So when we were embarking on that journey towards that enablement, IP licensing, the market, the industrial market, our customer segment was all aware that there was something going on. Of course, we couldn't update the share market, the stock market, and our shareholders.
But what it meant was there was a lot of nervousness among our customer base of what is going to happen to their supply chain because the type of deal we were constructing was not very clear, of course, because that was between us and the other party. So everybody kind of took a step back and took a pause for a period of time. But we saw a very strong rebound post the Siemens deal. We saw a very strong rebound in the second half, which will continue in the first half of this year. So that bit is over.
So the market has got clarity in what we are doing. It's done. The deal is a non-exclusive deal, which means we are able to supply to everybody. We are able to license even if we wanted to.
I don't think that will affect pipeline or revenues going forward. I think it's a second question from this. The house broker forecasts show revision to small revenues over the next couple of years. Yet I have a belief there are more Siemens-style orders out there, and why can we not factor that into the house broker estimates?
Great question. And I completely agree. There are other opportunities out there. I think what we need to be clear about is from here on out, we will be putting forecast upgrades out once we have things and they're in the bag. I'm not going to put speculative forecasts out if a deal isn't done. The forecast market expectations, as they stand there, completely, completely stand behind.
As the Siemens revenue comes off, the underlying business continues to grow. Are there other opportunities out there that we haven't got baked into the forecast? Absolutely, there are opportunities. And as those opportunities solidify, we will then start to share them with you, and we will then present an upgrade to those numbers.
The next question, working capital still seems problematic. Continuing bad debt provisions, stock over one year's turnover.
Working capital, I think in any business, is always a challenge. I wouldn't say it's problematic as such. Yes, I've taken the opportunity. I've taken a one-off bad debt provision. That isn't a reflection of the customers per se. It's a reflection of the markets that they're in and things that are changing and budgets that are changing more than anything else. It's a one-off. I don't anticipate it happening again. And it's done.
I think now is the right time to do it. Let me just go back up to the question. Stock. So stock is transient. Stock, we are growing, particularly on the advanced imaging side. We're growing the business. There's WIP as it moves through the CBRN business. There were some kind of stocking up for contracts that were won that were coming down.
I think as we move forward, you will start to see those stock numbers starting to - I don't think you will start to see those stock numbers starting to decrease as we move forward. But let me just caveat that in that the advanced imaging has a very long working capital cycle. So actually, from an advanced imaging standpoint, as we grow, there is a stock increase. So when you're looking at the stock, particularly on the advanced imaging side, you need to review it as a function of revenue as well as that business is growing. So as a percentage, it will come down.
After stating the Chinese issues, which quickly and easily be reversed, nothing has happened. Is the stock fully written off?
I might need.
Yes. This is a pre-date to you.
There's quite a lot of pre-dating me. For those of you that don't know, I joined the business in May and took over as CFO on the 1st of June. So the Chinese business is ongoing. We continue to have good relationships with our Chinese counterparts. There is some stock that is continuing to go out to them. I think.
Yes, I mean, this write-off is for products that actually are very usable and are being used for the same purpose. It is actually getting recovered, but slower than what we expected. Again, this is not really something that, in the balance sheet, of course, it's written off. We are recovering as we're going forward. There are products being made out of this. In the mid to long term, this will remain a very good opportunity from a business point of view, so.
The next question, Siemens Healthineers, what is the timeline for the remaining Siemens Healthineers payment, and how will these funds be used? Profitable? Do you want to answer this? Yes, tell us.
So the remainder of the $7.5 million that's due. I've said in the RNS, I'll try to see if some comes for you. So we've got another $2.5 million that will be coming next year. And then the final $5 million will come the year after.
The other part of that question is.
Sorry.
How will the funds be used?
The funds will be invested back into the business. They may contribute towards the M&A. They may contribute towards the working capital needs and minimize the drawing on the RCF. It will be used to basically maximize the return on the business and make sure that we can drive as high a return for shareholders as possible.
Profitability. What are the main risks to maintaining profitability after your first annual profit?
I think we've got a clear path to profitability. I think with having large contracts, timing is always a factor and always will be a factor in any business that has large contracts. So making sure that those timings are coming. From an overhead standpoint, we're keeping a very, very tight handle on our overheads. We're not overspending. I've got a very clear path to make sure that we maintain a profitable business moving forward. We're not jumping into things. We're not jumping ahead in any way, shape, or form. We've got very strict kind of fiscal rules that we are going to stick to to make sure that that profitability stays there within the business.
