Okay, let's commence. Welcome, and thank you for joining us today. Throughout the session here, if you have any questions, please feel free to type them into the chat at any time, and we'll aim to address as many as we can during the Q&A session at the end of the presentation. If we miss any, we'll make sure to answer these after the session, on Investor Hub. After seven years of building at the forefront of this field, we have the market-leading testing products and assets with growing moats around the business. We expect to close this financial year just under AUD 16 million, with over 145% year-on-year growth for our core products, and with expanding operating leverage driving to major company-defining break-even milestones in the next four quarters.
In a difficult capital environment, I was pleased to announce yesterday that we successfully secured AUD 14.5 million to drive expanded clinical adoption of our microbiome testing, with the continued backing of long-term partners like Sonic Healthcare and some of Australia's most respected institutional investors. Whilst the share price does not reflect it, which pains me incredibly, the Microba business is in the strongest position it has ever been, and that represents a real opportunity for investors as we move to capture this 25- billion market. Here are the investment highlights, which clearly lay out why it is such a great time to become or become a larger Microba shareholder.
Sonic are continuing to add to their investment in us, both financially with up to AUD 8 million of investment and through a new laboratory partnership in the United Kingdom, which leverages our Sonic partnership to remove the need for us to deploy capital to laboratory infrastructure by us leveraging theirs, and deepens our relationship by having a beneficial operating partnership together in that region. Second, we have a large, addressable, and obtainable market. We have a clear understanding and breakdown of the addressable market and how we target it slice by slice, and clinicians and patients here are desperate for an effective solution. We only need to win and help a small number of them to be a huge business. Third, we have accelerating sales and clinical adoption.
Looking to the end of this financial year, as I said before, we've narrowed our guidance and are now forecasting between AUD 15.4 million and AUD 16 million, representing over 145% year-on-year growth for our core testing products. With that continued growth, we have major upcoming catalysts, expecting to hit regional break-even points in Australia and the United Kingdom before the end of FY2026. We're building a sales and marketing engine here that leverages a combination of SaaS and medical sales best practice to continue decreasing customer acquisition costs and expanding our operating leverage. Aligned to that, finally, we've laid out a clear strategic objective to achieve group EBITDA break-even in the years ahead. Let me take you through what that looks like and how we get there. This is how it levels up.
This year, we've delivered strong growth in early clinical adoption and expanded in the U.K. by opening up first access to our flagship, flagship MetaExplore product. In FY2026, we will keep expanding clinical adoption in Australia and the U.K., expect our strong growth of those core testing products to continue, and aligned to that, expect to reach regional break-even points in both Australia and the U.K. We have laid out our circa three-year strategic objective to continue rapid focus penetration of innovator and early adopter clinicians across core markets to achieve break-even for the whole company. Here are five key pillars to that three-year strategic plan. We've articulated facets of these over the coming slides that I'm gonna take you through, so take this as one for you to read later.
Now, one of the questions that have come up consistently over recent calls and meetings with investors is, "Great, we love the growth in Australia and the United Kingdom, but how penetrated are you? And when do you start to cap out these markets?" My answer has been consistent. I take them through the numbers, how many healthcare professionals are addressable and obtainable, and how are we breaking them down, and show them that we have not even scratched the surface of these markets. For the avoidance of doubt, here is the data on the breakdown of the market. This shows from deep primary, secondary, and tertiary research, including a large body of work with a Boston-based consulting firm called Veranex. We have a clear understanding and breakdown of the addressable market and how we target it slice by slice, bite by bite.
Even from the first handful of markets here and a focus on one patient population, individuals with unresolved gastrointestinal disorders, we only have to capture a fraction of a percent to hit our internal targets over the years ahead. We are intensively focused on growth, but growth in conjunction with the underlying unit economics of the business. We have a clear formula we're executing against, which is laid out here: customer and market growth metrics going up, but importantly, together with multiple metrics improving underneath for unit economics and profitability. That drives us to, in the short term, those regional break-even points in FY2026. Fast forward a few more years to break-even for the whole company. Important to call out, this is not just a plan. It's happening now. After seven years of development at the forefront of this field, adoption is taking off.
We have a clear plan for how we maintain that growth trajectory. Over the formative years of Microba, we delivered non-diagnostic testing products and services to build the world's largest microbiome database and generated some initial revenues. Leveraging that data, we've launched our core diagnostic products and are now delivering compelling growth. Aligned to that, we have been discontinuing and transitioning from the legacy testing products to have all of our focus on our core diagnostic tests. We've completed most of that transition, and the last legacy revenues are expected to wind off by the end of this calendar year. Here, we've just grouped these into clear buckets, so it's abundantly clear, and people can see the raw growth exposed there at the top.
