Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining to the Biome Australia webinar. My name is Blair Norfolk. I am the Founder and CEO of Biome. I've got Lauren Dwyer with me today, our CFO. Also joining is Dr. J.B., Biome Senior Scientific Officer, that's been with me on this journey for many, many years. J.B. is here to support some of the Q&A that we get on the BMB18 strain, some of our IP development and clinical trials. I will just get started as well. The webinar is being recorded, so there will be an opportunity for people to watch after if they can't stay right through or for any of your friends that have missed out. Jumping in right away. We like to always start on this slide.
It's important to reinforce why the company exists and what our values are and why we do what we do, because it's not just a set of numbers, Biome, all the things that go in to bring these incredible numbers to life are the clinical trials, the values, the mission, the patients that are taking our products, that are receiving the benefits every day. To prevent disease, improve health outcomes and quality of life, but also make our products accessible. They can't be too hard to get. I know we're practitioner-only. It's important to us to make sure the products are going through the right channel. They're not just retail products. However, they still need to be accessible. It is a balance that we walk a fine line on. Bit of an update on the company. Sorry, I'll go back a slide.
Just to reinforce, we are the number one growth brand within all Complementary Medicine. That is vitamin products, probiotic products, other natural medicines. Within the pharmacy channel, we have been doing a very good job for a number of years now. H1, we'll do a quick recap on. You've all seen that. We had an incredible half last year. A number of clinical trials now supporting our products, 30+ . I had a question from an analyst in Sydney yesterday about this and did another deep dive on our clinical trials. We have now more than 90 studies between in vitro clinical trials, RCT studies, meta-analysis on our studies. There is a lot of research backing these products and a huge competitive advantage for Biome as we push further into that mission with BMB18.
Scaling, we'll go into a little bit later. I might glaze over that quickly. A very quick recap on where we've come from. It's been an incredible journey. Some of you will have been here through the entire journey. Some of you may be new to Biome. FY 2020 was the first year after launching Activated Probiotics into the Australian market. We did AUD 830,000 that year. We went on to AUD 2.1 million, AUD 4.1 million, AUD 4.2 million, AUD 7.3 million, AUD 13 million, AUD 18.4 million. Now we're on for another record year in FY 2026, which we'll be able to report to the market, hopefully as soon as July. Incredible growth. We continue to achieve that growth and continue to deliver the numbers.
What I'm really excited about is the number of patients that are now coming back every month to get their Activated Probiotics. One stat that we have shared in the past is from one of the largest health databases in Australia, the average patient or customer taking the Activated Probiotics products is purchasing two and a half boxes per transaction. Those are monthly boxes, and they're coming back seven times a year on average. That's more than 12 boxes in every 12 months, which is incredible, and it almost leans into that fact that while we're not a recurring revenue business, the practitioner model does present a very similar style in the patients who have had this product recommended by a doctor, a naturopath, or a pharmacist. They're serious health products. They're not just a multivitamin.
As a result, people trust them, they rely on them, and they're meaningfully improving health outcomes. Lauren, do you want to do a quick recap on H1?
Yeah, absolutely. H1 was our strongest half year on record. As you can see, a lot of really positive key metrics here. Our revenue of AUD 12.4 million was 40% up on the previous corresponding period. Our adjusted EBITDA, excluding share-based payments, was AUD 1.47 million, which was actually our 8th consecutive quarter of reporting growth in our EBITDA. Our net profit positive of AUD 1.18 million, which was up 172% on the prior year, which we'll talk about in the following slides as well. Our gross margin, 61%. That really, obviously, we've been able to maintain a gross margin of above 60%, which speaks to our ability to scale without margin dilution, which is really important.
Obviously something that we take great pride in is the fact that we haven't implemented price rises since formation of commercial.
That's important to a lot of people.
Yeah.
Certainly today.
In tough economic challenges and climates that we faced over a number of years, we've been able to hold that growth margin, and we've got some pretty exciting plans for our growth margin improvement as well, which we're going to talk about in the following slides. Our operating cash flow was a AUD 3.21 million turnaround at the half year relative to the previous corresponding period. We had operating cash inflows of AUD 2.9 million or AUD 2.1 million, I should say. Our EPS of AUD 0.53, which obviously speaks to shareholder value creation. This slide's really, I guess, just harping on those key metrics of the revenue growth, which we're seeing as we extend our distribution points and the number of customers ultimately taking our products.
