I know many of you are in the audience who know me, but for the sake of formality, I welcome you this morning to the annual general meeting of Atomo Diagnostics. And my name is John Keith. I have the privilege and the honor of being the Chair of Atomo Diagnostics, and I will chair today's meeting. We're delighted to be able to host those who have come in person.
Thank you. And also, I'd like to welcome those shareholders who are joining us by way of webinar. Now, those who have asked questions, I'd like to very much thank them for their participation. And as we do as well, we'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land we meet on. The Gadigal people of the Eora Nation actually span by rivers.
We have the Hawkesbury to the north and to the west, and of course, we have the Georges River to the south. We acknowledge those people, and we acknowledge all, and we pay our respect to others past and those emerging as well. We celebrate the diversity of the Indigenous people, their cultures, and connections to Country Australia. As a New Zealander, every New Zealander is joining us. It's 10:00 A.M., and the company has complied with the relevant requirements for convening today's meeting, and the quorum is present, and I formally open. I'm joined today by my fellow non-executive directors, Dr. Kasian, Dr. Cheri Walker, and also our executive director, Managing Director, and CEO John Kelly. Today we also have our Company Secretary Matthew Watkins, and we have Suzy Elhlou, who is our Financial Controller. Yes, sorry, there's Suzy. There you go.
Looking around the room at you. Thank you. Gareth Few, representing BDO. During the meeting, if you have any on our financials, and we also have representation from the company's share registry boardroom in attendance as well, so you have the formal structure around the board of Atomo Diagnostics. In addition to that, we have Grant Hummel from HWL Ebsworth, who's [inaudible]. The notice of today's meeting has been given in accordance with the company's constitution, and copies are available for you of that notice as well as our constitution on our website, the share registry site, and you can also look on the ASX platform for announcements, the ASX markets platform for announcements. Unless you have any objections, I will take the notice of meeting and explanatory statement as read. Right, the format of today's meeting follows the format of many AGMs, including our own.
I will make a few comments to you, and then we'll have a presentation from John Kelly, our Managing Director. I'm going to be a general update of the company and provide a brief summary of the voting meeting procedure. We'll then formally consider the business on today's agenda, and we'll take questions from you as our shareholders, and we've also had some questions submitted prior, so we'll address those as well, and after the formal business is considered, we'll conduct a poll on all resolutions that we have identified and shared with you, and once that poll is completed, the results will be tallied, and they will then be released on the ASX platform. I'm going to move to our address. Our agenda starts with me talking a little bit about our financial year to June 30, 2024, and our current financial performance for the year to date.
I'll then invite John to make some more detailed comments about some of the delays, and I'll then ask you to consider several resolutions that we've put forward to you as our shareholders. The board values highly shareholder feedback and participation of our AGM. The board is particularly mindful of the resolution concerning remuneration that last year received a strike at our AGM, and reflecting shareholder feedback, we will see that this year's resolution on remuneration is materially different, and I'll spend time on this when we reach these resolutions. Your company, Atomo Diagnostics, continues to participate extensively in the adoption of rapid testing. It's a critical means of early infection detection. Advocacy for such testing is shared with the federal government of Australia and the United States and many public and private agencies globally.
Locally, such support seeks the federal government funding for free distribution of Atomo's HIV tests through vending machines in various states across Australia, including New South Wales. We believe that decentralizing testing serves to empower and scale. Individuals are empowered through having user-friendly devices that test for specific conditions with immediate results. Similarly, decentralized testing settings screen effectively and early. They serve to scale the health system's capacity to respond to community health needs. And of course, we all lived through that with rapid testing during the COVID pandemic. Throughout our last financial year and so far this year, we've seen the continuing adoption of rapid tests both by consumers as well as professional users. So-called, what we say, professional tests and consumer tests, rapid testing.
With our partner, one of our partners, Newfoundland Healthcare based in the U.K., our tests, Atomo's tests, are now on the shelves of Tesco supermarkets and Boots the pharmacy chain, well, through our direct sales, as well as our sales through our own marketing efforts in Australia, you can go into your local pharmacy and also through the federal funder scheme I mentioned, access our devices through vending machines. Moving to financials, our revenue comprises sales of finished products led by our HIV tests. We'll go through that in a little more detail. Our self-tests and for professional use. So that's one component. Those are our finished products. In parallel, we have what we call OEM Plus contracts. OEM Plus contracts see our scale-up platforms to scale, make use of our technologies by third parties across different tests.
These include Lumos, the Melbourne-based company, and their famous FebriDx bacterial test, in Europe, in France, and NG Biotech, who have a blood-based pregnancy test. Looking ahead, we announced a federal government grant for Atomo to support the development of the world's first rapid test for the detection of active syphilis. That's in collaboration with the Burnet Institute, and those are now announced a couple of weeks ago. We're also delighted with BARDA's announced support for Lumos's Pascal-based FebriDx test. Of course, Pascal is one of our leading platforms. The funding from BARDA for Lumos to seek CLIA waiver support to allow widespread distribution in the U.S. follows, of course, a few years ago when they successfully secured 510(k) support for that test on our Pascal device. For those of you who are perhaps more recent Atomo shareholders, my warm welcome.
