Hello, thank you for joining us today for our investor update. My name is Ruth Ray. I'm the Senior Marketing Manager here at Cogstate, and we are joined today by Brad O'Connor, our Chief Executive Officer, and Darren Watson, our Chief Financial Officer. I'll go ahead and hand the time over to Brad, and I'll pop back in to help moderate the Q&A at the end of the session. Brad, over to you.
Thank you, Ruth. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us, for the presentation of Cogstate's 2023 financial results. I note our disclaimer that we will make forward-looking statements in this presentation, and except that you'll read that disclaimer. For those that have followed Cogstate for some time, you'll understand that we're on a mission to democratize brain health assessment. We want to make it easier for people to understand and measure their cognition. I think over the last 12 months, as a society, we've made substantial steps towards that goal. Cogstate's been in existence for over 20 years now. We have a fantastic scientific pedigree. We have a long track record.
We have a number of very strong commercial relationships in the pharmaceutical industry. We've got a fantastic team of over 370 team members, comprised of over 160 employees, plus a global network of consulting neuropsychologists. We've had a tough financial year 2023, but with a really growing addressable market and well-validated offering. We've got strong commercial partnerships with those relevant drug developers and a strong balance sheet, so we're really well positioned to grow. What I want to start today is talking about what's been happening outside of Cogstate in the broader industry, and the really positive external market conditions that we find ourselves operating in currently.
Just last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, approved Eisai's monoclonal antibody, lecanemab, or what will be marketed in the United States as Leqembi, for release, for the treatment of early Alzheimer's disease. This is the first-ever therapy to go through a full FDA approval for early Alzheimer's disease. Subsequent to that approval, we saw that the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid released updated guidance in relation to the reimbursement of those drugs, stating that they will provide full reimbursement of those treatments, provided that those patients go through a what's a fairly light touch CMS-facilitated registry to keep track of those patients and understand the ongoing health profile of patients on drug.
At the same time, in the June quarter, we saw Lilly release their phase III data in relation to a similar drug, donanemab. They've now submitted that data to the FDA, and they're expecting regulatory action before the end of calendar year 2023. There's no reason to believe that that therapy won't also be approved, and so by 2024, we expect to have two treatments on market for early Alzheimer's disease. I think it's worth pausing just to consider the, how momentous that occasion is, for, for the industry and the society as a whole, for patients, their caregivers, but similarly for Cogstate and its impact on our clinical trials business as well as our healthcare segment. Looking at the FY 2023 year just finished, fair to say, a tough year for Cogstate.
What we wanted to do today was to give some more context in relation to those trading conditions we experienced in FY 2023 and why we're seeing those changing as we head into FY 2024. The first is the clinical trial sales contracts declined substantially from what was a record in financial year 2022. We signed over $82 million worth of sales contracts in financial year 2022, down to $34 million in financial year 2023. A number of reasons for that. One is that our large customers were focused very much on the closeout of their Phase III programs and their regulatory submission. That's what I referred to on the previous slide. Those issues are now resolved, we'll talk about what they're planning to do in the future.
In the biotech market, we saw that those smaller biotech companies really impacted by slowing access to capital and slowed down their R&D program substantially. However, over the last three months, we've seen a substantial pickup in activity in those smaller biotechs who are focused, particularly in the rare disease market, and that's really encouraging for us. We did have reasonably solid first half results in terms of sales contracts, with over $27 million worth of sales contracts signed through that six months, but that was followed by a really disappointing June half year of only $6.7 million worth of sales contracts executed in that period. It's worth noting that the win rate through that period, so the amount of contracts executed versus opportunities in front of us remained unchanged.
What we saw was a substantial decrease in volume of opportunities through that period. That was obviously concerning. We were confident that that would reverse, though, and pleasingly, we've seen that over the last three months. Since May 2023, the level of request for proposals or, you know, sales opportunities volume, has increased substantially, both in terms of the number of opportunities and the total value of that sales pipeline. It bring that sales pipeline back to financial year 2022 levels, which obviously underpinned that really strong sales that we executed in that financial year 2022. Similarly, through FY 2023, we saw our revenue decline. Our clinical trials revenue was down 11% from 2022- 2023. A few reasons for that.