Really one of the headlines is that scalability and exception of the net profit, which is compounding more than four times faster than the revenue. Okay.
Yeah. I will glaze over a few slides. I think you've all got access to it, and I'd rather use more time for Q&A today. This is probably one of the most exciting points that we're going to talk about today, something that wasn't announced when we did announce this webinar. I'm really pleased that we have an opportunity to actually go through this, because onshoring manufacturing for Biome, this is not just adding another manufacturer in our list of five or six manufacturers that we have registered around the world. This is a step change for the business. I know some people will be excited about the margin improvement and the working capital improvement, and Lauren can talk to that in a moment.
From my perspective, this is a massive commercial opportunity for Biome to be able to really service our international market, support scale, be able to run smaller, more frequent batches, improve our stock turn. There are so many advantages that we're going to be able to unlock through working with SPA in Australia, beyond the obvious cash advantages and P&L advantages. Where I see this as a strategic partnership is Craig Silbery, the founder was, for those that are unaware, a very successful transaction in Australia. They sold that business for AUD 680 million to By-Health in China only five years ago. Craig's been a big supporter of Biome and Activated Probiotics and really wants to see us succeed in a similar way.
He will absolutely be helping us strategically to open doors and create new opportunities, whether that be for new product development, new relationships, commercial relationships, locally and abroad.
Thanks. Yeah, super exciting. Obviously, I'll just speak to some of the key points and what we flagged, obviously, in our announcement earlier this week, is the growth margin uplift. We do expect that in the next 18 months, as we scale and transition onshore, that we will be able to achieve 65%+ gross profit margin, which is obviously a key financial metric.
To be clear on that, we're saying that's FY 2027.
Yeah, over the next 18 months.
Yeah.
Yes, from September 2026, when we start furthering the production onshore. Yeah, I guess, we do expect further to speak to that growth in the net profitability and continuing to expand and increase our bottom line for shareholder value. In terms of working capital, obviously this is a primary focus of ours and one of the key reasons that we need to actually bring this manufacturing onshore. Having shorter lead times, and less working capital tied up in inventory that's actually at sea. Currently, our manufacturers, we've got stock that's sitting on sea for anywhere between 8 to 11 weeks in the current climate. Having that as cash available, not tied up in inventory is paramount to success.
That's something we, together, did analysis on only a couple of months ago. Just with the growth in the business, with supporting that growth for the future. The amount of inventory that we were starting to see at sea was creeping up to the point where I think at one point it was more than AUD 2 million sitting at sea in that time period, which is aging. It creates a strategic challenge for us as well with our customers. Some of them want a year or a year and a half dating on their products. For us to be able to do these smaller batch runs locally and have the pricing built in at an annual total volume rather than a larger or smaller batch volume is incredible strategic advantage for Biome.
Yeah, absolutely. I would also say with the forecasting as well, obviously at the moment we're having to forecast very far out, and being at such high growth, and wanting to continue on that trajectory.
Yeah.
Will very much help.
Exactly. It won't be sitting on seven or eight months now, which is a huge advantage for us. Not to glaze over as well, Australian Made is a major point of difference in the global market, not just for China and the CBEC market. This is a material competitive advantage. Not to say Italian Made is not a positive, but Australian Made for an Australian company is something that we'll really be able to lean on as we continue to scale into different markets beyond the ones we're in today. Yeah. Just to reinforce, this is an absolute step change for Biome, and we look forward to the numbers starting to flow through as well in FY 2027. This is a question that I've had a little bit, and it came up on my roadshow this week.
I've been up in Sydney the last two days with instos, with HealthInvestor, an investor show that Morgans just ran for a live group of investors the day before yesterday. The global probiotic market now is estimated around AUD 75 billion. I want to be really clear on what all these numbers mean. The global market, to get the data on that, a lot of that will be potentially even half of that might be food-based products with probiotic ingredients or specialized probiotic ingredients, not necessarily health products, but they sit in that fringe category. Whereas the Australian probiotic market, this data, we have more granular data from scan sales and local organizations that we work closely with on data and data analysis. This is probiotic supplements. That's AUD 600 million of scan sales.
