Again, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the various lands on which we work and meet today, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have joined us on the call today. Presenting today we have Alcidion's Managing Director, Kate Quirke, and Chief Financial Officer, Matthew Gepp. Kate and Matt will take us through a presentation, which will cover off the commercial and financial highlights of the half, and once it's concluded, we will conduct a Q&A. All attendees here on the call will have the opportunity to ask questions at the conclusion of the presentation. If you would like to ask a question, please do so using the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen.
We don't have all day to do the call, unfortunately, so I may group some questions together, just to avoid repetition. And if we don't get to your questions today, then please don't worry, I will come back to you on email. So with that, I'll hand over to you now, Kate. Thank you.
Thanks, Hannah, and thank you to everyone who has joined us on the call today. As I said in my commentary that was in the ASX release, the first half of FY 2024 has been a mixed result for Alcidion, as we continue to operate in a challenging healthcare environment that has continued to see significant procurement delays, which, when combined with budget constraints, has impacted the revenue growth and growth of the directory. Despite those delays, though, we have continued to improve the long-term financial profile by increasing our contracted forward revenue, which is a key feature of our business model, in that we have that ability to sign long-term contracts with recurring revenue out 3-5 and beyond years into the future. We lodged an updated investor presentation this morning as well.
So before getting into the financial detail of the half-year results, which Matt, both Matt and I will go through, I did want to give some further color as to who we are as a business, for those that may be new to Alcidion, why we believe we're an attractive market proposition, and some of the areas also where we have enhanced our product offering over the last six months. As many of you know, Alcidion's proposition is to provide smarter solutions for healthcare, and we have a key focus, really, on making the clinicians' lives easier through the use of our solutions to harness the data that's available in healthcare, so that we can provide safer care for patients, improved patient care, and that we do that by supporting the decision-making of clinicians on the front line.
To put it simply, we recognize the power of data, and when it's presented in a way that supports clinical decision-making, it can improve the efficiency of the healthcare system, the safety of patients, but also particularly at a time when we've got such an increasing demand on, our workforce in healthcare. We've got budget constraints and, and workforce challenges. At the core of our solution is our FHIR, F-H-I-R, which stands for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, platform, which is an interoperability platform, and we use that platform to bring focus to areas in healthcare, where data and insights from our platform, Miya Precision, can help to address some of the challenges in healthcare that we're seeing today.
Patient flow continues to be a very challenging area that is hindering efficient healthcare delivery, and simply the ability to get enough patients through the healthcare system. We support the improvement of patient flow through synthesizing the data that comes from electronic medical records and other electronic healthcare systems. We take that data, and we provide insights into that data, which help to improve flow and reduce the blockers, for example, to efficient bed management. We are also extending the value of that by supporting virtual care or hospitals in the home, which is where we're helping patients to be cared for in place or in situ, thereby reducing the in-hospital care needs and reducing readmissions to hospital. Several other areas that we are focused on, which you can see from the slide there, I won't go into all of them.
And there's a little bit more detail about that in the deck that was lodged today. During the first half of the year, we continued to evolve our product offering by releasing several additional modules and upgrading or improving on modules that are currently deployed. We're really excited to release Miya Emergency, which is adding the power of the Miya Precision platform with additional workflows that really focused on supporting the modern deployment and management of busy emergency departments. And that is being, you know, the emergency department being the front door of the hospital is an area where we see, you know, ambulances being ramped and unable to get into emergency, and then emergency, getting patients out of emergency in a reasonable time, either back home or into the healthcare, into the hospital system, is really challenging.
And our new module, Miya Emergency, is really focused on the improvement of that when combined with the power of Miya Precision. The latest version of Miya Results Tracking came to market. Really excited about this. It's an area that I think is under-addressed in respect of technology, and an area that I don't think the wider public understands, that, you know, as many as 75%, it's reported, of results go actually unacknowledged, which potentially means that nobody has actually viewed those results. Miya Precision is in a, in Miya Results Tracking, is really focused on, at a glance, how do you acknowledge and notify and identify those results that have not been acknowledged? Which thereby improving the patient safety and providing a digital safety net for patients and clinicians.