What I'd like to do is just share and summarize briefly what we do in Rapid Diagnostics. Atomo develops, commercializes, and supplies finished rapid tests, rapid diagnostic tests, and devices. We also partner with clinical partners to develop new tests and launch them into global markets. Our technology supports testing to detect infectious diseases, chronic health conditions, and consumer wellness. Atomo participates in three identified markets in developing and commercializing diagnostic devices. These markets comprise OEM Plus devices and sexual health and wellness.
Each of these markets involves Atomo's scale deployment of our patented technologies, often through partnering to allow us scale. Atomo's HIV tests leads our work in infectious diseases, demand, spans global health programs, and increasingly developed consumer markets. We extend across B2B sales in our OEM business and B2C through our partnered and direct sales.
As an example, as I mentioned, we're delighted to have our HIV self-test supplied through Tesco supermarkets and Boots pharmacies in the U.K. And in global health, we have a long-standing and continuing relationship with Viatris. Viatris are one of the largest producers of generic retrovirals in the world. They see the use of the Atomo device as part of their test and treat approach to their customers. The growing in-house number of country approvals for the sale of HIV tests, especially in developing countries, continues. As partners during the year, we supplied Atomo platform devices under OEM Plus to NG Biotech, Access Bio, and Lumos Diagnostics. Those sales support their proprietary clinical rapid diagnostic tests. Turning to our financial management, you are aware of Atomo's change in year-on-year revenues and sales mix, and these encouragingly reflect the overall market demand for products, particularly following the pandemic passing.
Our corresponding ramp-up is in the production and delivery of our patented products rather than the distribution of other products. The board and its senior executives exercise appropriate care in financial management, judicious regard for spending. The latter spending is very much focused on supporting the promotion and delivery of existing Atomo products. We continue to work with the company to ensure efficiency and benefit from reduced operating costs, including reduced board costs, and John will talk through these changes, and I'm happy to answer questions on financial matters as well. To this end, the board very much acknowledges the considerable efforts across the executive team and our people within Atomo within the wider workplace from here to South Africa to seek efficiency in our activities, and I'm pleased to report that these efficiency exercises are underway.
Concurrently, we continue to see strong positive employee engagement through the surveys that we run. On behalf of Atomo's board and management, we gratefully acknowledge the tireless efforts of those who provide services and advice to Atomo. Among them, George Sidis and Richard Sokolov of IDE, Matthew Watkins, and Kyra Ferraro, who provide company services, and through Vistra Australia, Gareth Few, and Andrea, BDO, and Grant Hummel. This board of directors joined with me on the line today, Deborah Neff, Dr. Paul Kasian, Dr. Cheri Walker, John, and me. Deborah chairs our people, culture, and remuneration committee, and Paul chairs audit and risk. These are pillars of our corporate governance, and I sit on both of those committees. In keeping with Atomo's board process, you will shortly be asked to consider Deborah for re-election to the board.
Along with fellow directors and executives, I value Deborah's contribution greatly, and I strongly endorse her re-election. So in closing, I share the board's strong recognition of the Atomo team's efforts and their commitment to developing and implementing the company strategy while making sense of and realizing new opportunities. The decentralization of health services, diagnostics, and care continues to evolve. The adoption of rapid diagnostics has changed users' behaviors and expectations by location, speed to results, and timely prescription. That is, better health earlier. These changes align with Atomo's proven competencies and focus on developing tests addressing unmet consumer needs. Atomo's competitive positioning draws from our product and commercialization expertise. We are excited about the year ahead and those beyond. I welcome John to talk to you about what we are up to in further detail.
I want to warmly thank you for your patient, considered, and enthusiastic support, questions, and interest in Atomo, and with that, I'll now invite John to take us through the most recent results and activities.
Thank you, John, and thank you everyone here today in person and online to join us. I wanted to step through a presentation that sets out, I think, our progress over the year, as well as a discussion around our focus for the coming period. Just to recap, in terms of who we are and what we do, we're an Australian-headquartered international business with operations overseas, particularly our HIV self-test manufacturing facility in South Africa, and we develop, supply, innovative rapid finished tests to market, as well as a range of technologies for the market that focus around reliability and usability in the field, which is increasingly important in a decentralized healthcare market.
Our solutions have been increasingly recognized as delivering best-in-class usability and performance in that field, and that's been recognized not just in independent studies, but also through self-test approvals in tier-one jurisdictions for Class IV IVD products. That usability supports the commercial opportunities for the business moving forward, and we're very encouraged by opportunities over the medium term and beyond in the U.S. market in particular. What do we do as a business? We're really focused on two main areas of revenue generation. One is the delivery to market of finished products, where we are the listed manufacturer, and our strategic focus in the first instance is in sexual health. We have a very well-adopted and approved HIV self-test, and we're now in the process of moving forward with a rapid syphilis test that supports both professional and self-test applications.