Roughly 70% of that sits in pharmacy, according to Complementary Medicines Australia's market analysis. Only about 15% or so sits in grocery, about 5% in e-commerce only, and then health food stores and other retailers make up the remaining balance. Obviously, community pharmacy is Biome's main business, and community pharmacy absolutely takes up the lion's share of that 70% of the market, which we are the leader in today. With our probiotics in community pharmacy, I'm pleased to say we believe Biome Daily is now the leading product in community pharmacy. It was number two in January when we looked at it, and looking at the decline of the leading product and the growth of our product, we believe we will just about have passed that and have the number one product in pharmacy today.
Where Biome is at AUD 20 million-AUD 25 million, roughly our run rate, that gives us about 10% market share of the pharmacy channel, which is 70% of the market, which gives us incredible headroom to grow. This isn't where we're getting to. We have a very significant base now. The brand is one of the strongest in the market. If you walk into your local TerryWhite Chemmart, Priceline, Blooms The Chemist, you'll see a huge bay of Activated Probiotics behind the pharmacist. If you do see one with a probiotic in front of the counter, please give me a call and let me know, because we'd like to address that immediately. We like to take our compliance very seriously, and protecting the brand is something that I see as one of my top few jobs.
Where we see this is the next five years, Biome has a huge opportunity to significantly grow beyond that current run rate to a much larger number that I'm not going to give a forecast on today. When we release our Vision 30 strategic plan in FY 2027, there might be a bit more context. This is a point that I'd really like to spend, or a slide I'd really like to spend a little bit of time on. Where we're at in the market in the broader sense is great, but how we're going to continue to grow and develop strategically is something that we need to spend some time on. I want everyone to understand. As most of you will be aware, we don't stock our products in the discount pharmacy chains, including the yellow one.
At this stage, we see that it's not the strongest point for our brand to be in discount chains. We work in premium independent community pharmacy, which is the bulk of the market in Australia, contrary to what the media says about some of the discount chains taking over. Community pharmacy is the backbone, it does represent 90% of the pharmacies in Australia. Within that, TerryWhite Chemmart is the largest pharmacy banner group by doors. They have now 650. Biome is the number two brand to a multi-billion dollar market leader, we are hot on their tails, we believe within the next 12-18 months to be the number one brand within the entire Terry White network in terms of revenue, profitability, gross margin return on floor space, gross margin return on inventory.
We're making their stores and their independent owners a lot of money. I've sat down top to top with TerryWhite over the last couple of months, we're discussing more of a strategic partnership. I can't get into the terms of that, put it this way, they are very incentivized to keep Activated Probiotics a premium specialty product to keep customers in their doors. They're very motivated to double or triple our sales within their network. Even though we've been there for five years and we've already got a very advanced business, they're motivated to help us grow at a similar rate over the next few years. Similarly with Priceline Pharmacy, we're a little bit newer into this network. I believe we're probably about three years in. We're now a top five profitable brand in a very large network, which is a big volume chain.
It's not far dissimilar to the type of foot traffic you get in the deep discounters, but a bit more of a premium and health positioning than you see in those other grocery or discount pharmacy chains. Priceline is also backed by Wesfarmers Health. Wesfarmers Health are working with me directly as well on really reinforcing a strategy, a joint operational strategy with Activated Probiotics to get it to be the number one brand in their network. They're also motivated and incentivized to do so. I'm quite excited to have those very powerful pharmacy organizations understanding that we're best in class and wanting to back the great results we've already got to continue growing. Practitioner-only, I haven't mentioned this. For those that might be new to the business, I probably should also mention the products and the research of what we do.
