Good morning, everyone. On behalf of my fellow directors, I'd like to welcome you to the Annual General Meeting of Pro Medicus Limited, and thank you for the time that you're taking to be with us today. My name is Peter Kempen, and I'm Chairman of the Board, and I will be Chairman of this meeting. I'm speaking to you from the boardroom of Pro Medicus in Richmond, Victoria, and I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I regret that we are again unable to meet face-to-face this year, as the board enjoys meeting with company shareholders and receiving your candid feedback. We look forward to being able to hold a more traditional meeting next year, which I have to say I said last year, but I'm much more hopeful that we'll be able to achieve that this year.
However, I want to assure you that you will have the same opportunity to participate today as you would at a physical meeting. This includes being able to ask questions through the online platform and vote using an electronic voting card. I'll discuss these processes later in the meeting. I would now like to acknowledge my fellow directors. Those present with me are Ms. Alice Williams, Non-Executive Director, Dr. Sam Hupert, Joint Founder, CEO, and Executive Director, and we're also accompanied by Mr. Clayton Hatch, the Company Secretary and Chief Financial Officer. In an adjacent room and online are my other remaining directors. Ms. Deena Shiff, who is a Non-Executive Director, Mr. Anthony Hall, Joint Founder and Executive Director, Mr. Anthony Glenning, a Non-Executive Director, and Dr. Leigh Farrell, a Non-Executive Director. Also joining us remotely is Mr.
Tony Morse of Ernst & Young, the company's auditors, who is available to answer any questions in relation to the financial statements and his report to shareholders. It's very important for me to mention the following key personnel who have provided excellent leadership during the year under very challenging circumstances. Malte Westerhoff, General Manager, Europe, and Global Chief Technology Officer, Sean Lambright, Global Head of Sales, Teresa Gschwind, Global Head of Customer Service, Danny Tauber, General Manager, Australia, and Brad Levin, General Manager, North America, and Global Head of Marketing. Each of those individuals is depicted on page nine of the annual report. I should also acknowledge the considerable contribution of Clayton Hatch, our CFO, who is also part of our global leadership team. Before we deal with the formal business of the meeting, I will provide my report to you, which will be followed by a report from Dr.
Hupert, the CEO. As I mentioned earlier, there will be the opportunity to ask questions during the course of the meeting and following the formal business. I'll now deliver my chairman's report. An overview of the year. By any measure, the past financial year has been the company's most successful to date, not only financially, but also in terms of sales and achievements of R&D and operational metrics. Each of our businesses in our principal markets, Australia, Europe, and North America, contributed strongly to the result. The success of the company, despite the challenge of COVID-19, has been due to the quality of our management team, the resilience of all of our staff, the flexibility of our leading-edge technology, and the robustness of our business model.
While Pro Medicus is primarily a technology company, like most businesses, it relies on its people to reach its goals and achieve overall success. Your company is fortunate to have a group of highly skilled professionals who are dedicated to meeting our clients' needs and that of their patients. The majority of our staff have been with the company for many years, and the core management team for over a decade. The company, led by Dr. Sam Hupert and the management team, have navigated their way through a full financial year despite the challenges of COVID-19 restrictions.
The company's continued to deliver the highest level of service to our existing clients, while at the same time recording a record number of new contracts and successfully implementing more major installations than at any time in the company's history. As a consequence, the company has continued to deliver long-term sustainable financial results, delivering on the milestones outlined in the company's strategic plan. The group continues to invest in our best-of-breed suite of innovative products to maintain market leadership, which we believe is fundamental to your company's success. Earlier this year, the company received FDA clearance for its breast density AI algorithm, to our knowledge, the only PACS software company to do so. Our investment also includes signing collaborative research agreements with both the Mayo Clinic and the NYU Langone Health.
In relation to the latter institution, we have recently established a new research and development hub in New York, in addition to those in Australia and Germany, which is already showing promising results. These agreements will allow the company to develop leading-edge AI and next-generation products for enterprise imaging. During the financial year, on 1st of October 2021, we announced the signing of a seven-year, $40 million contract with Novant Health, a community-based integrated delivery network spanning three U.S. states. This contract is the equal largest deal to date for the company. Each of these contracts is significant in its own right, and all will make a major contribution to our future revenues. Despite the number of recently announced contract wins, new opportunities continue to present themselves. As a result, our pipeline remains strong.
In Australia, our RIS product continues to be the undisputed market leader, with revenue increasing due to the continued rollout of our contracts during the period. Review of the global management structure. The global management structure currently in place has served the company exceptionally well for many years. However, with the rapid growth of the business, the board felt it prudent to review the global management structure to ensure that it can scale to meet the company's future expansion needs. To this end, the board commissioned external advisors to prepare a workforce future-proofing report to determine the optimal management structure over the short to medium term and to underpin the company's growth. I'm pleased to report that the process of enacting the recommendations of the report has commenced and will be ongoing over the next 12 to 18 months. Financial results.
FY 2021 was another record year for the company, with revenue increasing by 19.5% and net profit after tax increasing by 33.7%. The result would have been higher, but due to the adverse movements in the currencies of the countries in which the company operates. On a constant currency basis, profit after tax would have been higher by approximately AUD 2.8 billion. Notwithstanding the presence of COVID-19 during the whole of the financial year, it did not have a material impact on the company's results. The company continues to be cash flow positive, with retained cash and liquid investments increasing from AUD 43 million- AUD 62 million after paying increased dividends. The board anticipates fiscal 2022 will be another strong year. The budget for the current financial year has been determined, recognizing continuing strong growth from both existing and new clients.
I'm pleased to advise that results to date are ahead of budget, and we anticipate that the second half of the financial year will be even stronger than the first, as is traditionally the case. Surplus cash and M&A. As I indicated earlier, our cash and other financial instruments have continued to grow during the year. These funds are maintained to allow the company to continue to invest in the development of our product suite, including AI, to meet our dividend obligations and to take advantage of acquisition opportunities that might arise. The board has considered a number of acquisition opportunities during the course of the year, but to date, none of these have met our criteria.
In the meantime, we've implemented a process of investing some of the surplus funds in liquid investments, which provide a better return than cash to at least maintain the real value of those funds. Dividend policy. The board was pleased to increase dividend payments for the 2021 financial year to AUD 0.15 per share, fully franked. This represents an increase of 25% over the previous year and a payout ratio of approximately 50%. The dividends were funded from the company's internally generated cash flow. The board anticipates that future dividends will continue to be fully franked. The board will continue to determine an appropriate level of dividends, having regard to the profitability of the business, its need for ongoing investment, and the necessity to retain sufficient funds to pursue other growth opportunities. Additional director. I'm delighted the company was able to secure the services of Ms. Alice Williams.
