Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for coming out on this miserable day. I originally conceived that we might play that before the meeting 'cause in the past couple of years, we've had Zoom meetings, and we all seem to be waiting around, and the operator's saying, "Do you wanna load 'em in? Do you wanna load 'em in?" I keep saying, "Give it half a minute or another minute," and you end up two or three minutes late. I was anticipating that might happen again. I thought, well, while you're waiting at home, wondering whether we know you're here or not, you could have a little video, which we put together with John Wick. He's become a movie star, but what an advocate.
You know, he's not only had a fantastic journey, but he's written his own book, and he's a very big advocate for us, you know, walking around the country, telling his story, but impregnating it with the role in which John Greenwood and the BTM played in his recovery. You know, that's the first, but there's hundreds of others now, not just from burns, as he did. It doesn't tell the whole story, but he was driving along in the car with a jerry can full of gasoline. Believe it or not, a spark from his mobile phone set it off, and next thing, the whole thing blew up. You know, go figure. We've got a.
That's a sort of an indication, by the way, of we're gonna try a few things different today, and that video was the first of them. I thought also we're growing very quickly. This is still a startup in many ways and it's all right for Swami, who'll speak later, and myself to talk to you about what's happened to sales and so on and so forth. It doesn't sometimes feel real if the company hasn't been around for very long. I thought, just as a one-off, we might in addition to myself and Swami talking actually get a couple of the staff up. There's six or seven I could have gotten. If it works, we'll do it next year.
If it doesn't work, you'll go, "What the hell was that all about?" It's a little bit of a logistical nightmare because the first person I'm gonna talk to is Marcus Wagstaff, Professor Marcus Wagstaff from Royal Adelaide. He's currently in the U.S. He's currently at the biggest plastic surgeons conference, which starts this weekend in Boston. 3,000 plastic surgeons, believe it or not. Last week he was in Canada for the conference there and the launch of BTM in Canada. You're all aware that we've now had it approved in Canada. Before either of those things, he did a sweep through the U.S. and I'm gonna just give you. You're gonna hear it as I'm hearing it, 'cause we haven't had a briefing.
I just told him I wanted to speak for a couple of minutes, and he's in his hotel in Boston, so we're gonna get him on first. I just wanna give you a sense of what he's seeing, and you can hear it as I hear it, so it's unedited. We don't have a transcript of what he's gonna say. Then I'm gonna talk to Valerie Young, who's in the room, who runs our Asia, our Australia/New Zealand sales and marketing, and I'm gonna get her up for a couple of minutes and just chat about what she's been up to. You'll also know from releases that have been made in the last week that she's spent last week in Hong Kong.
Went up there to scope the place, and she's had a couple of wins early on and then, you know, a number of other surgeons said, "You come back and see me 'cause I'm really interested in this." You know, it just shows you in some ways how you can get an immediate impact and, the rest of the time, that probably happened in by Monday lunchtime, the rest of the time she just spent eating in hotels and restaurants around Hong Kong. We might ask her about that. Thirdly, we've got sitting next to her in the front row, Ed Graubart, and, he has one of his team out here as well from the U.S., but he runs our U.S. practice, and he's been here. We've had a strategy session for the last few days.
Again, you'll hear it as I'm hearing it, and I've just got a couple of direct questions I'm gonna ask him about how's it going in the U.S., how's his sales force going, what he's seeing from the doctors, what his initial thinking is in terms of Canada, because that'll be sort of funneled through him as well. The purpose of that is just, you know, just so you get a sort of sense of how deep the team is. We've got other people here from the team. Dave McQuillan is here, who previously was on the board but now runs R&D. Maybe he can come at the half-year report if this works. We've got a bit to juggle between me talking, Swami talking, and these three little just vignettes, if you like.
I'm not gonna allow you to ask questions of them, otherwise I'm gonna be here till Christmas. I can probably answer questions for them, but I just wanna give you a sense of the depth of the team and some of the things that are happening right, literally right now in Hong Kong, in the U.S., and in Canada in particular. Hope you enjoy it. I'm taking the accolades for it now because if the video link to Boston doesn't work, you know, it's gonna be disaster. Anyway. That's just a little bit of a vignette about what's gonna happen later in this chat.
We've got a quorum, so I'll open the meeting formally and welcome you all here today and I'll thank you now in case I forget at the end of it, but you know, as shareholders and the supporters of the company, really appreciate your, you know, support of us and hanging in there. I know there's quite a lot of people here that have been here for, well, as long as I have anyway, for five or so years, and it's turning into a big success, so I hope you're enjoying the ride. When I went to work this morning, I saw an article on my screen that was written by The Motley Fool.
The name of the company, by the way, The Motley Fool, should give you a sense of how much reliance you should make on taking this company, by the way. The article was about PolyNovo, which is what caught my eye, and it basically was an article that said, "Look, had you invested AUD 30,000 in PolyNovo in 2012." 10 years ago, that AUD 30,000 today would be worth AUD 1.1 million. If it had been priced at the price that PolyNovo was 18 months ago, it would have been worth AUD 2.3 million. I love when I read it because it made me sound like Warren Buffett, you know, and or the company like Berkshire Hathaway. We're nothing like that, of course, but I think it's an interesting.
For those of you who are on my email database who have asked to be on it, I'll send it around to you after this meeting. It's quite a tongue-in-cheek little article. It emphasizes, I think, you know, really where we are today, which is here I am standing here as chairman of a startup company, really a startup company worth AUD 1.3 billion. A startup worth AUD 1.3 billion, believe it or not. It's worth pinching ourselves to think that four and a half years ago, we didn't have a product. We didn't have any revenue. There was no product. All of that has been generated really in the last essentially four years, four and a half years.
Whether you can justify the price or not, see all this stuff on the social media and so forth about whether it's real price or not. Listen, every day, 3-6 million shares are traded in this company at that sort of price. Big dogs. In other words, it's not coming out of moms and dads like a lot of you. They're not coming out of people who are just buying AUD 10,000 worth of shares or AUD 50,000 worth of shares. That sort of trade day in, day out, a lot of it's from sophisticated customers and clients. We know from our share register that there's a huge number of fund managers, smart fund managers around the world and in Australia who are buying into the company.
It's sort of quite interesting when you feel a bit funny when you're the chairman and you go, "Well, I'm a startup," and we've really only scratched the surface. Here we already are at AUD 1.3 billion. When I say we've only just scratched the surface, one of the things you'll get, for example, when I talk to Valerie about Hong Kong, is just how much there still is to do in terms of our geographies. That's just Hong Kong. Swami's gonna talk about India, which is a fantastic story to tell near-term. These are all pre-December. He's also gonna talk a little bit about China and Japan. We're lucky because Swami has come out of running those countries himself for J&J. It's not like you or me sitting here thinking, "How the hell would we get into China?
We got no idea. We better just go and find a distributor. He's got the experience of going direct. He's got the experience of living in these places. He's got the experience of running these businesses with a lot of staff. I think, you know, where we've only scratched the surface, but we haven't figured out even where half the places we can go to geographically. Places like Japan and China are massive in this sort of market. The second thing we haven't figured out yet is. Figured out, it's no problem, is just how far we go with staff.
One of the things you'll get out of the discussion I'll have with Ed, I hope in a moment, is that he's gone from, again, 4.5 years ago, no staff, to now about 70, he'll tell us in a moment, but 54 of those are salespeople on the road, and he's got a budget to expand that again this year. We've got a lot of work to do just in the sales force, not only in the U.S. You know, don't think of this as just a U.S. company. It just so happens to be an accident of history that we've grown so quickly in the U.S.
If I showed you the current results that are in the U.K., for example, where we've also expanded our staff and in Germany and elsewhere, you'll see, you know, that we're really expanding quite quickly. The third area where we still haven't, you know, finished off is what we're doing with R&D. There's a lot of work going into this. I think I mentioned last year that, you know, for a billion-dollar company, if I took you to our front door and I said, "Look, I'm about to open the front door to the R&D lab of PolyNovo, how many people do you expect to see in there?" The reality is that there's no right answer.
If I said there was 20 in there, you'd go, "Yeah, that sounds good." If I said there was 40, "Yeah, that sounds good." Working on things like, as you know, hernia, breast implants, and the like, and some other things. The reality is that a year and a half ago, if you opened that door, there's one person. Now there's seven. Hopefully, I have sort of dreamed myself, it's not a dream, but it's internal, but I have to dream myself that we should have 20 people. One of the things that we've done for that, I'll come back to this, but we've taken David McQuillan off the board, put David McQuillan in charge of R&D. He's here today. We won't get to speak to him until he sort of polishes up his presentation skills.
He's got a year to do that. That's the second thing that we've really got to do. I think the other one is just the channels. There's sort of four areas where we have really not scratched the surface, and the fourth one is channels to market. In the main, everywhere we go around the world, we're selling to hospitals. You know, we should be selling to private plastic surgery clinics. We should be selling to podiatrists in the U.S. where they have the ability to operate and so forth. There's a lot of channels that will need our product, and one of the things we're trying to do is blitz the field, if you like, in burns and in hospitals.
I think we're already number one in Australia, but we could be number one in India very quickly. There's a couple of other markets where we're really very strong. We're taking market share. I think, you know, we clearly just really have scratched the surface. When you know, when you see the share price, you know, don't forget, I put up a graph in the recent ASX release where people with shares got very excited when we had our first month where we sold AUD 1 million a month. That was like, I don't know, three years ago, let's say. Six months later, we had our first month that did AUD 2 million a month.
Another six or seven months later. AUD 3 million a month, then AUD 4 million a month, and then the other day, we announced that we'd had our first month of AUD 5 million a month. In fact, it was AUD 5.4 million. I'm not sure if you said that, but anyways. When will the AUD 6 million a month come? You know, if you're skeptical about where we're going, just have a look at that graph, because there's only one way, and it's going up. It's not going up for many more reasons if you think about it, the way we think about it anyway. Then we've got, in a sense, a cookie-cutter approach. We've got a product that surgeons like.