One is that revenue from contracts on hand at the beginning of the year was delayed. We saw some of that revenue delayed by slow recruitment into one very large phase III trial. Pleasingly, that issue is now resolved. Then revenue from contracts that we executed through that first half of financial year 2023 was also delayed due to the pause of two phase III trials. That revenue delay, distinct from the one above, but again, those issues are now resolved and those two trials are now kicking into gear, which is pleasing for us. The other thing that I think is important to note is the improved second half performance from, from the December half into the June half.
In the June half, we saw revenue up just under $1.5 million. We saw profit before tax up $3 million, and operating cash flow up $1.3 million. A much better second half performance. Look, I'll just touch on the financial year highlights before handing over to Darren Watson, who'll go through a lot of these numbers in more detail. As I mentioned, $34 million worth of sales contracts executed in clinical trials through the FY 2023 year. We saw group revenue of just a little over $40 million, so that was off 10% from the prior year. Clinical trials revenue down 11% in that period. Operating net cash flow, $1.7 million positive cash flow from operations through the financial year.
We have $132.5 million worth of contract future revenue. Our profit before tax for the year was $3 million. That was ahead of guidance, but down from the prior year, and we ended the year with a little shy of $28 million net cash holdings. As we look forward to the 2024 financial year, we have really strong expectations for growth this year. In Alzheimer's disease, the approval and launch of the first disease-modifying therapies really opens the doors to line extension and combination therapy trials for Cogstate. I'll talk about that, in a, in a little while, but essentially what we're saying is that there's an increasing pipeline of opportunities for Cogstate, from that increased research and development spend.
We expect to see brain health awareness and diagnostics will be an important focus as we see those new Alzheimer's therapies come onto market. We note that in conjunction with our, our partner, Eisai, we're planning the launch or the commercial launch of our physician tool named Cognigram during this fiscal year 2024. The other thing in Alzheimer's disease, we're seeing other large pharma companies entering the market and planning trials in this space. We note there that just this month, Cogstate has secured a Phase II trial in presymptomatic Alzheimer's disease from a new customer. Really pleasing to see the expansion of that customer base. In terms of clinical trial sales for FY 2024, as I mentioned previously, that request for proposal volume has increased substantially.
We're seeing that, that just value of opportunity increase back to those FY 2022 levels. On top of that, we're seeing a number of programs From some of our existing customers that have start dates in calendar year 2024. It's not just the existing pipeline of opportunities that have already been identified, but we see a greater number of opportunities coming down the track also. In terms of revenue, for fiscal year 2024, the delays we've experienced in financial year 2023 have now been resolved, and so we're expecting to grow revenue from 2023- 2024.
We note that we have a strong backlog of work already contracted, with just shy of $28 million of clinical trials revenue contracted for FY 2024, and actually a higher level, over $30 million of clinical trials revenue contracted for FY 2025. That strong contract revenue basis underpins our revenue and revenue growth from 2023- 2024- 2025. We expect that our profit will increase with expected revenue increases, and we note that the staff cost reductions that we executed in May of this year, will start to show benefit in FY 2024 as we're running that lower cost base. What I want to do now is to really talk about some of the reasons, the drivers, for that increased sales activity that we're seeing at the moment.
Certainly, there's a substantial amount that comes from Alzheimer's disease and our existing partnerships in Alzheimer's disease. Our existing large customers are planning new studies in Alzheimer's disease, and we see a substantial amount of work coming from that. On top of that, we've been able to add three new customers to our portfolio, all of which are top 10 pharma companies entering the Alzheimer's disease space. Really pleasing to see that, as expected, the positive data from the Phase III studies that read out over the last 12 months, have encouraged new pharma companies to enter the race for new Alzheimer's disease therapeutics. In other disease areas like Parkinson's disease, MS, depression, and sleep, we're seeing...
We, we're seeing that we're gaining traction in those diseases and broadening our, the, the base of indications that in which Cogstate works, and particularly, a pickup in the rare and pediatric trials, including, pediatric obesity or the GLP-1 studies that are getting a lot of attention at the moment in terms of the success of those of those therapeutics in both in both diabetes and weight loss programs. Finally, we're seeing that the, the continued trend for, you know, what we're calling patient-friendly trial design or at-home decentralized assessment, has been, has been an important part and of Cogstate being able to identify new opportunities. That really relates to the appropriateness of the Cogstate digital measures for use in those decentralized trials.