Alice joined the board in September 2021 and has assumed the role of Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee. I'm pleased to report that Alice is already making a strong contribution to the board's deliberations. When we consider the formal business of the meeting, I will invite Alice to address you prior to the consideration of the resolution for her election. Annual report. Expectations of investors and other interested stakeholders have been evolving over the last few years. With this in mind, the board believed it needed to update its annual report to meet those expectations. You will note that several enhancements have been made to this year's annual report. We expect that this will be an ongoing process. I'd like to acknowledge Deena Shiff and Clayton Hatch for their leadership in this process, assisted by personnel from KPMG.
In closing, on your behalf, I'd like, again, to thank all of our dedicated staff in Australia, North America, and Europe for their contribution to the company during what has been one of the most challenging but most successful years. I'd also like to thank my fellow directors who have also worked tirelessly and diligently to ensure that the company reaches its ultimate goals. That ends my report, and I'd now like to hand over to Dr. Sam Hupert to give you an overview of the performance of the company over the last year. To provide you with an update on the company's current activities. Over to you, Sam.
Thank you, Peter, and good morning. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. As most people know, we are a global organization, three offices. Our founding office here in Melbourne, where we do a lot of the R&D for the Pro Medicus practice management or RIS product. Our office in Berlin, where we do a lot of the R&D and support for the Visage product, and our office in San Diego in the U.S., which is our biggest market. We have two product sets. The original product being the Visage RIS, mainly used here in Australia due to localization and billing requirements. Two of the largest groups in Australia use it, as do a number of independent groups. The Visage 7 product set, which we acquired in February 2009, and is the product that we sell globally and particularly in North America.
As Peter mentioned, this has been FY 2021, our most successful year by any measure. We had a record year financially despite some material currency headwinds. I think even despite COVID and the restrictions of travel, we had unprecedented sales success with six major wins, five in North America and LMU Klinikum in Europe. We also completed five major implementations, more than in any other year. Some of these you will see later on were done completely remotely, some on-site and some in a hybrid model, showing that even if there are further restrictions in the future, we will still be able to implement the contracts that we've consummated. Importantly, we signed two major research agreements in addition to the one we have. Those were with NYU Langone and Mayo Clinic. I'll talk a little bit about that.
We received FDA clearance for our breast density algorithm. On multiple fronts, both financially and operationally, we had our best year. In terms of the financial results, most of you will have seen this, at our full year release. Clearly, all of our key metrics are headed in the right direction. Pleasingly, we were able to also not only increase our revenue and profit, but, as Peter mentioned, increase our retained cash, and we're able to pay a higher dividend this year, again, fully franked. In terms of the revenue split, the graph that you're seeing, the pink area is transaction volumes. That clearly grows year on year as new contracts layer on top of the existing ones.
The blue area is more support contracts that are recurring in revenue, more from the RIS products where people had capital licenses in the past but have annualized support contracts. The green area is the professional services, which are our training and implementation of all our sites, which is spread over the life of the contract. As you can see, each of those has grown over the year. This graph shows on the left the geographic spread. As expected, the bulk of our revenue is now coming from the U.S., which is represented as the blue. Australia has continued to grow, but clearly the U.S. growth has outstripped it. Europe is at the top.
The other is the operating cash flow, and as Peter mentioned, we have increased significantly, that we're now showing the fixed interest assets as well as the available cash, but they're now in as of the half, or as of the full year rather, we're just a bit over AUD 60 million, and we are debt-free. The operational model, most of you are familiar with this. We changed to this back in about 2010. It's used in the vast majority of our U.S.-based contracts, as well as some of our more recent contracts here in Australia. It is based on a concept of a minimum where the client will guarantee a certain number of transactions per year at a known dollar rate per transaction, and then any additional examinations are actually charged at that same dollar rate.
For us, the model has scaled very well. It provides a floor to our contracts, but there is no ceiling, so the more the client grows, the more we grow. It gives an annuity style stream, as you saw in the previous graph, so far greater predictability going forward. The only other thing is there's a forward revenue that we update every half of AUD 320 million. These are contracted minimums for the next 5 years. We'll update that in February when we do our first half. Clearly, the advanced sale is not part of this figure at the moment, but will be when we update it after the half, so it will grow even beyond that. We believe we can lay claim to having a highly scalable offering with a good operating leverage.
Our sales are software only. We sell very little, if any, hardware. We have a very contained cost base, and so margins continue to grow as our footprint increases. This next slide shows our EBIT margins. They grew from 53% last year to a bit over 60% this year, or in FY 2021. There were some unusual situations in terms of reduced travel and reduced marketing expense because in the previous year, the large conference that's about to occur at the end of this week in Chicago, the RSNA was virtual, and it's one of our major marketing expenses. This year it's in person. I'll talk about that a little later. Even taking that into account, we believe margins will remain largely around these levels going forward.
Some increased costs coming back, as people start to travel and marketing budgets go back to normal, but that will be offset by some of the increased revenue from the recent contracts that we've won. Looking at sales for the full year, as I mentioned, we had not only unprecedented for us, but I think unprecedented for the industry as a whole. It started earlier in the year with NYU Langone, one of the largest health systems in the New York and Long Island area. We then had a sale in Europe with LMU Klinikum, based out of Munich, one of the largest teaching hospitals in Europe, followed on by MedStar, which is a large IDN or Integrated Delivery Network system, based around the Washington area.
We secured the contract for Intermountain Healthcare, which is our equal largest contract to date, followed by University of California, so all the five academic campuses that comprise the office of the University of California, being UCLA, UC San Francisco, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, and UC Davis, and then rounded out the year with the University of Vermont, which we sold later in the piece and is yet to be put in. One of our strengths we are known for is being very successful in the high-end academic Tier 1 institutions, and we're very proud of that. We now service nine out of the top twenty hospitals as voted by U.S. News, which is a poll done every single year.
The top 20 will change from year to year, but there are always a certain coterie that are in there, and we're pleased to say that we normally poll within eight or nine in that top 20, more than double any of our competitors. People think of us solely as doing that Tier 1 academic space, and I think this slide shows that we're equally successful in the non-academic or IDN space. Previous clients that were very large for us, Mercy, Sutter Health, Allegheny, are all in that non-academic, integrated delivery network space. We've won another three material sales in the last year, being MedStar, Intermountain, and recently Novant. Interestingly, Intermountain and Novant were our equal largest sales to date by dollar value.
All three sales were for more than one Visage product, which I'll talk a bit about later, and a trend that we anticipate will continue. All three will also be fully cloud deployed, which is another key trend that we think is very important and a strategic advantage for us going forward. We're seeing an increasing network effect in this market segment, just like we did in the Tier 1 academic space previously. As Peter mentioned, we signed two key research collaboration agreements, one with NYU Langone, and we are in the process of setting up an extension of our R&D hub that from Berlin into New York, and we'll talk about that a little later.
