Well, welcome everybody to the PolyNovo H1 FY 2022 results. I can't actually see how many people are on the line, but I'm expecting a big number. I think you can see on your screen there are four people, myself as Chairman, David Williams, and at the top of my screen, probably yours, Jan Gielen, the CFO of PolyNovo. Max Johnston under him with the glasses, acting Interim CEO and previous board member. In a dark suit with a blue shirt, Ed Graubart, who's in charge of our U.S. operations, and I didn't ask you, Ed, but probably in from California. So I'm gonna top and tail this as I normally would. I'm gonna hand it over to Max for some comments.
He'll no doubt also, at an appropriate time, just ask Ed to say a few words about how the U.S. is traveling and also hand it over to Jan. I might say some editorial comments at the end, and then we'll open up for some questions. Welcome everybody, in any case. I thought a little bit about what I was gonna say in the last half an hour today because it seems, notwithstanding that our short sellers are up at about 9% at the moment, that, you know, people aren't really taking that much notice or not as impressed as we are with what we see as outstanding sales results.
Unfortunately, the half year results which you're gonna see are gonna be peppered with growth rates on month-on-month, on quarter-on-quarter, on half-on-half. From our perspective, the growth rates, especially in the COVID environment, we're not making any excuses for that, are outstanding by anybody's standards. So I've got one key metric I'm gonna give you to think about because I'm not sure that you're as impressed as we are by the fact that, you know, the Q2 sales in the U.S. were a record $8.06 million, up 105% on same time last year, which was $3.92 million. I think that's outstanding.
People don't seem to be as impressed by the fact that our sales for December were a record AUD 3.4 million, up 76% on same time last year, which was AUD 1.93 million. Before I sort of give you the metric that I wanted people to just concentrate on, that momentum that we saw in the last half and in particular in the last quarter, but into December, has carried on, and Ed might say something about this in terms of where the U.S. is going. But let me just say that in January alone, just finished, the U.S. had another record, January 2022, AUD 3.7 million, up 96% same time last year. The group recorded BTM sales of AUD 4.05 million in January 2022.
Again, the first time ever for the company, over AUD 4 million per month. For those of you doing a little bit of mental arithmetic in terms of what our run rate is, at AUD 4 million a month in a January where a lot of people have a, you know, a quieter year, you can start to get a much better feel for where our sales are going.
In addition to that, there'll be more of this when Jan talks to you, but in addition to that, the implications of that for where our cash is and where our cash will be this year, and we've made a couple of comments that we should be profitable by the end of this year, and there should be cash running off this business, which is a very good thing, and it goes to the issue of capital raising. There's one metric I just wanna give you. If you're getting bored with all that and you can't see the wood for the trees in terms of the sales and how outstanding they are, I've made the point that we've really effectively got a cookie cutter approach to this.
This is a product. Now, little bit of our product, as you can see, it's a very malleable foam. This is a product, that piece there, selling for $900, making us a 95% return. One of the things we said at the last time we talked was that we just need more people on the ground. It's as simple as that. What you'll see is we've now got 40 people on the ground in the U.S. Ed will tell you his, the leashes have been taken off, and he's aiming, I'm hoping, for 54 by the end of March. The one metric I want you to think about is this, just to prove my point.
In January alone, the average salesman in the U.S. sold $118,000 worth of product. Those salespeople we're paying roughly $100,000 per year. Little bit of role play. Ask me the question, "David, if an average salesman can make over $100,000 worth a month average," because in that 40, we've probably got 6 that have been there for a very short period of time, so they're still building up their network and so forth.
If a salesman can generate over AUD 100,000 a month-on-month, and you're paying a salesman AUD 100,000 a year, then why not put on more?" Well, the answer is we are putting on more, and we have taken off the leashes for people like Ed to really push this. The success of this business over the next six months and over the next six years is going to be getting from the small number, 40 people, by the way, in the U.S. on the ground, to 100 or 150. I've made the point before that we're well on our way to having five in Australia at AUD 1 million each a year, and if that's the case, we can easily have 100 in the U.S. That's the vision.