I think I've got that on the next slide. What does practitioner-only mean, and why do we do it? Why don't we just make our products easy to get? Why don't we put it on Amazon or put it in the discount chains or grocery? Wouldn't we get more revenue? Sure we would. Also, what would happen to our brand in a year or two? It's a race to the bottom, and our margin would erode. Discounts would pop up very quickly. We'd be on every e-commerce store within months, and it would be removing the product from solutions, quality, supporting patients with health conditions, and it would become just a race on price. The practitioner-only market is something that was developed by a company called Metagenics in the 1980s in the USA.
It was a model that they built to go directly to doctors and health professionals to pitch them on a higher quality product, traditionally a natural medicine or a probiotic or a herbal product, to be able to support their patients and also make a margin. Traditionally, doctors didn't make a margin on this type of product, but they opened up this concept and have built an AUD 3 billion business and turning over, we estimate about AUD 1 billion, and their largest market outside the U.S. is Australia. The practitioner-only model is very much aligned to a pharmaceutical calling model. You've got health qualified reps that are going to go and detail clinical trials, explain the mechanism of action to health professionals, really build trust. In turn for that trust, health professionals will then recommend your products.
This is a model that we've built very successfully based on the clinical trials that we have on our product, which is our competitive moat or point of difference. The Activated Probiotics range is mostly clinically proven on different conditions. I'll talk to those conditions in a moment. What this model does is it essentially unofficially recruits health professionals to be part of our sales team. Those 20,000 or 30,000 health professionals in the Australian market that are recommending our product every day gives us a huge competitive advantage over marketing brands that just have billboards, Priceline and discounts to promote their brand. It's trust, it's quality. It also leads to the repeat purchase that we see, that we enjoy, that I spoke to earlier.
The two brands, Activated Probiotics, which is one of the leading probiotic brands in the Australian market, certainly the number one practitioner-only probiotic range. We launched this in 2019. We have now 19 SKUs or 17 different products with two multi-sizes in the range. The products range from general digestive support with Biome Daily and Biome Daily Kids, our two best sellers that support digestion immunity backed by clinical trials. We have a range of roughly 50% of our sales is across conditions or preventative disease preventative products as well, like Biome Lift that you can see on the page there. Biome has the world's leading gut, brain or mental health probiotic in Biome Lift, the one I just mentioned, with three randomized placebo-controlled double-blind studies on firstly, depressed mood, stress, and sleep. Secondly, we looked at anxiety with very strong P values and great outcomes.
Third, we did a study with La Trobe University, which only concluded about a year ago, looking at sub-threshold depression. Moving from the healthy patients with depressed mood and stress all the way through to sub-threshold depression. The other one you can see on the slide there is Biome Cholesterol. This is our number 1 growth product this year. I believe it was up about 75%, 76%, 77%. Biome Cholesterol has five clinical trials supporting it reducing LDL cholesterol, which is the type of cholesterol that doctors are asking people to really manage and support for their general cardiac health. Biome, two clinical trials, which is used as an adjunct or support product alongside statin medications. Where that gets really interesting for Biome is statins are the number one and two drug on the PBS by volume.
With our product positioned in the dispensary as a professional product, it's a great opportunity to see how we can have these products recommended alongside those medications safely, appropriately, leading to a better outcome for that patient. We have had stories of people reporting that Biome Cholesterol has helped them manage their statins better, and with their doctor's advice, they've been able to even look at where that long-term picture goes with their statins. Activated Therapeutics, last but absolutely not least, this is our new brand that we launched in July last year. Activated Therapeutics was an opportunity for Biome to move beyond the world of probiotics, but still stay in the microbiome world there where we live, where we love doing our research, and the space that we're beginning to really own in Australia and abroad.
This range is gut health adjacent products that will be able to support Activated Probiotics, firstly with Synbio-GOS, the product you can see on here, which is a gut repair probiotic. This is the type of product for people that may have never taken a probiotic. They might not be a probiotic customer, but it's a gut healing product for maybe, say, a man that's coming into a pharmacist saying, "I've got gut issues. I don't know what it is. I'd like a quick solution." It's a product that heals the digestive lining, and with it, a mix of GOS fiber, which is clinically proven to support the digestive tract in two probiotic strains with a matching study that we've completed. It's a really nice entry-level product. Macro-PRO, which you can see next to it, is supporting GLP-1 patients.