A research collaboration agreement with Mayo Clinic, which is routinely voted the number one health organization, not only in the U.S., but also the world. In terms of year to date, how are we traveling since the full year results? As Peter mentioned, we are ahead of budget, which is pleasing. The client volumes globally are above pre-COVID levels, which is encouraging. We did see a step-up in exam volumes in the first half as some of the large implementations that we did in the first half of the calendar year came on stream, in particularly Northwestern Medicine, NYU Langone Health, MedStar Health, and now Intermountain Healthcare that went live recently.
The Novant deal is our equal largest in history, and that's yet to be implemented, but we believe that will occur in the second half of the financial year. We still have three contracts to come online this financial year. The first stage of the University of California, which occurs in the first week of December, University of Vermont and Novant, and clearly anything else that we're able to sell and implement before 30th of June, 2022. So far the year is tracking very well with plenty of good opportunity ahead of us. It's one thing to sell the systems, it's another thing to put it in, and as I mentioned, COVID did have a lot of restrictions, particularly in whether we could have on-site presence for radiologists and other trainings.
In a number of cases, that just wasn't possible, so we were able to develop systems for both on-site and remote training. In the case of MedStar, Intermountain, and our most recent implementations, we have found that a combination of both on-site and remote is most probably the optimal mix and the one that we will look to use more frequently going forward. Clearly, our biggest implementation schedule this is just calendar year 2021 so far, and as I mentioned, the first week of December, we'll add to this doing our first of the UCs, which will be UC San Francisco, first week of December. It will have been a very, very full calendar year in terms of major implementations. As for COVID, well, clearly it's a changing landscape.
We did mention that we were able to work from home as of mid-March last year, and that's pretty much been the case for most of our jurisdictions, although North America has returned to near normal with a lot more travel than we see otherwise in Europe and Australia. We have been at 100% capacity as our sales history and our implementation history over the past 12 months has shown.
We are seeing, interestingly, a lot more inbound opportunities despite COVID restrictions, and I think if anything, COVID may have provided us with a tailwind in terms of the heightened need for telehealth or remote reporting, which most of you will remember our system is ideally suited to support. We are seeing exam levels above pre-COVID, but clearly we are monitoring this closely, discussions of a fourth wave, particularly in Europe, although that would not have much impact for us. As we sit here today, we have very healthy exam volumes coming through. I think part of that is because the organizations are much more adept at dealing with COVID and still having the patients examined than they were in April, May of 2020. Visage RIS, as we mentioned, largely Australian-based.
We have two very long-term contracts, the largest and second-largest groups in Australia. We're pleased to say that the Healius, now called Lumus, rollout is now complete. We are still doing parts of the I-MED rollout, but I think we are now regained our position and are the undisputed leader in this market. Visage 7, the clinical product or PACS replacement product that we sell globally, and particularly in the U.S. What makes it so special? Well, we think it's being number one in three key categories. Speed, in other words, how quickly you can visualize images regardless of the size of datasets.
The functionality in the desktop that can do everything from 2D, 3D, 4D, which is moving 3D, and all the advanced visualization, which are becoming more standard requirements in radiology today, all done in the one desktop. Importantly, although you don't see it, is the scalability, because we are literally dealing with petabytes of data for clients every year, and it's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and the fact that we can scale seamlessly has been a key part to our success going forward. Driving the market, I think the main factor is still the size of the datasets. They are exploding exponentially. The gigabyte is the new megabyte, and it's not uncommon to have datasets or examinations that are between 1 GB-3 GB, and in some cases, as big as 6 GB-8 GB an examination.
It is causing the Legacy systems to have network speed issues because they're just not designed to deal with datasets of this size, whereas our platform has been designed for that, and this is a clear differentiator for us. Legacy technology used to take the file, compress it, send it down the network. A highly configured workstation at the other end would uncompress the file and do all the image manipulation and enhancement locally on the workstation. The problem with this now is that these files are just getting too big. Whereas with us, the model is very different. We take the file, and in near real time, we do all the 3D and rendering on a central server, and we then don't move the file. We just stream the pixels to the end user. Most of the work is done centrally.
The local workstation mainly used for displaying the pixels rather than actually doing the image manipulation. In our world, it's a Visage 7 streaming technology. We see, you know, going forward the cloud in the middle. We have the ability with the archive at the bottom of the screen. The idea is no matter what sort of end user, where they are, we're able to stream at high speed, even the largest files and datasets, not only to workstations, but also to mobile devices as needed. It's a far more holistic offering than of any of our competitors. In terms of the deals, I'll go through these quickly. MedStar was a... Since the last AGM was announced after that.
It was interesting and key because it's a well-known IDN, but I think it was the first that took all three Visage products, our Visage Workflow Manager, our cornerstone product, the Viewer, and the Archive, and all three are fully implemented in Google Cloud or GCP. Again, it was a very good portent of the new model we're seeing in our current opportunities, which include multi-product, and five out of the last five opportunities include cloud. That implementation was completed in June, July 2021 and will contribute pretty close to the full six months in the first half and then another six months going forward in the second. Intermountain Healthcare, as we mentioned previously, our equal largest deal to date, is a very large IDN based out of Salt Lake City in Utah, but spans across multiple states.
This was for a Viewer and Archive, again, fully cloud deployed. We completed that implementation in two tranches, one in October and one in the first week of November. That site, Intermountain, is completely live throughout the enterprise. Coming forward, the next deal was University of California’s. As I mentioned, the first campus, which will be UCSF, will be going live in the first week of December. There will be all five staged over an 18-month period with two other campuses scheduled to go live in the first quarter of calendar year 2022. There are options for affiliates. The UCs have a number of affiliates, and with UC San Francisco, one of the affiliates, the Benioff Children's, will be part of that contract deal for the go-live in December.
University of Vermont, again, an academic on the East Coast. We plan that this will go live in the first quarter of calendar year 2022 or the second half of financial year. Again, will be cloud based, as the previous few deals. The most recent deal after year-end was Novant, as Peter mentioned, a large IDN in the North Carolina area, spans multiple states. Planning for that has commenced. We believe that will go live in the first half of calendar year 2022, and in this instance, it will be in Microsoft's Azure cloud. It's one thing to sell the systems, it's another thing to put it in. I think, equally as important, as the technology itself, but clearly dependent on the technology, is the ability to fast-track implementations.
We believe we can do that in a fraction of the time of our competitors. As I mentioned, Intermountain was an extremely large, geographically diverse, system, and we were able to put that in in under a month in two waves, one in October, one in November, and have multiple hundred radiologists live across the enterprise. It is incredibly important because not only does it help our clients because, you know, trying to juggle two systems over periods of time as they're phasing from one to the other is not only expensive, it's fraught with issues. It's also good for us. It means we can get the job done, get them up and running, and then repurpose the team for future opportunities, which is something we've been able to do successfully over the last few years.
