Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to CSL's investor briefing. It's Mark Dehring speaking, and I have with me here online Paul Perreault, CSL's Chief Executive Officer, and Andrew Cuthbertson, CSL's Chief Scientific Officer. Paul and Andrew will be speaking to a short deck of slides, which by now you should have in front of you. If you don't, you can find them on the investor section of the company's website, and they've also been lodged with the Australian Securities Exchange. Following the briefing, we'll then move to Q&A and be joined by David Lamont, CSL's Chief Financial Officer, and Paul McKenzie, CSL's Chief Operating Officer. Please note this briefing is being webcast. Lastly, before we start, I draw your attention to the forward statement disclaimer contained in the slide deck. I'll now pass you over to Paul Perreault.
Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I hope everyone is safe, your families are safe, your friends are safe and healthy. As you know, slide three is the first slide I'll be covering on the overview. The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting all of us, and I would like to take this opportunity to provide shareholders with some insights as to how this is impacting CSL operations, what initiatives we're taking to respond to this global health conference will also be provided. I'll also update you on our employees, plasma collections, our commercial operations, and Andrew will provide that insight on CSL's R&D activities and our capabilities as they relate to the COVID-19, as well as the company's response to support global efforts and deal with this pandemic. Then I'll finish with a brief comment on our financials.
On slide three, the COVID pandemic spreads across the globe, and has been as you know, and all of us are experiencing the impact both at work and at home. Without question, our daily lives and routines and those of our loved ones have been altered, and we are all trying to adjust very rapidly, and that's no different within CSL. While this is a quickly evolving situation, I want to ensure you that the health and safety of our employees, our patients, and our donors remain our top priority. Over the past few weeks, I've heard numerous stories about the ways in which CSL employees are really coming together and continuing to deliver on our patients, and for public health.
I would say that our employees are focused, they're remaining calm, they're productive, so that they can be there for each other, for the families and the people that depend on our therapies. CSL has always been an organization that deals with challenges head-on, and I think we're proving that once again right now. I think it's also a testament to the values-based culture that we have at CSL, where everybody is banding together. A small number of our colleagues have tested positive for COVID-19, we're providing as much support as possible as they focus on their recovery. Whilst in the depths of COVID-19, our strategy and our mission hasn't changed. We continue to focus on delivering these innovative medicines to patients around the world, helping to save and improve their lives, and especially those living with this rare and serious diseases that our therapies address.
Our research and development team is well engaged with multiple academic partners and governments to find ways to apply our capabilities to help address the significant challenges that are posed by this COVID-19. Our well-established adjuvant technology of MF59 has been donated to The University of Queensland's COVID-19 vaccine development program. In addition, Seqirus is working with a number of other agencies who may be able to utilize MF59 in their vaccine development efforts. COVID-19 has also given rise to an increased demand for influenza vaccine. Unlike COVID-19, there is a vaccine available for influenza, and people are taking the precautionary measures to vaccinate. At the request of the Australian Government, we will be manufacturing additional Southern Hemisphere influenza vaccine doses to meet the increased demand in Australia. You may have seen some headlines with Minister Hunt talking about our response to that request.
Many of CSL's products are life-saving, and to safeguard our ability to deliver these medicines to patients who rely on them, we have implemented across our business continuity plans at all of our sites. At this time, we are not experiencing any material issues with product supply. Even before COVID-19, our supply chain resilience measures ensured that critical materials are not sourced from any single supplier or country. Turning now to slide four. There we go. Turning to slide four, safeguarding the health of our people continues to be our top priority. We need to keep our staff of 26,000 across 60 countries safe. Unfortunately, some of our colleagues have tested positive. However, I'm pleased to report that many of the colleagues have already recovered or are in recovery. When I say many, we've had a total of 45 employees across the organization that have tested positive.
Now, not all employees have been tested, I'm careful to say that we are monitoring the health of all of our employees at the sites and also tracking everyone that is working remotely. If they do get tested and test positive, we try to address and help them wherever possible. Being a global organization, we have been able to respond quickly to the needs of our staff. We did so in China. As you know, we have a facility in Wuhan, and we were supplying additional personal protection equipment from our Swiss operations, for instance. Wherever possible, our employees who are able to perform their work remotely have been strongly encouraged to do so using available communication technologies to continue conducting business and to mitigate any business disruptions. We do, however, need to continue producing medicines.
Recognizing the importance of these products to patients, our sites are considered critical infrastructure. We have been in countries that are locking down non-essential services as part of the containment efforts. We have been able to continue to operate as we've received the designation as critical and essential infrastructure. Employees who need to be on-site to perform their work, such as plasma collection and manufacturing, continue to work. They're supported by the introduction of enhanced protocols on hygiene, social distancing, staggered work hours, and the list goes on. We've also had great support from many of the governments where our sites are located. We've also accelerated the onboarding of critical roles and the implementation of succession plans for all key critical positions, both designed to improve the resilience within the organization.
As our employees are facing challenging situations at home, ranging from unexpected childcare to self-quarantine, we are staying abreast of pay and leave benefits arising in various countries while we're implementing our own emergency standards to ensure employee jobs and income are protected during the crisis. In addition, like many companies, all travel until the end of May has been restricted to business-critical, with employees observing strict adherence to the appropriate border control protocols throughout the globe. Turning now to slide five in plasma collections. Clearly, the collection of our raw material of normal plasma will be a challenge during this uncertain time. Even before COVID-19, the supply and demand status for immunoglobulins was a bit tight, as you all know, with plasma collection being a critical element of that dynamic.
