Also present are your board of directors, Brian Ward and myself in person, and the other directors, online, mostly overseas, of course, as you're aware, I think. Also here, we have our joint company secretaries, James Agnew and Tracy Weimar. The agenda for today's meeting is set out on the slide. I'll do a very short introduction, followed by a presentation from Barnaby May, and then from Brian Ward, before we get to the, financial statements. And present, we have Clare Stanley, the auditors, to ask any questions, should there be any. When we get to the resolutions of the formal part of the meeting, and we won't read out the resolutions, they'll be shown on the screen, and, the voting procedure is something that James will continue to go through these, but outline how that's gonna work.
Thanks, Jim. Well, actually, we're gonna have a couple of presentations, so we'll deal with the voting procedures after those presentations. But I guess just wanted to give you instructions as it relates to questions. So what we'll do is we'll work through in-person questions before turning to questions submitted online. Okay? For those in-person attendees, just make sure you raise your hand, identify yourself as a shareholder or a guest, we'll then invite you to speak. So that the online audience can hear you, can you just make sure that you're, you know, you speak loud and clearly. And if you are acting as a proxy for a shareholder, please state clearly who you are appointed to represent when introducing yourself to the meeting.
Questions, in terms of the questions for remote attendees, questions can be submitted by clicking the Q&A box, you can see located on your screen. This is highlighted in yellow, in the screenshot now shown. There may be some delay during the course, before we get to your questions, so we ask for your patience. Where appropriate, during the course of the meeting, we'll ask our Joint Company Secretary, Tracy Weimar, to read out questions. I will now hand it back to Jim.
Thank you, James. Just a few introductory words from me. I thought it worthwhile to reemphasize the attributes that give us great confidence in the future of the company, particularly in light of Aroa's share price over the last year. Our success is centered around providing clinically effective products that both improve patient outcomes and lower hospital costs, and do so in large markets, and so allow us to build a successful business for our shareholders. So how are we doing? Our business is based on applying our Aroa ECM technology across a wide range of clinical uses, and now spans four product portfolios. The clinical results in all areas are reinforcing the effectiveness of our technology. Over 6 million Aroa devices have been applied in treating patients. There are now 83 peer-reviewed clinical publications, and an expanding library of real-life case studies.
We're investing substantially in clinical studies, which we need to, for us to achieve widespread uptake in our target markets. The studies observe how our products compare to standard of care and competitive alternatives. As healthcare budgets come under increased strain, hospitals and other health service providers must achieve more with less. The combination of effective clinical outcomes and also lower overall cost to hospitals is what distinguishes us. We're seeing examples of lower cost of care in many procedures, and expect to leverage the study data to demonstrate the financial benefits of our products through lower complication rates and faster healing times. Barnaby May, our Chief Scientific Officer, will shortly be providing an update on these studies and the anticipated highlights for the coming year.
We estimate the market for Aroa ECM-based products in trauma, general surgery, hernia, and breast reconstruction, the areas we are already serving, to exceed $3 billion. So we're only scratching the surface. The challenges for medical practitioners and hospitals replacing existing products are significant, so the rate of uptake of our products is not easy to predict. But as I've just noted, our strategy of demonstrating value to both patients and hospitals is key. We are seeing this in consistent growth across TELA sales as well as Aroa direct. The company has contracts in place with all four of the largest U.S. group purchasing organizations, enabling more than 95% of U.S. hospitals to access our products. We are seeing deeper penetration within existing accounts and increasing average sales rep product density across all categories of tenure.
Bio established its sales team a few years before us and is also on a strong growth trajectory. In May, TELA Bio delivered its 13th consecutive quarter of at least 35% year-over-year growth, and they're forecasting revenue this year of between $74.5 million and $76.5 million. A few words about last year's sales performance and the outlook for this year. Last year, Aroa Direct Sales continued to perform well, led by Myriad growth of 73%. Our sales to TELA Bio were down as they reduced inventory in the first six months of the year. This meant we shipped less product in spite of TELA Bio's sales continuing to grow. As a result, our total sales for the year were below initial guidance, despite increasing the uptake in both our distribution channels.