You just got to put it in front of them, and then you get the hospital to agree to it, and you're off to the races. Far, the staff might be hiding things from me, but I haven't had or heard from any surgeon, not one surgeon in the U.S. who goes, "Eh, I'm going back to Integra," or, "Shit, that didn't work. It's not for me." When they see it, they love it. That's one reason why the international pension funds are in our register because they don't just go on the market and buy. They'll go and do their own due diligence, and their due diligence requires them to go and say, bring up, find. We don't give them the names necessarily. Go and find a surgeon in the U.S., ring them up and see what they say.
You know what they say? They say, "This is changing the way in which surgery is done." That's all they need. Go buy some shares and put them in your bottom drawer and hold them to the raise and enjoy the ride. That's what they say. The best is yet to come. It's a fantastic thing, obviously, to be a shareholder. You probably feel the same. I've never been involved. Well, I am a shareholder, but I've never been involved in a company where the shareholders themselves are so enthusiastic about the company, not because you bought at AUD 30,000 in 2012, and now you got AUD 1 million.
Although, you know, that was one of the things that most surprised me about our shareholders, the number of shareholders that say to me, "This is the biggest single holding I've got in my portfolio." It's only there for a reason, that's 'cause the share price keeps going up. But I think that's a really satisfying thing. But when I speak to shareholders and when I look at the social blogs, the number of people who are blown away with the fact that this product, at worst, just makes you look more beautiful, and at very best, saves your life. Saves your life in a way that previous products weren't able to do if you've got 75% burns to your body and 90% burns to your body and so forth. It's really, you know, that's satisfying.
How many investments can you have where you invest your money, you got a great return, and you're saving lives? We've only just scratched the surface. You know, there's a lot to be thankful for in this company. I thank you for being shareholders, but I also thank our staff and in particular, the enthusiasm of our staff. Because as you can see, I think when you see it the way I see it, this is infectious, you know. Every time I go to work and I hear of some surgeon that's taken this in another direction, more on this later, because that's where we're growing. The surgeons are going faster than us.
I think, you know, that's, it's really quite, you know, satisfying as an investor, as a chairman, and I speak on behalf of the whole board and the senior management team, by the way, that this is a real honor to be a director of this company in terms of what it's doing for social good. Again, just recognizing that we haven't even scratched the surface. I think, you know, we thank you as shareholders. This is my election speech, by the way. I'm standing for election today. We thank you as shareholders for supporting us and hanging in there with us.
As a prickly point, you know, we don't take kindly, I don't anyway, the other directors don't care, but I don't take kindly to people lecturing me on how the fact that we should be going faster. You know, I can't go any faster. I've worn out my R.M. Williams boots. You know, we're in four and a half years gone from nothing to something substantial, and you can see, you should be able to see that in the next two years, it's gonna go even harder. We're going as hard as we can, but you still got to find good people to put in the spots. If Ed wants to go to 100 people, 150 people, you still got to find them, we've got to train them, we've got to get them out there, and so forth.
We're going as hard as we can, and this is nothing like any other pharma or device company you've probably seen in the Australian market, where five years, seven years, 10 years later, they're still arguing about whether they should be doing a trial on pigs or dogs or mice. You know, we're way past that. We've got some good stuff coming through the pipeline. I didn't really intend to talk that long, so just gone off on a tangent. Let me introduce you first of all, before we start, by the way, I should have just said another procedural thing.
For anybody who isn't here today or wants to, you know, revisit my jokes and irreverence, then it is being recorded, and we'll put that up on the ASX in the next day or two. Are we recording video as well?
Yes.
Fantastic. See, I wore a red jacket in anticipation. I've got all that right as well. Let me introduce the directors first. On my right, I've got Christine Emmanuel-Donnelly, and next to her, I've got Bruce Rathie, and next to him, I've got Andrew Lumsden, and then Robyn Elliott, and then Leon Hoare. Leon's also standing for election today. That's why he's got a tie on. He'll no doubt say something about himself in due course. Over on the left-hand table, I've got our CEO, Swami Raote, and I've got our CFO and company secretary, Jan-Marcel Gielen, who you've all seen before. We did have a sort of cup of tea with Swami online, but none of you would have seen him before in the flesh.
Here he is, and you'll get to hear him in a moment. Also in attendance we've got Ash Butler from E&Y. Thank you, Ashley. And his partner in crime, Rikin Mody. Thank you, Rikin. And from our auditors, sitting right next to Ash is Barbara Eufing from MinterEllison, who have kindly, at no cost, given us this room to use. And no cost on the food either. Is that right? I don't know. If it is, it's coming out of his partnership salary. Let me just say that the notice of meeting. I'll get onto the more formal parts for now. The notice of meeting was dispatched to shareholders in compliance with the company's constitution, and is also available on our ASX announcement website. I'll take the notice of meeting as being read.
Today's meeting is being held online with Computershare meeting platform. This allows shareholders, proxies, and guests to attend the meeting virtually. Are we gonna know how many people are online? Last year was, like, 300. It's amazing.
I haven't got that visible. Sorry, Dave.
Yeah. Again, see, CFO not up to it. A couple of minutes behind what's really going on on the pace, you know. All attendees, hopefully you can watch the webcast, and hopefully I'm coming across quite well. It's gonna be a trial when I get Val and Ed up here to talk because I've got to share this space, and we only got one microphone. We'll see how we go with that. You've all got the ability, whether you're here or online, to submit votes and ask questions and so forth. In terms of how to ask a question, you controlling these slides? Yes. Online attendees can submit questions at any time. To ask a question, select the Q&A icon, type your question into the text box.
Once you have finished typing, please hit the send button. Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will not address them until the relevant time in the meeting. Please also note that your questions may be moderated by Jan, especially if he sees multiple questions on the one topic, so this doesn't drag on into the evening. He'll amalgamate some of them together. If for some reason we run out of time and we can't get to them all, or we think that they're so pathetic we're not gonna even answer them, then we'll, you'll get an email from me, or you'll get a phone call from me or Jan. To ask a verbal question, okay, put your hand up, and we'll take it from there.
Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll. You'll understand, you know, if you've got people online and offline, we've got to do it by way of a poll because we don't know whether people have changed their vote out of the room and so forth. If you're eligible to vote, once voting opens, press the Vote icon on your screen, if you're on the screen, and all resolutions will be activated with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to hit a Submit or Enter button as the vote is automatically recorded. You will receive a vote confirmation notification on your screen.
I now declare the voting open, so if you are on the screen and you haven't already voted, then you can start and do it at any time. I'm looking for Angela Liapis from Computershare. She's the returning officer, and I'll point her accordingly. The results of the poll, you don't need to hang around after it. If you want to, you can. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes, sometimes it takes 20. The results will be compiled and released to the ASX after the conclusion of the meeting. You can change your vote up until the time I declare voting closed. Essentially what will happen is we'll finish the meeting, I'll tell you that the voting's gonna stay open for another two minutes, and then I'll close it.
In the meantime, Angela will collect any votes that are in the room. I should have said, if you've already voted and you don't particularly want to change your vote, like me for example, then you don't need to do anything. Okay. Item one on the notice of meeting is to receive and consider the annual financial statements of the 12-month end of 30 June 2022 for the company and its controlled entities, together with the reports of the directors and the auditors. Are there any questions in respect of the financial report or the company auditors? Ashley's never been asked one yet, but he's just wants that day to happen. Jan, do you have any questions on the financial
No. No questions, Dave.
No questions. Is there any questions in the room? No. If there's no questions or further discussion on this matter, I'll consider the financial report and directors and auditors' reports received and adopted. Before we move to the formal resolutions, I would now like to make some observations about the year just past, how I'm thinking about the year ahead, and then I'm gonna invite Swami to make a presentation to get a bit more granular than what I'm about to do. As I said before we go on to questions for him and me, I'll go through and introduce you to some of our management team, and then I'll return and go to questions.
I'm doing that because there may be some further clarification and granular sort of understanding of the business that comes out of their presentations, and so it'll make it a bit better. We did have, you know, our head of the U.K. here, but he's had to go back for a family matter. I think I'm anticipating that if it's okay that we might have Dave McQuillan talking about R&D at the half year, maybe the head of the U.K., maybe somebody from our manufacturing. Let's see if we can make this a bit more inclusive and give you a better understanding of the business. It's a trial run, but let's see how we go. Just in terms of, you know, my address, I'll just make some brief editorial comments.
I've already waxed lyrical about things, but we're already way past the end of the financial year, but as you saw, we had strong sales growth of 47% up. Don't forget that the first half of the year was really COVID restricted, whether you're in Australia, there's a long period where New South Wales completely shut, for example, but also in the U.S.. In the second half of the year, it started to really pick up, and we started to kick some goals. I think it's also important to understand that even last year, the U.S. is already significantly profitable. Given that we're growing quite strongly again this year, you know, we're expecting an even bigger profit out of the U.S..
The relevance of that to me is that, you know, the U.S., I wish I wasn't saying this 'cause it's just putting so much power in the hands of Ed, that you know how important he is. We need him to, you know, we need that profit out of the U.S. 'cause it's partly just working capital for us to grow, not only the U.S. but the rest of the world at the same time. It's pretty clear that when we sell a little bit of PolyNovo, which I happen to have brought a lot of it along here today, just in case nobody had ever seen it. This is what would happen if you're laying on the operating theater. Well, have I got this right?
The surgeon rips open your feet, and he pulls out what we call a 10-by-20. He prepares this to put it on your wound. As you can see, you have to be pretty strong surgeons. This is our product in a 10-by-20. Normally, we're selling it as a 10-by-10, which is roughly that size. That's a product we'd be selling for $900-$950. Our margin is extremely high. The way the U.S. is growing, as you saw, we just had our first $5 million a month or more, you know, we're gonna spin off a lot of profit out of the U.S. and then ultimately out of the U.K. and Australia and so forth.
the U.S. is very profitable, even after Jan hits them with a hefty sort of overhead charge that pays his sorry ass and Swami and a few other people. That's it. You know, I'm gonna leave that up here 'cause any of you who wanna feel it and touch it. As you can see, it's very manageable. Why am I telling you all this anyways? That's our product. the U.S. is very profitable. I think the more important thing, and you will have seen some of this already in our announcements, is that, you know, we've been growing quite strong.