And in a, you know, very significant milestone for us and for our PAS, PCS customers, PCS being the name of the product that we acquired from Silverlink, we brought the future of patient administration to market in the last month. From the outset, from the acquisition of Silverlink, we wanted to define the future of patient administration. We understood the depth of the product that we were buying in respect of PCS, and it has a real powerful depth of information, and we've now made it available in the modern Miya Precision framework, ensuring that all the depth of the functionality that came with that is available alongside the power of the Precision platform.
It's a very exciting milestone for the Precision platform, and for our customers, and for our future opportunities, particularly in relation to those electronic patient record opportunities that we are pursuing in the U.K. Moving now on in a little bit more detail, I will let Matt go through the detail of the financials and breakdown into each of the areas of P&L and so forth, but I did wanna give some highlights in respect of that and some of the actions that Alcidion is taking. As I said at the beginning, it's been a mixed result for Alcidion, with external conditions making it a very challenging operating environment for us, and it is one that has been felt by most companies across the healthcare industry.
Despite the challenges in H1, we increased our forward five-year revenue from FY 2025 to FY 2029 by extending our contract with South Tees out to 2033, which also includes the potential for further modules to be taken, as well as an extension of that contract through to 15 years. So the potential value of that contract is around AUD 54 million, the initial one being AUD 23.3 million, and that's all we've counted in the five-year forward outlook at the moment. But the potential upside exists there, as well as with many of our other contracts. Our five-year forward revenue now stands at AUD 126 million, noting that we do have negligible customer churn. And this really, you know, seeks to underpin the long-term financial profile of Alcidion.
That is AUD 126 million from next financial year and beyond before we add any further contracts to it, and I think that's really important when you look at the longevity of organizations like Alcidion, and their ability to weather some of these ups and downs that we see in respect of our short-term revenue pressures. H1 revenue was AUD 19.1 million, which was in line with H1 revenue last year. The gross profit margin increased to 88%, which was largely driven by product mix. During the period, we made an EBITDA loss of AUD 2.9 million, which was largely a reflection of the headcount increases we made in late 2020, FY 2023, and those being the full cost of that headcount being seen within the first half.
I will touch shortly on some action we've taken around decreasing the cost base to improve our EBITDA positioning, as we move forward. Contracted revenue for the full year stands at the 31st of December, at AUD 35.5 million, which is 4% up on the same time last year, noting that we still have a further six months remaining in the year to build upon that with new sales. Despite the challenges in the delayed procurements in the first half, we've continued to demonstrate the value of our solutions. As I said, we signed the new South Tees contract. We had new TCV sales of AUD 24.3 million.
Included in that amount is 20.5 of the South Tees contract extension, which is the new component of that contract, and there was AUD 3.8 million of additional new sales, above and beyond South Tees. The other new sales included the sale of Miya Precision and Miya Emergency to a new trust in Hampshire Hospitals, which is a sister trust to University Hospital Southampton, who are also currently implementing Miya Precision and Miya Emergency. Implementations of our solutions also continued at a pace, particularly with those that we had sold in FY 2023, now coming to the point of going live.
As flagged in our Q2 quarterly, though, we do recognize that the need to balance our current revenue and the revenue forecast with the cost base, albeit at the same time ensuring that we are able to deliver upon those growth opportunities. So as a result of that analysis, we intend reducing the annual cost base by AUD 6.4 million, which is a combination of what we announced in the last quarterly, plus an additional reduction in headcount, which is currently being undertaken. It's worth noting that in 2023, we completed some major customer deliverables, such as a large part of the Australian Defence Force deliverable for Leidos, and we had scaled up staff materially in particular areas to deliver that.