Most people know that we are deemed to be the most expensive system in the market, which is where we've always positioned our product. We believe that it provides the greatest value or return on investment or ROI. ROI can be measured both financially and, just as importantly, if not more so, clinically. While in the past I've talked about financial ROI, today I just want to give a few examples, real-world examples of where we think we've actually moved the needle in terms of clinical outcomes, what made a tangible difference. This is a tweet of some radiologists talking about how you should double-check when you put a stent in the ureter, which is a tube coming out of the into the bladder, to make sure that there's not a stone there with the stent.
It requires a image manipulation and enhancement, which in other systems could take minutes, whereas in Visage, it's about two or three clicks and takes seconds. There are literally hundreds of examples like this where our technology enables the radiologist to do things that they otherwise would take a lot longer to do or they wouldn't be able to do without using separate systems. We see this day in, day out, and it makes such a material difference to their ability to make the most accurate diagnosis possible. This was a recent article in The Boston Globe, and it was spawned out of COVID.
Very interesting because during COVID, they realized that a lot of female patients were putting off screening mammography simply because, you know, there wasn't the availability, and particularly at the beginning of COVID, a lot of centers were either closed or only working part-time. What they did find is once the screening resumed, that only 15% of the people or the patients were actually getting real-time reports, and those 15% were mostly white women with higher incomes. The reason they found this out was they felt that those people either had connections or tended to be a little bit more forthright and wanted to get the result right away. What had unintentionally happened was the system started to support some inequities that Black and Hispanic communities tended to be pushed, their diagnosis tended to take longer.
There was this inequity. What the breast imaging department at this hospital, which is Mass General, did was decide that they would read everything in real time. Women would be able to go out to the peripheral clinics, and centrally, the breast imaging radiologist would be able to read those examinations pretty much in real time using the Visage platform. I think it has made a very critical difference, that, as they say, the racial and ethnic disparities vanished. Here was a real-world example where remote reading, the thinness of the application, actually made a difference to the community that the hospitals serve. The last one, we often get asked, "What do you do in terms of some of these research collaboration agreements?
What are they geared towards, and how are they actually gonna help patients?" The one I'm talking about today is a collaboration agreement we have with Yale, with Mariam Aboian, who is a top pediatric neuroradiologist there. It's really to do with defining how you can grade brain tumors in children. Part of the problem, the images you see at the bottom with the yellow markings, is most times, tumors are measured in just one axis. In other words, how wide they are or how long they are. Even if you do it in a volume, it's very hit and miss and very difficult to have consistent measurements across all the tumors. Not only that, even if you know the size, the consistency of the tumor is a very key diagnostic factor.
How much of it is the dead core? How much of it is swelling, et cetera? It's important to have that differentiation, whereas normal measurements just don't show you that. They just show you the size. That's assuming that they're accurate. The research project was to use AI to segment or separate the tumor in all its different parts. Not only that, to use radiogenomics, which is looking at the molecular structure on MRI that will help indicate what sort of tumor or molecular structure of the tumor that's there, so over and above what it physically appears on MRI.
In partnership with Mariam and her team, we were able to develop specific tools that allowed them to take these measurements and take them quickly, make them more accurate, and then give them the data sets that they could then use in their machine learning model to categorize these tumors more accurately. This is what it looks like on screen. On the top left, you see the color, and on the right, you see the picture of the segmentation. This used to take in excess of two and a half to three hours per examination. With Visage now they're able to do it inside Visage in a matter of just minutes.
We're now at a point where this has been deemed to be accurate and clinically sufficient that we're looking to put this into clinical production at Yale, starting in the first quarter of next calendar year. For the neuroradiologists, this will be an absolute game changer for them. Successful that there's talk of future collaborations for other tumors using the source of the same technology. There are a number of other datasets that Yale have where we will be applying similar technology and refining algorithms to see if we can build out this technology, not just for brain gliomas, but other central nervous system tumors and then tumors in other parts of the body.
I just thought this was a very good example of how a collaboration can be done with both sides acting very closely together to get something that we hope will be clinically meaningful in the very near future. In terms of our growth strategy, we have enacted on that, clearly expanding our footprint, which was material not only in U.S., but with LMU Klinikum in the U.S. We have been able to bring and sell multiple products to the market. We showed our workflow manager at RSNA 2019, pretty much two years ago to the day, and that's now gone into production in sites like MedStar and others. We are looking at other adjacencies, other technologies that sit around our core product set, and we'll talk about those in just a moment.
As Peter mentioned, even though it's been our most successful year to date, we have had very good success in replenishing the pipeline that we have had an increased number of inbound opportunities over the past 18 months across different segments of the market, different size opportunities, and importantly, a number of them for more than one product. The viewer and either the worklist and/or archive. We are seeing a huge momentum shift towards cloud, which I think is driving some of that pipeline. Quickly going through the products, the One Viewer product, we have made some material progress on this in the last 6 months. We are still working towards having departments use Visage exclusively outside radiology.
We're not quite there yet, but we have made some material steps towards that, and we think this could be another future opportunity for us to expand our reach within the health enterprises we service. The Open Archive first released a few years ago, Mercy Health in St. Louis was then our first client. We are seeing increased traction for this product, particularly with cloud, and you will have seen it in LMU Klinikum and at groups like MedStar Health and Intermountain Healthcare. We are seeing opportunities not just with those in the pipeline, but existing clients looking at upgrading their archive as their current technology starts to get a little older. As I mentioned, the last product, our Visage Workflow, it rounds out the set. It again has been very popular.
Novant, MedStar, and others have either acquired it or purchased it and will be using it. We see it very important in terms of our cloud strategy because it gives us all three modules that we can put in the cloud and make it a truly turnkey solution for those that don't wanna buy or don't have separate modules already. Cloud, as I mentioned, has become huge for us. Big momentum swing. We are cloud native. We say that it's the same ultra-fast performance, but in reality, we're finding that cloud is even faster than on-premise for various technical reasons. While people were originally concerned about performance, if anything, it's even faster. It has got increased security and scalability, which is what cloud is all about.
We see it as a significant advantage because our competitors are not able to be fully cloud capable at this point in time. Finally, I'll finish off with AI, because we often get asked about this. As many of you are aware, we have been dealing in this area for a number of years. We see multiple uses for AI that I have here on the screen. The one where we will be doing most of our work in, at least in the beginning, is the second last one, the second opinion or aid to diagnosis. We developed a product suite based off the core Visage product, which we call Visage AI Accelerator. It's a unique end-to-end solution.
It does have an ability to be used by research institutions and then also moved into production once those research projects reach a certain level of maturity, similar to what we talked about with the radiogenomics program at Yale. It as its name implies, it enables our clients to fast-track their imaging and AI strategy. We see it as an open platform, one that will allow not only our own algorithms to run, but also those that we commercialize, co-develop with any of our research partners, and also open it up to all third-party independently produced AI algorithms that where it makes sense. We see it as an open platform that will give our clients the biggest opportunity to integrate AI over and above what's currently in the market.