More recently, our sales via TELA Bio are more in line with their market performance, and so our overall sales increasingly reflect this, as Brian will show in his address. At a time when the market capitalization of Aroa has fallen, I thought it worthwhile to outline how the company considers its underlying value. We aim to build a very successful business, regardless of market conditions. We set our goals in a classical manner. That is, we target marketing, market share, share pricing, margins, and costs in existing and new product markets. This results in a net present value that underpins a highly valued business, and so our confidence in the future. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone working at Aroa, Aroa, for their contributions over the last year.
One of the benefits of a maturing business is that we're able to build on the experienced and capable people who've got us to here, and are also able to secure high-class additional talent. So we see no limitation to attracting and retaining the skills we need for the next stage of our journey. Turning to your Board. In March, we were pleased to welcome Darla Hutton after Steve Engel retired. Steve played a valuable role in shaping the company's direction, and was a pleasure to work with. Darla is a global commercial operations executive and is standing for election at this meeting. She brings experience, significant on-the-ground sales and marketing experience in the medical devices sector, with crucial insights to drive sales of our products within the U.S. and beyond.
Per our director rotation policy, Phil McCaw and John Pinion are also retiring by rotation and offer themselves for re-election today. I'll now hand over to Dr. Barnaby May and Brian Ward. But before I do, I want to express my sincere appreciation to Aroa shareholders. As I outlined, we are just getting started, so thank you for your continued support. Bye.
Thank you, Jim. Barnaby May, Chief Scientific Officer. So I've been with Aroa now since 2008. And my brief for today was to give a bit of a sort of retrospective where we're at in terms of our portfolio of evidence, but then also prospectively looking forward to what to expect this year. You know, since we started publishing back in 2008, as Jim mentioned, we're now at the stage where we've got over 80 publications in peer review. And this is, you know, in part, you know, a huge shout-out to the team at Aroa, but also to all of those collaborators that have joined us along the journey. So these are also, you know, research academics, but also our clinical collaborators as well.
So these 80 publications are summarizing data from not only our preclinical studies, but also from our clinical studies as well. So studies focusing on our wound care product, Endoform, more recently, our Myriad range of products, but then also the products, our reinforced biologics for hernia repair. Now, what's really interesting is when you start to aggregate over all of these, publications and start to look at the cumulative number of patients that we've published outcomes for. So we're currently at around 3,500, 3,500 published patient data. So we've now got a really good lens on clinical outcomes. So stepping back, you know, what have we learned?
So from our preclinical publications, so to date, we've published over 20 peer-reviewed publications, focusing at that sort of deeper understanding around our platform technology, Aroa ECM or Aroa extracellular matrix. And what we've shown in those preclinical publications is the retention of, you know, native structure and also composition, right? So really, this exemplifies the sort of optimal platform technology for the types of clinical applications where we're using Aroa products. If we then turn clinically, what are we seeing when we take some of our Aroa products and then use them in a clinical setting? So the overwhelming feedback that we have from our clinical customers is the rate at which we can quickly regenerate tissue, right? That's been lost or is missing. The second key point is the resilience of our material.
So we're finding particular application of our products in contaminated soft tissue defects. And the feedback that we have from our surgical customers is the persistence of our material in these wounds, where it otherwise may be degraded quite quickly. So if we just dig into some of the data from some of our publications, and in these coming slides, I'm just focusing on our peer-reviewed publications to date for the Myriad product range. Excuse me. One of the things that I mentioned we've noticed is that how quickly we can regenerate tissue in some of these complex volumetric defects.
So if you look across these three examples here, and we take into account the rate at which we can regenerate tissue that's damaged or missing, typically, we're sitting around 3, 3.5 weeks of time to grow up missing or damaged tissue. Often, this is in situations where we've got exposed structures. So by that, I mean, you know, bone and tendon, which are, you know, avascular structures, and are typically very hard to get tissue coverage over. So how does that compare with some of our competitor products? Well, you know, it's not unreasonable to see in the peer review literature, some of our competitor products taking in the range of sort of 6-8 weeks to regenerate missing tissue.