And they're very nicely aligned in the market because the users of both of those tests have a significant overlap in terms of cohorts. Outside of sexual health, we have an ongoing interest in women's health, in particular blood pregnancy and anemia, anemia being very closely linked with female health and pregnancy in particular. And we work strategically with NG Biotech to ensure that that blood product is delivered globally. And we're also looking at opportunities to help commercialization in key markets. Outside of the finished products business, we have an interest in the wider deployment of our technologies to market. And we partner with companies, as John mentioned, NG Biotech and Lumos being two, to support their desire to deliver a better-performing, more usable product in the market. And we've seen success through those supply channels.
We're also looking at new opportunities and new product solutions based around our core functionality in areas of blood and swab testing, as well as blood delivery more broadly. In terms of last year's financial performance, our revenue was up 61% year-on-year. If we strip out the remnants of COVID business, the core business itself was up 90% in revenue. And that, I think, speaks to a re-emergence of blood testing post-COVID, where during the COVID period, there was a retraction of non-COVID testing and non-COVID healthcare-related activities more broadly. We're now starting to see a re-emergence of business pre-COVID levels. And we're starting to push now into areas, particularly, as John mentioned, in consumer health, as well as in the engagement with public health that are more supportive of at-home testing. And I think that's a direct relation to changes in attitudes and policy post-COVID.
We are also focused on the reduction of our business costs, and we've delivered a fairly significant reduction in OpEx over the period. And that reflects, I think, an ongoing program. We did see a reduction in OpEx for FY 2023 relative to 2024, sorry, relative to 2022. And we expect to see continued focus on that as we move forward. If we look at that in a sort of graphical format, we'll see that the revenues now for the business outside of COVID, the core revenues are starting to step up as we move away from COVID and start to see growth in market penetration. And we're also starting to see a continued focus on OpEx showing returns in reduced business costs. And obviously, that's a trend we want to see continue. It means that we're tracking more aggressively towards break-even with increasing revenues and reducing cost base.
I think that that's a key focus of the business moving forward is to continue those two trajectories. Driving the growth of the business, the long-term opportunity really is a transformative level of usability that our technology delivers. We've had independent studies done to help with the validation of the platform and the marketability of our products, but that's also been replicated on several dossiers in clinical trials and usability for regulators. What we see is a greater than 90% reduction in blood-related errors compared to multi-component kits. We have delivered a complete reduction in errors related to the buffer reagent delivery, which is another source of error. That's been delivered through automatic delivery that's push-button activated in Pascal. In simplifying the steps, we not only remove errors and improve reliability, but we make the test more intuitive to use and quicker to use.
That results in a much quicker procedure time, which is important in point-of-care settings, as well as an overwhelming user preference. It's that overwhelming user preference that I think is the most powerful metric for us to take into an increasingly consumer-focused market. What that means in terms of actual solutions is, I believe, a really well-delivered, intuitive, easy-to-use device with less steps and, more importantly, less room for error when doing those steps. We have a very intuitive system that's difficult to do incorrectly. It's simple. It's button-activated, and it removes the need for user dexterity, and it removes the need for users to second-guess whether they've done the procedure correctly. That inherent reliability leads to inherently improved levels of performance, but also inherently improved levels of user satisfaction. I think that's really what we're selling here.
We're selling user satisfaction and reliability in the market. The same development ethos, capabilities, and core IP have been used to develop a similar solution targeting swab testing. And our CEO, Chandra Sekhar, is at Medica this week with both the swab device and the Pascal and Elan devices, as well as some early prototypes for other solutions that we'll talk to market about moving forward. We've had a really good reception, and we're very excited about the opportunities for swab testing and blood testing over the longer term. We're also mindful of the need to be compatible with digital traceability in the U.S. market, in the CLIA-waived market in particular. Small desktop readers are typically commonly used to provide not only quantitation of results, but traceability for reimbursement.
We have solutions that are compatible with those reader systems, and we're working with a number of leading reader development companies to make sure that they can offer readers that are Atomo-compatible. We also see long-term opportunities for at-home testing with app support. The app not only delivers better usability, but delivers a better level of precision in reading the line and also can be used to read line intensity, which then allows you to look at quantitation in the home. And that opens up a range of applications longer term where monitoring levels are important rather than just yes/no tests. So things like PSA, testosterone, vitamin D, thyroid. And we have some IP around how we do that that we're excited about. And that's kind of on our longer-term horizon for product expansion.
But today, we have products registered in a number of markets through either the Atomo direct-to-market HIV business or through our OEM partners. And that includes approval across all tier-one jurisdictions. In the U.S., 510(k) approval was secured last year. Lumos are now pushing actively for a CLIA Waiver on the platform. We're the only approved HIV self-test in Australia. We've got CE Mark across Atomo products, Lumos products, and NG Biotech products in Europe, both professional use and self-test, as well as being pre-qualified in developing markets and registered in more than 30 countries. So we're seeing an expanding footprint of registrations that we can now leverage off as a business for other applications. And I think that gives us a really good infrastructure to build upon.
And all of that is underpinned by what we believe to be a very robust proprietary IP position, not just in terms of formal utility patents that are granted in global markets, but also 10 years of detailed R&D development around not just how the products work, but how the products are manufactured. And we have a number of proprietary processes that are very difficult to replicate. And that's notwithstanding our IP position around that. So that underpins the value of the business. We've not only got really best-in-class solutions, but we've got a robust ability to protect that IP and therefore enter into arrangements that reflect that in terms of joint ventures and licensing arrangements moving forward. I'll talk a little bit about some of the core product drivers for us. Obviously, HIV self-test has been the majority of the revenue.