For me, an early indicator, the leading indicator of how much you're gonna get in sales is what you're doing with your sales force. The surgeons, a lot of them have heard about it. If they haven't heard about it, just need to present it to them, show them the evidence. Sometimes somebody like Val will go into the operating theater with them and show them how to use it. It's pretty simple, though, says he. You know, in the U.S. this year, last year, I should say, we went from 36 to 56 sales staff, 54. In the U.K., went from three to six. You know, we discovered after our last CEO left that we didn't have anybody in London, believe it or not. We put somebody on north and south of the Thames, and off we go.
In [99-Z], 5-8. I often say to Ed, just by way of example, that until recently, we only had two or three people in California. I said, "Well, if we can have six or eight in Australia, gotta be able to have 8 in California alone doing $1 million worth of sales." Well, unfortunately, he warned me not to say that today 'cause he's now got 9 in California. We're growing those sales teams, and that's the leading indicator for me about what you're gonna get in terms of sales. The other thing I was gonna say was that the last time I looked at the complete list of salespeople in the U.S., there was about five that hadn't sold anything.
Because you put them on, you come and bring them in for training, you send them out in the field with somebody else for a month. It takes you some months to get them into their own sales area, and then it takes several more months for them to start to, you know, get some sales up. When I saw five people, well, you know, that just gives you an indication before you even put any more people on, gives you an indication about the sales pipeline that's gonna come out of those people starting to get active in their particular area. Now, again, I just spent a bit of time with Ed, and he tells me that there are no salesmen who haven't got any sales.
He is gonna put on another 10-20 people in the next six or so months. That sales team expansion in all these jurisdictions is really very good. As you can see, we did that with our ASX announcement that our sales were up 73%, same time last year. You know, post-COVID, and it's not completely out of the system yet, but post-COVID and our hospital business really up 71% and 73%. Somebody on one of the social media blogs said, "Oh, yeah, but it's. That's in Aussie dollars. The Aussie dollar's in fact." Yeah, sure. The U.S. grew 61% in U.S. dollars. Whichever way you wanna have it, we've grown. I don't wanna sort of make excuses for a first-ever AUD 5 million dollar month.
You'll also see that we had received FDA clearance on our new product, which is MTX. We noticed a lot of this stuff, by the way, you'll know I've said it before, is being surgeon-led. We're playing catch up with the surgeons. That's what I find, you know, one of the things I might find most interesting when you look at this business, is we're going along this track, and we're dealing with burns. The next thing is wounds. Next thing is diabetic foot ulcers. Next thing it's oncology burns. Next thing is amputations. It seems to me that there's hardly a month or two months goes by where some surgeon in the world hasn't found another use for it.
We're playing a bit of catch up because in some cases, let's say diabetic foot ulcers, a lot of surgeons are now using it for that. We need to sort of go back on an understanding that some surgeons will need the data in order to go and do some testing so that we can sell it to the whole surgeon base. It takes a life of its own. I'll give you one little example, and I think Marcus is on the line waiting for me to talk to him. Marcus, there was a conference a month ago now or so in Munich on a Friday night, our Friday night, and it was a pediatric conference.
It was in German, but they asked a surgeon in Brisbane Hospital to talk about the history of BTM, and they asked Marcus to open it in English, from Royal Adelaide, just to talk about what he uses it for and so on and so forth. As soon as that was over, the two Australians dropped off and no doubt went home and had a red wine. Anyway, Marcus, I'm laying in bed. Sorry to make this so personal. I'm laying in bed on a Saturday morning, and at 8:00 A.M. the phone rings, and it's Marcus Wagstaff. I said, "How you doing?
What do you want?" He said, "They had this conference in Munich last night." I said, "Yeah, yeah." He said, "Well, what I heard was that after we dropped off the line, there was a surgeon who got up and said she had a patient with a baby, and under the scan, they saw that the baby's spinal cord was not covered. In other words, it was gonna be born with spina bifida. She made the decision to go into the womb, in utero, and put our BTM on the baby's back. A month and a half later. I'm being general about this, so we can't tell you exactly the details because the surgeon wants to publish these, so should be done soon. Puts it on the baby's back.
A month and a half later or so, the baby's born. The spinal cord's completely covered. We know how the foam works inside and outside the body. She just takes the laminate off the top. Job done. Marcus was blown away as an experienced surgeon using this product. I then picked up the phone 'cause I used to be on the board of Monash IVF for all the doctors. I pick up the phone to talk to the doctor, who's the busiest doctor at Monash IVF. He does about 700 women a year just to put it in context. I told him. He goes, "Oh, shit." He then gave me the stats on spina bifida in babies, which was, like, 4% or something in IVF babies.
He said, "Hold on, I'll ring you back." He rang the professor of obstetrics at Monash University. He said, "What you don't know is Monash University is about to start a clinical trial using stem cells for spina bifida." He rang him up, and he told him, and he then rang me back, and he said, "The surgeon said, 'Oh, shit, we don't need to do our trial anymore.'" I rang Marcus. This is all by 8:30 A.M., just to give you a sense of how these things work. I rang Marcus and told him, "They're gonna do this study, but now they've thought, 'No, we don't do it.'" Marcus said, "Don't do that.
Keep on doing the study, but we'll impregnate stem cells into the BTM." Just to give you a sense of not only how things work, but how, you know, we've got a team of people working on putting our product inside the body for breast implants and for hernia, and here's somebody who just says, "I'll just do it myself." Some rather novel things about that which I won't bore you with at the moment, but David in particular will understand this just because one of the things we're working on is we know how the foam works, but, you know, how does the laminate work? And how do you know, you don't want the laminate to necessarily stay in the body.
My point is that we have got an amazing amount of things happening in terms of surgeon-led nuances to how this is applied. My second last point down the bottom there is that Dave McQuillan has not left the building. It's a sort of reference to Elvis. Elvis has left the building. Dave was on the board. He's an Aussie. Actually, just wave out, Dave, so you've got. You've done your hair. It looks good. He's an Aussie who was living in Pennsylvania. He's been in this space for a long time, and he was on the board, and he's decided to come back. As a scientist, of course, he's unemployable, so we gave him a job.
He is, of course, running our R&D, and he's now got seven people, David, or nine.
Nine.
Nine people, polymer scientists, and so forth. We're really going to expand that, and we've got a list of people that we want that are not just polymer scientists but to do with packaging and design and so on and so forth. Hopefully, you know, by the end of this time next year, he'll have 20 people, and we'll have some more products in the market in the same way as we've got MTX coming. By the way, the MTX product, we've just had approved by the FDA, you know, it was also surgeon-led because you'll know that, you know, on our product, you can't see it unless you really feel it, but on one side is a very thin laminate. We noticed that there's quite a number of surgeons who felt that they didn't need the laminate.
They didn't need to have the body protected for such a long period of time because the wound was of a certain type or small or whatever. They were taking the laminate off before they put it on. We designed a new product, MTX, for those sorts of people who might be plastic surgeons who wanna use it for fillers or whatever it happens to be. A lot of this is surgeon-led, but these are the sort of things, these are the trials and tribulations that Dave is gonna have over the next year, where we've got surgeons coming, throwing ideas at us, even having used them.
He's gonna have to filter, you know, what we do and don't do, and then the ones that he thinks are worthwhile, then we're gonna have to take them to the next stage and ultimately to trials and so forth. I've already talked a little bit right down the bottom there about new indications. The year ahead, you know, we've got sales team expansion. You know, if you don't do anything else, just keep putting more sales on the road 'cause they're paying for themselves. Now we've got the added opportunities that are in Hong Kong. More on that later with Val.
India, more on that later with Swami, and Canada, with a little bit of that now in a moment with Marcus, who's in Boston. We've got new markets, we've got new channels of distribution. As I said before on channels, you know, we're really hospital, hospital. Sooner or later, you know, once we've blitzed that and we're number one like we are in Australia, we need to move into other channels and other surgeons and so forth. That might lead us into new alliances. We might do a deal with somebody who's a distributor for us in a certain application that we're no longer in or we're not in. Or we might even buy somebody if it made a lot of sense. We're completely open to all of that.
That's probably all you need to hear from me for the moment. I may sort of say some other things later, but we've got a new leader, and he's sitting right here, and he comes with some special characteristics. I think I would like to invite Swami up to say a few words. Once he's said a few words, I'm gonna come back and talk to Marcus Wagstaff in Boston. Thank you.
Thank you, David. Good afternoon, everybody. First, I would like to thank everyone on our board, our executive team, and across our company for welcoming me, providing me with generous insights, assistance, and support during my first 90 days in the role. I've invested a lot of time with our teams in the U.S., U.K., and Australia. I've also had the pleasure of connecting with our patients, I met John in Adelaide before I said yes, surgeons, hospital systems, and some of our major shareholders. I look forward to getting to know many more of you today and beyond. In my first three months, I have confirmed my initial observations about NovoSorb. Its simplicity, its elegance, and robustness of design is breathtaking. It provides distinctively superior outcomes for burns, trauma management, and chronic wounds. It's designed for manufacturability and democratizing access across the world.
If you look at majority of our competition, it's restricted to developed world, and that too, primarily in U.S.. 90% of the world is in U.S.. 90% of biologics are in U.S.. This can go across the world. Potential to supplement flaps and microsurgery reconstruction for complex cases, improving surgeon and operation theater productivity. I want to thank the previous leadership and our teams for their passion and commitment in expanding the impact of NovoSorb BTM during challenging times for the med tech industry. While the first half of fiscal 2022 was constrained because of COVID, our teams picked up pace in second half to deliver global sales of AUD 37.6 million, up 47% versus prior year. Total revenue for the group was AUD 41.9 million, up 43% versus prior year.
Including BARDA, the revenue of AUD 3.8, which was up by 4%. The U.S. delivered an impressive revenue growth of 55.1% or 49.5% in local currency. U.K., Ireland grew by 185%. Sales in Australia and New Zealand rebounded strongly in the second half with 63% growth, and our distributor sales increased by 30% in the second half. We continue to invest in building our capacity to drive revenue with personnel growing from 106 to 152, with majority of that expansion increasing headcount with our U.S. sales team. That investment is paying off handsomely. In September, as you heard, we achieved our first-ever AUD 5 million sales month and a record first quarter in sales.