It's something that we just can't stop talking about at the moment because the amount of people buying these peptides online or going to doctors for weight loss, diabetes, and all sorts of other reasons to be taking these peptides, particularly GLP-1. Macro-PRO has been designed to firstly support sarcopenia in the elderly with muscle loss, but also that same patient on the GLP-1s that are experiencing rapid muscle loss. It's to support them going through that process. It's an N one or an adjunct product. One other product I'd love to talk about in that range, which you can't see here, is called Pepti-BIOTIC. Pepti-BIOTIC is a gastric reflux, GORD or GERD product. It's a delicious watermelon drink. It's also clinically proven.
It's a specially fermented soy product with a postbiotic, which was a prebiotic but heat killed. That product's supporting patients around pharmacies with their reflux needs. It's providing a really unique alternative, possibly against long-term PPI use, which no pharmacist or health professionals like patients. Just to lead on from the Biome Cholesterol conversation a moment ago, this is a bit of an overview of some of the adjunct medication opportunities that the Activated Probiotics range has.
As I said, as they're condition-specific, clinically proven on these different conditions in the dispensary, in the pharmacy, it's a perfect opportunity for us to work with health professionals, whether that be a doctor, a medical specialist, a pharmacist, or even a dispensing tech behind the dispensary in the pharmacy to grab one of the Activated Probiotics, for example, Biome Osteo, which is clinically proven to reduce bone loss and could be sold alongside osteoporosis medication. Biome Breathe, my favorite product. This product was studied to reduce asthma exacerbations or asthma events by 64%. Biome Lift that I mentioned earlier as well, could be recommended alongside anxiety or other mental health medications as well. This is the opportunity for Biome to really grow beyond the probiotic market, which we spoke about earlier.
We already have our products, in most cases, positioned as category expanders, not just taking market share from the other brands, but this takes it a step further into the adjunct prescribing alongside the 330 million prescriptions that are on the PBS currently. Every one of those prescriptions is an opportunity for one of our products to be recommended, and we do not believe there's another brand that can even compete in this space. A very quick overview of BMB18, as I know, I think we're getting through time very quickly. BMB18 is Biome's first, our first owned strain. We do have a number of strains on exclusive license. What this is a step change for Biome into IP ownership.
Of the initial in vitro studies we've done on this strain, it's one of the strongest results we've seen, certainly in mechanistic data around immune support, on inflammation, and we also believe it's a great candidate for neurodegenerative diseases, and that will be an opportunity for future clinical research. The first study, which we've already released, 240 participants, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study with La Trobe University. We mentioned in an update just last week that that's now been expanded to Athens University as well. Now we'll have a multi-dose, multi-center study with 240 participants. We'll be expecting that we'll be able to show some really material P values and results within the next 12 months on gut health and also mental health. Watch this space for more on the BMB18 study.
It is really material for Biome because this will further protect our products. We'll be able to add our strain as a hero to some of our existing lines that are doing large volume, which adds value to the IP as well as people look to how to understand Biome Australia as a valuation perspective, not just on brand, not just on growth, but also on IP that has sales behind it. It'll also create a very unique opportunity for us to do new product development into areas where we have no competition at all. Where we're at right now, we've announced we have 7,500 distribution points in Australia. The addressable market is estimated around 12,000.
What I want to reinforce is about half of those 7,500 have not really been developed to the point where we see them as top Biome accounts. Our model has always been to be the number one profit driver in each independent pharmacy. We work with them to be able to develop their understanding of the products, to understand that it's unique, it's keeping the customer in their ecosystem. They can't go buy it on Amazon or the supermarket or the discounters. The gross profit, the margin that they make on this product is a lot stronger than other products in the category. Not to forget the point that these products actually work and the patients are coming back to buy them again.
While, yes, we're at 7,500 out of 12, there is a huge opportunity still over the next few years to develop. We look forward to giving a report on same-store sales growth in the coming periods. International markets. I know everyone's waiting for a material update on this, and there will be one coming with the end of year report. Australia is established but still growing fast. We have already mentioned, I believe, that Canada, we are seeing all the early signs that we'd like to see in an early market, and I'm very positive about what's happening with Fullscript and EcoTrend in Canada. Ireland and the U.K. Ireland has become the crown jewel of Europe, and I look forward to reporting on that. Ireland, we have a partnership with Uniphar, and Uniphar also own about 40% of the pharmacies in Ireland.