Finally, our own FDA cleared, as we mentioned, that was in February. We have this now in production at one of our key sites, and we will be looking to commercialize this towards the end of this year, early next year, in terms of selling it to others, and it will be the first time a PACS company has actually produced its own AI algorithm, as far as we know. In terms of our team, we've added to the team. It's led by Malte Westerhoff and Detlev Stalling, who are the two co-founders of Visage. MingDe Lin, who's a Ph.D. medical scientist based out of Yale, has been instrumental in coordinating not only the breast density algorithm with Yale, but also the radiogenomics and other research collaborations we do with them.
Raj Moily, who's our newest member of the team, also based out of Connecticut, out of Yale, who will be doing the business development for AI and the AI integration. We've expanded the team in anticipation of additional work coming through. Last two or three slides, NYU Langone, just as an update. It was a multi-year research and collaboration agreement, as Peter said. We've already started the work in establishing the office in New York. We had a little bit of difficulty in the beginning in terms of getting people across because of COVID, but that's now sorted itself fout, and we're already starting to show promising results with some new product we'll be highlighting at the RSNA later this week, which is a joint development between NYU and Visage.
RSNA 2021, it is in person. We will have a large presence. Unfortunately, we as Aussies, we're not able to go, but we will have a strong team fielded out of the U.S. and European teams. Pleased to report that we've had an excellent number of advanced bookings. Despite there being restrictions in terms of number of registrants, we do anticipate we will have a very strong showing this year. Finally, in summary, it has been our most successful year in company history. Our North American footprint continues to grow very strongly. Our expanded product portfolio has started to pay dividends. Our ability to implement both remotely and on-site has been fundamental, particularly to our success, particularly over the last 12-18 months.
The Visage AI Accelerator is strategically positioned to leverage AI. I'll leave you with one last slide. Our marketing manager, Brad Levine, often gets sound bites from all of our implementations of what radiologists think about our system, and this one stuck out to me when a radiologist recently said, "We went from a Flintstones car to a Tesla." On that, I thank you. I finally thank all our staff, as Peter said, for all their incredible efforts. Just a special shout-out to Richard English, husband of Danny English, who unfortunately had an accident recently, and we wish you well in a speedy recovery. Thank you.
Thank you, Sam. As you can see, the company has been extremely busy in the last 12 months or so, and we don't anticipate that will slow at all in the coming year. I also think Sam's report demonstrates his detailed knowledge of the business, and he's a very significant part of the company's success because while he allows the team to make their own decisions, he carefully oversees them and is certainly a driver of the activities that we've experienced and also helped to navigate through the challenges of the last two years really, which I think have been done very successfully and probably better than most corporations to date.
Thank you, Sam, for all of that and for your contribution over the year. I will now invite shareholders to submit their questions and we'll try to initially deal with questions in relation to the comments made by Sam and myself. We will later seek to answer questions in relation to items of formal business as we deal with each item. I'll now address how shareholders can use the online platform to submit written questions and vote on the resolutions before the meeting. I'm sure many of you have attended a number of virtual meetings and therefore are familiar with the practices, but I will go through it as to make sure that we're all on the same page.
Voting on the resolutions will be conducted by way of poll using the electronic voting card you should receive after clicking the Get A Voting Card button. Shareholders can submit written questions during the meeting by clicking on the Ask a Question button. I do encourage shareholders who have questions to submit them as soon as possible. If you have any trouble using the platform, please check the online portal guide on the Pro Medicus page of the ASX website, or contact the help lines shown on the screen. I'll now turn to the questions and I might before I ask Clayton whether we have any questions, I would like to deal with two written questions that we received prior to the meeting, and I want to thank those shareholders who took the trouble of doing so.
The first question that we received was, Pro Medicus has a large exposure to the U.S. and various health authorities. Are there any plans to significantly diversify geographical revenue sources so the company is not so reliant on the U.S. and Australia to diversify risk? The answer to that question, I think, is that the company also has a number of clients in Europe, over and above Australia and U.S., a number of clients in Europe, as Sam has mentioned, and we intend expanding our presence in that market. We're also exploring opportunities in the United Kingdom. In addition, we do have a number of clients in Canada, which we've had for many years, and some additional opportunities have arisen recently. Having said that, the board's keen to focus our efforts on...
in the U.S., where there is a strong flow of opportunities from organizations who appreciate the value of our products. While we have a significant number of clients, we still have a small percentage of the overall U.S. market. There is so many opportunities that it would be hard to divert our attention too much in terms of geographical diversity. It's not to say we won't, but at this time, we are concentrating on those markets that I referred to. I don't know whether, Sam, you'd like to make any further comment in that regard.
Look, I think that's exactly it. The U.S. is not only the biggest market, it's the most active. That's why we're focusing our efforts there. I think cloud will be an important thing for other markets, and Europe in particular seems to be a few years behind the U.S. in terms of cloud adoption, particularly in healthcare. I think it's coming, and I think that will help pave the way for us to use our technology seamlessly for other markets. You know, in summary, Peter, there's absolutely no reason it can't work anywhere in the world. It is a truly global product. It doesn't need to be localized other than, you know, language, which it's capable of being. We are looking at the other markets, but clearly, with the U.S. being so active for us, it's our key focus.
Thanks, Sam. The second question, it has two parts to it. What is Pro Medicus doing to support indigenous communities in closing the gap? And the second part, what percentage of Pro Medicus spend is directed to indigenous-owned suppliers? This is a bit more tricky than the other one. The company isn't specifically doing anything or directly to close the gap. However, our products do lend themselves to facilitating diagnosis in remote areas, which when used by our clients, provides indigenous communities with the same standard of healthcare enjoyed by all Australians. We see that as a significant benefit, and it plays to the article from the Boston Globe that Sam referred to earlier in his presentation.
We believe it's just as important in Australia for Indigenous communities as it is in the U.S. In relation to the second part of the question, the company doesn't have many areas of expenditure where Indigenous suppliers might be able to provide goods and services, but we'll consider whether there are any opportunities in this regard during this coming year. I'll now go to any other questions that might arise or have arisen, particularly from in relation to the reports that we've just delivered, before we go to more general questions. Clayton, are there any further questions?
Yes, please. Thanks, Peter. Question from Stuart Coleman, representing the Australian Shareholders' Association. Cash levels are currently high and growing each year. Could the board please advise what the plans are for this cash and how it will be utilized to enhance shareholder value?
Thank you, Clayton. Thank you, Stuart, for the question. I think my report did touch upon this issue, and it is pretty much as I indicated. We do wish to retain the funds until we find appropriate opportunities, particularly for M&A, while still paying reasonable dividends in the interim and also continuing to invest in our current product suite. As I said, we have looked at a couple of about three or four opportunities which might enhance our product offering and our shareholder value, but none of these have met our criteria. I should say, particularly, we've noted that many of these opportunities are particularly expensive, and that's one of the criteria that we set ourselves.