The company recorded first quarter sales of AUD 12 million, up 73.3% versus same time last year. In September, we also announced receiving 510(k) clearance for NovoSorb MTX, another surgeon-led innovation for soft tissue regeneration and management of complex wounds. We expect clinicians to carry NovoSorb BTM and MTX together as a richer toolkit for patient care. I'll now share with all of you my first 90 days observations and themes to accelerate growth. Early this week, the senior leadership team of PolyNovo came together to agree on the next 5-year plan. We started our meeting by inviting Dr. John Greenwood from Royal Adelaide Hospital and Thilak Gunatilake from CSIRO, the original team behind the design and development of the NovoSorb technology, to share their story.
Their story of grit and wit in design, development, and the sheer range of possibilities with NovoSorb inspired us to redouble our commitment to drive global expansion and impact. I'll talk about four themes. The first is geographic expansion. U.S. continues to be our number one priority, and our U.S. team is a role model in responsible execution. Building a very profitable business model, making prudent choices as we task them to outperform market and accelerate growth. In Australia and New Zealand, we're already a leader in deep dermal full thickness burns, and are now expanding in a focused manner to trauma and other critical areas where NovoSorb BTM provides distinctive advantage. We continue to drive rapid adoption in U.K., Ireland and Germany, and we hope to be number one or number two players in both these markets over the next eighteen months, if not sooner.
As we speak, we are launching across Canada, Hong Kong and India. With these launches, we hope to secure insights across the spectrum of clinical needs in developed and emerging markets, as well as the range of operating theater environments, helping prove the versatility and robustness of the NovoSorb platform. As an added advantage, we are partnering with BARDA from U.S. to use five clinical trial centers in Canada while keeping India as a backup option to accelerate enrollment of patients in our pivotal trial. Simultaneously, I'm leveraging previous experience, understanding, and clinician and regulatory relationships to explore fast-tracking our entry into India, China and Japan. China and Japan are number two and number three global markets for medical technology, and they will be critical in our journey to become global leader and standard of care in soft tissue reconstruction. Second is about indication expansion.
David spoke about it, but we have started implementing the strategy of going beyond burns in our mature markets. In addition to full thickness deep dermal burns, we are now looking at trauma and other complex reconstruction cases where we can have differentiated impact for our patients, surgeons, and hospital systems. Our early work in the crowded and commoditized diabetic foot ulcers market presents an interesting opportunity to occupy a distinct niche in the limb salvage space, where BTM has provided consistent and superior results compared with currently available options. We are investing in hiring senior clinical and health economics expertise. These hires will help build global and regional advisory networks, and these networks will aid smart patient selection, procedure mapping, peer-to-peer education strategies and deployment to improve our penetration and impact. Third is about innovation.
We are redesigning our innovation process to better capture the voice of clinician, payer, and regulator with a view to improve our decisions and speed to market. In addition to the polymer chemistry expertise, we're expanding our R&D teams with package engineering, biologic sciences, and immunopathology through both direct hires as well as alliances with academic centers of excellence. Tapping into clinicians will provide proactive insights on how and where our technology will impact. At the same time, we aim to accelerate the rollout of advanced wound care portfolio, be more deliberate, thorough with surgical implants needing PMA approval, and continue to support our partners with novel drug device combinations which could have substantive impact on treatment of diseases like type 1 diabetes. The fourth is around capacity expansion. As we expand globally, we continue to make significant investments in scaling our production facilities here in Melbourne, Australia.
Our expanded manufacturing facility will go live in April 2023 and will double our current capacity. Simultaneously, we are designing a state-of-the-art process and manufacturing capability along with R&D labs for the newly leased adjacent facility at Port Melbourne, Victoria. We'll continue to invest in enabling capabilities in digital and information technology, CRM, website management, document management, and clinical registries as we prepare to scale globally while remaining connected at all times. Lastly, it's about capital efficient and profitable growth. PolyNovo, compared to its peers, has a history of driving capital efficient and profitable growth. We intend to be prudent and responsible in investing capital in areas providing maximum impact for our customers and patients, and superior prospects for our shareholders. The current and increasing profitability of the U.S. business will be a key part of that.
Let me close by stating that you can expect a laser focus on execution in service of customers and patients from me and our management team, and a culture of accountability and trust within our company and all our partners and stakeholders. To conclude, PolyNovo is a multi-year growth story and we are just about getting started. I'll now hand back over to Chair.
Thank you, Swami. As I said, before I go on to questions, I thought that we'd introduce you to randomly three of our staff, and one of them is Associate Professor Marcus Wagstaff, who I believe is on the line. Here's our second test of whether we can do something innovative here. There he is, looking like it is really 11:00 P.M. at Boston. Wave to everybody, Marcus. Yes. You've got quite a red face, so you may have been into the Canadian Club and Coke, I think.
Not yet.
That works. I said to everybody here, and I'll say it again, look, the purpose of this really is to just give you a bit of a feel for things that are happening, like, literally as we speak on the ground and from some in this case, independent person, 'cause he's really at Royal Adelaide, but he is part-time our medical director, and we pay him a fortune to occasionally, you know, wander around the U.S. and speak to surgeons and attend conferences and dinners and so forth. Just before we start then, Marcus, just give us a pencil sketch of what you've done since you left Oz, where you went to, who you spoke to, and leave out Canada. I'll come back to that in a moment.
No problem. I left Adelaide on the seventeenth of October and touched down on the same day in the U.S., given the timing, and really, our feet haven't touched the ground. We've been through Dallas, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and then up to Canada and now back to Boston. In all, in every place, I've been meeting with surgeons, presenting our data, presenting our work, and showing them what's possible and how far we've come. I'm presenting to newer doctors as much as I'm presenting to established physicians. I've been to trial sites for the BARDA trial and had a chat with investigators.
It's been a real pleasure to meet up with these people and make connections with, you know, colleagues across the world. The feedback I'm getting is that, you know, they're using BTM, they're very satisfied, very happy with it. They're happy that it's safe, they're happy that it's effective and that the outcomes they're getting are superior. They're just sort of working out where it fits in their practices. There's people in the U.S. who are innovating, you know, again, beyond expectation. Lots of them are through their learning curve, and they're very comfortable with it. I'm finding, you know, some of their indications very much mirroring our own.
The other good thing I've seen is that the surgeons are energized, and I think that this sort of tour has helped that. So has the sales team. You know, with PolyNovo, they're really excited about what they do. They can see its purpose, and the difference it makes to patients, which is important to me. Yeah. It's been a fantastic experience to do this. I think it's only been positive and a good reinforcement of everything that we stand for.
Brilliant. Thank you, Marcus. Now, before I go to Canada, you're in Boston at the moment. What's the conference on this weekend, and what are you planning to do apart from wander around aimlessly?
Well, I might actually one day learn something. You never know. It's Plastic Surgery The Meeting which is the American Society of Plastic Surgeons meeting, which is. I think it's. If it's not the biggest in the world, it's only one of the biggest plastic surgery meetings. It's huge. PolyNovo has a presence here. They're in the exhibitor hall. What am I doing? Well, I'm talking to the sales team. We're presenting to surgeons, again, similar to what we've been doing across the U.S., but at least this time, the surgeons are coming to us. The trade stand will be open. I'm open to give advice at the trade stand.
you know, the team have my number, so I'll be supporting them through the weekend. yeah, it should be a really strong weekend.
Brilliant. Thank you. Actually, in Canada, where was it? What did we do? What reaction did you get? Did you talk to people who were already using it before it was registered?
Well, it was the Burn Association meeting, so specifically burns. It's a really tight community in Canada, so you know, to present there and to meet over there and do the presentations in the evenings, and also we did a symposium, a lunchtime symposium on Sunday. You're talking to just about everybody, and that's the doctors as well as the nurses and allied health. There's already surgeons using BTM through the Special Access Scheme who are very happy, you know, have words like, "This is a game changer. This has saved lives already." They're already doing you know, a lot of support for the product onwards.
Of course, Canada's gonna become some of the trial sites for the pivotal trial for BARDA. Again, some people hadn't heard of it and were exposed to it and really want to try it. Others have seen it, and they're adopting it into their practices already. It really is hitting the ground running. Then, again, positive.
Brilliant. After Boston, back home, is that it?
Well, I've got to go back to Dallas on Monday. Again, meet up with some more surgeons in Dallas on the way back 'cause we're flying from Fort Worth, and then on Tuesday, fly home.
do you feel that you've earned your money, that we pay you, or do what you do well or something?
No, I think I've earned it. Thank you very much for asking. The bill's in the post, but no, it's been really worthwhile, and I think it's helped to refresh things and re-energize things, and everybody here is really focused on what they do. All good.
That's great. Well, look, I'll let you go and talk to your broker about buying more shares. On behalf of everybody here, but especially the company, thanks for everything you're doing. It's fantastic. Above and beyond, and we'll see you when you get back to Australia. I'll buy you lunch.
Absolutely. My pleasure as always. Thanks. I'll hold you to that, David. Thank you. Cheers.
Thank you. All right. Okay, just to keep it moving along, I next want to invite up here Valerie Young, who as I said before is in charge of our sales and marketing in ANZ, where I'm now told we've got six or eight people coming close, if you like. I'm told this sort of picks up from where we left off. Val, we all know you've been up in Hong Kong. We just made an announcement that you've been up there.
Yes, I have.
The only thing I know for sure is that you were in a very good restaurant one night. I know that. Because I saw the photos of the pig.
Yeah.
Tell us a little bit about when you went out, what you did, who you saw.
Yeah. I was in Hong Kong at the start of the month, and I was there for just over two weeks. The purpose of the trip was really to meet the surgeons that I've been connecting with on Zoom, on email for the last four months, and really try to get more buy-in from them and hopefully get a case. We also had to look at things like, you know, local talent for further expansion down the track. We did a bit of that as well. What was, in a way, a nice surprise, but something I was hoping for, was that we got a couple of cases while I was there as well.
That's great. Was that directly out of your sort of selling or?
Who else would be?
Well, obviously. Yeah, exactly. I don't know why I asked you. I think you mentioned to me that you had had approaches or feedback from quite a number of other surgeons.
Yeah. In fact, I'm going over again in two weeks. Exactly two weeks.
Yeah.
To spend a bit more time there, hopefully, work out more of the market potential other than in burns and trauma.
Yeah.
In Hong Kong, there are four plastic surgery locations in public hospitals, but there are three others that do a little bit of plastic and burns as well. As I was getting deeper, I'm uncovering more and more opportunities.