As we keep delivering results, they are unlocking more pharmacies for our products to be ranged in. Roadmap. I don't need to go over this. We can gloss over. Near term, I think we've spoken about most of this. Happy to hand over to questions.
We've had a couple of questions come through. The first one, can you talk us through BMB18 and what kind of impact probiotics strains into the Biome?
Maybe I'll talk to it, J.B., I might ask you to give a bit more background since you've had a very long career in IP discovery and even drug discovery. From Biome's perspective, it's not just that step change in ownership, BMB18 is really the next generation of probiotics as well. Having that strain commercially would be an opportunity should we choose to license it out. We could do a deal with one of the major probiotic manufacturers in the world that we have very close relationships with, people I sit on the IPA board with. There are optionality that Biome will be able to identify. J.B., can you explain from your perspective, what does this patent mean that we've lodged, and how do you see this as valuable for Biome?
Well, thanks, Blair. I think that, honestly, it's probably for me, as chief science officer, the most exciting thing we've done. I'm always very happy to see the financial success. To me, this absolutely catapults Biome into the realm of being a biotech company. It's a fantastic step in that direction because if you look at how much biotech companies are valued around the planet and how much good they do, it's nice to be in that sector. As far as BMB18 specifically is concerned, it really is a fantastic step forward for us. Gives us that point of difference. Very, very powerful strain. We lucked out with our first choice. It really, I think, is going to be a strain with extraordinarily broad utility, and that'll allow us to use it in many, many products and use it specifically as a stepping-off point for new product development.
As we understand more about BMB18 and what it can do, it will give us a pathway into condition-specific probiotic formulations, including BMB18 and other strains that can address new unmet needs, and that's really exciting for me. Having been in the drug development and drug discovery area for closing on 40 years now, it's probably the biggest step forward that we can make as an organization. In the same way, it's just the first step in a whole new realm of strain discovery, being able to go in new directions and really leverage the fact that we have such a good and competent capability in terms of bringing these things to market, to really deliver some, I think, exciting products into the future.
Thank you, J.B. I better be careful to ask you to not say too much more because we've got to consider our continuous disclosure as well.
Absolutely.
Also, I love the reference to biotech. The value of biotech without the spend of biotech. I think it's important to note we've managed to develop this strain for the best part of about AUD 300,000.
Yeah.
It's been done through the relationships that we've got, that we're able to leverage, that a biotech wouldn't be able to do. We're able to develop these very high-value assets without burning cash. It is exciting that we can continue to look at this IP portfolio over the coming years.
I think to that point, this is a model for biotech going forward. Increasingly, the huge amounts of money that many of the large ones are throwing at the work that they're doing is not resulting in the sort of outcomes that we've got for an absolute fraction of that spend.
Yeah.
I think we're showing some real leadership in that field.
Yeah. Thanks, J.B.
Thanks, J.B. Next one come through, can you determine what % of your sales are being generated from the add-on-to-market opportunity?
Very reasonable question. Very difficult question to answer. We do get scan sales in the pharmacy market. It's very hard to determine exactly what % it is, but the best way that I look at it is looking at a specific product. Biome Cholesterol that I mentioned, up 77%, that's the obvious product, alongside Biome Advanced, which is prescribed with antibiotics, which is one of the high volume co-prescribing products in a pharmacy. We know it's working, but we have to trust the feedback from the pharmacist. We have several programs, I believe seven or eight programs with different pharmacy chains, where the products are actively in the dispensary point-of-sale system. If a certain medication gets scanned, a product will pop up.
For example, if it's a medication for a UTI, Biome Her might pop up as an N of one or a recommendation to sell or recommend to that patient alongside the antibiotics for UTIs. Difficult question to answer. We are working on different methodologies to track it. We do see certain groups doing sales volumes higher than we expect, and then that is pointing to the direction that it is absolutely working.