Revenues for HIV self-testing have more than doubled for us over the year. And not only have they doubled, but margins have improved. And that reflects the fact that we're selling more tests in Europe, more tests in Australia, where we get higher pricing and better margins and less reliance on global health volume, where we see less attractive margins. A lot of that's been driven by the federal government's adoption of HIV self-testing in public policy. Up until May this year, self-testing was not supported by government in a procurement sense. And all of their procurement went into laboratory and clinic testing. There's now an acknowledgement that self-tests reach people that don't test through facilities. And we've been very successful in working with civil society to put in place a number of pilots that now have been adopted and scaled by federal government.
That's been the culmination of several years' worth of hard work by Atomo and others to really prove the utility and the benefits of self-testing in the community. What we now have is a government that's aligned to that and supporting that. We announced earlier this month an order for AUD 440,000 worth of HIV tests for the NAPWHA at-home mail-out program. That is directly funded from federal government. We've also seen a significant rollout of vending machines through New South Wales Ministry of Health. The target there is to put 70 machines into New South Wales over the next period. I believe there's already 30 up and running. As John mentioned, we've been successful in getting into leading retail channels in the U.K., Tesco supermarkets and Boots Pharmacies, as well as a large pharmacy chain in Germany. We're in hundreds of pharmacies now here in Australia.
Boots the Chemist has ranged us as a core product, which means it's a push from head office into all of the branches, and we're starting to see returns from that, and we have brought on 141 new pharmacies over the period in Australia. We've worked hard to expand the registrations for products. We got registrations in Colombia, Switzerland, and most recently, Bulgaria for Eastern Europe, and we saw our first order for, I believe, 20-something thousand into that East European market as a starting point for launch, so we are making good progress for HIV, and we see that continuing over the medium term, and more importantly, we're making progress in markets where they pay for the product at a price premium that gives us a good margin.
Moving beyond that, the future for HIV self-testing, I think the key point here is that self-testing is the largest growing segment of the HIV market as governments adopt HIV policy because it's effective and it's targeted and it's low cost relative to running a facilities-based approach, and also because consumers are more proactive in managing their health and taking more responsibility through pharmacy retail channels, so we expect to see that demand for HIV self-testing continue to grow, and we're very focused on making sure that our test remains a leader in that channel. We're well advanced in the planning for a launch into New Zealand after Christmas, and we'll be excited to announce that when it finalizes. We are supporting the national scale-up of the SAMESH vending machine program that is also federally funded. That was announced in the May budget.
We've been working with them to support that. The delay in seeing volume on our side has been really related to the need to actually manufacture and install the vending machines. We understand those machines have started to get installed this month. The installation will be complete by February, and we'll start to see significant orders coming through that channel in quarter three and beyond. We're actively looking at a partnership opportunity to put a 4th-gen HIV test onto Pascal. 4th-gen measures p24 antigen, which allows us to compete with earlier detection tests in clinics and labs. At the moment, that market is owned not exclusively, but predominantly by Alere with their Determine test now, Abbott, and we believe the usability of Pascal far exceeds the usability of that product, and we're very excited about the opportunities to move into professional testing and sits alongside self-test.
Although the self-test market is growing more rapidly than other segments, the professional market today and for a number of years still represents the bulk of the business, and I think getting a product into that channel, given our expertise, given our track record in self-testing, is eminently doable. We're also looking to lobby here in Australia for the adoption of self-testing as a viable method for testing and confirming negative status for people on PrEP. In Australia, there are 68,000 people on PrEP. They have to test negative for HIV four times a year to stay on PrEP. They currently have to go into a clinic. That's a burden on them every 12 weeks to go in and get that done, and the attendance at clinic has been established as one of the reasons why people don't stay on PrEP, so there is a compliance challenge with PrEP.
In the U.S., there are studies showing the ability to do that at home through a telehealth consult, and we believe that that's attractive to users. Certainly, the feedback we've got from various partners like ACON and NAPWHA suggests that that's a very attractive offering to be able to provide. If we even got one of the four tests each year at home, that would be 68,000 tests. That more than doubles our market here in Australia immediately. So we do think there's significant opportunities for growth in the HIV home test market. If we move on to syphilis, you will be, I suspect, aware that we recently secured an Australian government CRCP grant for AUD 2.44 million worth of non-dilutive funding, and that funding is to deliver a complete product dossier to support regular resubmission for the world's first active syphilis rapid test.
At the moment, active syphilis is only measured and detected and confirmed through laboratory testing that's both expensive and timely to deliver results. Antibody tests are on the market currently. They detect syphilis, but they will also be reactive for prior infections. So that means that if you've had syphilis previously, those tests are not effective at all. And they're actually recommended not to be used with people who are at risk of having previously had syphilis. So this test is not only novel in terms of its usability on our platform, but it's also delivering to market a novel patented assay that was developed by the Burnet Institute in Melbourne. And we're working with them to put together now a detailed development program. And we're also looking to close out commercial arrangements with them to support the commercialization of that test post the completion of development.