Great. What do you sort of think the prospects are there in the next, before the end of our financial year, June 2023?
Well, what I'm hoping for is before the end of the financial year that we can put on either a sales team or engage a company to help us really go deeper into the city.
Yeah.
Hong Kong alone is not obviously very exciting, but Hong Kong is also with Macau, where those both cities does not require the product to be registered in order for us to sell it. Once we get some local hospitals using, especially the university-associated hospitals-
Yeah
We can potentially use that experience to get into the Greater Bay Area of China.
Yeah.
The Chinese government is actually looking into that Greater Bay Area and population of 71 million people.
Yeah
with 1,000+ hospitals.
Yeah.
Don't get too excited, David, because not all of them are gonna be relevant.
Yeah.
If we can generate some good data in Hong Kong and Macau, we will be able to get into China there as well.
Yeah. I think the interesting thing will be whether the China door opens for treatment in Hong Kong once the COVID restrictions are out. I was talking to the chairman of China Grand the other day who bought Sirtex.
Mm.
They've got a waiting list of 500 people at AUD 500,000 a go-
Wow!
to get into Hong Kong to do it, you know. I'm optimistic that it might be a good window for us into mainland China as we go through whatever Swami is gonna do in China.
For sure.
Yeah. The restaurant that you had, the Char Siu Pork, it was all right? You took your mother?
It was pretty good. I took my whole family. Thank you, David. He's sending you the bill.
Could you give me my credit card back? That's what I want to know. All right. Hey, thank you very much. Finally, I'd like to invite up Ed Graubart. For those of you who've been around for a few years, Ed actually did talk once before. You won't recognize him because he's lost a lot of weight since then. He's looking not too bad. Ed, please come over here.
You are up for re-election.
Yes.
Got a group over here.
Yeah.
No tie.
Ah.
Our marketing team.
Yes
Looks like BTM, PolyNovo, our biggest advocate, and you're on video, so you might wanna think about it.
I, uh-
Get the vote or I might run against you.
Probably can't see it here, but it's got PolyNovo against the button. Somehow I think this is gonna be on my expense account. I don't know why.
It already was.
It already was. Thank you.
Yeah. That was so we had all our team wear that at ABA last April.
A bit like Marcus. Thanks for this. A bit like Marcus, let's divide up Canada and the U.S.
Sure.
Just give us a bit of a feel about, you know, well, number one, what have you done with your sales team in the U.S. in this last year? Not sort of say a number, but give us a sort of feel for it. You've got nobody waiting to get sales. One of the things I'd like you to just reflect on, 'cause you and I talk about this a bit and I, on our board, we often debate it. How long, when you put somebody on, does it take them to pay for themselves? 'Cause it's an important question when you're looking at the capital, the optimal capital base of the company, you know. If you've got to put people on and you don't see anything out of them for two years, well, then that's like a big investment.
Mm-hmm.
If you put somebody on and it doesn't take that long, and I think I know what your answer's gonna be, but I'd like to know. It's horses for courses, which area, what type of person. Give us your general answer, but also just give us an anecdote of where it's really happened quite quickly and other times where it's been slow but then turned into a big success like Exodus or something.
Yeah. It is just that, right? It's you're putting somebody in a territory and what is the territory like? Like, what are the dynamics? Are there customers there? Do we have access? And can we get stuff to going? On average, I'd say we're about 6-8 months till somebody is really-
Fulfilling the obligation to pay for themselves. Some take longer, much fewer take longer because we're putting them in virgin territories with no access. Then you got others who are overperforming. Overall, 6-8 for the group to really be averaging together. We've had success in certain areas in Indiana, where someone has come in and opened seven, eight new accounts within their first six months, seven months, eight months.
Yeah.
Because they've got the relationships, came from a competitive company with no non-compete, could go in and could influence the hospitals. The hospitals there weren't quite as strict as some others in other parts of the country. Now we've had some others that took us a year and a half to two years to get in. Being patient while that person is doing the right things to get in. That person did, you know, 40 to 50 cases just in the last few months. At the end of the day, it's really sitting back and evaluating and making sure people are actually delivering on what we're expecting.
Just to be clear on this, because you told me this once before, the guy had no sales, I think, for.
For 18 months.
18 months, and then now, bang, 40, 50 cases.
Yep.
It's a slow burn.
It is. That's it. You got to really manage it. It's not just look at a number and say, "Hey, this person needs to go." You got to have patience, and you have to understand what the market is. You have to understand what that person's going through, what are they doing, and how can we help them.
Yeah.
Some of it is just hospital contracting, going through COVID, going through GPOs, whatever the situation is. Sometimes we'll put somebody in a market ahead trying to influence the GPO to approve us versus waiting for the GPO and then going in. We look at each, the leadership team here is very experienced. I trust them explicitly. I know what they're doing, and I know how they're engaging. It is an active conversation across the country, how we go, not just now. To answer your other question, what are we doing in 2023?
Yeah.
We're doing the exact same thing. How can we get out ahead of some things so that we can take advantage of them or influence them?
Yeah.
What are we doing now, and how can we move that forward so that we're making, as you said, you put up there, we're a profitable part of the organization. We need to be really thoughtful and responsible in where we're putting our people, because I know that part goes away, it's gonna be a different conversation with us.
100%. I saw a graph just recently of your growth in the U.S., and it's very significant, and so significant it proves the point that we're taking market share. Now, my point is, my question is, when do we get to the stage where we're gonna be approached by a competitor's staff who all know how successful we're being? When do we get to that stage where we're gonna see some people coming to you and knocking on your door rather than going out trying to find people?
We've been at that stage, and a number of the hires that we have in the field, a number of the leadership team came from competitive companies. There are conversations that have been going on for two-plus years with some of them, either waiting for them to get out of their non-compete or for them to move out of their area. It's a very active and engaging part of our thing, really building that bench, building friendships, understanding. We go to trade shows. We have people come up saying, "You're hiring.
Yeah.
It starts a conversation. It's always. You know, we just hired two sales directors recently. We filled the positions within a week because these are people that we knew and people we've been talking to for quite a while who wanted to come on board. The opportunity presented itself.
Yeah.
We made it happen.
Yeah. Yeah.
They're fantastic.
Tell us something about the culture in the U.S., given, you know, you've got people all around the country. How's the culture, especially among the sales team and, well, the company generally, though? Are people excited about what we've got? I mean, is it another job where-
It's great. They got to be excited about working with us, and I hope we're doing a good job there. When you hire competitors, people come with a perceived notion of what the product does, right? They know what they came from, and they thought it was great.
Yeah.
Every single one of them realizes what this product and what the potential is. There's an excitement, as Marcus said, of the sales force of what this product can do and the outcomes. It's the same excitement I have.
Yeah.
33 years in this industry, I've had the opportunity to get my hands on some outstanding technology. It's the best product I've had in my bag. I say that confidently as I stand here, both economically and clinically.
Yeah.
What it does for patients.
Yeah.
A lot of the kids that we talk about and some of the places that we've done some of that Special Access.
Yeah.
One of the videos we showed of Dr. Shiff's patient. It's meaningful what we do.
Yeah.
It translates, I think, across the sales force.
Yeah. One final question. You heard Marcus talking there about Canada and how it's a bit of a club up there. Everybody knows each other and strength of that community and the fact that we've already had a number of sales in there by people who've just taken the risk themselves.
Mm-hmm.
What's your initial thoughts about Canada and how we stretch up there?
Yeah. I wish I would have been there because, you know, this is something we've been really pushing for the last 2.5 years since the first case was done. Special access, not allowed to go up there all through COVID, all done remotely. The outcome was, you know, an 8-year-old boy with an 80% burn. Right in the doctor's article write-up, says BTM saved this patient's life. That just propels people to want to do something about it.
Yeah.
They don't have a technology like this up there. They might have some competitive stuff. We have an opportunity to go in and educate how people can do it. We're gonna transition some competitive business over. We have a chance to take something that they're doing now that's the standard of care.
Yeah.
Creating a new standard of care for them.
Yeah.
That is, for a select group of patients for a public system like that. I've been waiting for two and a half years to get into Canada, so I'm very excited about it.
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's great. I heard, I don't know if this is true, but I heard a rumor that the guy that introduced Marcus on the platform when he talked was a doctor who said, referencing the comment you just made, who said, "I'm unbiased. I've got no bias at all, but this product saved my boy's life," and then he introduced Marcus.
That's right.
Is that right?
That's exactly right.
It isn't biased. It's being totally honest.
No. It basically says I can't be unbiased even though I'm not a, you know.
Yeah.
It has nothing to do with the organization. He just, you know, called to ask a favor and would you do this? Gladly. To have that type of relationship with someone, that's special. It's what we do. It's meaningful to us.
Yeah.
So.
All right. When you get back home, I know you've got somebody here with you, but yeah, thank everybody on our behalf, and.
I appreciate that.
Tell them we'll take them to dinner if they can pay for their own fare down here.
Does Valerie still have your card? Can I get it?
Get it off her. Thanks, Ed. I hope you found that useful. I did. You were hearing a lot of that as I was hearing it, so I think that's pretty crazy. We might, depending on what feedback we get, we'll do that again at the half year with another group of people, I think, maybe invite Ed out again. All right, let me move on to the. Oh, sorry, I'm not gonna move on to the voting yet. Questions. Are there any questions? I'm gonna take some later from Jan off the computer, but I'll just see what we've got off the floor first.
Please, everybody, Anton Whitehead, sitting in the front row, Head of Equity Capital Markets at Bell Potter, graced us at an important time in the market when there's no work around to come down and talk to us.
Thanks very much, David. My question relates to the sales force in the U.S., and what are expectations on a per head basis for a mature salesperson? Is there a natural capacity that one salesperson has?
No, I'm gonna let Ed handle that.
The answer is there will be a natural capacity. A lot of this does happen once we build a surgeon's confidence with the product being in there. But there's a lot of aftercare too, right? There's the nurses, there's those things. What we're doing with our structure is we're being able to build a team within that structure that we can support the capacity. We're not just relying on one person, we're relying on a group of people to support a group of hospitals that really has unlimited potential. We can span it as big as almost we wanna get it within a team structure like that.