Just circling back to another question on BMB18. Can it be used to improve or leverage existing probiotic products?
Absolutely. I'm not sure if I've already addressed that or not. BMB 18 is intended to be added to our high-volume products, which further protects our IP, the company from competition, and adds a strategic point of difference from a scientific lens as well. I would like to see BMB 18 coming into our products within FY 2027. That's a goal of mine. We're still working through that with our manufacturers and teams. We have already done a commercial batch. We've validated, we've got the safety, we've got the research. It's ready to go. It's just working through that process of getting it into the production cycle now.
In terms of launch products, just on BMB18 for different health topics or new areas, that might be a little bit longer as we continue to do the clinical research, but optimistically, we'll get some results within FY 2027 of the first study as well. As we get those, we'll report where we think we can take that with innovation.
Just a note on that, BMB18 actually turns out to be a rather robust and not particularly difficult probiotic to make at scale.
Yeah.
That's not always the case with newly discovered probiotics. Some of them are quite finicky. This one is not.
You're right, J.B. Very quickly, that's probably a good point for me to touch on as well. The commercial development is equally as important as the scientific development, and this is where I guess some of the biotechs in live biotherapeutics probably fall down as well. Being able to develop a living bacteria within a small testing environment, the challenge is how will it scale up once you develop it? We have probiotic strains that might cost anywhere from AUD 100 up to AUD 4,000 or AUD 5,000 a kilogram, and that depends on the yield that you're producing. Even being an expert producer or commercializer of the fermentation process, you still have to be able to select the right strain because it might not ever get a commercial yield that could be affordable.
We want these things to be high value, but we don't want them to create products that are going to be AUD 500 a month because they just won't be accessible for people.
Yep.
Do you have an early view or strategy for the Chinese market? Can your newly announced onshore production be scaled up to serve massive markets such as China?
Really good question. Look, a lot of the big Australian vitamin companies have had their success and failure in China. I sit on the Complementary Medicines Australia board with the CEO of Swisse and Blackmores. We share many dinners talking about this specific topic and the pains that they're currently having on this specific topic. I've got to be careful what I share, what isn't public knowledge with the CMA, but there has been a recent issue with China and Australian manufacturers. None of the ones that we're working with, but some have actually lost their license recently and are fighting to get them back. The CBEC market, that cross-border market that's been the main route for Australian brands into China is also under review by the Chinese government. There is a lot of risk in the market at the moment.
I'm actually on the ground in China from next Sunday for a week. Austrade have invited me over with one of five brands, including Blackmores, to be in an Australia pavilion, which is going to be a very interesting experience. The first time the company has officially been in China. Our strategy for right now is we will always assess for our local partners on the ground. We don't believe it's the right time or the right market for us right now to go in. It is very generic. It is very low quality still, the copycat issues are real problems to solve. Our strategy has always been look at the developed markets, the markets that are more advanced. We think North America presents a very real opportunity with a practitioner-only market, whereas China's still a little bit early stage.
I will report back after my trip next week.
Thanks. When will you be able to buy in the U.K.?
Immediately.
Now.
Yeah. Biome launched in the U.K. and Ireland initially through the practitioner market about two years ago. The retail market in Ireland is more advanced. As I mentioned earlier, we have the partnership with Uniphar, there is a list of health food and pharmacies today that you can, certainly within London and the M25 ring, which if someone wants to send us an email to support@activated.co, we can direct them to a stockist to be able to get the products.
Okay, maybe just a couple more. What is behind your benign two-year arrangement with probiotics?
I actually got this question when I was on the road this week from an insto. Why did we sign a two-year agreement on our five-year agreement? This is very intentional. My preference was actually for it to be a shorter period of time. The reason being, Biome has many supply chain partners now, and we're constantly reviewing and optimizing those supply chain partners and what they provide us. We want to make sure we have the highest quality product. We also want to manage our cost base and our margin and our route to market long term as well with the right partners. The next agreement with that partner, we are in discussion, negotiation on a new five-year agreement. It needs to meet Biome's terms.