We've implemented a wide range of initiatives to protect staff and donors, as well as optimizing our plasma collections. Some of these initiatives can be seen in the plasma center photos that I'll show you on the following slide. They include really responsive protocols on hygiene, greater frequency of sanitization, increased social distancing, enhanced personal hygiene practices in all of our centers, and the pre-assessment of donors prior to their entry into the facility. Consistent with our manufacturing sites, plasma collection centers are deemed critical infrastructure. Currently, our network of centers is fully operational. Despite the challenges, we continue to expect to meet our objective of opening a total of 40 new collection centers this financial year. We opened a new center in Houston just a few weeks ago. To date, we have 32 centers that we have opened. We have been on track this year.
I have to say that the last eight we'll continue to monitor to see if the cities and the resources that we have to open the last eight this financial year will continue, or whether we'll need to put those into next year. That really depends on how the plasma collections are running at our other centers as well. As medical facilities with critical infrastructure designations, we are able to provide our staff, donors, and key vendors with a letter of safe passage. This provides the mobility needed to travel to the centers. Importantly, the document also extends to Mexican citizens, allowing them to continue to cross the border of the United States and donate. This is not a silver bullet, however. We still have to make sure that we're increasing our advertising promotional programs to encourage new donors to come into a center and donate plasma.
We have a process in place which redirects donors to a sister center if any problem arises with another center that we might have in the same city. We've engaged the FDA with initiatives to release plasma earlier in the cycle, and we'll see how that progresses. Investors may recall the plasma collection activity during the global financial crisis in 2008, and there was also a bit of a slowdown. Although this is a completely different environment and a different issue, I do expect that we will see our donors return as they're able to feel like they're safe to come out of their homes and come back.
I do think that the timing of this will have an impact on the amplitude of donors coming into the center, but also will give us some indication as to how we will recover to higher levels of plasma collection after this particular situation starts to moderate. I do have to say, though, that doesn't mean there won't be any impact to next year's numbers. I think it'll be a bit lumpy as time goes on because we just don't know yet. I can tell you that in the month of March, we started to see a dip in collections. We were still above collections from last year, but over the last two weeks, we've seen a dip again where collections have dropped below last year's levels for the same month.
That gives us some indication that there is clearly some decline in the plasma, and you all know the cycle, so that as we continue to operate, we'll get more and more data, and we'll be able to give you further guidance at the full year. However, we do have the plasma that's needed to continue to supply through this year, and it should not have any impact on this year's financial results. Switching gears, it is critical to keep our centers operational. Our centers have implemented a range of protocols, including temperature checks, questionnaires, and as I mentioned, expanded hygiene measures and heightened social distancing. We'll continue to follow guidance provided by federal, state, and local health officials, the CDC, and work collaboratively with the FDA to ensure that supply is not compromised. When this crisis does pass, there will be an opportunity, hopefully, to accelerate back our collections.
I would say that there will clearly be some bumps in the road, and we do have a number of initiatives underway. As normal, we'll be providing investors, as I mentioned, with an update at the full year. I do have to say that each center is its own universe in this situation. Even though we have designated status in all these areas for our plasma collection and for our manufacturing sites, there are local authorities that sometimes do not get the message. Some centers have seen a bigger decline than others, individual centers, and other centers are actually collecting above their budget. It is quite a mix, and we're monitoring it very carefully, and we'll update you in August. Moving on to slide six.
You can see that in the first photo, and many of you have been on our site tours to our plasma collection centers, you'll notice that there is a much wider separation of the donor chairs and we are looking at screens between the rows of the donor chairs. We also have physical distancing markers on the floors in tape. You've probably seen this in some areas where you've been out to the stores, et cetera. Keeping people distanced from that social distancing as they come through the center. Moving on to slide seven. No doubt you have read stories about elective surgeries being suspended, hospitals being overwhelmed or prioritizing COVID-19 patients, the unavailability of some clinicians to provide diagnosis, all of which might have some effect on demand for our products in the long term, we just haven't seen that yet in our numbers.
Perhaps not unsurprising, the products CSL produces are generally life-saving and life-extending and non-discretionary. Patients need these products. I will say that we have had a couple of observations that we've seen in the marketplace. We have received an increase in the number of requests for immunoglobulins, and obviously the demand for influenza vaccines has also been strong. As we enter right now into the vaccination period in the Southern Hemisphere, the reason that the Australian Government has asked for additional doses, obviously, is that the burden on the healthcare system could be overwhelming if we start to see high influenza disease as well as COVID accelerating at the same time. I am pleased to report there's been no interruption in our supply chain. Our logistics team has done just a terrific job in getting product to where it needs to go.
Despite some of the difficulties early on in China and in Italy, product still got through, and currently there are no stock-outs being reported of our products. To round out my comments on the supply chain, again, despite these challenges, we are getting what we need to manufacture our products. As you may expect from a company our size, even before COVID, we have multiple contingencies in place with primary, secondary, and tertiary suppliers around the world and across our supply chain. We also had very good help across borders in Europe, where our trucks and supplies were coming through and being expedited past the lines that were at the borders. We made sure that we had those opportunities in place to make sure that as part of the critical infrastructure, things were getting where they needed to get in the right time.