Behind all of this, we have a world-class team working day in, day out to achieve what we see is a major revolution in healthcare and deliver the platform for personalized microbiome-based healthcare. A major part of the Microba story that we have not had the opportunity to showcase today is the advancements that we are making on the product and what we call our product accelerated growth model. Here, we have pictorialized it for everyone for the first time. Our growth strategy, and you may have heard me talk about this before, is intimately aligned to the adoption curve. At Microba, we talk about this internally as the skepticism curve, and it has four dimensions.
On the left, on the innovator side, we have, say, an integrative and functional medicine clinician with low demands of the testing products in terms of those four dimensions: interpretability, actionability, business integration, workflow integration. All the way to the right of this curve, at the laggard end, we have someone like a very traditional community general practitioner being the most skeptical and slow to change. We have very high demands on interpretability, actionability, business integration, and workflow integration. The key thing is that the demand across the vast majority of this spectrum is already strong. The clinical importance of the microbiome is accepted. It is an essential organ that doctors have missed, and we now see it at almost every clinician conference.
The product just needs to meet the increasing needs from these clinicians as we go from left to right through the adoption and skepticism curve. The way that we do that is by delivering new features, one step at a time from left to right, opening up more and more of the clinician market, addressing their unique needs from the product to serve both their practice model and the specific patients they serve. The team have an incredibly clear product roadmap that they're executing, shipping new features every quarter. Here, what you can see is little snippets of those features across those four dimensions.
Over the next four quarters, I—sorry, two quarters even—we are planning significant releases related to interpretability and actionability of the report, as well as features that serve high-volume clinics, which stand to be a key growth driver for this next phase of the adoption curve. In parallel, we believe brute force sales in medtech is outdated, increasingly ineffective, and inefficient. Microba is a really unique business in that we have a laboratory in vitro diagnostic component of our product, but the major value unlock is through our medical software stack that sits over the top of it. We have, and this is the way that I like to explain it, the clinically trusted medical device component—like Cochlear is to hearing health, Microba is to gut health.
We also have a sticky clinical software stack that sees us scale more like a medical software company or a medical SaaS company like Pro Medicus. Like Pro Medicus is to medical imaging data, Microba is to gut health data. Aligned to that, we're leveraging a combination of SaaS and medical sales best practice. Sales is an important base layer of presence in market, but we're executing what we call a product-assisted and product-led growth system that will continually reduce customer acquisition costs, increase resource efficiency, shorten sales cycles, and time to value. What does all that mean in practical terms? It means that rather than a Microba specialist onboarding, training, supporting a clinician to be successful with the test and embedded into their routine care protocols for these patients, we have efficient digital systems that enable scalable self-serve onboarding, training, and support, always on and increasingly AI-assisted.
Finally, we have partnerships with two of the world's largest medical diagnostic companies, which gives us the opportunity for two key points of leverage. Firstly, the laboratory networks of these companies. We do not need to build labs everywhere, and we can scale as a software company, not as a laboratory services company. Secondly, we can leverage their large customer networks to efficiently acquire customers, enabling these partners to refer and triage customers to us to be fully serviced with the world's leading clinical microbiome testing services. Finally, there is an attractive additional upside to Microba, leveraging all of the data generated from our diagnostics business and years of R&D and investment. We have developed a rich pipeline of live- biotherapeutic assets targeting multiple chronic diseases. We have now moved from that R&D and investment phase into a partnering focus phase to deliver return on investment.
No further R&D expenditure is planned from here. We are focused on deals. There are two key catalysts coming up before the end of the year, which we expect can stimulate deal activity for these assets. We are ready and in position to capture that deal activity with deal precedents ranging from AUD 1.5 billion all the way up to AUD 11 billion. To execute on our continued diagnostics growth, we have just completed a capital round. A key cornerstone for that round is Sonic Healthcare, who have continued to back us and invest in our partnership, this time with up to AUD 8.3 million of new capital, of which AUD 4.1 million was included as a part of this capital round. In addition, we signed a key strategic partnership with their U.K. subsidiary, which is The Doctors Laboratory, which is the largest laboratory diagnostic provider in the United Kingdom.