Government contracts. Can you clarify the expected values and delivery schedule for the new U.K. government framework contract? I can answer that. Yes, so the government framework contract, I think the one that you're referring to is the $84 million framework contract that was awarded earlier last year under the Home Office R&N network contract. So the $84 million is for three different categories of products for which we qualified and we are selected as vendors alongside a handful of other vendors. You have to be pre-qualified,
and we already announced the first win under one of the framework, one of the items, which was a GBP 1.7 million sort of tender, which we won, and we are in the process of delivering at the moment. We expect that contracts will start to come in reasonable sizes in an increasing manner.
It's typical of government spending in terms of starting small, and then as the contract goes through, they start to spend more. Of course, that framework contract is over four years. So we expect the revenue, whatever revenue that we win, to actually be over four years. And we have always stated that we don't expect to win 100% of that revenue, but we expect to win a healthy portion of that $84 million spend that is planned and frameworked under that contract.
So what we have in Kromek at the moment, and I think this is what Claire was mentioning too, that we have got a lot of structural elements of how we are going to grow, like the framework contract under which we expect to win. Because in some cases, we have got the best offering.
Some of the cases, we are the incumbents on some of these expansion programs that are happening. So we will win a healthy portion of that contract. But giving timings is difficult. But that is how we have constructed our forecast so that we take some of these timing risks out of the forecasting sort of regime at the moment. CBRN detection.
Are there plans to expand your CBRN detection business internationally? Very much so. If you refer back to the slide in the presentation, one number that we quote is the number of countries we have sold our CBRN products into. Now, our two key markets, where the majority of our big revenues at the moment are coming from, are U.K. and the U.S. And of course, Ukraine has been a driver within our business.
But what we have done in these international markets has actually made early sales to key customer bases. And I mentioned in an earlier answer that we have brought new leadership within our sales and marketing area within CBRN. The team is expanding within that. And we are going to continue to work very hard to develop some of these early sales into tangible pipelines, which we can convert and grow. But in the very short term, we are not expecting massive growth in these international markets.
Our short-term growth will be driven by what we already have in the bag in the U.K., in the U.S., in the IDIQ. And these international markets, as and when they mature into serious revenues, we are generating reasonable revenues, but serious revenues. These will be bolt-ons, and that's what's going to drive our mid-term growth in this business. Biosecurity.
What are the next steps for commercializing your biosecurity technology beyond government contracts? Look, at the moment, I think I touched on it. We have got two contracts. One of the contracts, the U.K. government contract, is a development and delivery that goes into delivery, not for early evaluation, but real deployment and use. And that is going to be the start of the commercialization process with a very interesting revenue model, which is a recurring revenue model. And we expect that to expand.
We believe there are substantial opportunities beyond that stage within the government market in security and defense. But of course, there are other application areas in food security, in probably the medical world. But our focus today remains very much in this security and defense and also sort of monitoring of emerging threats, which in government terms, it still remains, in customer terms, it still remains within those government realms of large area monitoring for monitoring emergence of new viruses or bacteria. So we see a very large opportunity within that. The commercialization process starts next year.
Advanced imaging. What are the main drivers for growth in your advanced imaging segments, and how do you differentiate from our competitors? Look, advanced imaging, we have a strategically very important position within the market. We are the only independent CZT supplier. There are three other suppliers which are embedded within large OEMs through which they were acquired as their internal supply chain. Siemens acquired a company back in 2011 for their CT business.
GE acquired a company for their nuclear medicine business in 2008, and Canon acquired Redlen in 2021 mainly for their CT business. That leaves Kromek as the only other independent player for supplying to the rest of the market, including Siemens' SPECT business and other OEMs, so in this market, this is a long sort of process of getting qualified, embedded, and we are already supplying commercially into Spectrum Dynamics, one of the Tier 2, where we have a $59 million contract, and that's going well.
We announced a Tier 1 contract in CT back in 2020, two years back, and that goes, we expect to get commercial, and we are, of course, going to have a supply contract with Siemens as part of the overall deal we did with Siemens earlier this year, so we are positioned extremely well.