I think that product offers significant opportunities in the market. We're very excited about it because it has a clear professional use screening application in public health. It also has a self-test application in public health for at-home screening similar to the programs we're seeing for HIV. And it's also an application that our partners in pharmacy retail have suggested sits very nicely beside HIV on the shelf. So for all those reasons, it is of significant commercial interest to us. And we know that syphilis rates in Australia have tripled in the last 10 years. In other countries, typically even more and 7 million new cases a year. So in some ways, it's a bigger problem caseload-wise than HIV moving forward. We'll be announcing more on that as we roll forward.
Obviously, that grant is a very good start to the commercialization of this product because now the development is fully funded by government. That gives us the capital needed to deliver this product to market. If we conclude with a bit of a look at where we're focused now in terms of the business moving forward, obviously, one of our core goals is to continue to reduce costs within the business and at the same time grow the existing revenue base of the business. The heavy lifting, at least over the near term, is HIV self-testing. We're going to continue to expand pharmacy retail in Australia and launch into New Zealand. We will continue to push for expanded public health engagement and procurement, particularly with a focus on the opportunities to support PrEP. We will continue to launch in new territories where we aren't seeing business.
So that would be working with existing partners to push into territories where they're not active, as well as taking over territories where they're not active that we think we can do better through another partner or possibly direct. So we're very focused on making sure that the HIV self-test we have on the market becomes the market leader in developing markets in particular where we can get good margin. Outside of HIV, we're looking at expanding into syphilis. And that sits very nicely within a sexual wellness portfolio. And we and Burnet have already received inbound inquiries around parties interested in clinical trials around that product, which I think speaks to the clinical need and the uniqueness of what we're hoping to bring to market.
We continue to work with NG Biotech to see how we can move forward with the blood pregnancy test, both in the Australian market as well as opportunities to commercialize it through partners in the U.S. We note that NG Biotech have had success through their recent partnership with Teva Pharmaceutical in Italy, Portugal, and Spain. And we're interested to see how that channel may support other tests, in particular iron deficiency, which sits very nicely alongside pregnancy in a women's health category.
And longer term, as I mentioned, we see an enormous opportunity in wellness, particularly at-home monitoring of wellness: vitamin D, prostate health, testosterone, thyroid. There's a long list of biomarkers that will increasingly become important to people as they manage their health. And we think our Pascal device, coupled with a reliable app, is the type of product that has longevity in that market.
Outside of finished products, obviously, we continue to focus on expanding OEM business. We are supportive of Lumos's efforts to move towards CLIA Waiver for their FebriDx product in the U.S. Not only does that increase the market size for FebriDx and by default Pascal, which supports FebriDx, but opens up a pathway for reduced barriers and less risk for other customers that want to get onto Pascal in the market. We're starting to also complete some development work on new, excuse me, some new potential solutions that repurpose some of Atomo's IP and know-how, and we'll hopefully, in the coming weeks and months, be able to disclose a bit more to market on those products and some of the commercial opportunities that relate to those. I'd like to thank you for your time. I'd like to thank you for your continued support of the business.
And I will hand back now to John Keith for the next stage of this meeting.
Thank you. Excellent. Thank you, John. I hope you found that comprehensive. I hope you found that interesting. It gave you a sense of where we've been, what we're doing today, and also where we're going. One of the themes you'll hear today. I'm sorry, Matthew, slightly off script, but one of the things you'll hear today is how we're using the IP we've created to then extend from that so what we're learning as we're going, particularly what the demand is for rapid diagnostics so there's a product-led but also demand-pull aspect to what we're doing. Okay. We are now moving on to voting and questions so that's your, that's where you get to voice by way of a democratic process.
All shareholders, proxy holders, and authorized representatives who are in attendance in person are entitled to vote. You have been issued with a yellow card. Victor has his yellow card. Other people have their yellow card. You cast your vote by marking the for, against or abstain box. You print your name where indicated so that we can then on boardroom then do the auditing of that to make sure that that all follows. There's a ballot box out front. You make sure your vote is counted. If you could raise your yellow voting card when complete, and that will help collection boxes you go out. A yellow card also entitles you to comment and ask questions during this meeting. If there's anyone present who's entitled to vote and doesn't have a yellow card, it's interesting.
Non-voting shareholders present in the room have been issued with a blue card. Do you want me to check whether you should have? Yeah. That essentially means that the shareholders voted already. You voted already. You want to hear it. All right. A blue card will not allow you to vote again. No double voting. But you can certainly comment and ask questions. And red cards indicate you're a visitor. And visitors and media who are present are reminded that you're most welcome. But it is a shareholder meeting. So you're reminded that you may not make comments or ask questions. And for proxy holders, shareholders, and authorized representatives who have not yet voted prior to the meeting, cast your votes in each of the resolutions when the poll is open. And I'll open that in just a moment.
Where, as Chair, I have been appointed as proxy to act on behalf of a shareholder. As Chair of this meeting, I will be casting votes in favor of resolutions one to four and then against resolution five. I'm going to talk about resolution five in a little bit more detail because it confounds simple people like me when it comes to double negatives. But we'll talk through that in just a moment. We recognize that the AGM is an important platform for shareholders to engage us. And we encourage during the year, but also at AGMs, just questions being asked of us. And we'll take questions from shareholders on the items of business, general items of business after all resolutions have been put to the meeting before the poll is conducted.