That will see them take on the laboratory processing services for us in the U.K. as we continue to scale in that region, enabling us to focus on scaling as a software company without the laboratory CapEx and operational overhead. We successfully completed the capital raise yesterday, raising AUD 14.5 million, with AUD 12.5 million in an institutional placement supported by existing and new institutional and sophisticated investors, and a fully underwritten AUD 2 million Share Purchase Plan. For our existing shareholders, the Share Purchase Plan will open this Friday, the 27th of June, and all shareholders can apply for up to AUD 30,000 of new shares on the same terms as the placement, which was AUD 0.09 per share, and includes the attaching option, which is one unlisted option for every two shares, exercisable at AUD 0.14 with an expiry of two years.
As I said at the start, it is a great time to become or become a larger Microba shareholder. On that, I'm going to stop there, and I'm going to go to some of the submitted questions that I've seen tick through over the course of this session. I'm gonna start here with the first one, which is just where I was before, which is, what more can you say about the laboratory agreement with Sonic in the U.K.? I feel like this is a really great example of how we're activating the global partnership with Sonic. It's always been a global partnership from day one. As I said in the presentation, there are two ways we can leverage our major partnerships with Sonic and also with Synlab.
Their laboratory network, so we do not need to build our own labs everywhere and can scale as a software company, not as a laboratory services company, and their large customer networks to efficiently acquire customers, enabling those partners to refer customers to us to be fully serviced with our world-leading testing products. With the growth ahead in the U.K., we expect to hit volume levels that justify in-country metagenomic laboratory processing. That is the perfect opportunity for Sonic to take on that processing at their world-class facilities in London. We then save significant CapEx and OpEx, and it enables us to focus and scale as a software company, as I said before, not as a laboratory services company. This agreement is with Sonic's U.K. subsidiary, which I said before is called The Doctors Laboratory, and they are the largest laboratory diagnostics provider in the U.K.
The agreement itself gives them a two-year option to take on those services, which they can trigger at any time, and we'll be working with them actively to ensure that that's done at the volume level that makes sense and is optimal. The reason that we did it as an option is because there are a whole bunch of integration and service level agreement details that we didn't need to document yet until we're all ready to kick off that formal work together. The team are actually already active on that, and our laboratory director will be over with them next month. Once kicked off and then operationalized, that would see them take on the laboratory processing requirements for us in the U.K. and in Ireland, and be motivated with a margin on those services.
The agreement gives them three years exclusivity with an option to extend for an additional three years. We hope that is a long, enduring, beneficial operating partnership in that part of the world. It is a really great example of how we can work with Sonic, and I think a blueprint of what we can do with them globally as we continue to grow and scale. Okay, I am gonna go to the next one here, which is, this is actually a really interesting one, because it has come up a few times lately. This person has asked, I recently went to a doctor and asked about your testing, and they disregarded it. Is that a sign that there is an adoption problem? This is a big misconception that I see. As I said, it has come up in conversations a few times lately.
Remember, I just walked through the adoption and what we call the skepticism curve. My response regarding that doctor would be, they are highly likely to be in the late majority or the laggard part of the adoption curve. There is no point in us spending time trying to convince them. Ultimately, they will either be convinced by their peers or they will retire. The team are incredibly good here at Microba at now typing and categorizing these healthcare professionals and leads to ensure that we are focused on healthcare professionals that are ready to adopt. That is key to efficient and effective sales here. We are intensively focused on innovator and early adopter clinicians in that segment of the curve.
As I showed right up front with the TAM, SAM, and SOM, we only need to win a fraction of those innovator and early adopter clinicians to be a significant business and impact hundreds of thousands of patients. Focus is key. Interestingly, the same point came up in presentation just last week, except the individual had an important nuance in that they saw a doctor and had the same response. They disregarded it. Then they visited another doctor and asked them, and they strongly recommended it and were already routinely using it. Again, we are focused on a very specific part of the adoption curve. You can spend a lot of money trying to convince and convert people that are not ready. We are focused on the ones that are ready.
Even by winning a small part of that segment, we can build a huge business. Another interesting anecdote, which could be helpful here, is there was a gastroenterologist conference on the Sunshine Coast just a couple of weeks ago. One of our executives attended, and there was a really interesting panel session on the microbiome with three clinicians. Essentially, all of them on that panel said that clinicians should be using microbiome testing now. Unstimulated by Microba, they all spoke about the use of MetaExplore, and a key point being that the clinical nature of MetaExplore and its validated and accredited status clearly differentiates from what they have seen before in the noise of unvalidated direct-to-consumer style products. I hope that explains why you might get that reaction from a clinician and where they might sit on the adoption curve.