Looking at Alzheimer's disease specifically and the commercial opportunity that exists for Cogstate, I think it's important just to remind everybody of the financial significance that Alzheimer's disease plays in our broader financial structure. Over the last two financial years, only 24% of the sales opportunities that we've been focused on have, have been in Alzheimer's disease, but 70% of the value of sales contracts executed over that period have been in Alzheimer's disease. That just reflects the size and scale of, of those, particularly the large Phase III Alzheimer's disease projects and therefore the, the revenue impact they have in our business.
Whilst we've seen breakthrough treatments from both Lilly and Eisai over the last 12 months, I think it's important to note that these are far from perfect, and there's still room for improvement on those drugs, and we therefore expect continued investment in research to improve upon the results that have been shown so far. What's really important to note is, and this was shown particularly with the Lilly data that was presented at the Alzheimer's Association meeting in Amsterdam last month, was that the earlier treatment really showed a much greater benefit to patients. So that early diagnosis and timely diagnosis of the disease is really important to better health outcomes. Again, that just reinforces the role that really sensitive digital assessments can play in delivering better health outcomes to those patients.
In terms of increased future R&D spend in Alzheimer's disease, we've seen in other indications that positive data and, you know, and regulatory approval certainly lead, leads to a de-risking of future investment by other companies, and there's no reason to believe that Alzheimer's disease will be different to what we've seen in other indications. The other thing that I think really important to note is that you know, over the course of the next 12 months, Eisai and Lilly will have revenue from the drug launch of their new therapies. Certainly, we see within large pharma companies an increase in R&D spend, where there's a revenue line to protect and to grow, and we expect that to happen. We expect new mechanisms, line extension, combination therapies.
I'll talk about what that means, in a minute, but we expect that, you know, there will be continued spend, from an R&D perspective. All of this adds up to a growing market for Cogstate technology and services, both in our clinical trials business as well as our healthcare business. Digging a little deeper into the opportunities with those approved treatments. Our expectations are that we'll see, drugs like Leqembi and Donanemab trialed, in, in different but associated diseases. We would expect them to be trialed in Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, as well as Alzheimer's disease and Down syndrome.
I should note that the, the individual companies haven't spoken publicly to their intention to go into these areas, but that would just be our expectation, you know, based on the, you know, a logical assessment of what you would do with that drug having achieved that approval. The other thing that is important to note is that the analysis of both the Eisai and Lilly data focused heavily on the role that tau plays in terms of treatment benefit for patients upon the lowering of amyloid. Both of those companies have tau programs in development, we would expect in the future that they would seek to run combination tau and amyloid treatments to show improved benefit from that combined treatment.
In the context of Alzheimer's disease, I want to talk about presymptomatic Alzheimer's disease, sometimes referred to in the industry as preclinical Alzheimer's disease. Presymptomatic treatment, the idea of that is to lower amyloid burden in patients before such time as it causes Alzheimer's disease. This is analogous to the management of cholesterol, where we're seeking to lower cholesterol and therefore lead to better health outcomes in terms of cardiac safety. So far, Cogstate's been involved in 100% of the ongoing, and, and those presymptomatic Alzheimer's disease studies that we know are about to start.
We had some very early experience in this, running the A4 study, that included Lilly's prior generation drug, solanezumab, and Cogstate's been involved in that for some time, showing the sensitivity of the Cogstate assessments in that very early stage Alzheimer's disease. A key, and I, I think it's important to note there that, you know, that 100% market share has been hard won, but we expect to benefit from that over, over some time into the future. The reality is that for our competitors, they just cannot show the experience in this stage of Alzheimer's disease. It positions Cogstate really well. The key difference there is the need for more sensitive instruments, both the digital assessments as well as the clinical assessments.