We are continuing to look, and if we find the right opportunity, we'll certainly let the market know about it and perhaps hopefully transact at some point. In the meantime, we recognize that holding cash is not particularly helpful, and so we have decided to invest money in liquid securities, which we can easily realize if necessary. That at least provides us with a maintenance of real value of that money until we find the appropriate opportunities. Sam?
Yeah, I think it's also important to mention that we are continually investing in the business, which is our number one focus for the cash. It's just that the percentage of our operating expenses as percentage of revenue goes down, not because we're not investing, but simply because the revenue's going up at a faster rate. Good examples of recent investments have been additional staff in the U.S., which is now our equal largest number of staff in a jurisdiction, and also the investment we're looking to make in terms of the extension of the Berlin R&D hub in New York City, where we're just starting that process and have earmarked, you know, funds over the next 12-18 months to establish that.
It's not like we're not investing, and clearly, if we thought there was an opportunity where we could gain an even more strategic or significant advantage, we would invest further.
Thank you, Sam. Clayton, next question.
Yeah. A question here from Michael Porter. What new roles and functions are being developed from AI experience? Is AI a crucial factor in winning major new clients?
I'll give that one to you, Sam.
Yeah. Well, as you saw in my slide, we've employed another doctor. Thank you. I'm now no longer the only one in the company, and I think you'll find more because we are a clinical product. We are making some investments so that we can maximize the efforts we have with our research collaboration agreements. At the moment, they're three, but we anticipate that there could likely be more, and also how we interact with the third parties. We do see AI as emerging. I know there's a lot of talk about it. We're sure that it will be very suited for medicine and radiology in particular. It hasn't yet hit that inflection point where it's, you know, mainstream, but I think that's coming soon.
We are making some investments on the medical clinical side with Ming and Raj, and also on the business side going forward with these research collaboration agreements. Clearly, that'll be an area where we extend our you know build our bench in terms of manpower.
Thank you, Sam.
Another question from Wayne Arthur. Can you tell us about the breast density algorithm? With FDA approval, are you making sales? Are the sales for individual radiologists rather than large hospitals? Are there any competitors?
Well, the last part of the question first, look, there are a number of competitors. There's an Australian-listed company that's main core product in its business is breast density. We did get FDA approval in February. We have put it into production. Well, it's going in production at one of our academic partners, and really to see how they use it, where they find the return on investment, other areas where they will use it that we hadn't quite thought of yet. We're a long way down that process, and both Raj and Ming in the US are very close to that. We will start to commercialize it, I think, either late this year or first thing next year.
In other words, start to price it, package it, work out how we implement it, and then look to sell it. Now, we think it will go to existing clients first. Matter of fact, for sure it will. Those that, you know, understand the need for it. Then we'll sort of adjust that business model, bearing in mind that, as I mentioned, AI and radiology is still emerging. You know, there's not a precedent of how these things occur. First half of this next calendar year is when we'll be putting it out to market.
Another question from Paul Kelly. How does your breast density algorithm different from the product offered by Volpara Health?
Yeah. Well, I can't give you the exact science, because we only know what we hear of Volpara. I think one of the key differentiators is ours works in situ. At the place that we have it, when the images come up, the density calculation's already there. It's literally in real time. We don't need to send the files up to the cloud, then do the AI analysis and send it back. That's one fundamental difference. As I said, we're approaching it from slightly different angles. I think, you know, Volpara's looking to provide a broader suite of products around breast imaging. At this point, ours is largely around density, and then we'll look at things like, you know, diagnosis and other areas as add-ons going forward.
Question from Lindsay Sherman. I'm a shareholder and member of Team Invest. Thanks for the presentation on your AI technology. Do the machine learning models need training data to be supplied by the radiologists? Is this time-consuming to gather, or do those data sets already exist?
Look, it is time-consuming, and it's like everything, the better the curation, in other words, working out what the images are actually showing, whether it's a grade one B or one A tumor. The better the curation, the better the machine learning. The better the input, the better the result. It's not set and forget. You need to validate across multiple organizations, and that's another key point of our breast density one. It was validated not only at Yale, where we did it, but also validated at another tier one academic institution. We will continue to do that validation across the board because people have different image acquisition devices, different brands of equipment, and that will make different things. Different ethnicities can make differences. It's never a set and forget, and I think that's the key message.
You need to be able to continually refine it, and having the access to these tier one academics with arguably the best radiologists, not only in North America, but the world, is a very important step in that.
Another. A question from Howard Coleman, also from Teami nvest. What do the board and CEO regard as potentially the biggest risks to the business in the next few years?
I'll take that one. That's a very timely question. I think the board has considered this quite recently, and the issue of succession is our main strategic risk at this stage. As we pride ourselves on having longstanding staff, which has served us well, we haven't had to deal with a lot of succession within the business generally at the CEO level or in the senior management team. However, we will be faced with that in the short to medium term, in the next two to five years. The board is now considering how we best go about ensuring that we can have a seamless transition within the succession of the key positions that we enjoy right now.
Can I just add-
Oh.
I think the only other thing I'd add. It's also to do with scale. We pride ourselves on being a smart, small, multi-skilled team, and clearly, you know, the amount of business we're now doing. We're looking at how we can scale the organization to make sure that we can take advantage of any of the opportunities that are coming, to make sure we take full advantage of AI as it emerges as a mainstream technology. I think the review is, as Peter said, yes, some succession, but also about scale and making sure that the organization is fit for purpose for our expansion plans going forward.
Thanks, Sam. I'll now move. There are no further questions in relation to our report, so I'll now move to the business of the meeting. The formal business has been set out in the notice paper, and with your permission, I will take the notice of meeting as read. The minutes of the previous annual general meeting, the board reviewed the minutes of the meeting held on 25th of November, 2020, and I've signed those minutes that are true, an accurate record of that meeting. The company secretary has a copy if any shareholder would like to refer to them, or you may be able to refer back to last year's AGM, where the resolutions were made, if you need to be reminded. With your permission, we'll note those minutes as a true and accurate record of proceedings.
I'd now like to again refer to the process of shareholder questions and voting on resolutions before the meeting. In terms of questions, shareholders can submit written questions during the meeting by clicking on the Ask a Question button. To ensure questions reach us in time, I ask that you submit them now if you haven't already. Again, any general shareholder questions submitted online during the meeting will be addressed after the formal business is completed. If we aren't able to get through all of them today, or if there are specific questions that will be better addressed on an individual basis, we'll respond to them after the meeting. If we receive multiple questions that are similar, we'll try to amalgamate them into one or choose to answer the broadest question, which we'll cover off on the others.