We've also scaled the business with new processes and new systems, introduced automated testing, implemented systems that help us to streamline activities, and that means that we can operate the business more efficiently with less staff. While letting staff go is never easy, and never an easy process for any business, and I'd like to acknowledge the impact that it has on those staff members who will be leaving us, we also know that we're not alone in the healthcare tech space with having to reduce costs to align with the softer revenue outlook, and we're aware of competitors taking similar actions to this in recent days. The cost base reduction will reduce our annualized cost base to approximately AUD 34 million, ensuring on the current revenue rate that the business will be profitable in future years.
However, given the associated costs of the restructure and the timing of those redundancies and where they fall within the financial year, the cost is expected to be about AUD 1.1 million to the business. The full annualized impact will therefore not be recognized this year, and, as a result, Alcidion will not be in a position to deliver an EBITDA positive result for FY 2024. We've purposely structured the realigned cost base in a way, though, to avoid compromising our ability to win those new large contracts and allowing us to continue to deliver on excellent customer service, as has been expected from our customers.
While we continue to be frustrated by the delays in contracts being awarded and the time it's taking for them to move through procurement, we're also comforted by the number and size of ongoing tender processes that are coming to market now. You know, for example, we're currently tendering for several large EPR contracts, as well as a number of flow contracts, with a total aggregate lifetime contract value of over AUD 200 million, and we expect more tenders to be released before the financial year end. While we don't expect to win all of those tenders, or for the process to complete, necessarily in this financial year, it does demonstrate the overall, overall sizable market opportunity that is available to Alcidion. So to give you a little bit more detail on the financials, I'm now gonna hand over to Matt.
Thank you, Kate. Good morning to everyone who's joined us for this half year results presentation. You know, Kate's touched on some of the high-level numbers. Now, the business delivered AUD 19.1 million revenue in the first half of the year, marginally higher than the prior corresponding period, and of course, not quite where we'd hoped to be at this point in the year. Recurring revenue increased AUD 0.2 million, non-recurring revenue decreased AUD 0.1 million, and we saw a nice uptick in the gross profit margin to 88%, which delivered, 400,000 additional gross profit to the business, compared to the prior year. And that's largely a result of the product mix in the half.
Planned increases in staff costs, largely due to planned headcount increases in the second half of 2023, saw those costs up AUD 1.7 million to AUD 16.3 million. And while that's relatively large compared to H1 last year, when you compare it to the second half of 2023, which was AUD 15.7 million, it's only 3.5% higher than that period. So a lot of those cost increases are a result of changes in the cost base in the second half of 2023. The business delivered an EBITDA loss of AUD 2.9 million. That's AUD 1.7 million lower than the loss in the prior corresponding period and is largely a result of the flat revenue, coupled with the increase in the staff costs. We acknowledge this result is not where we anticipated it to have been.
Kate has touched on the causes behind that, primarily delays in customer procurement that have created headwinds for the business in the first half. We are addressing that directly through a reduction in our underlying operating expenses, with reductions in the staff base in Q3 that have been announced today. We'll see a AUD 4 million reduction in annualized staff costs. In combination with the savings we realized in H1 of AUD 2.4 million, we expect our ongoing staff costs will reduce by around AUD 6.4 million on an annualized basis. A quick snapshot of revenue versus the prior corresponding period. We actually had quite a good half in the ANZ business. ANZ revenue is up AUD 800,000 to AUD 11 million. That's the largest revenue contribution from the ANZ business that we've ever delivered.
UK revenue was down AUD 700,000 to AUD 8 million. As touched on previously, that leaves revenue just marginally ahead of the prior year. With that in mind, the ANZ business represented 58% of total revenue in the half, and the UK representing 42%. That's slipped from prior years and prior halves, and the prior corresponding period, the ANZ business was contributing 54% of revenue. It is pleasing to see that the recurring revenue continues to get stronger, and we ended this half with 74% of our revenue being derived from recurring sources, and that's a theme we expect to see moving forward as well. Touching on the balance sheet. Look, there's not a lot of interesting things to talk about here on the balance sheet.