Forget about all the percentages you're gonna hear. If you get lost in the trees, don't worry about it. The fact of the matter is that we put on a new salesman and they sell, and they make a very profitable business for us. Consider this a business that hardly had a product three years ago. By the end of this FY, we should be cash flow positive and profitable. We are, by the way, significantly profitable in the U.S. already. If, for those of you who wanna delve into the accounts, and we hit them up for some charges to pay for all of us, our people back here in Port Melbourne. That's some little editorial comments just to give you some different figures.
Those figures, I want you to concentrate just on my cookie-cutter approach for the average salesman's ability to sell right today in the US and to increase that. That's going, you know, from 40 to 54, hopefully in the next month and a half in the US. We're continuing to add clients because that's what you would expect if you're seeing what's happening to our sales. We're now 164 hospitals in the US that we're supplying. But each salesperson we bring on is expanding that as they go. Welcome, let me introduce you to Max Johnston, and thank you, Max.
Thanks, David. Just as David has said, we're extremely proud of the sales result that we've got in the first half. Given the environment that all medical device companies have been operating under, growth of 44.6% across the group in our BTM sales, we think is an outstanding effort. Great to have Ed on the line today. 57.9% growth in the U.S., and we've got to remember the U.S. was very, very badly hit by COVID, and top marks to Ed's team for being able to generate that sort of sales in a lockdown environment. We're also very pleased to report that our partnership with BARDA remains extremely strong. BARDA have been a great partner throughout this journey with us.
First half this year, they spent a further AUD 1.83 million in our business, up 34.8% on the previous period. Their investment in our partnership continues to grow quarter-on-quarter, month-on-month, and they continue to ask us for what other projects they can partner with us. A tremendous partner and good to see also their continued growth into our business. Total revenues up 41.9%, including the BARDA revenue, AUD 18.15 million, an increase of over AUD 5 million, half on half. Thanks, Jan. We continue to invest in our business. In terms of customers, we've now grown our customer base to 361. That's up from first half in 2019 at 123.
Consistently, we continue to grow the number of hospitals that we service. In terms of employees, total employees now at 122. We started in first half 2019 at 41, and I can remember when I joined the board, we actually had three employees. We had Dan and Tim, who are still with us, and a financial controller. That was the staffing way back when I started my journey with PolyNovo. Now up at 122. Most of those heads are deployed in sales, marketing, and increasingly within R&D. We're investing in our sales and marketing team to expand our intensity in sales and our geographic spread. We're investing in R&D teams for product innovation and commercialization, and to expand the footprint that our technology can have across many, many different indications in the healthcare area. Thanks, Jan.
What I'd like to do now is to pass over to Ed, so that Ed can give you a little bit of insight into our U.S. market. Ed represents 90% of our volume at the moment. He and I have become very close because he's the difference between happiness and sadness in a month. I've got to say, over the last three months, a record November, when I first arrived, a record December on the November, and a record January over the December. Ed, thank you, and if you'd like to just take us through the U.S. market.
Sure. I think David's pretty much covered it. I got a great spokesperson there for the U.S. in David. As David said, our first half we were up 58% year-over-year with AUD 14.2 million. Our December sales were a record at AUD 3.4 million, up 76% on the same time last year. We had something that I've been striving for since I got here, we had our first AUD 2 million-dollar month, and we exceeded that easily in the month of December. We've got strong quarter-over-quarter momentum with Q2 sales, as David said, at AUD 8.1 million and up 31% over the AUD 6.1 million that we did in Q1.
The good news is, as a follow-up to that strong first half in Q2 performance, we had another record month in January with sales of AUD 3.7, up 96% over the previous January. A lot of things that we've been working on are starting to finally come to fruition in the, you know, with COVID still in the background and sometimes in the foreground.
As we continue to build out the U.S. sales team or any team member really, the focus is on high-performing people with a track record of success. Our commitment continues to be on new account acquisition, going deeper in current accounts with expanded indications across multiple specialties, and driving growth within our GPO and IDN partners. With that, we've hired an additional sales director, 10 additional sales representatives, and a sales associate, and we've added two additional sales associates so far this year. As stated, we had 40 selling team members at the end of December. We've since added to the team in January and February, and we're on our way to 54+, as quickly as we can build out the pipeline of candidates and move on with the high-quality people.