The other key point that we're seeing clinically is the persistence of our material and how robust it is in, particularly in these contaminated soft tissue defects. So by that, I mean those types of defects, like necrotizing soft tissue infections, Fournier gangrene, some of the large, complex ventral hernias. The column in the middle, the CDC contamination grade, so the Centers for Disease Control has a contamination grading score, runs from one, which is a clean wound, all the way through to four, which is a heavily contaminated or an infected wound. Most of our publications are focusing in on these contaminated wounds, right? So grade two and three, right?
Now, what's really interesting is that if you then start to look at our infection rates, right, you may assume that, you know, if you've got a relatively contaminated defect, you may see high, instances and, or incidences of infection. Most typically, our published rates for infection are at 0%. Now, how does that compare with some of our contemporaries in the space? It's not unusual in the scientific literature to see infection rates reported, you know, 20, 30, sometimes 40% with some of our competitor products. So this really speaks to the quality of our Aroa ECM scaffold, and how it can be used in these, you know, particularly complex contaminated defects. Excuse me, skipped one. And then finally, I just wanna talk just around this reapplication number, right?
So often with these types of products, the way surgeons are typically using them is via repeated weekly applications, right? Now, because our material appears to withstand local bacterial contamination, but also local tissue inflammation, our reapplication rates are typically one product application, whereas some of our competitor products are being reapplied up to, you know, seven, eight, nine times, right? So that directly reduces the overall cost of care for these complex soft tissue defects. What can we expect this financial year? So, speaking to the first item on this list, and please, this is not an exhaustive list, it's meant to just show some of the key highlights that we're expecting for this financial year. As a lot of the shareholders will be aware, we're running a large prospective registry study for our Myriad products.
We expect the first publication to come out from a subgroup analysis of that data set. We expect that to publish in this quarter of this financial year, and that's a study looking at the application of our Myriad Matrix product and also Myriad Morcells in complex lower extremity reconstructions. We're reporting out 130 defects. To my knowledge, this will be one of the largest studies published, looking at the application of these types of technologies in complex lower extremity reconstruction and limb salvage. The second project on that list also comes out of the Myriad registry study. So this is looking at outcomes from traumatic wounds. So we currently have, as part of the Myriad registry study, 10 sites that are participating in this study.
Several of those are level I trauma centers based in North America, and they are utilizing our Myriad products on some of their complex traumatic defects. We'll be reporting out a subgroup of that data set also this year, which will capture in the range of 40-50 traumatic defects. Number three on the list, this is a follow-up publication to a publication that we put out about two years ago looking at real-world evidence to support the utilization of our outpatient wound care product, Endoform. In this instance here, we're turning our attention to venous leg ulcers. Our prior publication focused on diabetic foot ulcers, so the publication this financial year will focus on venous leg ulcers. Again, this will be a very large data set, so upwards of 2,000 wounds in that analysis.
And then finally, number four on that list is the randomized controlled trial that we're running for the Symphony product, which is our outpatient skin substitute product. This is a randomized study comparing the healing outcomes using Symphony versus standard of care. That study is currently fully enrolled, and we expect to report out on that in Q4 of this financial year. I'll pass to Brian.
Great. Thanks, Barney. So I'm gonna quickly talk about sales, and then what I wanna talk about is, you know, why we think Aroa is gonna be successful over the next few years. So, you know, most of our focus for our direct sales effort in the U.S. has been on Myriad. So Myriad is our top priority. You know, we've had this product on the market for three years, three years with our own direct sales team. Obviously, in that time, you've seen us come from a relatively low base to, you know, strong sales. So last year it grew 70%, greater than 70%, year-on-year. So we've got good, strong sales momentum there. When we initially started with Myriad, we started in relatively small wounds in distal and salvage and some colorectal procedures.
More recently, we've been moving into much larger procedures in trauma centers and having a lot of success there. So we're certainly seeing a change in the mix of procedures we're selling Myriad. We're seeing Myriad being used in much larger, much more valuable cases. So it's finding a place in these large volumetric defects, and we think, you know, that's an area where it can really shine. As Barney talked about, we're getting more and more compelling clinical evidence coming through. So we're showing that rapid rate of tissue formation, that resilience and persistence, which really makes a difference for clinicians. You know, from a value perspective, not only is it the clinical value that we're bringing, but we're also bringing the large cost savings to hospitals.