You know, the two big numbers or the two important numbers being the cash at AUD 7.9 million and the trade receivables at AUD 7.3 million. You know, that compares to the AUD 3.3 million we ended June with. Impairment of debtors has never been an issue for Alcidion, with the majority of that opening balance now having been collected since the period end. Balance sheet was strengthened, of course, late in the half with a placement and SPP, which added net AUD 5 million of cash to the balance sheet, and excluding the deferred revenue balance, we ended the half with just over AUD 10 million in working capital. And, you know, which sets us up well for the rest of the year.
Moving on to the cash flow, which we've all seen already at the 4C, that this is pretty much identical to what we announced at the end of January. Now, after delivering an AUD 8 million operating cash outflow in Q1, we saw quite an improvement in Q2, albeit it was still a negative result of AUD 3.4 million, and has seen us end the half with AUD 11.4 million operating cash outflow. We are expecting the second half to be considerably stronger, both on the receipts and the expenditure side, and, and the forecast being a positive H2 operating cash flow. That's it for me, Kate.
Thanks, Matt. As mentioned earlier, we continue to grow our forward-looking recurring revenue. During the first half, we added significant contracts such as the AUD 20-AUD 23.3 million South Tees contract extension, which added an additional 8 years, which was for the Miya Precision electronic patient record. As I've touched on, there's further options to extend that out to 15 years, and module add-ons allowed as well. We also signed another contract for Miya Emergency, which I touched on before, with the Hampshire Hospitals, adding to the deployment of ED, Miya Emergency at University Hospital Southampton. The importance of that is that they're both in the same integrated care system, and that ICS is expecting to be going to procure a full EPR later this year.
We continue to renew contracts with several key customers, alongside sales of technical and product implementation services in addition to that. Just an update on Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust, as I outlined in the release. Dartford initially signed a contract with Alcidion for Miya Precision in March 2019, and it was for electronic noting and our nursing observations platform, and over time, they added electronic prescribing and other modules as well. But they've never actually gone to market for an electronic patient record. Their initial contract has run the full term and is due to be renewed at the beginning of March. In order to attract funding from NHS England, they will be required to go for a full EPR procurement at some point in the next few years.
But in order to ensure that they continue to use and have the benefit of Alcidion's Miya Precision modules, they are about to sign an extension to our contract for three years. It'll be worth around GBP 3.4 million, significantly more than the original five-year contract. Includes a movement of the solution to cloud deployment. They initially had deployed on-premise. So we're very excited to be continuing that relationship with Dartford over the next little while. Why I'm announcing this now is that Dartford, as a requirement from NHS England, have notified the market that they have an intention to sign this contract, and therefore it is public knowledge. But we will do a formal announcement once the contract is signed, which we expect to happen in the next few days.
Product implementation and technical service delivery has always been a strength of Alcidion, and the business, and what we do, and this continued in the first half of FY 2024. Along with the continued successful delivery to our Leidos partners for the Australian Defense Force project, we also went live with the first Miya Precision deployment into a community and mental health trust in the UK, with Herefordshire and Worcestershire going live with Miya Precision Flow, Access, and Command. We continued to roll out Smartpage in to New Zealand sites, with Waikato District very happy with the implementation of Smartpage Non-Clinical, which allows rapid and reliable messaging and dispatching of tasks across the health service for portering and cleaning services, and so forth.
Continuing on the Smartpage theme, the Isle of Man completed the rollout of all Smartpage modules by adding our latest one, which was Emergency Response, which is used to support the alerting of codes in hospitals. So if you've ever been in a hospital and heard code blue, code black, code yellow, this historically has been done to pages. Now they're using Smartpage for that functionality. The Isle of Man actually became an Alcidion customer back in 2016 when they selected Patientrack for nursing observations, and they've subsequently added in all of the Smartpage modules. And again, that demonstrates the value and the approach that we take around being a modular offering, so that we can continue to sell additional capabilities to our customers, where they are interested.