The idea is that we get the right people in the right places and, you know, we won't hire somebody till they are the right people. I'm very happy with the team we have right now. As important as adding sales staff is, we need to drive the level of accountability we desire, and we need to add support staff as well. Staff with roles and responsibilities to increase their clinical and technical acumen and skills with the end goal to shorten the time of effectiveness in the field and driving revenue earlier in their tenure. Keeping that in mind, we've added a new director of marketing, promoted one of our sales directors to our VP of Sales in the U.S., and another to the Director of Strategic Accounts, who will specifically focus on our GPO and IDN integration.
We've also added roles specific to our clinical team and now have a dedicated team member focused on sales training and development. Our ambition is to have every territory manager capable of handling a minimum of 10 accounts and generating at least AUD 1 million a year in revenue. We do have some far exceeding that, you know, 2.5, approaching 3 million dollars a year now. At the end of December, we had 154 active accounts. We added 35 in the first half, 16 in Q1, 19 in Q2, and we maintain a robust pipeline of new customers in development, and we're on track to meet those numbers again in our Q3.
As you can read on the slide, and as David mentioned, the U.S. business is profitable on a standalone basis, and we expect the sales and profitability will continue to grow. As we do that, we will also be expanding our markets, and the next market I expect to be able to talk about this summer will be our entry into Canada. With that, I'll turn it back over to you, Max.
Thanks very much, Ed, and thank you so much for the effort that the guys have put in. It really has been an outstanding end to the first half and start to the third quarter. What I'd like to now cover off is Australia and New Zealand. Australia and New Zealand, we were down on the previous year around about 25%. It was long lockdowns. First half 2022, it canceled elective surgery and an unseasonably wet season. There was very few of our normal burn season activity. We had a very strong recovery post the lockdowns when they lifted in January. We were 6.5% above our target and 72.5% up on January of the previous year.
Very much a very strong recovery coming back into Australia. We're back to return to in-person meetings and attendance at conferences. We've got large repeat customer base of 149 hospitals and selling into multiple verticals. I think that that's something that we feel very proud of. Of the 149 hospitals that we've taken on in Australia, we have not lost an account since we started entry into the market. Extreme loyalty from people who have started using BTM. We've got increased usage of BTM in smaller burns, which are the more frequently occurring burns. Sales of small devices, almost minuscule ones, for us, now represent over 50% of the total units sold, providing a more stable base in orders and reducing our reliance on the burn season.
We're adding three additional sales personnel in sales support roles. That's to grow the existing business. Ed mentioned that in the U.S., we're aiming to go from an average of 4 accounts per territory manager to 10. Well, Lyndal in New South Wales, she actually handles now 27 accounts. We see the opportunity now to further develop the tail of the accounts within the Australian market and increase the lift from 149 to beyond into other clinical areas. Thanks, Jan. U.K., Ireland. We probably couldn't have wished for a worse scenario to launch the U.K., Ireland business into. Pretty much from the beginning of when the business started, they've had rolling COVID lockdowns and it's been very, very difficult to actually expand the business.
Total sales first half 2022, an impressive percentage increase, but still a very small number at AUD 369,000. That was significantly less than the original target that we put in place for the UK. Encouragingly, they also are getting back to normal in terms of the marketplace. First half 2022, as I just said, affected very much by Omicron and not being able to get into hospitals and the cancellation of surgeries. Customer engagement was maintained mainly by digital and off-site meetings, resulting in a strong account acquisition. The most encouraging number I see is that we've increased the NHS accounts that we hold from 23 at the end of the first half to 38, first half 2022.
That's a huge jump in terms of the number of accounts that we're covering, and we see that we should be able to get to 150 accounts within the U.K. within a reasonable period of time. Sales of small and medium BTM devices represent a large proportion of the sales and continue to increase, with medical staff in new accounts gaining confidence in BTM use. We've added two sales reps in London already, and we're recruiting for Scotland. That will mean that we'll have good coverage not only of London and Greater U.K., but also into Scotland, which is a particularly strong medical device market. We've employed a clinical trainer, he was added in Q2, Ross, to assist with clinical support and start to build a more robust KOL program over there.