You keep the salesperson who has the relationships, the most knowledge of the territory, and you start bringing in some people underneath them. If the territory can't be handled in that capacity, obviously, we've added a number of reps that came from territory split. Do that very infrequently now, whereas we're starting to build some of the other pieces. The idea is just to follow your line of questioning is to make sure they can handle what they have and drive patient outcomes, right? It's not just about selling something, it's making sure that what's on the other side matters, and that's what we're driving for. Ultimately, that's what we're driving for business within those accounts as we go. one person has success, two, four, eight within those accounts.
We have to pay attention all the way through the process of the healing of the patient. That takes multiple people within a territory. There's just one person who can do it.
I mean, I don't want to spend too long on it, Anton, but, we're sort of rethinking our whole approach, as we speak, in relation to what's been happening in the U.S.. You know, the philosophy we had previously was, okay, get somebody on like Val. She does $1 million, and when she gets to $1 million, we say, well, you know, we made X number of dollars off that, pay her a salary, the rest of it's profit. We put somebody else on, and hopefully, they build up to $1 million. That's the way we've gone about it. In the U.S., as Ed just indicated, he's got a guy, for example, in California, who's doing $3.5 million.
Instead of dividing that into three, he's adopted an approach where he puts some slightly junior people underneath him who can follow, do the follow-up, train the nurses, et cetera. When they get properly educated, he might then put them into Wyoming, Ed, or Idaho. That's. Internally here, we're sort of debating how that, what's the best way. Thank you for your question. Thank you for coming out. Anybody else? Chris. I should have said, by the way, thank you for anybody who's come from Tasmania. When you see a flannel shirt, there was only one place in Australia it could have come from. I know there's a few people in the audience from Adelaide as well. Chris.
Right.
How about King?
Right. Just a quick one. Whereas that's been talked about before, and Swami's mentioned it, and so once you sort the product out and everything like that, a quicker way to move forward would be to purchase other people who've got a stake in the market, like other companies or whatever. Is that something you strive? Is that something particular job to go and do that? Figure out other companies to.
It's shared around. It's in the first instance, it's in Swami and my head, and we decide whether there's anything out there that looks attractive, and there's plenty of things. You know, we got. Well, our first focus is let's keep building and go hard as we can and not distract the staff. Everything's open, Chris. Thank you, by the way. Despite how he dresses, he's one of our biggest shareholders. I mean, can you believe that? I mean, I can't believe a Tasmanian's saying we should take over things when they're building me up for taking over Tesla. I mean. Anyway. Okay. Other questions? Oh, yes.
Chairman David, my name is Gil.
Hi, Gil.
We do know one another. I'm also a member of the Australian Shareholders' Association.
Oh.
What I'm asking you is.
Sorry about that.
When you can look into your crystal ball.
Yeah.
As an investor and a passionate owner of PolyNovo.
Yeah.
When I can actually take my stock of PolyNovo from my trading stock and put it into my buy and hold stock.
Yeah.
I've traded it 22 times in the last four years.
Yeah.
Done very nicely.
Yeah.
It'd be really nice to sort of see as it's actually what's happened to me, my first investment was AUD 0.38.
Yeah.
I've seen it go all the way to AUD 4.
Yeah.
Earlier this year, we're under AUD 1.
Yeah.
I'm just wondering, in your crystal ball, how much longer do you think I need to hang on so that I'm comfortable with the product?
Yeah.
What you're doing, but so that I can just sort of slip it across to my buy and hold.
Yeah.
not worry about it anymore because I know that you'll be paying me a little dividend.
Yeah.
I won't have to keep watching it all the time.
Yeah. Gil, look, looking at your hair, I think you should have, you know, relaxed on this a lot longer ago, and I would have put it in the bottom drawer in my bedroom already, right? Yet, as I have, you will see, of course, that even if I buy or sell 1 share, I've got to announce it. The only thing I've ever done is buy shares. When it got down to under AUD 1, you know, I was there front and center and bought a few million AUD worth, and the rest is history. It, for me, there's always gonna be a question mark about what the value is. Because of that, it's been ripe territory for short sellers. Now, short selling is where you go and sell some stock that you don't own.
You go to somebody else who's got stock and say, "Can I borrow it off you?" They go, "Well, why would I lend it to you?" "Well, I'll pay you 8%." You get the stock, and you sell it. You got to buy it back 'cause you got to repay the person you borrowed it off. You know, you'll see that since the stock went under a buck and I started buying, the short sellers started to go. We're 11.5% short. 11.5% of the shares sold by people who didn't own them. They'd have to buy it back. When I started buying, the short started to go. Today, I don't know what it is, I haven't looked this morning, but let's say it's 7.25%.
It's come off, you know, 4%. That's helped push the price up. It's not just because I bought or somebody else bought. I actually quite find it quite funny. I looked at a website a week ago, and there was something like 5 million shares traded in the day, and somebody showed me a comment on HotCopper that said, "it's probably Williams's buying again." Well, I only bought 20,000 shares, you know. Now getting the blame for everything. It should be in your bottom drawer now. There will be a lot of volatility that comes from the shorters. Don't think about that AUD 4, by the way. I said it last year. Look, the stock was trading at about AUD 2.50.
My recollection, you can go and have a look at this, and we had a meeting like this, and I announced that, you know, we're up 100% or something. Within three or four days, it went from AUD 2.50 to AUD 4 because we were 7.5% short. In those 4 days, it not only went to AUD 4, but the short sellers went to 2.5%. In other words, the reason it went up was because they had to cover because they were scared it was gonna, you know, keep going. They covered, and the rest is sort of history. Then when it got to AUD 4, a whole lot of other shorters come in, and they go, "Well, shit, that's too high. I'll sell some." You know.
Look, I've said it before. I'm not worried about the shorts. People on blogs are worried about them. For me, they're my friends. They've got to buy it back. I'm buying shares at AUD 1 knowing that there's 11.5% short. When they have to come back in the market, the shares that I bought, they won't be there to buy, you know. It's a, it's a bit of a game, but it's a game that somebody like you who's worried about their trade account shouldn't play, but put them in your back door because, as I said earlier, AUD 1 million a month, AUD 2 million a month, AUD 3 million, AUD 4 million, now we're at AUD 5 million a month.
There's only one way for this company, and we can have a healthy debate every day about what the value is, but it's going up and, for, in my opinion, for good reason. My best advice to you, put them in your bottom drawer, get a caravan and go to Cairns. Go and see Chris. He'll take you on his powerboat up the Launceston River. Anybody else in the room? Yes, at the back.
Thanks. Question. Particularly now you're starting to go into China about protecting IP, will you be always manufacturing here and sending product there? Was that a way of protecting your IP or is there anything else you have to do?
Look, it's a problem that everybody has going into China, and we don't yet have a solution. Not that I even agree with you, by the way, that the problem is there any longer. Of course, it's there, but it's a healthy debate. When we get to the point where we need to go into China, there are some companies in China, for example, if we were to use a distributor, who would want it as a condition of the distribution agreement that they should be able to manufacture in China. To do that, it's a problem because you'd need to hand over the formulas, you know. That sort of thing. We're not gonna be in any hurry to do any of that. It might not surprise you.
I do know Chinese companies that have, you know, done deals recently, and we've done them for China Grand advising them, where they haven't had that as a condition and are happy to take the product off the head company like us. I don't, you know, I wouldn't say never. I would never say never to where we might distribute. I mean, the U.S. is growing so quickly that we might in two years' time say, notwithstanding it's a very, you know today in Idaho or Wyoming, Ed. We have an argument about whether we should already be there. You know, we might get to a stage we go, "Why don't we put up a plant somewhere in the U.S.?
Why don't we put up one in Ireland or somewhere? This is not like, you know, your Coca-Cola and wanting to put a bottling plant or Bega Cheese and put up a cheese plant. Give me AUD 500 million, and I'll produce enough just to supply California. This plant that we just put up, probably all up cost us AUD 4. Yeah.
Yeah.
It's capital light, whichever way you look at it. Look, never say never. I imagine in two, three years' time, I imagine that it's for the board, that we might have another plant. But if I had to guess, it might be Ireland first because of different tax reasons and probably also might be Wyoming, you know. Anybody else in the room? Otherwise, I'm gonna take some off the line here. Sorry, one more. Father-in-law of one of my employees.
Hi, David. Good to see you again.
Thank you.
Is it possible that you could give us a one-minute summary of Swami's background?
Um-
He looks very interesting character. I'd love to know his background.
Yeah, we'll skip over the bit about being in jail, but yeah. Let's, Swami, why don't you give a bit of a background?
I'm a pharmacy graduate. Did my MBA, worked in pharmaceutical industry, started my life as an investment banker, did treasury, wholesale banking, retail banking for about four years. For the last 30 years, I've been with healthcare industry with Johnson & Johnson in different parts of the world, so U.S., India, Indonesia, Seoul. Responsible for global operations, regional operations. Did a little bit of supply chain, you know. Yeah, one of the bad moments, I also had to shut the company. I was a janitor. I did everything, but enjoyed myself. Thank you for the question.
Okay. Jan, what do you got online?
We've got quite a few questions, David. To answer your question from earlier, we have 200 people online watching today. The first question is an audio question. They've phoned in, so if I can ask the operator to patch them in, please.
Oh, good. Yes.
Yes, please.
Good afternoon. I'm Paul Fanning, representing Australian Shareholders' Association. We have 631,627 proxy votes from 36 shareholders. Thank you, David, for making available to us a pre-AGM for a list of questions, also with Jan. They got very insightful answers. We have two questions for general business. Can I give the two questions now?
Yep.
Thank you. Okay. The first question is relating to a recent ACSI ESG reporting trends. The documents that PolyNovo provided or were to provide, and there was no reporting of achievements of ESG goals, including climate-related disclosures. Also, Sustainalytics, which is a division of Morningstar, reported PolyNovo with no ESG rating. And it was in a high-risk category of 32.3. What is the company aiming to do in the near and longer term as far as objectives and timelines? Question one. Question two relates to a very recent event there in cybersecurity. We, the ASA, are concerned about the fact that there's no mention or citation in the annual report about cybersecurity risk management. We know that the company has a lot of IP to protect and has been already engaged to some extent with international suppliers and clients.