In terms of voting, Pro Medicus share registry provider Link Market Services will conduct the voting by way of a poll, and Mr. Jim Compo-Georgas of Link, hope I've got that right, Jim, will act as returning officer. Votes will be counted after the end of the meeting and results published on the ASX and Pro Medicus Limited's website. Shareholders can cast their vote using the electronic voting card received after validating online registration. To validate registration, you'll be asked to enter your security holder reference number or HIN, plus postcode if you're in Australia or country if you're outside Australia, then cast your vote. Click the Get Voting Card button. If you're intending to vote, you'll be able to finalize and submit votes up until five minutes after the meeting ends.
I'll remind you at the end of the meeting. Proxies. The proxy votes that have been submitted will be set out on the slide shown for each resolution. For some context, the current number of Pro Medicus shares on issue is approximately 104 million. A number of shareholders have appointed the chair of today's meeting, myself, as their proxy. As indicated on the proxy form and in the notice of meeting, my intention as chair is to vote all discretionary or undirected proxies held by me in favor of each resolution. Now to the business of the meeting. Accounts and reports. To receive and consider the financial statements of the company for the year ended 30th of June, 2021, and the related directors' report, directors' declaration and auditors' report. While no vote is required on this item, I would call for any questions shareholders may have.
Are there any questions in relation to the financial statements?
No, there's not.
Thank you, Clayton. We'll note that those accounts and reports have been received. The remuneration report: To adopt the remuneration report, which is contained within the annual report on pages 36- 43 for the year ended 30th of June, 2021. While the vote in relation to this item is not immediately binding on the company, we naturally take seriously the views of our shareholders. Before putting this motion, are there any questions?
Yes, a few questions. One from Stuart Byrne, representing the Australian Shareholders' Association. The ASA has a preference for at least 50% of the remuneration of the CEO and KMPs to be at risk. While we recognize the situation with the CEO, the STIs for KMPs are paid in cash rather than our preferred position of at least 50% in equity with a minimum twelve-month holding lock. Can you please comment on your position?
Thank you, Clayton, and thank you to the Shareholders Association. We do review our remuneration policy each year, and we have felt that over the years so far, the current methodology does serve our purpose well. It does give the key management team immediate cash benefits for short-term incentives, but does provide a long-term incentive as well within the LTI. As you would appreciate, I think there's a three-year period that before vesting, but there is one year lock on in relation to the LTI granting. We feel at this stage it is appropriate and...
We do consider it each year, but we are cognizant of the fact that you don't wanna keep chopping and changing the rules because it only upsets the management team who do fully understand the current system. We wouldn't change it annually, but we do review it and are in the process of setting our targets for the year and for the next three years for the LTI.
Another question from Stuart Byrne, representing the Australian Shareholders' Association. The ASA also has a preference for rights issued under the LTI plans to be issued at market value. All LTI performance share grants are allocated at nil value and calculated at fair value rather than face value. We prefer share grants to be satisfied by equity purchased on market. Would you consider face value calculations in the future?
Clayton, I might ask you to just explain that, the issue of face value versus, market value, just so the shareholders who might be listening to this question understand the issue.
There's a requirement for the accounting standards to represent it in fair value. We need to represent the long-term incentives at a fair value when they were granted to the employees. That's a statutory requirement that needs to be done in the annual report. There is also a consideration to actually put them in at a market value, so what they are when they were given to the employees, which is obviously four years after the grant date. It's something that we've looked at and would consider for our next annual report.
Thank you. That's in terms of disclosure. Yeah.
Correct.
Thank you. I think hopefully that answers the question. Any other questions in relation to the remuneration report?
No further questions, Chair.
Thank you. Thank you, Clayton. I'll now put the motion. If all shareholders who haven't voted, they could please do so now. You'll see on the screen, hopefully, the proxies that have been lodged already, which show a clear majority of the shareholders support the remuneration report. I'd like to thank those shareholders for that support. That's very encouraging for us. As I have made a flippant comment in the past, perhaps we're not paying ourselves enough. But we are very appreciative of the support for the remuneration report. Thank you. Moving to the election of directors. To elect Ms. Alice Williams as a director of Pro Medicus Limited, who, in accordance with the constitution of the company, retires and being eligible, offers herself for election.
As I indicated earlier, I'll now invite Alice to address the meeting prior to putting the motion.
Thank you, Chairman. Good morning, shareholders. I would like to provide you with a brief overview of my educational and work experiences and how I can contribute to the governance of Pro Medicus for shareholders. My background is founded on an accounting and economics degree from University of Melbourne. Subsequently, I have completed postgraduate investment qualifications as a Chartered Financial Analyst, and I have recently completed two courses in cybersecurity with Harvard and NYU. My experience includes having practice as an accountant, working with a number of domestic and international financial institutions. I've also worked as a Vice President for JP Morgan, managing institutional investment portfolios. Since then, over the last 20 years, I have worked as both a consultant and a non-executive director.
As an independent consultant, I've worked with a range of domestic and international corporations and the federal government, assisting with corporate strategy development, capital fundraising, government regulatory and competition policy, and foreign investment review processes. Aside from Pro Medicus, my current board appointments include one listed and two unlisted companies in the financial services and telecommunication sectors. I recently retired off the board of the Australian private health insurer, Defence Health, to provide me with appropriate capacity to work with Pro Medicus. This recent retirement from Defence Health represents a 12-year appointment where I've developed a deep level of understanding of the health insurance environment in an Australian context. It has been a pleasure working with the board and management team at Pro Medicus through my induction into the company.
My experience enables me to assist in the development of corporate strategy, assessment and valuation of investment opportunities, and to assess the impact of technology and cybersecurity risks. As chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, I'm able to provide oversight of the financial statements and audit and risk management activities for Pro Medicus. I would be pleased to be appointed by you, the shareholders of Pro Medicus, to assist in the further development of your company, which has a very exciting and prospective outlook. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Alice. As I said earlier, we're very pleased to have Alice join us, and she's relieved me of the task of being chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, which is even better. Are there any questions of Alice before I put the motion?
Yes. A question from Stuart Byrne, representing the Australian Shareholders' Association. We recognize the value that Ms. Williams brings to the board of Pro Medicus with her significant commerce background. Could you please advise the process that was followed to select her as a director? We also have significant concerns about her current workload. Can the chair advise shareholders that Ms. Williams will have sufficient time to commit to Pro Medicus, considering the current pressures being placed on all board members?
Thank you, Clayton. I'll answer the first part of the question, and Alice can answer the second part. Using an executive search firm, we went through an extensive process to identify a suitably qualified person to assume the role of chair of the Audit and Risk Committee. I think we had some high-quality candidates who were put to us, and the board determined that Alice was the best of those candidates. We're very happy that we went through a very exhaustive process to make sure that we got somebody not only who had the appropriate qualifications, but would understand our business and would contribute strongly to it, and the board believes that Alice does that in spades. She's...