Our expertise and advantage in terms of digital assessments is well known. What's perhaps less well known is the capability that Cogstate has in terms of the delivery of those clinical assessments via our consulting neuropsychologists, as well as the assessment and auditing of those assessments that are conducted at trial sites. The earlier stage of these patients in a pre-symptomatic disease, these are otherwise well people, allows for the greater application of decentralized trial approach. This is that at home, telehealth style assessment. To date, Cogstate is the only provider of central rating, which is a telehealth, you know, assessment of a primary endpoint in an Alzheimer's phase III trial.
I'll say that again, we're the only people to have delivered that telehealth assessment in as of a primary endpoint in Alzheimer's phase III trial. That's a fantastic claim, and I think that is the type of claim that underpins the fact that we've just secured a new customer in that, in that presymptomatic Alzheimer's disease space. The other thing I just wanted to touch on before handing over to Darren to run through the financial results, is just the opportunity we're seeing in rare diseases.
We're seeing as a general statement that a number of biotech companies are, are looking at rare disease as an opportunity to run a, a tightly cost-controlled clinical trial program and get regulatory approval in respect of, in respect of those compounds, and we are benefiting from that that push of those biotech companies. Dr. Pamela Ventola is the VP of Science at Cogstate and, and leads up our push into rare diseases. She's a highly respected consultant and scientist in the industry. We note there, she authored a publication providing evidence for clinical meaningfulness of change seen in a trial for Rett syndrome.
To just put that into layman's terms, Pam defined ahead of the trial what success would look like, managed those aspects of the trial, and then was able to report back to the regulator that those success metrics had been met. She's similarly, she's published a paper showing the applicability, in fact, the benefit of central rating telehealth style assessment in rare disease trials. That kind of conduct is now becoming the norm in rare disease trials, both from a reduced cost but an improved outcome point of view. To the extent that the regulator, the FDA, is now recommending this approach to biotech companies, and they're citing the Cogstate publication on this subject. Again, we're really well positioned there in terms of the growth profile into rare disease trials.
I'm gonna pause now and hand over to Darren, who's gonna run through in a bit more detail the financial year 2023 results.
Thanks, Brad. This chart details the profit and loss for the financial year 2023. As Brad mentioned earlier, revenue for the year, $40.5 million, was down 10% from the prior year. This was caused by revenue delays associated with specific issues on the small number of trials that Brad outlined earlier, as well as the low second half new contract sales that were achieved during the second half. We did see improvement in the second half over the first half. The second half revenue hitting $20.9 million, compared to the first half of $19.5 million, an increase of $1.4 million, with many of those issues around revenue delays beginning to come to a resolution through that second half.
Gross contribution for the year was $21.2 million, down 20% from the prior year, and down almost seven points of margin. The decline in revenue was the driving factor, but also the fact that our clinical trials cost is largely of a fixed nature. While we initially held our resource levels in anticipation of revenue growth, adjustments were made in the second half as part of the restructure of the business that we undertook in May. Additionally, the contribution was impacted by the lower software licenses, with our software license mixed down to 10% of clinical trials revenue, down from the record of about 22% in FY 2022.
That decline in the gross contribution, together with an increase in our operating expense, resulted in EBITDA of about $5.3 million for FY 2022, which is down 59% on the prior year record of $13 million. Then there's a small increase in depreciation and amortization year- to- year, and therefore results in our EBIT of $2.7 million, down from the record in FY 2022 of $10.7 million. I think it's important to note here that the second half EBITDA, EBIT, and net profit before tax were stronger than the first half, with stronger revenue and the rebalanced business from the restructure, returning the business closer to our target levels of profitability.
If I turn to the next page, as Brad covered a little earlier, contract sales for FY 2023 were $34 million, down from the record level of $82.5 million in FY 2022, as the graph on the left here illustrates. While the first half was reasonable at $27.3 million, the focus on closing out the Phase III trials and the subsequent regulatory submissions, as Brad mentioned earlier, together with the lower spend that we've seen from biotechs in the current constrained market, saw only $6.7 million of sales in the second half. Alzheimer's continues to be the main driver of our sales, accounting for 70% of the value in FY 2023. The graphs to the bottom right of the table here show the breakout of our new contract sales between phases.