What is the board's stance or what is the company's stance? How are you dealing with the cybersecurity risk?
Okay.
Those are my two questions. Thank you.
Okay. First things first. I thought we answered the first question for you adequately on the ESG question, but I'll ask, given everybody now has heard it again, because I think our view was that we had adequately disclosed what we're doing with ESG. Jan, what was your-
Yeah, that's right, David. In the annual report, we did disclose that we got certification as carbon neutral for Australian operations. It's quite a milestone. To answer the other question was in terms of ESG moving forward, we're looking at waste management plans and improving where we can. And there's a lot we do on the social side of things as well, both within the office and our team. And the governance side of the business is managed well in line with the ASX principles that we're required to do.
Yeah. Look, I think we answered this last time, Paul, so I'm not sure why you're asking again, but it's an active issue for all boards, including our board, and we have adequately, we think, covered it for a pretty simple operation, by the way, Paul, in our annual report, as we previously said to you. With respect to cybersecurity and any other risk for that matter, we've got a very active campaign and documentation of all of our risks, not just cyber risks, which is, you know, part of our audit and risk committee. That risk profile is extensive and is being overseen by Robyn Elliott on our board, who's, you know, had similar roles at IDT and CSL. We got a lot of backbone in between that.
Most of it, as you might imagine, is commercially sensitive, in the sense that we don't wanna tell people what our risks are. Especially the Australian Shareholders' Association, notwithstanding you've got 635,000 shares. Thank you anyway. Other questions, Jan, please.
Righty-o. It's my nine questions, David. The first question relates to hernia. Is that still looking viable, and how long to market for that product?
I might ask David McQuillan to answer that, who's not on the speaking circuit, but given he's now in charge of R&D, and I know he does have some innovative ways of tackling new product development in any case, and hernia is a part of that. Just a brief answer, David.
Yeah. I mean, Hernia is certainly in our product pipeline, Hernia and a number of other opportunities. We have a number of technical challenges to overcome in strengthening the base polymer. I don't think I can tell you too much. We've certainly shared that we're working on several different prototypes, all of them look interesting. We have to get them into pre-clinical animal models. The target model is a pig model, so that's ongoing. Giving you a timeline, I probably can't commit to that just at the moment, other than say, we're making progress and a couple of the prototypes are looking very promising.
All right. Thanks, David, and thanks for coming down. Ian?
David, just the reasoning for David McQuillan to move from the board to an executive position.
Yeah.
That's the reasoning behind it.
I thought I said before, he's unemployable and no. Look, first and foremost, we're interested in him as the head of R&D. When that was settled, and he was also interested in coming back to Australia, he's got kids in the U.S., kids here, so it's been a bit of a challenge for him, but he's interested in coming back. We needed a new head of R&D. We wanted to expand R&D. When we decided that, it seemed to be a bit of a conflict to have an executive on the board. That's, there's no great shakes on it.
Thanks, David. A question from Mr. Andrew Wrightson. Does the cost of servicing current clients reduce significantly over time as they become an expert at using the product?
Can you just repeat that? Do the what costs?
Do the costs servicing current clients reduce significantly over time?
Oh.
as they become better at using it?
Yeah. No, absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, look, in the initial instance, some of our salespeople will go into the surgery and assist the surgeon. There's a. I wouldn't say it's a high-touch area, but that's, you know, and it doesn't last for long because it's quite a, I think it's quite a simple, you know, product to use. I'm waiting. I'm just looking over at Val to see whether she thinks I'm crazy. It diminishes quite quickly, and then it takes on a life of its own. We get the benefit where the surgeons start talking to other surgeons, so they're doing half our job for us.
Thanks, David. A question from Andrew Donnet. Could we provide guidance on the average sales per salesperson in the U.S.?
I could ask Ed to answer that, but I don't particularly want to answer it. It's a bit commercial, but just in light of a question that was asked earlier by Anton, you know, one of the things I see in Australia that the average sales per salesperson in Australia is significantly lower than it is in the U.S., and the number of hospitals they service is significantly higher. I could point to somebody like a Val. I'm not sure how many she's seeing at the moment, but I'm gonna guess she's seeing, let's say, 30 hospitals. Whereas, Ed's got a lot of people that are doing four or five. If I challenge Ed on that, he goes, "Yeah, but that guy does four. He does an average of 350 per hospital.
Thousand." You know, well, I get it. Look, it's size of hospitals. It's the structure of the geography. You might have a state that's only got one significant hospital in it that doesn't do burns. If you get a burn in Idaho, as Ed keeps telling me, they'll ship him out to Seattle, where we own the market, you know, or to Colorado or something like that.
Right. Thanks, David.
Next.
Next question is from Mr. Ty. Can you please provide an update on October sales to date and guidance for the current financial year?
Yeah. No. I mean, look, yeah, not only do I not wanna do it until the market gets it, but one of the things you know, might find is surprising, and we surprise ourselves nearly every month, is that the U.S., for some quirk, and I should have asked you this earlier, Ed, you know, comes really good right at the end of every month. So it's probably something to do with the ordering cycle of hospitals and something, but, you know, I might be sitting, 10 days out from the end of the month, and the U.S. might be at $2,500. In the last 10 days, another two comes in. You know, it's like, for some reason, it's just a quirk of the U.S.
I'm reluctant for obvious reasons to start giving month-by-month accounts unless they're significant, you know, like we've just had our AUD 6 million month or something. More particularly because of the variability across the month.
Great. Thanks, David. A question from Paul Richardson. Is there currently any discussion around increasing the price?
It's an active discussion on our agenda at the moment, and I think everybody knows that we're arguably significantly under some of our competitors. As we're now getting market share and getting a, you know, a formidable position in some countries, especially here, but there's certainly plenty of fat between us and competitors, and in addition to that, we think we've got demonstrably better outcomes. I think there's two levels that you need to think about, but it's an active consideration for us.
Great. Thanks, David. A couple more to go. Question from John Cunning. How secure is the IP, and are we seeing competitors emerge?
Well, we think the IP's secure, and as anybody who's got IP, any sensible person who's got IP needs to put a lot of effort into refreshing that and adding new IP as we develop new products and so forth. We're as active as anybody, and so far, touch wood, you know, we've had no issues, and I don't anticipate any in the near future.
Great. Thanks, David. A question from Michael Holland. In Europe, you've made reference to UK, Ireland, and Germany.
How is the rest of Europe progressing? How is your thinking developing on getting the right go-to-market approach there?
Yeah. Well, I mentioned Germany, but Germany is a bit more wider than Germany, so our distributor in Germany is PMI who are Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and I think the Benelux countries, and we've recently given them Holland. We're now in, Swami, do you wanna say anything else about the Nordics or Poland?
Yeah. Yeah. We are in active conversations across Europe. The next two markets which we're looking at are France and Spain, but we're looking at how do we make impact in those markets. What we don't want to do is tie up with a distributor and just depend on him because we need active clinical selling for this particular technology. Once surgeons get used to the technology, they need a little bit of a help in habit change. Once that happens, then it'll keep moving on its own.
Mm-hmm.
The initial investment and the engagement from our partners is what we're seeking from.
Very good. Thank you. One last question from Alan Malloy. Has Professor Fiona Wood, Director of Burns at WA, going to the Fiona Stanley Hospital, I believe, has she been using the PolyNovo products? If not, why not?
I'll ask Valerie to answer that question.
Yeah. The question, just Val, I'm not sure whether you heard it, but it's from a professor who says, "Is Fiona Wood. Why isn't Fiona Wood using the product?" Now, I know-
Is she, if she's not?
Is she using the product?
Yeah.
Yeah. The answer is she is using it, but you can answer, given she's about to go to Burns.
Fiona started using BTM approximately two and a half years ago, and she has used it both in adults and in pediatric burn cases.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thanks.
It's a good point because everywhere you go, people say to me, you know, "How do you, how do you find Avita as a, as a competitor?" They're not competitor at all. They're just a complementary product. Fiona's been using it for what it's used for, which is to rebuild the dermis and then to use her own Avita technology on top of it. From what I've heard, I haven't spoken to Fiona myself about it, but from what I've heard, she's had great results. Just a verbal or on this video that I'm doing now. All right. We're gonna move on to the really formal part, and this won't take us very long, I hope, but we're gonna talk about again, casting your vote.
If you've already voted, you don't need to take any action unless something today has changed your mind. However, if you voted and wanna change your vote, voting on the resolutions is currently open, and you can vote at any time until I declare the voting closed. The results will not be updated on the screen, but will be updated at the conclusion of the meeting and then released to the ASX. I'm gonna put up the voting so far on the screen at the moment. Please note that only shareholders, proxyholders, or authorized shareholders representing votes may vote. Any directed proxies given to you by a shareholder will be automatically cast as directed when the poll is closed. Voting tab is available within the navigation bar now. Press the vote icon, and all resolutions will be activated with voting options.
To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to hit a submit or enter button, as the vote automatically is recorded. You will receive a vote confirmation notification on your screen. You do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until the time I declare the voting closed. When voting is closed, your final voting selections will be recorded. For the people attending in the room, please mark the back of your voting cards as you see fit. Once the poll is declared, Angela Liapis, who I can't see, will collect these from you. If you have any difficulties, please call Computershare's helpline on 9415424. Okay. I now move to consideration of the formal resolutions. I'm advised at the beginning of the meeting that we have...
We will vote on these resolutions by way of a poll. I intend to vote all undirected proxy votes given to the chairman in favor of all resolutions. We will now move to consider the resolution number one, and that is my re-election. Given I could re-elect myself, but I won't, I'm gonna pass over to Bruce Rathie, who will conduct this part of the meeting.
Good afternoon. Mr. David Williams retires by rotation and being eligible offers himself for re-election. I put the following resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution: That Mr. David Williams, being a director of the company, who retires in accordance with Clause 59 of PolyNovo's Constitution and, being eligible, is re-elected as a director. Are there any questions from the audience here today? Thank you.
Yeah.
Are there any questions online?
There are two questions. First question from Stephen Mayne. Why does David Williams keep on buying shares in small parcels, generating dozens of ASX announcements about his increased investment? We know you support the stock and are fully invested. There is no need to ride every dip in such a high-profile way. If this is going to keep up, roughly how much does David have penciled in to spend buying PolyNovo shares between now and next year's AGM?