On China, our manufacturing facility in Wuhan has recommenced operations and skeleton staff are returning to work in Shanghai and our Beijing offices. The staff is starting to return from work at home. We did see some congestion at seaports with the importation of albumin in China, but we addressed this with air freighted product into the country. Overall, our business in China is starting to return to normal. I'm going to pass over now to Andrew Cuthbertson, my Chief Scientific Officer, who will be describing CSL's core R&D capabilities and the company's response to the pandemic. Andrew, over to you.
Thanks a lot, Paul. Hello, everyone. This is not an R&D briefing. I'll be pretty precise, we thought it might be interesting for investors to understand how CSL and Seqirus are responding to this crisis. We've had over 100 approaches from academic colleagues, other companies to do things. We were determined to reduce that number down to a small number of projects where we really believe we could make a difference. Part of that process was to look hard at our core R&D capabilities across the whole company, CSL and Seqirus. Look at our skilled people, our technologies, our facilities, manufacturing facilities, importantly, and to an extent, our geography. Where our key people and facilities were clustered.
It's interesting just to note that both CSL, originally called the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, and our Behring operations were established over 100 years ago to respond to public health crises with biological medicines. That deep expertise still exists in the organization, but obviously with very modern research and development tools. What do we have on slide eight? Broadly, looking across the whole organization, it's a powerful mix run by Bill Mezzanotte and Russell Basser and their teams. We have an integrated R&D network around the world, and we've got world-class expertise in immunological science, vaccinology, and protein therapeutics. Extensive experience in hyperimmune product development, and importantly, manufacturing capability. Scaled recombinant protein-based vaccine development expertise in manufacturing, recombinant protein, monoclonal antibody therapeutics development expertise in manufacturing, and as Paul mentioned, our proprietary MF59 adjuvant technology, which is formulated with vaccines to increase their potency.
We have the ability to manufacture, again, this adjuvant at very large scale. If we move to slide nine. What are we actually doing so far? I'd emphasize these are R&D projects. They have risk. They won't all work. We've chosen them because, first of all, we believe in the deep scientific foundation on which they're based, and they match our skills, technologies, and facilities in R&D that we can bring to bear around the world. As I mentioned, we're considering this as a CSL and Seqirus joint effort. What does the world need at the moment? Well, the very obvious thing the world needs is a safe and effective vaccine that can be manufactured at large scale. The point is, this is the way to stop the virus on a population basis post strong public health measures.
It's the way to create herd immunity, but without trashing the health system. What I would say is vaccines, of course, are hard to develop. They take time. They are very effective in a public health sense. We've chosen to partner with The University of Queensland and CEPI, an international epidemic preparedness organization. We are bringing to bear our adjuvant technology, our development expertise in recombinant proteins, and potentially our scaled manufacturing. That relationship is very strong, and we're already working closely to accelerate that program, and we are in a position to manufacture at large scale for that program, should it be successful in clinical development. In the meantime, the other thing the world needs are treatments. Let me just mention two areas. First, Emil von Behring won the Nobel Prize in 1901 for describing a hyperimmune therapy for diphtheria.
CSL has the ability to make hyperimmune medicines, the basis of which is to take antibodies from subjects who have recovered from COVID-19 infection, take their antibodies from their plasma, purify them into a potent medicine, and deliver that medicine to patients and subjects at high risk of disease. You might have seen we were very pleased to announce an alliance in the Northern Hemisphere with Takeda and other plasma product development companies to a focused, powerful hyperimmune effort across sites in the Northern Hemisphere. We have mounted a similar effort here in Australia with the Australian Red Cross and Department of Health. The issue with hyperimmunes, which may be life-saving, is that you need access to convalescent donors.
While our clinical colleagues around the world are very excited about us producing hyperimmune medicines, it is limited to accessing safe convalescent donors who are willing to donate their plasma. At the same time, we very recently announced an exciting collaboration with a company called SAB Therapeutics, based in the U.S. They have wonderful technology for effectively transplanting the human antibody repertoire into cattle. In this case, it's possible to vaccinate cattle, harvest their hyperimmune serum from the cattle, which will contain human immunoglobulin. The point about hyperimmunes, whether from human donors or the cattle, is that they could go faster than a vaccine approach. That's why, in parallel, we're pursuing the whole hyperimmune approach.
Finally, for completeness, we have realized that a number of our biotech products in early-stage clinical development actually could be used to block the cytokine cascade, which causes vascular leakage and acute respiratory distress syndrome in desperately ill patients in intensive care. We are repurposing with our academic colleagues and collaborators, some of our early-stage biotech projects to pivot them into studies looking at ARDS in COVID-19 patients. Look, with that, my summary would be we're very focused on matching our strong science with our technical capabilities and facilities around the world. These are R&D projects that I've described to you. They won't all work, our R&D teams are heavily engaged in delivering some of these projects right now. Thanks, Paul. That's it for me.
Thanks, Andrew. Let's move on to slide 10, and I'll finish with a couple of key points. First of all, the COVID-19 outbreak will continue to present an extremely challenging time for the world for some time to come, I believe. Our top priority, as I mentioned at the beginning, is to safeguard our people, our patients, and our donors that are really helping us to supply these life-saving, life-extending medicines to people around the globe, as well as protect human health with our influenza vaccines. I'd say now more than ever, our patients and at-risk populations need to have a continuous, reliable supply of medicines, and we're working to support them in every way that we possibly can.
A lot of these patients have, as you know, obviously, other comorbidities or diseases that could put them at higher risk if they were infected with immunodeficiencies or other disease states. I think we've been able to demonstrate that, for instance, with a pivot back to southern hemisphere influenza manufacturing at the request of the government in Australia. There's no doubt that we have some challenges with the collection of plasma, and we also have a range of initiatives underway to mitigate a lot of those challenges. You know that we do this every single day, many, many hours a day.