I'm gonna talk a little bit about that later in the presentation. You know, as Jim mentioned earlier, you know, we have a tiny sliver of the total market that's available for Myriad, so we think it's got a very long way to run, and we're really just getting started, with the opportunity, for this product. On the TELA Bio side, you know, TELA Bio is a key partnership for us. TELA's responsible for the commercialization of our OviTex products, in the U.S. We have a co-development arrangement with them. We're also involved in manufacturing, the products for them. Now, over the last, 10 years or so, we've built out a wide portfolio of products for TELA Bio.
Where we started in complex hernia, we've expanded into more straightforward hernias and robotic surgery, and then more recently expanded again to laparoscopic and inguinal hernia. So we're building out a large portfolio of products there. I think there's over 50 SKUs now. And we're also now on our second generation product for breast reconstruction. So that portfolio is maturing a lot, and we really think that portfolio is well positioned now for success. You'll see, you know, our year-over-year sales, or TELA Bio's year-over-year sales, have continued to grow strongly. So last year, based on, you know, normalizing to our financial year, they grew 40% year-over-year. Again, the data there is compelling.
So the BRAVO study showed that, the rates of recurrence, which is a critical metric, in repairing ventral hernias, recurrence rates were very low, so less than 3%. If you compare that to, the norms in that market, they're typically 10%-30%, so very low rate of recurrence. And that's, you know, that, that really stands out as being completely different from what's typically been seen in that market before. That BRAVO study has also been now, repeated by independent investigators that are getting similar results, in their studies as well. You know, like our Myriad products, you know, the OviTex products bring disruptive value, so they allow, clinicians to, access products that are very affordable, but also lead to, significant cost savings for the hospital as well.
And also, like Myriad, you know, OviTex, you know, it only has a tiny portion of the total addressable market for those products. So there's a very long way to go with OviTex in terms of gaining market share. So I want to talk a little bit about why we think Aroa can win and, you know, why we think we're well placed to do very well in these markets. And I think, you know, as people in this room will know, you know, building a company like this is not straightforward. You have... It's not a straight line. You have some rabbit holes. You have some things that don't go well and some things that do go well. But we think over the medium to long term, we can build a very successful company.
I think that comes down to some critical factors that really contribute to our competitive advantage and to our ability to build a winning business model. I want to talk about four of those things. The first thing is the value that we can bring to our stakeholders. Barney talked about the clinical outcomes. Assume that we are seeing very good clinical outcomes when we compare these products to alternatives. You know, when we first started out, the publications that we were producing, the numbers of patients in those studies were relatively small. I think what you're gonna see this year is a big change in gears in terms of the quality of data that we're now starting to generate. What you will see now is very large studies coming through that are much more convincing.
So the small studies that we did at the beginning were helpful in terms of getting clinicians to initially use the product, but to get a much larger proportion of clinicians to use the product, you need larger, larger studies, and we're beginning to see that data coming through. So the example Barney gave in terms of the lower limb salvage study coming through this year, 130 patients is a very large number for these sorts of studies. So we think that's really gonna make a difference as those studies come through. It's not just the clinical outcomes that are really demonstrating the value of these products. The way our hospitals get paid for using or for following the procedures where our products are used is as a lump sum fee.
So for them, their payment is capped, so they don't want to end up having additional complications or additional costs associated with these procedures. So what we're being able to show now is that we're controlling the rates of complication. We're keeping those low, and particularly, as Barney mentioned, very low rates of infection, which is unusual for these sorts of products. And so seeing a big difference there. As Barney mentioned as well, fewer applications, so that's fewer applications of the product, but it's also less going back to the operating room, less cost for them in terms of their people, and it's easier for them operationally to run their hospitals. We're seeing, with this rapid tissue formation, a shorter length of stay, so they can get to definitive closure a lot quicker and get the patient out.
We're also, you know, our products have typically been discounted from the market leaders, so this has been important, certainly through COVID and while hospitals have been under financial stress to get our products going. And so we're saving them money right across the board, and we think that's very compelling for them in the future. I think we've got a very unique product portfolio as well. So we've put a lot of focus on developing our platform technologies, and we have some very unique resources and capabilities within the company. Developing the Aroa ECM platform has been a big effort early on, but now we're in a position to be able to leverage that effort, and the cost for us to generate new products and line extensions is very small.