Our work also continued with Calvary Health in the production of their Calvary Health data hub. Our data and analytics team worked with Calvary Health to deliver this capability. It currently encompasses 28 live dashboards, ingesting data sources from across 38 separate data sources and 7 years of data. It's a really valued source of... A single source of truth across Calvary Health in respect of managing their environment. Looking forward to the second half and beyond, we're optimistic the market is heading in the right direction, and we have seen several tenders released recently. Many of which we expected to see in the first half, and while slow, there is certainly more movement.
As at the 31st of December, the contracted revenue able to be recognized in FY 2024 was AUD 35.5 million, up 4% on the prior corresponding period, and we expect to build upon that further in this half. Recognizing the continued procurement delays, as I've outlined, and the need to appropriately balance future growth potential against the current cost base, we are implementing further annualized cost savings, primarily via the reduction of headcount. They will total, in total, for the year, contribute AUD 6.4 million in annualized savings. AUD 2.4 million of that have already been discussed and addressed in the Q2 update. But there's an additional AUD 4 million of it, of cost savings that will be implemented over the coming month, and that has commenced.
Given the various timings for the cost savings, coupled with the costs of the restructure and redundancy, we'll only realize about AUD 2.2 million of the total annualized cost savings in this financial year. These cost savings have been implemented to streamline very specific business operations, and they'll not impact our ability to win the larger contracts, which continue to remain a key part of our future growth profile. There are several large EPR contracts in play at the moment, which collectively, along with some of the other tenders that are out there, you know, equate to, you know, pipeline of over AUD 200 million in terms of contract revenue. We've also focused on ensuring we can continue to provide high quality support and services to our customers.
As I mentioned earlier, we've done that because we've really focused on the processes and systems that we've put in place over the last 18 months to scale the business, that allows us to run more efficiently than previously. Cash flow for the second half of FY 2024 is expected to be positive. In the absence of larger contract wins, which are progressing, but they're obviously, as I've said, timing is highly unpredictable. We expect to achieve second half year revenue similar to the first half, and furthermore, while the company expects to achieve an improvement in the underlying EBITDA for the second half, given the reduced revenue outlook, it does not, we do not expect to be EBITDA positive in FY 2024.
While the short-term revenue growth has been impacted by the challenging environment, the business has seen an increased number of tender processes, and I think that demonstrates the overall sizable market opportunity that Alcidion has. We remain very well positioned for long-term, with AUD 126 million of sold and renewal revenue already committed in the next five years, excluding the current financial year commitment. We have a strong cash balance at the end of December, as reported in the quarterly. It was AUD 7.9 million, and that's been obviously increased as we've gone into the next quarter. And we certainly expect to build further on that over the coming half. I am now very happy to, to take questions on any of this.
Thanks so much, Kate. We do have a few questions that have come in. Again, to anybody on the call, if you want to ask a question, please do so using the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. Okay, so starting from the top, what was the catalyst for increasing your cost cutting? And what sort of cuts are you making, and how sustainable is this?
Well, absolutely, we've made a careful consideration has gone into it so that we can be sustainable, and we have looked at where the business may have redundancies. You know, some of that may be in middle management. Some of it may be as a result of having implemented systems that can automate some of the processes that were being done manually. We also, as I said, have come to the end of a large part of the delivery for the Australian Defence Force program of work. And we did add, I think, some 13 heads in order to address that. So there's a combination of areas from which we've been able to draw it.
The catalyst has been really, as I said, and I think I indicated as much at the second quarter, that we would look, come February, at what the forward revenue projection would be for this financial year, and whether tenders that we anticipated, and I'm not talking about the electronic patient record tenders here, but the tenders from other areas that were progressing, whether they would land in this financial year. And if they do, I think they're gonna land towards the end of the financial year, and therefore, one could see that revenue and cash were going to be impacted. So I think it was a combination of looking at the business and understanding that we could run it more efficiently, but also that it was important to adjust the cost base at this point in time.