You can see again a strong mix of both phase II and phase III trial signings, in FY 2023. Turning to the clinical trials business. Excuse me. Revenue was at $35.7 million for FY 2023, down 11% from the prior year, as we've discussed, the revenue delays being the main cause of that. We did see improvement in the second half as some of those causes began to ease, with revenue growing to $18.6 million in the second half. The margins were impacted by the lower revenue, the higher staff costs. As I mentioned before, we initially tamed resource levels in anticipation of the revenue growth, adjusted for that in May.
Also a lower software license mix, with our software license revenue declining from the record highs of FY 2022, which were at 22% of clinical trials revenue, to just above 10% in FY 2023. Again, it's important to note here that the second half has stronger revenue and stronger margins. Illustrates that the restructure we undertook in May returns the business back to historical or target levels of margin. Turning to the next chart, which illustrates the future contract revenue runoff. On the bottom left, you can see the contract revenue runoff. For FY 2024, we have revenue under contract for clinical trials of $27.7 million, and healthcare revenue of $4.2 million.
That revenue grows again in FY 2025, so it gives us confidence of growth in FY 2024 and FY 2025. In the bottom right-hand table illustrates the percentage of revenue under contract at the beginning of the year relative to our full year revenue. You can see that FY 2023 are significantly different to the prior years. A couple of impacts in here, one being that a large portion of the revenue under contract at the beginning of the year, close to $5 million, actually shifted out to future periods as a result of the revenue delays that we've talked about. The abnormally low second half of new contract sales has resulted in low in-period revenue.
We believe that FY 2020 through FY 2022 are more representative of future years than is FY 2023, which had those two unusual scenarios of revenue that has shifted to future periods and the lower, in particular, the lower second half contract signings. Turning to the healthcare business, you can see revenue of $4.4 million, essentially flat year-over-year. The $4.4 million primarily consists of the amortization of the two Eisai deals, both the global and Japan deals. Our margin slightly down from the prior year, down by 1.3 points.
First half was impacted by an external study that was undertaken on our behalf in terms of go-to-market opportunities around the healthcare business, which will be beneficial to us as we enter into FY 2024. The second half sees us return to the more expected or consistent margins for our healthcare business. Finally, on the next chart, just from a cash flow point of view. As Brad mentioned earlier, positive net operating cash flow of $0.7, though down considerably from last year. Clearly, the key driver to that is the lower EBITDA, declining from $13 million in the prior year down to $5.3. A couple of important notes.
Continuing to invest in the business, so you can see capitalized software development costs of AUD 2.1 million, reflecting the ongoing investment in the technology that underpins the business. Also from a financing cash point of view, the AUD 0.6 million relating to the share buyback program that was undertaken in the second half of FY 2023. The combination of the operating cash flow, those investing activities and the financing activities sees a small reduction in our net cash over the year of AUD 1.9 million. We remain in a very strong cash position of 28.7, AUD 28.7 million of net cash at 30 June. It positions us well from our ability to continue to invest into the business.
With that, I will hand back to Brad.
Thank you, Darren. Just to, to wrap up before we open up for questions, just before I get into this, I'll remind people that there's two ways to, to ask questions. The first is you can type your questions into the question pane on the control panel. You'll see a chat there from Cogstate Meetings inviting you to do that. The other is you can raise your hand, and the moderator will, will unmute you, so that you can ask your question verbally. We encourage you to do either of those. Just focusing, I suppose, on, as we look forward, that we believe that we're the-- that our business is really well positioned for growth. We're absolutely rece-...
Seeing momentum returning to the business, and, and particularly that comes from the growing opportunity in Alzheimer's disease. Our existing customers are planning new trials. We note that most of those have a start date in the 2024 calendar year. Certainly we're expecting new trials come from from our existing customers. We're seeing an expansion of our customer base, and, you know, we're encouraged by the addition of three new large pharma customers over the, over the last few months. Those three companies are all top 10 pharma companies in terms of rating, ranking by revenue. We're planning our go-to-market for Cognigram in the USA. Just a reminder that Cognigram is the Class II medical device that's received FDA clearance.
We're expecting that Eisai will take that into the market late calendar 2023, early calendar 2024. Obviously, sales contracts in our clinical trials segment will be critical to revenue growth, and the timing and, you know, of execution of those sales contracts will, will impact just how much revenue we recognize in fiscal 2024. We're obviously encouraged by the fact that the sales pipeline has increased to those FY 2022 levels. In May 2023, so just a couple of months ago, we initiated cost reductions. We exited a number of people from the business, and we restructured the business. That restructure is going very well. The cost base reduction was enabled by technology efficiency gains that we've invested in over the last couple of years, and it positions Cogstate for profitable revenue growth.