We have proven technology, which the enablement program demonstrated the value of that, where Siemens paid $37.5 million, similar to our market cap at that point, for licensing for the use of our technology in the smaller of the two markets we address. So we have a good position. We have an absolute laser-focused strategy for growth, which is capturing supplying into the SPECT market as we are doing and capturing that CT market, where, again, we are structurally very well positioned with contracts and what we have in there. So yes, we expect to grow in this market very well.
And that growth is over a very long period of time sustainable because the product life cycle in this market is 20 plus years. So once you get into that supply chain, you are generally sole-sourced or maybe dual-sourced in extreme cases. But you are there with that partner for a very long time to come, and you continuously supply into that with a very good visibility of revenue. The next part is shareholder value. Are there any plans for dividends, share buybacks, or any other measures to return value to shareholders?
So I'll take that one. I think first and foremost, what we need to focus on is driving shareholder value in whichever way is most appropriate at the time. So I think for the here and now, what we're focusing on is shareholder value, so we increase the share price and we get that revenue. In terms of the long term, yes, we're considering different options as we go through to maximize shareholder value and maximize shareholder return depending on what's happened. Somebody's already mentioned, could there be another Siemens enablement type deal? Absolutely, there could. Coming out of that, there may be one solution. If it's a growth on contracts, we may do something else.
But what we want to make sure that we do is we're working within the shareholder interest as a whole moving forward and that we make sure the business has the resource to grow and drive that value forward for you.
Does the company forecast to continue year-on-year profits?
Short-term, so yes. Absolutely.
The next question is AFAIK. AFAIK, I don't know what that actually stands for. The results presentation isn't on the IMC website nor on Kromek's website. How can we access the slides and recording? As far as I understand, the results presentation along with the slides and the recording should be on the IMC website, and it was there since last week.
Yeah. Friday.
From Friday, I think.
Maybe at the end, IMC, can we?
Yes, we can clarify that. Each of the last two financial years, a substantial sum has been set aside for doubtful debts. Explain how this is possible given the status of your customers?
I was only here for this year, and maybe you can talk to the prior year. This year is very much a reflection of geopolitical environment, customers and budgets changing, and spend profiles moving for individual customers. The actual customers themselves were not putting bad doubtful debts because somebody's gone into bankruptcy or liquidation from a prior year.
In the prior year, I think it was GBP 100,000 was the bad debt. This is relating to timing issues with some contracts which have taken longer from a customer's point of view to deliver. But these are mainly timing issues, and do we expect some of these to unwind? Yes, we do. This year, very much, the bad debt was a timing issue which we expect to unwind, so. The deal with Siemens was great, but not as big as some other acquisitions of your competitors in the health sector.
Now, do you see Kromek continue to increase revenue in the health sector, even though most of the big medical manufacturers already have captive capabilities now? The Siemens deal, of course, was not an acquisition. It was a use of our IP on a non-exclusive basis in SPECT.
So one segment, use of IP rather than acquisition, which allows us to do either similar deals or grow our revenue. Our core strategy is very much to grow our revenue. We have a very strong customer base in this. We will be supplying to Siemens as part of the overall deal. We have a Tier 1 that we announced two years back, which will get into supply within the foreseeable future.
But also, we have got other customers in this market. So let me address a captive issue. I mean, Siemens, if you looked at it before the previous deal, Siemens had a telluride manufacturing business that they bought in 2011. But their technology is really suited for their CT business. So they chose to do a deal with Kromek to get access to materials and this technology for their SPECT business.
Similarly, apart from Canon, we expect we have got opportunities. We expect to have opportunities to supply or do similar deals with every other OEM that is present in the market today because we have a full breadth of technology, both for the CT side, which is X-ray-based, and SPECT side, which is gamma-ray-based. And we expect to not only grow our revenues but also have the option to do similar deals to Siemens. In terms of the quantum, I think we addressed this with the very first que
stion. The quantum that was paid for this licensing deal was very similar to our market cap at that point. So we believe this was a good deal for us, our shareholders, which has provided us a very solid foundation to really grow the business profitably. The next question. I attended this recent CMD and have followed the company and broker updates.
You gave a medium-term target of $60 million revenue and 30% EBITDA margin. There have been recent contract wins and appears to be momentum in the business. The revenue forecast in the broker reports seem to be increasing at a relatively slow pace, and EBITDA margin seems to be decreasing rather than increasing. Is this related to the Siemens contract payments, and separately, is there anticipated of a large jump-up in revenues and margin in 2028, 2029? Otherwise, the target seems unattainably high. I'd appreciate your thoughts and clarifications. Do you want to take the first half of the margins, and then I'll talk about the growth plans?