So that means that you can reflect on how you might vote based on the answers we've given as well as the presentation we've given. Any shareholder wishing to ask a question, please raise your voting card, and I reserve the right as Chairman to rule any questions not pertaining to the business of the meeting or deem them to be out of order. So I now move on to the formal part of the business. Oh, excuse me. Okay. So we're going to go to the resolutions. Then we're going to go to questions. Then we're going to go to voting. I'm saying that as much for my own benefit as for others. Okay. So we move to the formal part of today's business, and if you have a question on any of the items mentioned, we'll consider those formal resolutions after.
We'll consider those questions after the resolutions are put to you. Let's move to the resolutions. The first item of business is to receive and consider the financial report of the company and the director's report and the auditor's report that was for the financial year ending June 30, 2024. These items are contained in the annual report. Suzy has a copy over there. We have copies if you want one. We also have them on our website. I'll ask that the items in the annual report are taken as read. The annual report is available on the ASX announcement platform and, as I mentioned, also on our own site. The Corporations Act requires the accounts and reports to be put before shareholders at an annual general meeting, as we're doing today.
However, except as set out in resolution one to be considered later, there is no requirement for a vote of members to be taken on the financial accounts. I will point out that no written questions were received by the auditor in the cut-off date of five days before this meeting. I know that Gareth from BDO has confirmed that. Questions may be directed through myself as Chair to the auditor. These questions may relate to the audit by way of conduct, the audit report, our accounting policies, and the independence of BDO's auditor. As this matter does not require a vote, we'll now move to the first resolution, resolution one. Okay. You can see the voting on the Remuneration Report.
I now refer to resolution one, which is to consider the adoption of the Remuneration Report forming part of the director's report for the financial year ending June 30, 2024. The Remuneration Report is set out in the director's report of the 2024 annual report. The Remuneration Report sets out the company's remuneration arrangements for directors and key management personnel as defined of the company. The vote on this resolution is advisory only. It does not bind the directors or company. The full resolution is displayed on your screen along with the proxy votes received for this resolution. I move that shareholders consider and have thought that pass the ordinary resolution. We then move to resolution two. Now, Deborah is caught on a plane. She is listening to this call streaming but is unable to speak. So I'm going to speak on her behalf.
Resolution two relates to the re-election of Ms. Deborah Neff as a director of the company. Ms. Neff's profile has been provided on page seven of the notice of meeting. The full resolution is displayed on your screen along with the proxy votes received for this resolution. I move that shareholders consider and have thought fit pass the ordinary resolution. In my support of Deborah Neff as a continuing director, Deborah brings a wealth of experience of both global health as well as the domestic U.S. market, as well as a keen understanding of diagnostics. Deborah actually started her career in the development of strips that we have in the core of our platforms. Not only has she been CEO of large companies, she's also CEO of startups. She understands the notion of growth. She understands the demands, particularly on CEOs, and the expectation of board members. She is tireless.
She is direct. She chairs our people's committee. She brings a great deal of fairness to what we do. But as critically, she also allows a level of insight and a degree of intelligence to discussions, which provides us with the impetus, provides us with the connections through an extraordinary network of people that we work with that benefit the company and benefit you as shareholders. Deborah sits on a very small number of other boards. And I feel that we're privileged to have her with us. She is a resident of Palo Alto. She sits at the crossroads of where innovation is being developed. And I strongly encourage the continuing support for Deborah as a board member of Atomo Diagnostics. Okay. We have had some feedback on resolutions three and four, which we've chosen to withdraw. I'll just mention those because you would have seen them.
The first was around having an additional 10% placement capacity under the ASX listing rules. As a special resolution, it required 75% support. And we found that we weren't quite heading towards that. So we thought we would take that as feedback. And rather than troubling you with that now, we would step back from that resolution. Resolution four was a tiny change to our constitution. And I've had a discussion with one or two shareholders about this. And it simply allowed a change in the notice of meetings that we would actually be allowed to have virtual meetings, AGMs, under some changes that were made post-COVID. And we had a couple of shareholders say, "No, it's better that you actually meet with shareholders in person." That is very much my practice. All we were trying to do was act in line with our best guidance and policy.
But we've chosen to actually withdraw that again as a special resolution that would have required a 75% pass rate. We now move to resolution five, which is a Spill Resolution. And I asked you earlier just to allow me a minute to talk about this a little bit further. Now, this is a conditional resolution upon which at least 25% of the votes cast in favor of resolution one being against adoption of the 2024 Remuneration Report. So you can read this. This is actually a slightly odd double negative, as said. I note that shareholders are asked today to consider this resolution meeting. However, if fewer than 25% of the votes cast in resolution one are against the adoption of the Remuneration Report, there will be no strike. And the voting results in resolution five will not be considered. Let's move to resolution five.