I fully believe that the adjusted cost base can support a much higher revenue multiple as we go forward, mainly because of those efficiencies, and processes, and systems. We are no longer anywhere near start-up or scale-up. We are now, you know, a business that is mature and is running mature processes to support our customer delivery.
All right. Thanks very much, Kate. One more here. So it's actually two questions. It says: "The NHS financial year ends on the thirty-first of March. Is there historically much activity prior to year-end, and does that impact the timing of any contracts awarded in H2 of this financial year or FY 2025?
Historically, correct. There is activity at the end of March. I think there will still be some activity, but the EPR contracts, as I have said in previous calls, have really had an impact on the total procurement landscape in the NHS. So that people have stopped looking at what they're doing in the smaller procurements and have focused on how they can extract funds from NHS England, and in order to do that, they need to go through the EPR process, and the EPR process takes its time. We also know that the funds for the electronic patient record program have been moved out of this financial year substantially.
So it does impact timing, and it has certainly meant that this year has been an unusual one in respect of all of the other modular activity that we would usually see coming out of the UK. I do expect that there will be contracts awarded, and obviously the Dartford one is going to be of a reasonable size for us and will have some forward cash associated with it, and there may be some other smaller contracts of that nature. But we would not expect any of the EPR contracts that we are involved in to impact this financial year's revenue.
... All right, so this was the second part of the question. It says, "What, if any, have you budgeted for costs of entering new region, and what does that commercial timeframe look like?
Look, we have been looking at new regions for some time now, and there is many ways in which you can choose to enter a new region. Some of them is about going and setting up your own company, such as we did in the many, many moons ago when we first started entry into the UK with Patientrack. Others is around looking at partnering with people who or companies that are already in situ where their offering may enhance our offering may enhance their offering. And that is a far less expensive way and a way in which to test your offering in new markets.
So at this point, we're not budgeting any significant costs associated with entering new markets, but certainly are starting to look at Canada, which I've obviously looked at and have spoken about before, as a very viable market entry point for us, that we will potentially choose to partner with someone. And maybe have somebody on the ground in a contract sort of basis that can advise us without having to necessarily set up an entire shop there until we start to demonstrate traction.
All right, thank you. Next one. Of the GBP 200 million TCV you're tendering for, is that mostly contract expansions with existing sites or new trusts? And what percentage split is there between big EPR projects versus smaller modular additions?
Look, the pipeline. The TCV of contracts we're going after is actually larger than GBP 200 million. That GBP 200 million is really what the value is of the EPR U.K. contracts. They're fairly sizable. But if you look at our pipeline at the moment, it is a combination of some EPR contracts. There are a lot of modular and flow opportunities and virtual care opportunities amongst our pipeline. So of the tenders that we are currently going for, there would be a mix of electronic patient records, as well as the smaller modular plays around flow, observations, and virtual care.
Okay, so this kind of leads on to: Is it realistic to assume that large EPR contracts being tendered for will take at least 12 months from submission of the tender to a contract signing?
That is the published timetable that the tenders have in them at the moment, yes.
Okay. So, did Alcidion lose any tenders to competitors during January or February?
No, we did not.
No. Due to the revenue waiting on the second half of each financial year, will another capital raise be needed to survive future years?
We are not planning on having to do a capital raise. Obviously, adjusting the cost base has been done, with a full, knowledge of what the cash flow and future revenue, projection is at this point in time, and we will be managing the business to that forecast revenue.
All right, one more here, maybe for you, Matt. It says: To what quantum do you expect second half 2024 operating cash flow to be positive, particularly given the AUD 11 million cash outflow in 1H 2024?
We're not guiding on that number at the moment. You know, we do have costs associated with the restructure program that we're undertaking at the moment. So look, it's certainly not gonna cover the AUD 11 million that we were down in H1, but we are, you know, we're guiding for it to be positive.