Darren mentioned that we've seen those clinical trials contribution margins get back into sort of target range through the June half of the financial year, and the cost base reductions that we executed in May will position us well to maintain that sort of margin in FY 2024. We expect to grow revenue and profit in FY 2024. At this stage, we're not providing specific guidance pending the execution of those sales contracts, just so that we can see get greater certainty in respective of the timing of the revenue. I think it's one of those questions where the quantum of the revenue is less in question than the timing of the revenue and therefore the impact in FY 2024.
We note that, you know, we'll update the market again at our AGM, scheduled for late October. Finally, we note that, coming out with this release, we, the share trading window for Cogstate will reopen, and we will recommence our share buyback, and be back in the market tomorrow. We and that decision to recommence the buyback reflects the board view of, of value, relative to where we're trading currently, as well as our strong cash position. With that, I'm gonna open up to questions. Just a reminder again, there's two ways to ask questions. You can type your questions into the, into the question pane, into the chat pane, or you can press the Raise Your Hand button, and you'll have your line unmuted.
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Brad and Darren, for walking us through this information. We do have several questions, and to what we've just been speaking about in terms of healthcare and Cognigram, we've had several questions about about that area, and I do want to ask one of them. That's regarding Eisai's go-to-market planning, does the planned application of Cognigram match the expectations that were in place when the partnership was signed? What needs to happen for Cogstate to reach above minimum contracted royalty revenue?
Yes, I mean, a complex question to answer, I suppose, in terms of in terms of expectations. I think this has been, you know, a, a moving target for all of us, in terms of the expectations of getting drugs on the market, you know, the moving, the moving goalpost that has been reimbursement of those drugs, we're really pleased to see CMS's updated statement in terms of reimbursement of those therapies in the United States market.
Absolutely, as we get to, you know, towards the end of this calendar year and the start of 2024 calendar year, you know, I think having the sales, you know, sales activities, putting that Cognigram product into the hands of primary care physicians absolutely meets our expectations and our, I suppose, our ambitions with respect to the product. We believe that that's a substantial opportunity, and we've always believed that was a substantial opportunity. The original investment thesis for Cogstate revolved around the idea of putting technology into the hands of primary care physicians and allowing them to better identify the earliest stages of cognitive decline that might be associated with Alzheimer's disease. That absolutely meets our expectations in terms of or, or ambitions, in terms of what we want to do with the product.
Having a partner who, who has therapy on the market, obviously positions us really well. In terms of what it will take to exceed the minimum royalties that we're receiving under that, under that agreement, it's really just quantum of quantum of applications of the technology, so number of tests, number of patients, really. You know, so it's, it's a product of getting the product on market, in the hands of the sales force, calling on primary care doctors and really making that part of standard of care. It's probably too early to talk at this stage about, you know, what that rollout looks like, and I would be breaching confidence if I was to do so. You know, we're excited to think that it's finally happening.
We've been working on this for over 20 years now, so it's exciting.
It certainly is exciting, Brad. Thanks, thanks for that. A little bit of a switch here, to something else that was just brought up. Regarding the share buyback, what should be expected, and would you say that Cogstate is in a position to be a bit more aggressive in this than maybe we have been in the past?
I think, I think the question probably reflects a little bit of a lack of understanding of what Cogstate can do. We're limited somewhat by the volume of stock that goes through the screen. Just so that people understand the mechanics of how this works, when stock is crossed by a broker, which it often is in respect of Cogstate, we don't participate in that, and we are limited to how much stock we can buy on a certain day. We're, we're, we're limited to 25% of the stock that's traded through the screen on any individual day. We've been as aggressive as we can be. On most days, we've, we've hit that limit.
You know, we're a function of how much stock is going through the screen. It, it hasn't been. We're also limited in terms of the maximum price that we can pay for stock, so we can't bid the stock up. There's, there's rules that prevent us from doing that. We've, we've acquired as much stock as we've been able to under those conditions, and we'll continue to do so.