We have this huge capacity to increase the scope and breadth of our product range at a relatively limited cost. We also have some very unique technical capabilities within this company, so what we do is very unusual globally. We've managed to attract some people with very deep specialist expertise in this area. I think we've got a leading global team, in this industry. On the Enivo side, you know, we're developing a second platform technology. This is a completely new class of product, and we believe this is going to lead to a family of new products that will be very complementary to our existing offerings.
So if you take these things, these three things as a whole, then we have a very strong pipeline of products that we can feed to our sales team over, you know, for quite a period of time, that can continue to drive product activities. We're also developing more and more commercial leverage. So we've been able to attract to Aroa people that are very experienced in the commercialization of these types of products. So look, if I look around our senior leadership team in the U.S., they've been in this very particular market for at least 10 years, some of them over 15 years, so a very high quality group of people with deep expertise in this market. We're not encumbered with a legacy sales model.
We're developing our sales capabilities in new ways, and I think, we're certainly adapting to changes that are happening within the U.S., and I think we're well placed to do very well with our sales organization. I think the other thing that's unique about our commercial team is that they're very energized by our vision for what we can do with this technology. So we've positioned these products to provide more access for more people, and we believe there's-- that these products have been rationed to a small group of people that have limited capacity to heal. But we also think that there's a much broader opportunity for these products to use them in many more patients. And I think that's something that's really energizing our sales team.
And then lastly, I think for a small company, we've got fantastic GPO access, so we're able to prospect in over 95% of the accounts in the U.S., because of the great job that they've done in terms of opening up GPO access. So we're very well positioned in that respect. The other thing that really stands out about Aroa is our ability to manufacture our products at large scale, at a very high quality, but at extremely low cost. So if you look at most medical device companies, you know, their cost of goods is typically 35%-40%, so they're working on margins around 60%-65%. You know, Aroa has very high margins, so our cost of goods is typically less than 10%. So our margins are typically more than 90%.
That's unusual for a device company, and, you know, it puts us in a very good position. That should improve over time. So we have process improvements coming along that will improve those margins, but we also have a change in sales mix happening as well, where increasingly, our products are much higher margin. So we see that shifting to our favor, in the future. We also have a manufacturing process that, in order to scale it up, we can do that at relatively modest cost. So there's not a lot of capital investment to double manufacturing capacity now. So we're able to do that very well within the funding that we receive to expand the business. So if you think about, you know, why are we gonna win? I think we have a very unique value proposition.
We have a great portfolio of products, and we have the ability to build out that portfolio over time, at relatively low cost. We've, you know, we've attracted a great commercial team with a lot of insight into this market, and we have relatively low cost of goods, so high margins. Yeah. And if you look at financially, you know, we, we see that Myriad and OviTex are gonna continue to drive growth. So we did $69 million this year. Our guidance is $80 million-$87 million next year. Gross margin will continue to improve, so going from 85% last year to, you know, north of 85% this year. We see our sales team maturing, and becoming increasingly productive over time as they spend more time in the territories, as we build out their portfolio.
R&D will track from in excess of 20% at the moment to about 10%. So, you know, that, and that's, you know, more than enough to provide a sort of portfolio that we need for the future. And EBITDA margins will expand. So this year, we lost NZD 3 million. Our guidance for next year is NZD 2 million-NZD 6 million. So, you know, we're making this transition from being, you know, loss-making to moving to be profitable. You know, we see that profitability increasing over time, but at the same time, we're able to maintain high growth on the top line. So, any quest- I'm happy to take any questions. Well, okay. Well, I'll end it there.
Tracy, do you have any questions from the online switch? There are no questions online at the moment. Thank you. Yes?
My name is Tracy. I'm a shareholder. I wish to inquire whether your products are, what I say, in Australia?
So sorry. I might just repeat the question because the people online might struggle to hear on the floor. The question was whether our products are available in Australia.
Yeah.
Yeah. Look, we don't, we're not selling directly in Australia at the moment. However, we do have our Myriad product approved there, and quite recently, we have supplied product into a burn center up in Queensland. So you know, it is a market that we want to build out our presence in, but we are doing it in a relatively limited place at the moment.