So resolution five is subject to and conditional on at least 25% of the votes cast in resolution one. Resolution one, of course, is a Remuneration Report and against the adoption of the Remuneration Report. Then this is what we call a spill motion, which means that we'd have to have an EGM, Extraordinary General Meeting, where we'd all get together. And within 90 days, all of the board of directors, with the exception of the CEO, would have to put themselves up for re-election.
Now, this is a double negative. You're being asked to vote for a spill motion. That is, you support spilling the board because it clearly is passed, or you vote against it. Now, I fear that my going through these very considered notes, I've probably overcomplicated a simple motion. So with that, I'm going to pass to Matthew, who's going to put it even more simply than I have failed to do.
Sure. Thanks, John. So today, as John's mentioned, the board is recommending that should this conditional resolution be considered, if we receive more than 25% votes against our Remuneration Report and therefore receiving a second strike, given we received strike number one last year, the board is recommending that shareholders vote against resolution five. So our recommendations for resolutions one and two are four. But resolution five, the board is recommending you vote against resolution five. And feel free to ask any questions if you have them during the poll.
Why we've arrived at this is it reflects the seriousness with which we take shareholder questions and shareholder actions by way of votes under the resolutions.
When we saw that our Remuneration Report last year was voted down, I went out to major shareholders and I asked, "Please share some feedback." A specific point of feedback around remuneration was the issuance of options. You'll see this here. In the Remuneration Report, no options have been given or have been adopted or proposed, and similarly by way of executive compensation, executive compensation for CEO remains unchanged. For our COO, we've proposed only a CPI increase. That's it, so what you can see is the board has been judicious in thinking very carefully about fairness to our people by way of compensation, but as critically, taking feedback from our shareholders around that compensation.
Because we have remuneration, it's a special resolution, 75%, we can see that for this year, we face a second strike on remuneration. So with that in mind, again, from a careful, judicious view, we have put ourselves forward to say, "If you're serious about questioning the board in this way, then you would vote for a spill." Or you'd say, "Actually, we can see that the board is acting in a responsible way and is acting in a way that is in shareholders' interest for the long-term benefit of the company, at the same time balancing that with duly recognizing and compensating our people for market alternatives for those individuals and actually arriving at a sensible balancing point." It is for that very reason that I'd like to seek your confidence in voting against the Spill Resolution.
But that is a decision only you should make and only you can make. So it is your discretion. So to repeat Matthew's guidance, the board's recommendation is for the other resolutions, they are positive. You vote yes. The Spill Resolution, you vote no. Right. Is everyone okay with that? I feel like we've had not two bites but three bites of the cherry. Hopefully, we're okay. Okay. We're going to go to some questions that we've had shared with us prior to this meeting. And then, of course, any questions, please raise those as we go. Okay. Now, I understand we have a little bit of liberty where a question is extremely long. Rather than reading to you the seven or eight paragraphs, I am allowed to just summarize those a little bit. I'm going to work between John and me.
The first question John is going to answer, but I'm just going to read it to you. We have a rapid pregnancy test arrangement with NG Biotech, a French-based company. It's a name of a company we've worked with for some time. And that company now sells devices through Amazon. So if you go onto the Amazon U.K. website and you look for NG Biotech's pregnancy test, you will see their pregnancy test online. And of course, with Amazon, you then get reviews from people using the device. And we seem to have this split between five stars and a few people with one or two stars. So the question we've had from a shareholder is to say, "There are mixed reviews on the site.
And do we have any comments?" And they then say, "Of course, we understand that it's an Atomo platform, but it is an NG device." And I've certainly taken time to go through all of the comments on that. But perhaps, John, you want to talk to that point.
Yes. No, please. Happy to. So first, I'd note that NG Biotech have supplied hundreds of thousands of finished tests to the European market. And we're talking about at most a couple of dozen feedback individuals. And as you say, the feedback has been both positive and negative. The question specifically was, "Have we got any comments on feedback related to the performance of the test?" I think our position there is that NG Biotech is the listed manufacturer of the test. We're not in the habit of commenting on other companies' chemistries and assays.
What we will say is that the usability of the Atomo device has been proven repeatedly in clinical validations, not just for the approval of the NG product, but also the approval of the Lumos product and approval of Atomo's products, and delivers a level of repeatability and usability that far surpasses traditional kits on the market. There are, when you use any product hundreds of thousands of times, situations where it may not operate as intended. In the case of mechanical failure for our device, those rates are incredibly low, and the majority of issues that we've seen in the field relate to the user interaction with the product and the user following instructions and workflow rather than the device itself, so we're very confident in the reliability of our product. We are very confident in the overall clinical performance of the NG product.
We're not going to make comments on individual small numbers of Amazon reviews for a product that's supplied in the hundreds of thousands.
Thank you. Okay. Question two. The next question relates to the remuneration of executives. That question is, "This is not a company that makes hundreds of millions. It doesn't warrant the salary packages of the two executives are on. My capital is worth nothing. The board should address this matter immediately." If I go back to the comment I made with respect to the remuneration resolution and the independence of the setting of compensation. In the setting of compensation, we look to reward fairly. Then we have a separate around incentive. That reflects the performance of the company.