Thanks, Brad. Next question: contracted revenue from FY 2024 dropped from $32.6 million at the half year to $27.7 million at June 30, which is a decline of nearly $5 million. Could you talk to maybe what has occurred here?
Yep. That's exactly right. Compared to the figures released with the half year at the end of February 2023, you saw a decline of $4.9 million in contracted revenue for 2024. You saw an increase of contracted revenue for 2025 of $3.5 million, an increase in 2026 of $0.3 million, an increase at fiscal 2027 of $0.7 million, and an increase for fiscal 2028 of $4.1 million. Overall, over those five financial years, you've seen contracted revenue actually increase from $92.2 million at February to $95.9 million as at today, but the timing of those has changed.
There's certainly an element of, you know, those delays we referred to, earlier, you know, sort of, pushing activities to the right. We've talked about that at length over the last 6 months. The other thing that's, I think, really important to note here is these changes in movements in terms of. This is expectations in terms of when do we expect activities will occur that allow us to invoice. Those expectations change all the time, and these numbers do move quarter to quarter, and they always have constantly. It becomes more obvious when you have a really slow sales half, as we did through the June half.
Normally, if we'd had a, you know, a half of $20 million, $30 million, $40 million worth of sales contracts executed over that period, you would've just seen that growth in 2024 and 2025 contracted revenue. That would sort of muffle a little bit of that movement that you see quarter-to-quarter and half-to-half in terms of the timing of the expected timing of revenue recognition. There's a little bit here of, you know, when the tide goes out, you see more of the, of what's happening behind the scenes. The analysis that, that listener has identified is 100% correct. Again, $4.9 million reduction of contractual revenue for 2024.
You know, overall, at $3.7 million, you know, every other period has increased in terms of contracted revenue, so an overall increase of $3.7 million of contracted revenue for those five years.
Thanks, Brad. I appreciate you laying that out. Another question: Looking at trials in this presymptomatic AD area, we've seen some difficulties in recruitments. The question is about how trial sponsors might navigate some of those recruitment difficulties and maybe I might add, how Cogstate may help address that, some of those challenges, so we maybe might not have to endure some of the delays that have been experienced.
Again, I think there's two aspects in respect of delays. Firstly, the difficulty of recruiting of those patients is, is absolutely a fair comment. The second thing in, in relation to delays, though, is, is about, and a little bit of it's about, is around expectations. It's a delay if your expectations were wrong. And yeah, clearly through fiscal year 2023, our expectations were wrong. They were guided by our pharma company customer in that situation, but with the benefit of hindsight, those expectations were incorrect. There's two aspects to it. In terms of improving recruitment into those trials, I think Absolutely, there's a role to play for digital cognitive measures as a screening tool in that space.
I think the other thing, though, that really increases the rate of recruitment into those trials is the release of blood-based biomarkers. This is the ability to, to assess amyloid in people's brain via a blood test. Obviously, that makes the comparison to that blood test is a PET scan or analysis of amyloid in CSF, so via a lumbar puncture. A blood test, you know, really reduces the friction point in terms of identification of patients who might participate in that trial. We think that the release of those blood tests, which is coming shortly, will really be the thing that speeds recruitment into those trials more than anything else.
Brad, you brought up biomarkers, which is actually leads perfectly into another question we had about the, the growth of importance, and understanding of biomarkers in Alzheimer's disease. The question is around how Cogstate tests may align with, with biomarkers.
Yeah. It's really important and a very good observation. What you're looking for in Alzheimer's disease presently, and is both the presence of amyloid and the presence of cognitive impairment. You need both of those aspects for a diagnosis for the existing treatments, for the ones that are coming on the market currently. There's, you know, there's a need to wrap both of those things together in terms of availability for primary care physicians as well as specialist clinicians. There's a number of discussions that we're part of currently to think about how, you know, how as an industry, do we make those tools more widely available to physicians?
I think the important thing to note is that those blood tests are not yet quite ready for commercial launch, but they're getting very close, and we expect them on market very soon.
Thank you so much, Brad. We're gonna take just a few more questions here, folks. If there are others that, that don't get answered, please do feel free to email us at communications@cogstate.com, and we're happy to continue answering questions. The next question we have here is: the interaction earlier this year with a potential purchaser clearly indicates the board is open to recommending a sale at the right price. Has the board considered running a formal sale process?