Absolutely. We still stand by GBP 60 million of revenue, 30% EBITDA margin. The growth, and when I say midterm, that's five years, but that's 2030. I'm not talking three years. The way the business grows, particularly within the advanced imaging, the contract profile does show a ramp-up as we move forward, and those sales come online. We get more customers. Those markets that we're looking at, that's not a speculative GBP 60 million. We've got a visibility and a flight path to that. Otherwise, we would not have told you those numbers. Sorry, I just got back to the question.
There was the first part of that question was the EBITDA coming down next year. So what was?
Yeah. So the Siemens revenue and contract, obviously, we've been working 20-plus years to amass the IP and know-how and knowledge to get the ability to license that IP. So the margins coming down is just really a reference to the product mix and the Siemens revenue reducing. The underlying costs of the business are very disciplined, consistent moving forward. And the gross margins within the other underlying business, within advanced imaging and CBRN, are also consistent or growing. So within this business, it's very important to not just look at the total numbers in isolation. We really need to look at the product mix that feeds into that.
Just to add a couple of points and Claire's points that Claire made on the growth trajectory. The midterm targets, in the very short term, over the next 12 to 36 months, as our slides demonstrate, we have got the majority of the structural elements of that growth captured within either the revenue that we are going to generate through the framework, either the Siemens as the enablement contract revenue comes down, the Siemens supply contract is going to start to kick in.
We've got the Tier 1 contract, which would be in its early revenue days from within that period as well. And of course, the IDIQ and the framework contracts we have got in the U.S. So in the very short term, we don't have to win anything big to really deliver our numbers that are there. If we win big, of course, those could be additives.
But in that medium term, there's a number of additional lines that open up. Firstly, the biocommercialization starts within that period. Secondly, the Tier 1 contract in the advanced imaging that happens, that goes into a reasonable ramp, as Claire rightly pointed out. The Siemens revenues continue. And of course, there are other products that come in the pipeline that we showed in CBRN, which is the 300 million-plus pipeline today we have for known programs with a spend profile within that period of time.
If we take all of those layers of business, existing what we have, the bolt-ons that we are expecting on the bio and the Tier 1 ramping and the Siemens revenue coming through, we have a very good flight path, as Claire rightly points out, towards that medium-term target.
Although the EBITDA, as the current number stands in next year compared to last year, comes down, but I think there is plenty of opportunities to actually grow very strongly even in the short to medium term and improve profitability as is there. Latest regulations require airports to allow change in X-ray imaging requirements where electronics and liquids need not to be taken out of the cabin bags. We haven't heard many wins in that area.
Who are the competitors in that field? Look, we have a stable customer base within that, so you're not hearing a lot of wins, but we are working with companies like Analogic. We have a customer in the U.S. which remains unnamed, but we supply into them, and we have got other customers. Aviation remains a small part of the business in the advanced imaging.
Our main real big focus is in the medical imaging in SPECT and CT, and the majority of our drivers of growth are really in that medical imaging. Although aviation will form part of that overall revenue mix and growth mix, the biggest growth is going to be driven through what we have established, delivering, and are going to deliver within the medical imaging segments.
When going for CBRN bolt-on M&A, what capabilities are you looking to acquire? Great question. We are not looking to acquire technology. So we are looking to either acquire products which will fill our product portfolio gaps because if you look at radiation detection, there are multiple product categories. We make three of them. So there are other categories we can add on to. So that's one. Or secondly, if we have enhanced access to markets and customers.
So we are looking for profitable businesses to acquire, which gives us either product portfolio or better access to market, which accelerates our growth. The next question is, how will Trump's tariffs impact? I don't know whether you want to take it, whether it's tariffs between the U.K. and U.S. and supply chain tariffs and all.
So, tariffs very, very much in the news. In terms of moving forward, contracts will be plus tariffs. So, those tariffs will get passed on to the end user.
The next question, how much is Kromek paying to its PR firms? That's an operational question, so I don't think it's particularly we always evaluate contracts and the value we get back, so I don't think that's really an answer we can provide in this forum.
But what I should say is, with all suppliers, we benchmark and we continue to review, and we believe that all of our key suppliers give us very, very good value for what we're doing.
Given the cash in hand and the revolving credit, why was interest due discharged in dilutive shares?