Other question?
No, I have a suggestion, Brian. It's just, now the Ukraine war is. Everybody knows that, and, I think your product will save a lot of children's children's life. They heal more quickly. And also, if you are in that market, then, the European or countries or the American, America or Australia, then they, they have been some marketing, that sort of thing. And I'm suggesting that to request for the Australian government to give some money to buy your product, to send to Ukraine. It's just humanitarian aid. And, for example, AUD 1 million or AUD 2 million is a tiny, tiny from the Australian government. Yeah.
But that is just a little bit of logistics, how to reach there. Also, the Ukrainians, many of them don't know English, so, yeah, a little bit of help.
Okay. Yeah, that's a great idea, but we haven't dealt with the Australian government. We have provided a little bit of, w e've donated some product to Ukraine last year, but that's a, you know, look, you know, looking for opportunities with, government agencies on aid, you know, makes a whole lot of sense. Yep.
Oh, it's a very good organization. Then last year, you donated through which organization then?
I couldn't give you that off the top of my head. I mean, it was done through a distributor in Poland that we had, through personal relationships. Yeah. It was my understanding, not through an NGO. Yeah, yeah.
It's just I have read an article from the New Zealand Herald. Two or three pages is introducing a gentleman, I think he's called Kenny.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
You know him? Yeah, he's ex-army officer.
Mm-hmm.
He knows how to distribute those products in Ukraine. Yeah, it's just very impressive because he already had cancer, and he's trying to do so much good things. Mm. Yeah.
Okay. Well, thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you.
Are there any more questions?
Jim, a question has come through online.
Thank you.
I'll just read it out for you. It comes from Colin MacArthur. Most of the studies appear to be registry studies. Could you please advise what RCTs have been published or are in progress?
Yeah. Yeah, great, great question. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, our primary focus for the Myriad portfolio is data coming out of our observational prospective registry study. With regards to randomized controlled trials, we have the Symphony RCT, which I spoke about during my presentation. That's currently fully enrolled of 120. We expect to report that out in Q4 of this financial year. But also, like, you know, just to signal as well, there's been quite a number of comparative studies that have been published, looking at performance outcomes with our reinforced biologics.
Brian referred to the BRAVO study, but there's also probably half a dozen comparative studies that have been peer-reviewed, looking at the performance of our reinforced biologics versus some of the competitive hernia meshes, whether that's the biologics or the synthetic meshes as well. And, you know, generally, you know, the sort of the take home is low recurrence rates with those products.
Thanks, Brian. We now come to the formal part of the business, and the first of those is to consider, have any questions regarding the financial statements which are included in the annual report that was distributed to the shareholders. With us, we have Clare Stanley, the auditors, and James Agnew is our Chief Financial Officer. Are there any questions for James or, or Clare? Tracy, are there any questions remotely?
Jim, there are no questions re on this particular topic. There are others that we can perhaps pick up a bit later in the meeting.
Do you wanna pick those in relation to the presentations by you?
It's right.
Well, I think we should deal with them now.
Oh.
Okay, then. Yeah.
Okay. Let me just read it out in that case, which is: What are your thoughts on why the Aroa products are performing so well in contaminated environments?
So, this is a question that we get fairly regularly. And, you know, without sort of solid data at hand, I speculate that it's down to a couple of factors. So, the first thing to note is, you know, when we're placing our Aroa products, what we see in terms of the quality of the tissue, right? So one of the key take homes in the clinical observations is just the quality of the vasculature within that regenerated tissue, right? So if you're thinking about bacterial contamination and fighting off infection, obviously having a really robust blood supply in that newly built tissue is gonna be key to warding off infection. So that's probably the first thing to note.
The second thing to note as well is that our products and our platform technology will elicit an anti-inflammatory response in the tissue that's being regenerated, right? As opposed to a pro-inflammatory response, right? So I think that's another key factor when we think about, you know, the reduced infection rates that we're seeing. The third piece as well is that we do know from the published data that there are components of the extracellular matrix that have bacteriostatic properties. So I think it's probably not down to one particular feature of our products. It's probably a, you know, an overlap of several features. Hopefully, that answers the question.