All right. Thanks very much, Matt. One here on: When a patient is discharged in Australia, and they become eligible for at-home medical review, what role do we have in this, and is this something that we are wanting to build?
No, that, I mean, that is not currently the market we're targeting. You'll find that that's probably fairly high volume, low margin type business. Typically, where we are focused is on the hospital using solutions such as ours to manage the full patient engagement, including all of their vital signs management, and connection with the patient, who would normally or otherwise be taking up a hospital bed, but is receiving that care instead in their own home.
All right, thanks, Kate. What is your level of confidence re renewal of contracts which are ending in the next 12-18 months?
Well, historically, our renewal rates are very high, with negligible customer churn, as I indicated. We obviously look at each contract on a case-by-case basis as to whether there are, you know, in, there are instances potentially where a U.K. customer may have chosen an electronic patient record that we didn't bid for, and there are many of those, that might be replacing one of our modules. So we obviously look at that in the overall forward projected revenue, but by and large, the confidence in those renewals is very high.
All right, so this is actually interesting question. Given the understandable focus on NHS England, are there any sales opportunities for NHS Scotland or elsewhere in the UK?
Yes, most definitely. There is a tender out at the moment, for example, for Wales, for patient flow. There is also, you may be aware, we have a quite reasonable footprint with both, Patientrack and Smartpage in Scotland. And we continue to see further and new opportunities in Scotland for those modules.
All right. Can you please give an outline on where, in addition to what you just mentioned, where the prospective tenders are located? Are they UK, Australia, New Zealand?
... there's none from New Zealand at this point in time, 'cause they're still just finalizing their restructure, but we're getting close to that being resolved. But I would say there's probably, in just terms of sheer numbers of tenders, there's probably a pretty equal representation between Australia and the UK at the moment. Certainly quite a lot of activity in Australia at the moment.
All right, just two more here. So in relation to new revenue, is there a breakdown between new clients versus existing clients by new modules?
Look, not one that I can sort of readily put up. You know, when we make announcements about customers, we generally tend to indicate whether they are new or extension customers. But you know, Alcidion has always considered that we're at the beginning of the uptake of our modules. And as such, you could expect that new customers will form a large part of our pipeline.
All right, can you provide some color on why the UK revenue was lower over PCP?
I think that's probably for the reasons that I articulated in terms of the procurement delays. The UK has completely focused its procurement on electronic patient records, almost to the exclusion of the modular type cells of observations, you know, Smartpage type deals, flow type deals. And so because they are very large contracts and they're elongated, and there has not been that many of them let in this financial year, it has impacted how we've performed this year versus the prior year.
All right, just one final question here then before we wrap up. What is the product mix which led to the gross margin increase? And are you expecting this product mix to continue?
Yes, it should continue going forward. It just basically means that we sell more of our own product versus, third-party, products. As many of you will know, we on-sell, medications management solution from Better and a couple of others. But yes, I mean, I think, I can't guarantee, you know, what the mix will be half on half, but, it should continue in that trajectory.
All right, well, thank you very much, Kate and Matt. Thank you everybody for joining us today. Before we close, Kate, do you have any last remarks?
As always, I would like to, you know, thank the shareholders for their continued support. Acknowledge that it is a challenging time in respect of shareholders' returns around Alcidion, but I'm extremely optimistic in respect of the opportunities that are ahead of us. Alcidion remains a very well-represented and recognized name and brand in respect of healthcare delivery, and I expect that to continue. I would also like to acknowledge the staff and the team at Alcidion, and the senior leadership team, who are working extremely hard and diligently to continue to ensure that our customers receive the best possible support, and the best possible solutions, to ultimately ensure that, you know, patient outcomes are improved over time. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Kate, and thank you to everybody who joined us. A recording of this webinar will be made available on Alcidion's website this afternoon. Again, thank you, and we look forward to updating you too.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.