We're trying to pull all the levers that we can to ensure that we continue to have this very precious supply of raw material to take care of our patients in the future. You heard from Andrew a description of CSL's core R&D capabilities and how CSL is well-placed to respond with a range of assets and capabilities. We do have a lot of activity underway in the development of all the areas that he spoke about in terms of vaccines, hyperimmunes, and polyclonal/monoclonal antibodies. It was interesting when we were discussing this briefing, and I was looking at the core capabilities of the organization. If you actually look at everything that was on that slide, which is quite a bit, it would be hard to find another company that was touching all those areas to try to respond to COVID-19.
It's almost as if you want to start a biotech company to respond to COVID-19. It would look very much like CSL in terms of the capabilities, the competency, and the assets that we have across the organization. We haven't been blowing our horn very loudly in the public, because we have been working very hard behind the scenes. This is a very complex business to operate. We are acutely aware of our responsibilities as a leader in the field, and that's why we took on a number of these projects. We could have taken on others, but we felt that these were the ones that were closest to our capabilities.
Having said that, the COVID-19 implications with all the work we're doing on these other areas, for a number of reasons, we're able to allocate some resources because this disease and what's spreading right now does have implications for some of our capital projects and our clinical trials. We've taken a considered view and paused some of our programs, both on the capital side and in our clinical trial area. Both capital programs and clinical trials generally have a multi-year timeframe. As you know, when we talk about capital and R&D, we don't manage these on a fiscal basis. There will be opportunities to accelerate the programs once the crisis is behind us. At this point in time, we don't anticipate any material deviation from the original plans. For instance, when you take a look at CSL112, people are still having heart attacks despite COVID.
There's no doubt about that. However, the overwhelming responses of the hospitals to have their staff responding to the COVID crisis limits our ability to actually utilize the clinical trial protocols because the staff is overwhelmed. The burden on the healthcare system to run clinical trials of that scale are difficult. We don't want to expose more patients to the hospital environment, but we also want to protect the quality of the data. Especially important in CSL112, that if you don't get that second, third, or fourth dose in, where the data collection is not appropriate, this could really set back the trial. We've made decisions on all of our clinical trials. We'll continue to run a few. When you look at areas like CSL112 or transplant, for instance, these are not the trials that will be up and running at the moment.
We have put a hiatus on the recruitment in those particular trials for all of those reasons. The group does remain in a strong financial position. Our leverage is conservative. Our liquidity is secure and with an estimated AUD 1.1 billion in cash and undrawn facilities available to us. This takes into account the dividend being paid today, which is unchanged from what was announced at our half-year results. Lastly, there's no change to our FY 2020 profit guidance. We continue to expect a net profit after tax at constant currency to be in the range of approximately AUD 2,110-AUD 2,170. We will, as usual, provide guidance for next year's profit at our full-year results in August. In closing, I encourage everyone to take care of yourselves, take care of your families, colleagues, the communities that we live in. These are truly unprecedented times.
There's no manual on how to navigate through this. Together, I'm confident that we will. With that, I'm going to hand it back to Mark so that he can open up for questions. Just remember that, besides Andrew and myself, David Lamont and Paul McKenzie are also online. Thank you.
Thanks, Paul. Ladies and gentlemen, before we start Q&A, could I ask that you limit your questions to two? This gives everybody an opportunity to ask a question. Of course, if you do have further questions, you're welcome to rejoin the queue. Operator, if you could open the lines up, please. Our first question comes from Lyanne Harrison of Bank of America.
Thank you. I will just give a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Lyanne, please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. First of all, Paul, you mentioned early on in the presentation that the requests for IVIG are elevated. Can you give us some color on that, whether or not you think that it's because hospitals and clinics are stockpiling, or is there just in general higher usage amongst the patient groups?
I think there's a couple of things. I think one, certainly people are concerned that there could be some stock outs or things of that nature because they're assuming that plasma collection is going to be tight as people are trying to get to centers. There could be some of the stockpiling. I think it's generally people trying to respond to COVID, thinking that a boost in the immune system to try to help patients recover would be a good thing. There's been some anecdotal reports out of China and other areas where people are using IG as supplemental to everything else that they're putting into the therapeutic areas that they're trying to use. You see combo therapy being used all over, and I think it's really people trying to save lives and thinking that this could help.
We don't have specific data around why the requests are coming in. It could be that some people are short on their current suppliers. It could be that they are doing some stockpiling in anticipation. I think generally it's people trying to respond to the health crisis.
Okay. Thank you. A follow-up question around, I guess, your existing immunodeficient patient base, are you seeing anything come through around, I guess, increased interest or demand to move from IV delivery to sub-Q?
Look, I think we haven't seen anything that's demonstrable in terms of additional requests for people to go on to sub-Q at the moment. I think that this crisis will, in the future, give a little bit more attention to home therapy. It's hard just within a couple of months to see that big shift because these patients would have to go into the healthcare system and the training that goes into changing a patient from IV to sub-Q, and the difference in how it's administered takes time. We don't have people that are able to travel to help people get started at home even though it's a critically central service. The consultation with the physicians would need to occur as well. From a medical system perspective, I think the burden on the system is such that these people don't want to go out.