Any more, Tracy?
Not at this time.
James, let's get toward the resolutions since you're going to give us a f ind out all the procedures.
So Jim has called a poll on all resolutions at today's meeting. We will shortly be opening voting, so I will briefly outline how you can do this. For those attending in person, I understand that the voting procedures were explained to you during registration, but please raise your hand if there's any questions. Shareholders and authorized representatives attending online can vote via the webinar poll. If you have lodged a proxy form and voted before the meeting, you do not need to vote again at this meeting unless you wish to change your proxy instruction. For those of you who have yet to vote for the meeting, please cast your votes when the webinar poll is opened. You will know that the webinar poll is open when a window similar to that now displayed appears on your screen.
To vote, simply select the option for which you would like to cast your vote. It will then be marked. To submit your vote, simply click on the Submit button. Until we close voting, you can change your vote. The poll results will be tallied after the meeting, and we will announce the results later today. Our share registry, Boardroom, has provided a report on valid proxy votes received before this meeting. We will display the results of the proxy votes on the screen as we go through each resolution. We will now move to the resolutions which are up for consideration today. Details are set out in the notice of the meeting and are taken as read. For online attendees, the poll is now open, and you may cast your votes as we go through the resolutions.
Guests are reminded that we are now in the formal business of the meeting. The opportunities, therefore, for questions and comments, is limited to our Aroa shareholders and their authorized representatives. I will now hand the floor back to Jim.
Thanks. Thank you, James. I'd now refer to resolution one, which is the re-election of Phil McCaw. The board unanimously supports Phil's re-election. You can see the proxies that we have received. Phil, perhaps a few words from yourself.
[Foreign language] . Just a little bit about me. I've been on the board of Aroa now since the first capital round was invested in 2008. So arguably, I'm getting a bit long in the tooth. But with that length of tenure, I think comes deep experience, trusted relationships around the table, and the ability to make sure that we don't repeat some of the errors of the past. As many of you will know, I think, I'm a material investor and shareholder in the company, and I also led my venture fund, Movac, investment into Aroa. My personal stake sits at around 6%, and I'm therefore acutely aware, as many of you are, of our share price performance over the last 12 months.
But my focus has always been on what I see as a significant long-term potential in this, in this business. You know, over my time with the company, I've worked closely with Brian, the exec, and the board, with a particular focus, given my experience on the capital needs of the company, assisting with the structure and negotiation of our major commercial deals, including TELA Bio. And being active in all strategic matters and serving as a member of the Remuneration Nomination Committee. I think this board is outstanding, based on my experience in working across multiple boards. Collectively, we have been proactive in developing and evolving the mix of experience, capability, and diversity of this board as the needs of the company have evolved.
It's a fantastic group, as I said, and everyone is focused and energetic in applying their diverse set of experiences to the business. We debate and challenge strategy and performance, bringing contrasting experiences and views. It would be a privilege to continue serving on this board, on behalf of all shareholders in this group. Thank you.
Thank you, Phil. Are there any questions to Phil? I have one on the floor. Yes.
Yeah, Philip, I wish to inquire about how much you will charge for those AI for those pharmaceutical company, because I'm a shareholder of AFT Pharmaceuticals here. I'll see whether they can afford your service or not.
Is this as a director? Maybe that's something we can take offline. Thank you.
We'll talk to you about that afterwards.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Are there any online questions for Phil? None at this time. Okay. So we move to Resolution two, which is the reelection John Pinion as a director of the company. The board unanimously supports this resolution and recommends shareholders vote in favor of it. John, would you like to say a few words?
Yes. Can you hear me, Jim?
Yes, solid.
Yes. So I've served as a member of the Aroa board for just over nine years now, and it has been my pleasure to do so. I'm really excited about Aroa's progress, its momentum, and the opportunities that lie ahead as presented by Brian today. I'm really looking forward to continued service and supporting Aroa in achieving its vision of unlocking regenerative healing for everyone. To the board and to Aroa, I bring over 30 years of experience across med tech and biotech, across technical disciplines to include translational sciences, tech development, engineering, manufacturing, and quality. I've held a number of global leadership roles at companies to include Baxter, Genentech, Roche, and Ultragenyx. I'd like to think that I contribute in a meaningful way to strategy that we work on as a board and with management.