Thanks for the question, but I don't think it's appropriate for, like, us to respond to that. That's purely a matter for David.
Sending my bank balance.
Okay.
I'll pass on the second question. That's also not appropriate.
Okay. Thank you. For the purpose of taking all proxies into account and ensuring that the votes are counted accurately, I direct that a poll be taken on this item.
Voting is open and will remain open during discussions on the resolutions. Now I'll pass back to David. Thank you.
Thank you, Chris, and thank you those 222 million people for and the 28 million against. I'll be looking for you. Okay, election of director Item 3B, re-election of Mr. Leon Hoare. Mr. Leon Hoare retires by rotation and being eligible, offers himself for re-election. I put the following resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution that Mr. Leon Hoare, being a director of the company who is in accordance with Clause 59 of PolyNovo's constitution and being eligible, is re-elected as a director. Before I proceed, I would like to ask Leon to say a few words about himself and his experience so far on the board.
Thank you, David. Just a few words. Firstly, thank you for the opportunity to stand for re-election. I think my bio in the AGM notes and also in the annual report provides an overview of my background. In short, I've had a very extensive career in medical technology in the industry, and I continue to be leading the business in this space. I hope that these capabilities equip me well to contribute to our corporate direction and to support our growth strategies. I'm genuinely excited by the platform technology that PolyNovo offers the global market across so many sectors and geographies. I'm very engaged. I like to think I'm very engaged in contributing to the board and supporting the leadership team. I've got great confidence in our direction going ahead. Thank you, David.
Thank you very much. Are there any questions from the audience here today of Leon Hoare? Jan, if not, on the screen.
Just checking if this is appropriate, David. Give me one moment. Okay. From Stephen Mayne, could Leon Hoare comment on whether it would be more appropriate if PolyNovo had a more independent chairman rather than David Williams?
Sorry, I didn't get the end. A more what chairman?
Had an independent chairman rather than David Williams, who is more like an executive chairman and is not really independent given the size of the shareholding.
Yeah. Leon, would you like to comment on that?
I have enormous confidence in our chair, and I think he brings knowledge, enormous energy, and great direction and support for the board and to the shareholders. Thank you.
Yeah. Can you hear whether Stephen Mayne is clapping, Jan?
No, but I do have a phone question.
Oh.
If you're willing.
No, go ahead.
I'll pass you through, please, operator.
Good afternoon. This is Paul Fanning again from the Australian Shareholders' Association. This is a question not so much at the re-election of the two directors, but about looking at director shareholdings. In their annual report there is a table, but we notice that Robyn Elliott still appears to have no shareholding in the company, yet her appointment to the board was in 2019. The ASA and best practice companies require directors to acquire a meaningful shareholding in the company to demonstrate skin in the game. Does the board have any stated policy on minimum shareholding requirement of directors within a defined period of time? How are you going to deal with it? Thank you.
Thank you, Paul, for that question, which I answered to you the other day. It's a matter for the board, so I'm not even going to ask Robyn to comment on it. I've given you an answer to that previously, and so it's something that's for the board to decide on. Okay. Is that it?
That's it, David.
Okay. For the purpose of taking all proxies into account and ensuring that the votes are counted accurately, I declare that a poll be taken on this item, the re-election of Leon Hoare. Voting is open and will remain open during discussions on the resolutions. Okay. Number nine, issue of share options to David McQuillan, item 4 on the notice of meeting. The resolution is to approve issuing share options to Mr. David McQuillan, proposed for the purposes of Listing Rule 10.11. A voting exclusion statement applies to this resolution as outlined in the notice of annual general meeting. However, the directors recommend that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. Put the following resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution, that the issue of share options to David McQuillan is approved. Are there any questions from the audience here today? On the screen, Jan?
There is one from Stephen Mayne. There was a 10% vote against the options grant. Did one of the proxy advisors recommend against, and what was the issue?
One of them did?
Yeah.
The issue was the vesting period. Is there a question?
The question is, what was the issue if one of the proxy advisors recommended voting against the resolution?
Yeah.
What was the issue that the proxy advisor
Well, I don't know if that's a private question or not. I mean, I don't know what the answer is, but you no doubt have read.
The question was around, they had a concern around the vesting period.
Yeah.
of the option plan that was within six months of the first tranche.
The feeling from the proxy advisor was that the six-month-
Too short.
Vesting period was too short.
Yeah.
It should have been a year. Okay. Well, we hear them. David's got a contract. We agreed it, he agreed it. Even if I was to agree to it, I think we went into it with our eyes wide open. The vesting periods, you know. Just for memory for everybody, it's not only he can't earn them unless he's been working for six months, but they also can't be exercised until he has outperformed the VWAP by 150%.
Mm-hmm.
He also can't earn them until there's three or four different tranches of AUD 400,000 each, that they're 24-25 years. There's a number of hurdles, and I feel comfortable at that, about that being enough to lock him in.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I've got Paul Fanning back on the line. You have a question? Australian Shareholders' Association. Can you patch him through?
Thank you. Thank you, David. Look, yes, I have a question regarding from the ASA about this issue of share options, Dr. David McQuillan. This question we did raise with you in our pre-AGM, but for the benefit of the participants in the room and shareholders at large. We observed that Dr. David McQuillan will be issued with 1,200,000 share options under the long-term incentive plan as part of his total remuneration package. Which is the basis for the putting of resolution four? What specifically are the conditions and company targets required to achieve the STI? We would like-
Did I not just answer that, Paul?
Yes.
Paul, listen, it's in the notes. He has a six-month hurdle. He has a yearly hurdle before he can take them, and he has a VWAP hurdle. They're outlined in the notes very clearly, and I've also outlined them to you, so I'm not sure why you've spent an hour and a quarter of my time getting that answer and then asking me again. I told you the other day when you came, you've got the answers. If you don't like them, ask them again, but I don't want you to take up a lot of time just grandstanding and asking me the same bloody question, for Christ's sake.
Thank you.
All right, for the purpose of taking all proxies into account and ensuring that votes are counted accurately, I direct that a poll be taken on this item. This is the issue of the options. Voting is open and will remain open during discussions on the resolutions. Remuneration report, which I think is the last resolution here, item five on the notice of meeting. The Corporations Act requires a remuneration report to be included in the annual report. Shareholders will be asked to vote to approve this report. Please note that this vote is not binding on the company, but the result will be taken into account by the Remuneration Committee when reviewing a director and executive packages. A voting exclusion statement applies to this resolution and is outlined in the notice of annual general meeting, and you'll see the excluded votes there on the screen.
Directors recommend that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. I put the following resolution to the meeting, that for the purposes of Section 250R(2) of the Corporations Act, the remuneration report required by Section 300A of the Corporations Act is contained in the directors' report for the year ended 30 June 2022 is adopted. I hereby move that resolution and call on Andrew Lumsden to second it as the Chairman of the audit committee. Is that seconded, Andy? Thank you. Are there any questions from the audience? Let's hope there's one from the Australian Shareholders' Association employees. Are there any questions on the screen, Leon?
No, not at this stage.
For the purpose of taking all proxies into account and ensuring the votes are counted accurately, I direct that a poll be taken on this item. Voting is open and will remain open during discussions on the resolution. That is the conclusion. Well, I'll leave the voting open for two minutes in case any of you want to change your votes or fill out cards that you haven't filled out. Angela, my longtime friend of 15 years, is walking around with her ballot box. Oh, Angela. Sorry. Thank you, Ms. Liapis. In 1.5 minutes, I'm gonna close the voting. Please ensure you've cast your vote on all resolutions, especially for those people online. Do we know how many people are online?
200, David.
200 online and another 60 or so in the room. I went to a big meeting yesterday, and how many was there in the room, Leon?
Twelve.
Yeah. Thank you, everybody, for attending anyway. I'm gonna close the meeting. I won't close. I'll just make a couple of comments while we're just waiting for that extra minute. Angela, I just thank you all for your support. I thank our staff in particular, in all jurisdictions, especially in the U.S. and the U.K. and Australia in particular, for all of their support. Look, our job here is to really bring this product. A sensational product by anybody's standards. It's our job to bring this to patients and to surgeons and to the market as quickly as possible, and that's what we intend to do. We're running as hard as we can, and we hope that you stay with us.
It's gonna be a fantastic ride, and it's a fantastic product, and there's lots to be proud of. We are standing on the shoulders of giants like John Greenwood and the scientists from CSIRO and others. We've got a pretty simple task, and our task is to get it into every jurisdiction, in every channel, and as quickly as we can, and so that we can improve patients' lives. The money will come as a consequence of that. I thank you very much for your support. I'm gonna close voting now. I think we've got one question or one comment. Yeah.
I thought we were gonna hear something about India and the opportunity.
Yes, Swami. You short-changed people. Okay, he's gonna give you a two-minute summary of India.
India, you know, I mean, from the sheer number of patients, is the world's largest burns and trauma market. Unfortunately, not many of them can be treated with the current options which are available there. If you think about John and Tilak, who came from Sri Lanka, this product and this device is designed for markets like India. Today the market is very small, and we will be doing the market development. That's what David meant, that, you know, we'll almost be the market leaders because the only option today for patients, majority of them in India is, the surgeons unfortunately have to allow them to die. That's the cheapest option for helping a patient. That's where we believe we can truly have an impact, and this will help us globalize the technology across the world.
I think, I don't probably need to say that Swami knows a little bit about India, but the fact that he's run businesses there and we really feel blessed in a way 'cause it's elevated the importance of India. Not only India, but he lived in Indonesia as well, speaks Indonesian, you know, Korea. There's a number of places we'll go to a lot more quickly. I don't think you said, Swami, but there is a big India conference on in mid-November to which you're going to.
Yeah.
We're launching in India then. You also didn't say. I should have given the India speech for Christ's sake. We've also now put two people on in India, and I would think, Swami, I'm putting words in your mouth, but I would think that by the end of this calendar year, we'll have six or seven. We'll hit the ground running pretty quickly.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. The voting's closed. I thank you all for coming, and thank you for your support. I've got this little piece here if anybody wants to come and touch it. Probably should restrict it to anybody who's got more than 1 million shares, you know, don't want the poor touching it. Anybody wants to come and touch it, please.