It needs to fit our business as we grow and scale, and we have given a list of things that we would like them to be able to support us with. We also have a list of other very significant IP companies and probiotic manufacturers that would desperately like Biome's business. We're just reviewing what will be best for Biome as we move forward. That two years gives us an ample window to be able to complete that project and then continually report on what will be best for Biome's IP, Biome's product, and Biome's margin.
Okay. Next question. Why are you not reporting a revenue figure for Q3? I am happy to take this one.
Okay.
The Appendix 4C is a quarterly cash flow report that's an ASX requirement, and that doesn't encompass revenue. They're two different things, those metrics or cash flow and revenue don't necessarily always correlate in lockstep, particularly for our business. When you consider a single quarter's revenue in isolation, it doesn't tell you a lot about our business. Q3 also has the impact of seasonality and cyclicality, which further could distort end rates. Rather than, I guess, input a number on its own, we would rather now move up to a model where we give you, I guess, the complete picture, each half year reporting period, so at the interim for 31 December and also at the full year come 30 June, and report the revenue alongside gross margin, EBITDA, and net profit.
That timing should come straight after the Q4 close for the full year. The cadence will actually then reflect, I guess, more transparency on how the business actually performs over the full year and half year period. I guess it's worth probably touching on that nothing has actually changed in the trajectory, even though we didn't report Q3 revenue, which was a change. This is more about the quality of ongoing reporting and making sure that we're reporting on metrics that actually are operationally focused. Yeah, we look forward to reporting on the Q4 results.
This was a decision that the board didn't take lightly. It was debated at great detail in January, it wasn't a last-minute decision that we decided to allay any concerns. I note as well, there's been questions around this around our cash receipts as well as a proxy for revenue, which cash receipts is not a proxy for revenue. There is a lot of distortion on timing with some of our partners being on 60-day terms, even looking at it on a PCP basis, January is the slowest month of the year, it's not a direct correlation. From that question around timing, we are absolutely happy to give a transparent report ahead of our final audit, we will do. We're very happy with how the business is tracking.
We have reinforced that we're on track for our Vision 27 plans, and we certainly have not fallen off a cliff, in the last couple of months after the best half we've ever achieved.
Yeah, absolutely not. I think just to further comment on that, those working capital shifts as well. Obviously, the biggest drivers of that are our cash receipts from customers. The timing that we have is around different trading terms. With the cyclicality of the business as well, again, just circling back to cash receipts isn't necessarily a great proxy for revenue. Also the timing of our stock build. Obviously, we've spoken about the challenges that we have with inventory, and working capital being tied up at sea, but also stock build for the cyclicality in our business as we go into our peak season of the immune health months here in Australia. Yeah, that I guess kind of speaks to some of the movements that you may see if you look at things quarter on quarter.
Yeah. Another one on just sort of the corporate program for Biome. I mean, I probably can't talk too much about what's going on other than there is a lot of interest in the company globally. The share price, I know it's been a tough year for healthcare. I spoke at a healthcare conference this week in Sydney, the opening remark from the head analyst from Morgans was, "Healthcare across the board is down 50% in the last 12 months." What this is the market that we're in has been less favorable. AI has been stealing all the noise and a lot of the capital. It'll be really interesting to see what happens with the AI market. From our perspective, it's actually supercharging our business.
It's allowed us to really enable more granular reporting to liken that of a much larger business, which we'll be able to enable our sales teams using these type of tools into next year. From the share price perspective, obviously all we can do is keep delivering, and we will keep delivering. We'll report well, we'll communicate, and the results will come through. It's been a much better week on market, and I think we're seeing a bit of a step change in people understanding that Biome has really taken that leap forward with this move to onshore manufacturing, the IP development, and the clinical trials on top of the growth that we're already delivering. I want to reinforce the company is cash flow positive or profitable. Certainly reported that last year, and we expect to this year as well.
We're now building on a foundation for a very large, very successful business in Australia and abroad. I'll look forward to seeing what that corporate picture tells over the next year or two, because there certainly is a lot of interest from different types of funds, different types of private equity firms, which we're certainly not engaged with at the moment. The interest is there because the business is very high quality.
Well, right on time. We've covered up all the questions.
Okay. Thank you all for joining. Appreciate your ongoing support.