You will see this year that the incentive packages are very, very modest, notwithstanding growth, notwithstanding cost out, but very much reflecting the overall performance of the company, as seen by various metrics, including our market capitalization, so we've been very careful in that regard. On salary, we have to pay what is fair, reflecting experience, reflecting competency, but also, it's the falling under the bus test, so if we were to replace one of our executives, if they were to fall under a bus, or if they were to move elsewhere, what would we do, and that recognition of competition and fairness is a critical aspect. The People Culture Remuneration Committee is chaired by Deborah Neff. We go out for external surveys to make sure that we're paying people adequately.
We have been careful and judicious in the adjustment to salary, no adjustment to CEO, and no adjustment to directors' fees that we ever made, actually ever, so we have sought to ensure that the priority of shareholders is duly recognized, and we ensure that the investment in the company continues to reflect where we have growth, and as I mentioned earlier, and as John has detailed, we've continued to take expenses out of our business. The next question is a financial question as well, and it relates to future sales volume ramp-up, various products in the market, projected three-year forecast cash flow, and the pipeline of work. When we think about the financial performance of the company, we acknowledge that we had very strong COVID-related revenues in 2021 and 2022. Those were not our product.
Of course, we partnered with Access Bio, and we sold their product across Australia at a time when it was pressing need. What we saw through that, though, was demand for self-tests. And I'm delighted when we think about what has happened to our sales. Year- on- year, so we go to financial 2024, financial 2023, the total number of devices sold is up by nearly 80%. So just in 2024 alone, we sold 1.13 million of our devices. 1.13 million. Stop and think about that for a moment. And when we think about the composition of that, about 2/3 of that is our own product, and 1/3 of that is when we're manual. You've got that balance. So to go to the question, the trajectory that we're after is what is sometimes called positive jaws, that we continue to reduce costs relative to the increase in revenue.
We're certainly now at that point. Our revenues for FY 2024 were up 90% on the prior year. We've continued to take costs out of the business. Suzy, by estimate, if we think about costs out of the business over the last 18 months or so, what would you estimate that to be?
Just shy of AUD 3 million.
Right. You can see that not only are we thinking about how do we reduce our operating expenses through greater efficiency, but we've also come to an end of the ramp-up of capital expenditure. This is all about how do we draw revenue out of the IP that we have, the products for which we have demand, and the revenue with which we're growing. I'd also point in terms of that positive jaws to our continuing to grow our gross margin at around 39%.
So in answering to this question, we are very sensitive to this. The second part of the question is they talk about HIV tests, STIs, a relatively niche market. When I was talking about this with John and thinking about how do we best respond, John, do you want to just talk about markets?
Yeah. I think we focused on applications that aren't niche deliberately. So we focused on HIV because 10 years ago, that was the biggest rapid test segment by volume. Syphilis also represents an increasingly significant problem and, in our case, commercial opportunity. We partnered with NG Biotech and supported them for blood pregnancy because pregnancy is, particularly in the over-the-counter pharmacy retail market, probably the biggest at-home test opportunity after diabetes.
So we've gone for markets where we're not niche because it's not the type of product category that sells at a high enough price point that being niche is sustainable. We're also focusing on applications where there's an application channel through public health as well as pharmacy retail. So again, we've got more than one horse in the race. So I think the point about niche is noted. And I think we actively put in place strategies and focus on products that deliver long-term opportunity in areas that aren't niche. And I think one of the reasons we haven't got into testosterone and vitamin D and thyroid and prostate monitoring at home is not because the technology doesn't exist, because our device does exist and it works well and the app is feasible. We've got proof of concept developed already.
But it's because at the moment, that at-home monitoring market still is niche. And we don't want to be the guys that have to try and spend millions of dollars making it not niche. That's not our core competency. So we're looking to focus in areas where the volume and the margins are already there. And then as products become less niche, we've got a really good solution to market. Hope that answers it.
Yeah. All right. We now move to closing the poll. All right. So here's your opportunity to complete your voting card. So you've got your yellow cards and blue cards. Voted to a good one. Does anyone need a pen? Just for my children a few years ago. So I'll be slightly heartbroken if it's not returned. But there's a pen.
Maybe he's my big pen stealer.
All right. We will conduct the poll and all resolutions. And if there are no further questions, ladies and gentlemen, and all resolutions on the notice of meeting have been put to the meeting, please complete your yellow poll voting card. And if you want to vote against and abstain for each of the resolutions, check that everyone has a yellow voting card who should have one. If not, we have more at the front desk. And once the poll is declared closed, the share registry will come around and collect the completed cards. We'll now open the poll. And I'm going to pause while everyone is voting. Yes. Okay. All right. All right. Okay. All done. All done. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. This is very procedural because I'm now meant to read.
As there has been no request for additional time, then I now declare the poll closed. Okay. Right. That wasn't meant to happen. Right. Thank you for your attendance. Poll is now closed. There is no further additional business to be brought forward at meeting. I declare the meeting closed, and after the votes have been counted, the results of today's poll will be posted on the ASX later today. Again, it's really nice to see you. Thank you very much for coming today, and we look forward to your continued support, and please, maybe after if there's any questions that anyone has, formal discussions with directors, management, then very welcome to stay for a few minutes, so we'll declare this closed, and again, thank you very much.
Thank you, John.
Thank you.