In the short period that she's been on the board, she's already proving her worth to us. We're very happy with the decision that we've made. In relation to the workload, I'll leave Alice to answer that question.
Thank you very much, Chairman. Yes, look, in considering an appointment to the Pro Medicus board, I thought about that issue very carefully, and that is one of the reasons why I retired off the board of Defence Health was to ensure that I had adequate capacity to manage the workload at Pro Medicus. I would also say that I sit on audit and risk committees for a number of organizations, and certainly, there is commonality in terms of some of the issues that these organizations would face in terms of changes in accounting standards, compliance requirements and risk management. Therefore, the benefit is that sitting on a number of different companies which have similar sort of issues, I can address them for Pro Medicus based on my experience elsewhere as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Alice.
A question from Claude Walker. Would Ms. Williams please tell shareholders about one risk and one opportunity for Pro Medicus that she has spent time thinking about?
Go on, Alice.
Okay. Thank you very much. That's a good question. Look, I think the Chairman identified one of the key risks for the organization, which was succession, and I'm very pleased to hear about the work that our independent consultants have been doing, working on our future plans for succession. Because clearly, having the technical expertise within the organization is crucially important for the success of your company. Another area of risk is obviously cybersecurity, which is a risk that all the companies that I'm involved with and most companies internationally face. Having a deep level of technical expertise in the company is very good from a risk management perspective.
In terms of opportunities, clearly, the AI opportunities are very exciting for the organization and one of the areas that does appeal to me in terms of growth opportunities for the business. Thinking from a financial perspective, the company is well-positioned to leverage off those opportunities because of its cash balances, the fact that it hasn't got any debt within the organization. Clearly the most important thing is the depth of technical experience within the organization and the collaborative arrangements that have been put in place with some leading international universities and academic research institutions, which for me is certainly very appealing from a shareholder perspective. Thank you.
Thank you, Alice. Was that the last question in relation to the appointment of Alice?
Yes.
I'll thank you for those questions. They were good. I'll now put the motion. For anybody who hasn't voted already, would they please cast their vote now? Now we'll refer to the proxy votes. Alice has been reelected, I think, with a significant majority of the total number of shares. Congratulations, Alice, on your election to the board.
Thank you very much.
The next motion is to reelect Mr. Peter Kempen as a director of Pro Medicus, who in accordance with the constitution of the company and being eligible, offers himself for reelection. As I am the subject of this motion, I will vacate the chair in favor of Dr. Hupert. Are there any questions in relation to that?
Yes, there is. Stuart Byrne, representing the Australian Shareholders' Association, has a question. The ASA has a preference for the chairman to be independent. Peter Kempen has been in the role for 13 years and is no longer considered independent by the ASA. Could you please detail why you see Mr. Kempen as being independent, and what are your longer-term plans for Mr. Kempen, and have you developed a succession plan?
Well, I can answer that. I know there are some guidelines regarding length and time of the position, and also there's some guidelines in terms of materiality of shareholding. We as a board discussed this as recently as just a month or two ago, and I think unanimously felt that Peter approaches his role as chairman in a totally independent manner, which is the most important thing for you as shareholders. We still feel that we deem him to be independent. In terms of succession, as Peter mentioned, we're looking at succession across a range of things, not just management, which is important, but also as the board, we have been adding to our board over the last number of years with Anthony Glenning joining us, Leigh Farrell, Adina, and now you, Alice.
I think we're building strength and capability there. Clearly we as a group would look at that going forward. Certainly at the moment, our view is Peter does act independently and therefore we see him as being independent.
No further questions.
You can put the motion.
Oh, yeah, I need to put the motion for Peter to be elected as a director, reelected. Do you have the? Thanks.
With the resolution, here comes the proxies, yes?
Peter, congratulations. 97.4% for, 2.4% against.
Thank you. Thank you, Sam. Thank you to all shareholders for your support. I really do appreciate it. It's always a bit of a vexed question when one has been involved for so long, but I would hasten to add that it's been a terrific ride. I've enjoyed every moment of working for you as the shareholders. I would note that it's been a period of growth for most of the time that I've been chairman. To that extent, I've played a small part in that, and I'm very proud of it. I'm pleased that most of the shareholders agree with me. Thank you again. Approval to issue securities under the Pro Medicus Limited Long Term Incentive Plan.
The motion reads that, "The purpose of the listing ruling, rule 7.2, exception 13, and for all other purposes, approval is given to the issue of securities under the Pro Medicus Long Term Incentive Plan on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory memorandum. As outlined in the explanatory note attached to the notice of meeting, the purpose of the LTIP is to align interests of employees with those of the company and its shareholders, and to attract, retain, and motivate employees." I should hasten to add that the current directors do not participate in the LTI. Further details are also provided in the explanatory memorandum. By way of background, the LTIP was established in November 2011, and increases in the number of performance rights have been progressively approved at AGMs since that date.
The board now seeks further shareholder approval to increase the number of performance rights to 10 million under this arrangement from 7 million currently. I would just like to add that this has been a very successful program for the company with a significant proportion of the management and staff participating in the program. I feel confident that it has engendered a strong sense of loyalty, engagement, and ownership by our staff. Before I put the resolution, are there any questions on the proposed resolution?
No questions from them.
Thank you, Clayton. Again, before I put the motion, I would emphasize that any vote cast in favor of this motion by any person deemed eligible to participate in the program and any associates of such persons will be disregarded, and I hope that that has been done. We'll now go to the result of the poll so far. That shows a clear majority of the shareholders support the resolution. Again, I'd like to thank all shareholders for that support because I think it's, it is critical to the success of the company. Other business. I don't have any notice of any other business, but I would invite you to ask any final questions that you may have.
Clayton, are there any other questions that have come through or we haven't dealt with thus far?
Yes. A question from George Swinburne. Is it proposed long-term to license the breast imaging to other providers?
At this point, I think our first stage will be to make it available to existing Visage users. Fundamentally, there's nothing that would stop us licensing it to others, and it's something that we would most likely look at as a second stage. Having a growing and material user base, there's already a pretty solid client base that we can already sell it back to, as the first step, and that's what I think we'll look to do, certainly starting first half calendar year next year.
No further questions, Chair.
Thank you, Clayton, and I'd again like to thank all those shareholders who did put questions to us. I think it's important for us to know what you're thinking and make sure that we try to address the issues that are of most concern to you. It is very appreciative. We are, as a board, appreciative of your efforts to provide us with your views. Before closing, I'd like to remind you that you will have five minutes after the conclusion of the meeting to cast your vote on any of the resolutions. Shareholders, thank you again for attending the meeting. In closing the meeting, I would invite you to join us next year. Hopefully, fingers crossed, face-to-face. Thank you for your attendance today and maybe this time next year we'll be able to meet in person.
Goodbye for now.