Good question. I think, two aspects to that. I think, I think that's true to say that, well, I would imagine that every board is open to a sale at the right price. Yes, I can confirm that our board absolutely is open to a sale at the right price, and the right price is the critical aspect. In terms of running a process, I think it's important to understand, you know, you know, where those previous discussions fell down, and a lot of it related to the fact that, you know, we were experiencing, so we, Cogstate, were experiencing those revenue delays, the complexities in relation to our current period revenue, and therefore current period earnings, which, you know, obviously has implications in terms of valuation.
I think as we look forward as a business and we look at the opportunities that we see in front of us, we look at the sales pipeline that is, you know, growing so rapidly, as well as the, you know, additional opportunities that we see coming through calendar year 2024. I think in terms of maximizing return for our shareholders, which is what we're focused on, it's about identifying when is the right time if we were to run a process. I would argue that now is not the right time, coming off the back of, you know, these results that we've just released, these Fiscal 2023 results. I think, you know, realistically, our shareholders would benefit from Cogstate printing some much stronger numbers, which we intend to do.
Then we could, you know, and then it might be an appropriate time to think about that.
Thanks so much, Brad. The final question we're gonna take tonight is, or sorry, I'm in the United States, it is this morning in Australia. How is Cogstate innovating? What's new and evolving inside the organization to stay ahead of the curve and stay sharp?
Thank you. It's an excellent question. A number of areas we're focused on innovation. I think the first I'll touch on is phone-based assessment. We've seen the seen the relevance of at-home assessment. We're seeing the demand for... We expect to see the demand for general brain health awareness tools. I think the launch of app-based smartphone assessments that can be that can be delivered to individuals, to consumers, as part of that general brain health awareness and, and making people aware of decline and giving them the agency to to act on that is the first area that we're innovating in.
We're just in the process of finalizing some studies that have been run at Monash University here in Melbourne that demonstrate the sensitivity and the utility of those smartphone-based assessments. You know, we, we, we have plans for how we'll launch those into both the clinical trials and the healthcare market. More broadly, we've invested over the last couple of years in building out our what we refer to as our data lake. Our data, ability to ingest, to analyze, and to report data.
I think that's a really critical aspect in terms of innovation, especially as we focus on getting more tests into the market as part of our healthcare opportunity, and the thought that we will be able to create, you know, very large data sets from which we can learn and from which we can analyze and show trends and show opportunities and show earlier identification of disease, both to our pharma partners as well as to physicians, as well, as well as consumers. I think that's a really critical area of innovation. The other areas where we've been focused on innovating has been just from an operational perspective. So how do we run our business internally?
We referred to the fact that we were able to reduce our headcount in May because of some technology innovation that, you know, that we've been working on over the previous 12 months. It's really about reducing the man-hours that it takes to conduct a number of our activities, using technology better that's purpose-built for our offering, and then, you know, delivering against that and actually, you know, taking the hard step of reducing the headcount where we identify those, or where, where we've delivered those technology innovations. That's three areas, the three main areas where we're focused in terms of innovation.
Thank you so much, Brad. It certainly is an exciting time. So much momentum right now in the industry, and it's exciting to be part of it. With that, would love to give an opportunity, Darren, Brad, any final words for our audience?
I'd just like to finish by thanking everybody for your continued interest in Cogstate. We're, you know, we're really focused on the momentum that exists in the business currently, and, and, we see, as I've mentioned, the opportunity for, you know, significant growth into 2024 and 2025 and, and, you know, and the, the launch of these new Alzheimer's therapies really changes the market opportunity, for Cogstate and changes the health outcomes for a number of individuals. So it's really exciting. So thank you again.
Yeah, same, so same thoughts from myself, Ruth. I think the opportunity for FY 2023, FY 2024, and FY 2025 are very exciting, and we're looking forward to delivering on that opportunity.
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Darren and Brad, and for all of you for joining. Again, we, we appreciate you being with us today, and we look forward to sharing more information with you as time goes on and more webinars. Thanks so much, all.
Thank you.
Thank you.