I thank you for the opportunity to serve.
Thank you, John. Are there any questions for John Pinion? Any questions, Tracy, online? Not at this time. Then we'll move on. Thank you. We'll move on to the third resolution, which I'm very pleased to propose, that Darla Hutton be appointed as a director of the company. The board unanimously supports Darla's appointment. Darla, a few words.
Yeah, thank you very much. My name is Darla, and I am privileged to be here and to also to serve Aroa. You know, I'm a director and also a member of the risk committee since March of this year, and maybe I'll just give you a little bit of detail about my background since I'm new to the group. I have over 25 years of medical technology experience, including global leadership expertise in strategy, in commercial operations, in sales, marketing, healthcare analytics, as well as lean and enterprise consulting. I currently work as the Vice President of Commercial Operations and Marketing for Asia, and also am sitting as the General Manager for India at Intuitive, one of the pioneers of robotic-assisted surgery.
But at my time at Intuitive, I've had leadership roles in sales and corporate accounts, key accounts, marketing, market access, and custom hospital analytics. My teams in the U.S., as well as in Asia, have contributed to the expansion of Intuitive's commercial capabilities, but also to our range of global offering and accessibility to our products. I've also had the privilege to serve as a founding member of Intuitive's Inclusion and Diversity Executive Council, which I'm very passionate about, and I'm a sponsor of both the women and the LGBTQ plus employee resource groups currently. Prior to Intuitive, I've held other positions at med tech companies and biotech companies such as Boston Scientific and GlaxoSmithKline. Then I started my early kind of professional career as a thoracic cardiac advanced nurse practitioner in a large medical center here in Florida.
I look forward to continuing to provide all of these commercial leadership skills and my expertise, really, in how surgeons, hospitals, societies, payers, and policymakers adopt new technologies based on value and data, to help guide Aroa to its full potential and to also accelerate its commercial operations in North America today, while we're accessing new markets for the coming years. So again, I thank you.
Thank you, Darla. Are there any questions to Darla? Tracy, do you have any questions?
Not at this time.
Then I'll move on to resolution four. Yeah. Which is related to auditors, risk, auditors remuneration. The board unanimously supports this resolution and recommends its adoption. Are there any questions? Thank you, Clare. Any questions online, Tracy?
Not at this time.
Thank you. Then I'll move on to resolution five, which relates to the issue of shares to Darla Hutton. The board recommends shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. Do you have explanatory notes in the notice of meeting, which you can, which I'm sure will have read? Are there any questions on this resolution? Any questions online, Tracy?
Not at this time.
Now, with the resolution six, which is the issue and the last resolution, which relates to the issue of performance share rights for Brian Ward. Again, the explanation for these, this proposal, this resolution are in your notes. Are there any questions? None in the room. Tracy, any online?
No questions online.
So we'll now provide shareholders an extra minute or so, poll voting to be completed. If you're in the room and you need some help, please raise your hand. Otherwise, my team knows that we certainly look at. We'll give a minute or so to complete that. Looking around the room, at least it looks like we're complete. I'll now declare the poll closed. The results will be announced to the ASX later today after they have been tallied.
Now as a last coming to the end of the meeting, but if there are any more questions that people would like to ask of any of the board or Brian, or Bob, or James, please ask them. Are there any, are there any questions?
Yes. I wish to inquire about, because your registered office is in San Diego, in USA, and then, California is always, with fires. I wish to know whether the firemen there or the firemen in, New York, that they suffer a lot during the 9/11 attack, or the firemen here in New Zealand or Australia, they can, access this product compulsorily. That would be good.
Yeah, I mean, we, we, you know, for us, we haven't had a big focus on burns, for, you know, the last three or four years. Yes, but that is changing a little bit. So we are, we, we have a study underway at the moment in burns in the U.S. So I think over time, you know, that, that's more likely to become a possibility. But we're very early in terms of doing work in burns. So something we can look to in the future.
Thank you. Right. Yeah.
Thank you. Are there any more questions? Are there any questions online, Tracy?
Not at this time.
Then thank you very much. I'll declare the meeting closed. Thank you, everybody, for your attendance.