One, they're immune-compromised and they're worried about getting sick. Two, they don't have the resources within the medical infrastructure in many of the countries to actually adapt to this at the moment. Certainly I would say people will be paying attention once we start to stabilize these countries from COVID. It wouldn't surprise me if people would be more interested in trying to infuse at home.
Good. Thanks, Lyanne.
Thank you, Paul.
Next question comes from David Low at JPMorgan.
Thanks, Mark. Paul, just starting with the plasma collection, you talked about initiatives with the FDA to earlier release or change the cycle times. Can I get you just to elaborate a little bit on what you're pushing for there or what you'd like to see, please?
Well, based on the science and the data that we have, David, in terms of our NAT testing and PCR testing, we know that we are able to reduce the window period for detection of viruses. The legislation on 60-day plasma holds has been in place for decades. That's one area where we would be looking to try to get some relief. Now, that would release a bolus for a short period of time, and then it would normalize. It's more of a one-time effect. The availability would be sooner going forward. But it would be part of the normal process at that point. Looking to try to get with the science and the data, a reduction in the hold times for plasma release from the system.
Nothing that I can point to yet, but clearly we understand that we could probably reduce it from 60 to say 45 days with the data. Depending on the availability of products, I think the FDA will be helping us to work through that.
Great. Thanks very much. I think there's a lot of questions, maybe one for you, David. Just FX, we've seen a few movements of late. Could you perhaps update us on what the FX impact has been in the financial year to date, please?
Yes, sir, David. In the slide deck, you will see we've still called out around about AUD 100 million headwind at this stage. I will preface that by saying rates are moving around like the rest of the market, volatility is back. At this stage, that's our best estimate of where we would expect to be for the full year, David.
Good. Great.
Thanks, David.
Our next question comes from Sean Laaman at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, Sean.
Thank you, Mark. Good morning, Paul. Hope you and your family are safe and well. Maybe if I could just tease out a little bit, Paul, a bit more on the plasma collection side of things. You mentioned that I think you said that there's been a dip on last year over the last two weeks in terms of volume. I'm wondering if the 32 new centers are contributing to that in any material way. Are they actually adding any volume? The second part of the question would be, you've been very clear that we'll get guidance for fiscal 2021 in August. I'm wondering if, for example, if you saw, say, a 10% or a 20% drop in plasma collections between now and then, would we know about it? Would the market be informed about that?
Well, I think it depends on the persistence of that dip. Two weeks is not enough to tell me. I think that we'll be able to see when things start to open back up and people start to travel more freely within the next three to four weeks in the U.S. Through the month of April, I would expect that decline will probably continue, would be my thoughts. I do think that once things start to open back up, that we'll see a return to the plasma collection. If it was maintained over that period of time and we could see that we were going to have stock outs or something like that, I think we would certainly want to inform our physicians and patients and then consequently the market would know about that.
Look, I would say that it's really too early to make that call. Clearly, we have continuous disclosure guidelines that we have to follow and so the issue is we haven't given any disclosure for next year yet. With the ratings, I know there's a lot of companies that aren't giving any guidance at the moment. I think we're doing pretty good right now to give the guidance on this year and we'll see how it goes. We've always been direct with you all and informed what we know and we'll make that call if we see a need to do that.
Thank you, Paul. Maybe just a quick one for David. Just with respect to the slowdown or however you want to describe it on the R&D side of the equation, is that R&D saving material?
The first comment is, I don't know that I would assume that there is any R&D savings because what we have been doing is redirecting our staff and activity into the COVID-19 activities. My view and what you should take forward is that there's no change in that guidance that we've historically given of sort of that 10%-11% of sales as an R&D spend even for this year.
Good. Thanks, Sean.
Great. Thank you, gentlemen. Stay safe. Yeah.
Thanks, Sean.
Our next question comes from Andrew Goodsall at MST Marquee. Go ahead, Andrew.
Thanks very much for taking my question. Likewise, hoping everyone's family is safe. Probably just a continuation of that previous question. Is there a sort of cutoff point where you need to sort of step up your actions, particularly with the FDA and see that unemployment, I guess, turn into donors before we see that risk of disruption? I'm just sort of thinking, is it three months? Is it four months where you need to see that take place?
Look, again, it's such a fluid situation, Andrew. It's hard to predict how long and how often. I would say that we need a lot more data points to really see because each of these centers, as I said, is an individual issue. We have some centers that are overcollecting today to their budgets, and we have some that are severely undercollecting. Net, we're still collecting a lot of plasma. It's just that it's not where we would like to be at the moment. I think the good thing that we were able to do over the last couple of years is opening a lot more centers. Back to, maybe I didn't answer the original question there. It's been fairly de minimis in terms of the additional plasma we've gotten from centers we've opened this year, especially in the second half of the year.
I would say that the centers we opened last year are certainly contributing. The ability for CSL to try to stay ahead of the curve in terms of opening new centers to our fleet size now is really, I think, doing a very good job. We're doing a lot of things across the organization, and one of the things that we've recently done is plasma operates within plasma, and that's all plasma all the time. We have now enlisted our marketing groups from our commercial teams to help the marketers in plasma and said, Okay, what else? Are we thinking the right way?
Is there anything else we can do? We also are going to employers through our HR group to look at employers who may have had to furlough people and said, Look, the plasma donation is a good thing to do for patients, and especially with the initiative that we have with the industry to try to collect as much convalescent plasma as possible. There are good reasons that people will become familiar with plasma donations in general. We're trying to pull as many levers as we can, and I think the levers that we pulled over the last five years to expand our collection centers is what's helping us today. It's going to take quite a few data points for us to give you a view on next year. Demand is still high for these products.