That was agreed at the time the contracts were put in place, and the shares were due to be discharged, or the interest payment was due to be discharged prior to the arrangement of the RCF being in place and also prior to the receipt of the Siemens next tranche of money, and we felt at the time it was the best solution for the business to return cash in the business.
These interests were basically for the periods of last year, last one year before repayment. These were incurred before the Siemens deal was actually executed when cash was, of course, tight, and the option for the loan holder was either to take the interest in cash or in shares. If it were to be paid in shares, the price of the shares was calculated at the point when the interests were due.
Although it was settled slightly after the Siemens deal, the period was actually prior to the Siemens deal where I think it was a right thing for us to do to pay in shares rather than pay in cash. Recent incident at Heathrow Terminal with regard to a chemical gas leak seems to be an issue that could have been addressed using Kromek solutions.
Is that correct? And are you in touch with Heathrow authorities? We don't do chemical detectors, so we are into radiation detection and going to be we have got an emerging capability going commercial in biological detection. So no, it wouldn't be relevant detectors to use. In these type of situations in which can be active terrorism or particular incidents, it is the it's led by the government, those investigations. If you look at the MoD contract and the U.K. Home Office contract under which we are delivering products, those are the kind of products which would be used in incidents if it was to do with radiation.
So yes, we are very much part of that solution, but the Heathrow incidents was not relevant for what we do. Can you provide backlog as part of your financial reporting? Backlog should be PO-backed.
We try to be as transparent as we possibly can on contracts, so we announce the size of the contract when we win. We can't be squirreled on a contract-by-contract basis because obviously we've got confidentiality to individual customers, and often it's quite sensitive, and we have to get approval from the customer to make the announcement in the first place. We try to give you guidance in our presentations as to the pipeline and the forecasts that we've got in place. Will I be doing a specific backlog based on POs? There's no plans to do that at this moment in time, but I'm always open to suggestions, and we'll take that question away and have a think about it.
So traditionally, just to add on that, traditionally what we have done and will continue to do is to provide the revenue visibility guidance, which is actually PO-backed. But it doesn't reflect the total backlog because our backlogs can be over several years in that instance. But as we go forward, like we have done divisional reporting for the first time and given the market visibility, those are things that we will put in place as and when appropriate.
Is there a plan to protect the company in the event of serious illness or worse of top management? Yes, we do have critical illness covers and key man insurances. But most importantly, we have a team which has got a second layer in the business as well. So there are people in the business who can fill gaps as and when required.
Yeah, this is a continuous sort of thing that the board reviews in terms of key risks and we keep an eye on. It's also, as you have seen, as we go into the divisional reporting, Berry Beumer, who is on the board, is the president of that division. Again, the way the business is being managed is in a devolved manner, and we are similarly going to see the CBRN segment is also independently operating from a management point of view with its own commercial head and so on.
Yeah, all of that layering actually helps. Of course, this is an ongoing risk that we are continuously monitoring, and we have some things in place, but that's done on a continuous monitoring basis. You have stated that doubtful debt provisions may relate to timing issues.
Could that suggest that some sales are recognized too early or sales on return basis, in which case it should have a return provision be incepted? No, it's not sale and return.
No, it's definitely not sale and return. I think there were some unique circumstances. That said, going forward, because of things that were particularly unique that we didn't expect to happen, there have been some changes within what we're doing and how we're going to do things going forward. So as I said before, this provision will not be repeated.
I think that answers all the questions. So thank you very much for your time. Just to summarize really, this has been a pivotal year for Kromek. The Siemens deal has certainly been instrumental in not only changing the financials of the business, but also demonstrating the value that we have created within our IP products and technologies, which has now got a demonstrable monetization track record.
So the two markets we are in, the big growth drivers of better healthcare with a reduced cost through early detection, where we'll see that technology plays in, or increased defense spends because of the threats from conflicts that are emerging, where our CBRN detectors are putting the best capability in with our war fighters and first responders. We are very well aligned to those growth drivers in those businesses in both segments.
So what we do, what we produce is actually needed in the market, and that is why we are going to grow continuously on a profitable and a sustainable basis going forward and with a clear focus on building shareholder value. Thank you very much for attending.
Thank you.
Perfect. Arnab, if I may just jump back in there, and thank you very much indeed for updating investors this afternoon. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order for the management team to better understand your views and expectations? This may take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Kromek Group PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, so good evening to you all.