Another one here, which is actually related, so I'll connect this one up, is, I've heard that your tests are more expensive than other comparable tests. Does that present as a barrier to adoption? How are you thinking about that? This is really important. We've done willingness to pay analysis to optimize our pricing based on both what clinicians feel comfortable to refer. That's one important dimension, but also what patients feel comfortable to purchase. You need to have those two things line up together. In terms of, I'll broaden the umbrella of the bucket here, functional gastrointestinal testing services as a broader umbrella of testing. We are not the cheapest. We're also not the most expensive. The value and clinical utility relative to cost is where Microba dominates.
Healthcare professionals in the innovator and early adopter category are seeing this. It is important to point out, there is a big difference in what is in MetaExplore versus in that broader functional gastrointestinal testing bucket. The closest comparable would be a Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis test, CDSA test. The market is quickly working out how big the difference is between MetaExplore and those offerings. I have heard people mention, you know, there is another lab in Melbourne, for example, and you know, the offering is similar. That is a key example where it is not a whole microbiome test. It is a CDSA with a very limited view of the microbiome. I would say that there is a reason why CDSA type testing has never advanced into meaningful use with doctors. What we are doing is very different.
The clinicians that get it really understand this. I think that will just continue to grow. Next question here, and apologies, I'm only gonna be able to answer a few more. You released three significant sets of data for Meta Panel and MetaExplore last month, and the share price went down. What did I miss? This looked like highly valuable validating data. I would say you didn't miss anything on the value of the data. These were landmark studies demonstrating the significant clinical value of our tests and how that translates through to patient outcomes. We believe the MetaExplore study is likely the largest clinical microbiome study that's been performed globally, just to put it into context. I encourage everyone to go back and look at those releases and the significance of that data in over 5,500 patients.
Unfortunately, those releases came at a time where the market is not recognizing the underlying value of small caps, and we as Microba are not immune to that. It is painful. In different market conditions, we would expect that that data would be significantly value accretive. Next one. Now, this is an important one. I want to address this head on. This feels like the worst timing for a capital raise. Why would you do this now? It is easy to look back at the share price chart and say that we should have done this in February. There were two necessary ingredients here: Sonic's participation as a cornerstone and demonstrated growth in the U.K. following all of our work in the U.K. and our acquisition there.
Q3 was our first full quarter of MetaExplore access in the U.K., where we were clearly able to show the results and growth in that region in April. Our terms with Sonic for their investment and our laboratory partnership in the U.K. and our plans around all of that took time to complete. In Q3, we had all of those ingredients really come together, particularly at the end. We engaged with key shareholders and institutional investors, and we introduced new guidance on our path to break even, more information on our growth strategy, product roadmap, product accelerated growth model. Unfortunately, as we worked through all of that process, that timing coincided with the end of financial year, likely tax or selling, all impacting the share price. I'm a shareholder like everyone else. It was a painful process to see that.
and it's a real dichotomy at the moment because, as I said at the start, the business is in the best position that it's ever been. and the share price doesn't currently reflect it. last one here, and then, the rest I will make sure we get to on Investor Hub. how should we gain confidence about the guidance for FY2026? we outlined a number of over 24,000 tests being the target that can deliver our growth and get us to those regional break-even points in Australia and the U.K. if we look just to Q3, let's start with Australia. in Q3, we grew 26% quarter- on- quarter. for the contribution from Australia to that 24,000 number, we would need to grow on average around 18% quarter- on- quarter. last quarter was 26%.
Just to give you some confidence there in the achievability of those numbers. In the U.K., the number there that contributes to that 24,000 is largely equivalent to what we delivered in the first full year of sales of MetaExplore in Australia. Both of those two things we can clearly see and reach, and the team are executing at pace. To close out, after seven years of building at the forefront of this field, we are building the category-defining company with world-leading technology, market-leading products and assets with growing moats around the business. We are closing out a year of over 145% year-on-year growth for our core products, expecting another strong year ahead of expanding clinical adoption and growth, together with expanding operating leverage, driving us to major company-defining break-even milestones.
have successfully secured AUD 14.5 million to drive that expanded clinical adoption of our tests with the continued backing of long-term partners like Sonic Healthcare and some of Australia's most respected institutional investors. Whilst the share price does not reflect it, the Microba business, as I said before, is in the strongest position that it has ever been, and that represents a real opportunity for investors as we move to capture this AUD 25 billion market. I will stop by saying thank you. Thank you for your ongoing support as we execute at pace to transform the lives of millions of patients across the globe. Thank you.