I don't expect demand to curtail next year for any reason that I can see.
The demand will be there. The question will be how much will we be able to supply? We will be able to supply more product, but there will be lumpiness next year, would be my expectation. What we collect in April will probably put pressure on the system as you look four to five months out from now. Again, our comments in the past about we don't manage the business half on half, that's clearly evident in today's environment, where we just can't predict where the ebbs and flows will be through the year at this particular point until we get a better handle on the collections.
Thank you. That's very comprehensive. Just a quick follow-up, just on sort of any delays to CapEx. Is there any, I guess, critical CapEx infrastructure, I guess like just production that would be impacted by any delays in some of your builds?
I'll throw that to David or to Paul. Paul, you want to comment?
Yeah, sure, Paul. Thank you for the question, Andrew. No, at this point, what we're doing is we're taking all the projects and looking at their critical paths, and then by managing the critical paths, we don't expect to see, as Paul said, any material impact to our plan for new production capabilities to come online. It's really just about a focus and a priority.
That's good. Thank you.
during this period.
Good. Thank you, Andrew.
Okay, thank you very much.
Next question comes from Saul Hadassin at UBS. Go ahead, Saul.
Thanks, Mark. Good morning. Just, Paul, a quick question on whole blood donations and the recovered plasma you get from that, or that the industry gets from that. The FDA, I think over the last few weeks, has put out notices saying that there is a decline in whole blood donations across the U.S. How much recovered plasma do you think goes to the industry from whole blood? In other words, how much pressure is going to be across the system, do you think, in three to six months' time from lack of whole blood donation? Secondly on that question, the FDA also announced that they're going to relax some of the donation criteria. For example, people that might have been exposed to vCJD, et cetera, to allow an increase in theoretical donations.
Do you see that assisting both on the whole blood side, but also on the resource plasma side? Thanks.
Yeah, sure, Saul. Thank you. We have obviously looked at the recommendations, and it does apply to plasma collections as well, with tattoos and things of that nature, where they're relaxing some of the criteria on donor deferrals. Look, I think that'll help. Is it going to be significant to make up for some of the downturns that we've seen and incentive checks going out from the government? In the near term, I'd say probably not. The long term, if they maintain those, I would say it certainly increases the pool of donors that we're able to access. I think that it would be a good thing overall because we do have data around a lot of these things, and a lot of them are historical in terms of the safety profile. In terms of the amount, it varies as you know by company. It's very small.
It's less than 10% of our collection comes from recovered. It's not like it's going to zero. It is less, and there are fewer donations, just as we've seen it in the source side. Again, I think people are going to respond and start to come through. The whole idea of recovered plasma from the convalescent donors through whole blood collections has increased some, but of course that's convalescent plasma that's going into another patient, so it's not coming back to the manufacturers for manufactured products. Again, I think from an industry perspective, I don't know what the numbers look like, to be honest, so I can't answer the question with any knowledge. It'll have an impact at some level. If people were highly dependent on recovered across their donations, then they'll be impacted more.
I'm optimistic that when this starts to moderate, we'll see a return of the donors back into the system.
All right, thanks. That's all I had.
Good. Thanks, Saul.
Thanks.
Next question comes from David Stanton at Jefferies. Go ahead, Dave.
Thank you very much for taking my questions. Good morning and good evening. Look, I had a question regarding unemployment in the U.S. Given that you're going to see an increase or you are seeing an increase in the number of people unemployed, that those people, at least a large proportion of those, are going to have health insurance, what does that mean for volume of use for your product over the medium term? I know that you've been certain you won't be curtailed in terms of demand in FY 2021. Does it mean that potentially, some of those people who use your products on a prophylactic basis might move to an acute basis, or will there be increased time between infusions for some of these patients? Any color on that would be great.
Yeah, I wish I could give you color on that. This is the most complex healthcare system in the world. It's hard to understand how this will move out. I have seen that a lot of the insurance carriers are continuing to cover. The hospitals are continuing to move through. With the companies that have worker layoffs, they're trying to get that gap coverage for their employees that they've had to furlough or lay off. The infusions, the time between infusions, a lot of our patients also are on government programs. In IG, I think it's about 20% is Medicare, and those patients should still be okay. In hemophilia, there's a lot that are on Medicaid, the state Medicaid programs, due to disabilities and the disability designation. They also are getting coverage.
I don't have data to tell you how many of those patients are not employed, to be honest. It's one of those things where it'll be a patient by patient. Because these are rare diseases, you could have one company that employs a lot. As you look across the payers, not one payer has the bulk of these rare disease patients. It's going to be really hard to get that data, David, and I'm not sure that we'll have that anytime soon. There's a lot of people looking at the various cities. We know where patients are located, but they're located everywhere. It's not just in New York City or other major cities. It's going to take us time to get any of the data that I can then give you a hopefully better-informed position than what I just did.
Very well. Thank you. I guess my second question is regarding the donors from Mexico who come across and donate in southern U.S. their plasma. Can you give us any update on whether they are being quarantined when they come back, and perhaps, as a result, not so willing to donate their plasma? Thank you.
Sure. It's been a mix, depending on the city and the border area. There were some initial when COVID started, where donors that came across to donate were being asked to quarantine when they returned to Mexico. That prevented them from coming back. Many of that has already changed again. It is a large part of our donations in terms of when you look at the number of centers there, it's not a large part. It's about 4% of our donations come across from the border centers in the U.S. Arizona is different than Texas, and different cities in Texas are different. As I said at the beginning, we have letters which are allowing people to come back and forth as an essential service. There has been some impact. Those are some centers that have been impacted. They're still collecting.
There is some impact. As I said, it's a center by center, whether they're on the border or not on the border, it's a center by center issue. Some towns in Mexico have specific requirements. It's not the whole country of Mexico. Some towns in the U.S. are allowing and other towns are limiting the number coming across. It just depends on the center.
Good. Thanks. Thanks, Dave. Next question comes from Gretel Janu at Credit Suisse. Go ahead, Gretel.
Thanks. Good morning. Maybe a question for David to start with. How can we think about the cost base and margins varying over the next few months, just given the increased advertising to donors and other disruptions that you have in the general supply chain? Thanks.
As Paul mentioned, really, when you look at where we are for the remainder of this year, there's not a large impact at all. We have had to air freight some product into certain regions to get through some supply chains, but I would put that very much at the fringe. When you get into FY 2021, that's where you start to see the cost side of things for the plasma start to flow through. As Paul mentioned earlier, it's a moving beast. We're monitoring it, and we'll give you far more clarity on that when we get to the guidance for FY 2021 upon the full-year result. Certainly, at this stage for FY 2020, we're not seeing that sort of cost pressure come through, given that we're really selling out of the inventory that we've produced in the prior months.
Yeah, thanks. Just on CSL112. With the hiatus there, what does that mean for the futility test that was scheduled this year? Have those still gone ahead, do you expect to update the market, as previously you'd said at the August results, as to where you were on that trial?
Andrew, I'll hand that over to you. I think we're in pretty good shape, but...
Good question. I think that those milestones will move out in a controlled way by some months, would be my answer, because they're driven by the statistical powering of the study and triggered by a certain number of recruitments. I think those milestones will move out, and we'll be more precise about how long. I think the whole approach will be to move them out in a very deliberate, controlled way and preserve the power and the integrity of the study.
Okay, thanks very much.
Good. Thanks, Gretel. Our next question comes from Steve Wheen at Evans & Partners. Go ahead, Steve.
Thanks, Mark. Good morning, everybody. This question just on albumin in China. Just wonder if you could comment on. You've given some guidance, some pretty specific guidance around this year, as you swapped over to the GSP license. I just wonder how it is panning out, particularly around the impact of coronavirus.
Yeah. Thanks, Steve. Look, I'd say that we've been mostly on track up until Corona hit. We are still getting the albumin in. There's a little bit of movement and a little bit of noise in it. In general, I'd say, and if you look at the guidance that we've given, that includes how we guided to that number, which included our work in China, I'd say we're in pretty good shape. Things are moving. There is some supply chain things we're working through. In general, given the situation we're in, I think we're doing reasonably well.
Right. Okay. My second question is just around specialty products. With the hospital system being overwhelmed, what does that mean for products like Kcentra?
Look, we haven't seen a slowdown. People are still coming to the hospital when they're in car accidents or have bleeding and warfarin. As I said, even with CSL112, even though the trial has been put on hold for the time being, people are still having heart attacks. We haven't seen a decrease in the patients coming in or the use of the product. As I said, the demand has been still coming through. We're still on guidance for the year. We haven't seen a major slowdown in any particular product based on COVID or the hospital administration or the admissions. Right now, I'd say really we haven't seen an impact.
Good. Thanks, Steve.
That's all from me.
Our next question comes from Chris Cooper at Goldman Sachs. Go ahead, Chris.
Hi. Thank you. Morning and evening. Firstly, just on your hyperimmune programs. I don't know whether this is a question for Andrew, but Paul, you talked of the challenges of finding sufficient donors for that approach. Look, I appreciate you're probably still trying to figure this out yourselves, but just at this stage, can you give us your best guess on scalability? How many recipients would you expect to be able to treat from one donation from a recovered patient?
Andrew?
No, thanks, Chris. Clearly, we don't know precisely, but I can give you some guidance. It depends, of course, on the titer and the titer of anti-COVID antibodies in the pool and in the batch. It won't be one to one. I would anticipate that you'll probably need something in the range of five to 10 donors to treat a patient. Making a lot of assumptions, something of that order.
I think, as we've looked at this, Chris.
Okay, thank you.
We've looked at this is not our first foray into hyperimmunes. The reason that we spearheaded this arrangement with our competitors, with Takeda and BPL, LFB, Octapharma, Kedrion, and Biotest is because we want to make sure that anybody that wants to donate can find a center. That's really the key, is to make sure that there's access to get the recovered patient, the patient that has recovered from COVID-19 and get the convalescent plasma. We are working on the testing for the titers because it is important that we get the highest titer donors coming through the system, and that the pools have the high titers that are available to make the hyperimmune.
The website, we've worked with Google and Microsoft, the website for this initiative should be up and running now, and will be fully operational this week. We'll start to get the word out of actually getting and trying to recruit patients to whichever center, because then it needs to go to one manufacturer to actually manufacture the product. That's what we've agreed to, both in the U.S. and in Europe. I can't give you all the specifics yet, but the Coalition is working very closely to make sure this happens because trying to do convalescent plasma from a blood donation is completely not scalable, and you have no idea on the titer levels, and you could have activating titers, activated non-neutralizing antibodies that can cause issues for patients, which is why we don't normally do this anymore.
When people look back at the beginning, Andrew talked about CSL at the beginning, in Spanish flu they talk about using convalescent sera. That's why we don't do it anymore. It can be dangerous and it may not be effective if you don't have the right titer. Clearly a lot of work going into this and we'll continue to update the market as we make progress.
Okay, thanks. I've got some follow-ups to that but I might just take them offline just cognizant of Mark's request. There were two questions because I want to get to this one on unemployment as well. I'm more interested from the perspective of donor fees with unemployment actually. Just thinking a couple of months ahead, I know during the last sort of major recession you actually had to reduce donor fees to actually disincentivize people coming through the door. Sadly it looks like we're well on track for unemployment to be at a multiple of the levels we saw back then. At this stage, are you expecting to need to reduce donor fees at some point in the coming months?
Look, I don't know. Can't tell you. It depends on what happens. I don't feel a need to reduce donor fees other than we want to make sure that donors have access to coming into the center. I'm less concerned about oversupply of plasma than I am about making sure we have enough. I don't want to do anything that would distance some people from coming in. Remembering that typically if things return to normal, only about 20% of the people that come into our centers are unemployed and that's been decreasing as unemployment has dropped. Most donors are underemployed, so they're part-time workers, et cetera. Look, we don't know is the right answer. We will see how things progress and we'll adapt as we go.
Good. Thanks, Chris.
Okay.
Our next question comes from David Bailey at Macquarie. Go ahead, David.
Thanks, Mark. Hi, Paul. Following on from that, just given the dip in plasma donations at the moment, following on from Chris, are you seeing an increase in donor fees at the moment? Is it costing you more to collect that plasma? Secondly, just interested in the comment on inventory levels. Do you carry enough inventory such that if there is a shortfall in plasma now and a finished product in six months' time, is there any ability for you to respond in terms of inventory down the track?
To answer your first question is yes, donor fees have gone up and as you know they were going up earlier this year as well before COVID. Yes, donor fees have gone up. Second question, do we have enough inventory? Yeah, for a time. It depends on how long this goes, right? Again, we don't have the answer yet, but we clearly have inventory to get us through manufacturing for the time being, and we have some finished goods stock that we can dip into. We try to keep minimum levels to make sure that we have backup. This is going to be a tough time and we'll see how we can respond. We're going to do everything we possibly can to make sure we respond not only short term but long term for patients that need these products.
Thank you, David.
Sorry, maybe. I'm Okay.
Next question comes from John Deakin-Bell at Citigroup. Go ahead, John.
Thanks, Mark. A question on the flu side. I'm assuming that next year in the U.S. that there'll be a reasonable increase in demand for flu given what's happened. Can you just update us about the increase in capacity? I know the fill and finish was kind of the bottleneck in the U.S. Can you just tell us where you'd expect that capacity to be and if you agree that the demand should increase?
Yeah. Thanks, John. What we are doing is looking at our production capacity, and it is the fill finish. It'll be the mix. We may have to do more multi-dose vials if there's additional demand as opposed to single-dose syringes. Syringes is really the tightness at the moment for us. That's why the new filling line in Holly Springs is really adapted to syringe filling. That's where the bottleneck is. We can finish in more vials. Of course, we've already started Northern Hemisphere manufacturing in Liverpool and Holly Springs, and we have reverted back from Northern and Australia for the short term while we fulfill some of the needs of the government. That's really the bottleneck. It'll be a matter of presentation, because we do have some vial capacity, at Marburg and other places where we could fill more vials.
Thanks, Paul. Just to follow up, perhaps to Andrew. Just there's been a lot of discussion around the timeframe to get a vaccine for COVID-19, and my understanding is there haven't been any vaccines for coronavirus that's produced at this point. Can you give us your, in your expert opinion, the likelihood of it being less than 12 months, and what the real issues are?
Look, thanks, John. I'll just give you my opinion. Given that there are quite a number of vaccine projects underway and where people are trying to go as fast as they can, you have to be clear what you mean by delivery of a vaccine. For example, there will be experimental doses available for human testing in a number of the programs, in the May/June timeframe. Depending on the technology, the manufacturing technology used, it's possible for manufacturers, including CSL, to make a lot of doses sort of in the second half of this calendar year. There's a difference between manufacturing capacity and just the progress of the vaccine through clinical or preclinical and then clinical testing. You have to have the ability to make the vaccine at scale, which CSL and a number of other companies around the world can do.
You then have to test it carefully but rapidly, in human clinical trials. It's probably more the testing regime than availability of product that will determine ultimate large-scale availability for vaccinating whole populations. I would anticipate that there will be vaccine available for human testing in the next few months. Next two months, something of that order, from different places around the world. There will be scaled production occurring, in this calendar year, and there will be large-scale clinical trial testing of several candidates in places around the world. With a whole lot of uncertainty, I would say that, if there is a successful product or products, they're liable to become available during calendar 2021.
Thanks, Andrew.
Good. Thanks, John. We have one final question, and that is from Andrew Goodsall at MST Marquee. Go ahead, Andrew.
It was just a really quick follow-up. If a situation emerged where you were able to collect more, given that a few of your competitors are more heavily reliant on recovered, would you sort of go down that pathway to actually go above?
Look Andrew, you know my feeling. I think we need more plasma. I've been saying that for a number of years.
Yeah
encouraging my competitors to help. Yes, absolutely. Go hard.
Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. Be safe.
Good. Thank you, Andrew. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now draw to a close. Thank you very much for your interest in CSL, and have a good morning. Stay safe, and goodbye.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.