We've got increased focus on generating more sales from the lucrative burns market. We're not a burns company, but we are famous for burns, and that's our heartland, and that's where surgeons get their confidence working on large burn cases in our product. Thanks, Jan. In terms of our distributor markets, primarily in Europe, sales growth to distributors was flat compared to the same time last year. Omicron impacted Italy and our larger market of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. However, we did see good growth in some of our smaller markets, Finland being a standout with very strong recurring sales. We made first sales to Denmark and Cyprus in first half 2022, and Poland, potentially another large market, coming on stream in January 2022. Both India and Taiwan placed orders, which was encouraging.
However, initiatives to improve the effectiveness of our distributor model have been undertaken. We haven't cracked the distributor model yet, but we're getting much closer to it. I think distributor models always will take your product to the purchasing office. It's getting it from the shelf into the theater, which remains our responsibility, and we are improving on that as we speak. In terms of new products, I think this is the exciting thing, NovoSorb MTX. We've got a product called NovoSorb MTX with broad applicability for single stage grafting in burns, chronic, surgical, and deep tunneling wounds to provide increased treatment options and better outcomes. We believe it has a total addressable market of around $750 million, and the product really comprises of our BTM foam without the temporizing film on the top.
Now, you might say that seems like a very, very simple innovation. Actually, it makes the product perform without the stability of the temporizing film in a very, very different manner and broadens the application in many other uses within the market. We're expecting to make a 510(k) submission, lodge that with the FDA in first half calendar year 2022. Another exciting opportunity is SynPath. Unique sizes and shapes of NovoSorb BTM for the U.S. alternate care market, a market we estimate to be worth $400 million. It's primarily an outpatient market, which is a whole new area for us to explore. The DFU or diabetic foot ulcer and venous leg ulcer reimbursement study is in progress. We enrolled first 10-patient trial.
We completed that with very good results, and that gave us the confidence to go into the next phase of recruiting 138 patients for the major trial commencing in April 2022. We will launch once we have reimbursement, and we expect that to be late 2023. I think the SynPath product is particularly exciting, and it's exciting not only from the huge commercial opportunity that it represents for us in the U.S. $400 million market, but something which I didn't realize before I studied it. Diabetic foot ulcers and venous leg ulcers can result, and usually result, in about 30% of the patient cases having an amputation. That to me was a stunning statistic and gives us a huge opportunity to improve so many patients' lives.
The story, however, only gets worse since COVID happened and people have less access to good patient care for the care of these indications. It's now lifted to 50% of diabetic foot ulcers and venous leg ulcers resulting in amputation. A very important product for us commercially, but even more important, a very, very important unmet health need. Syntrel, this is our expanded approach to hernia market. After learning quite a lot from the first hernia development, we're now in the process of validating four design options for the various hernia types which need to be treated. The four designs are being developed simultaneously. We don't expect them all to be successful, but we do expect that we will get two products at least from the four designs.
Most importantly, we're learning a lot more about the design of products which go in the body as opposed to products which are used on the body. We anticipate filing for FDA clearance in calendar year 2024. NovoSorb, the project to develop products to aid breast construction, is being conducted now in-house after having completed our partnership with Establishment Labs. We now have employed dedicated marketing resource to look at the market. We have a project team established, and surgeon engagements are underway, and we expect to leverage the processes that we're using to develop the hernia devices for this market as well in the soft tissue support area. In addition to the work that we're doing internally with our R&D team, we've established partnerships. The partnership which we have at the moment is with Vitacell.
We're supplying them BTM product for use in their trials. They control the trials. They generate the trials. Vitacell are ready to commence human trials in Adelaide. The reason we're excited about this partnership is it's our first entry in looking at how our product could combine with the pharmaceutical and become a drug-eluting product. An important partnership for us to follow. Clinical trials. We have the BARDA pivotal trial underway. The pivotal trial is open for recruitment, and screening of eligible patients is in progress. During first half 2022, 5 patients were recruited, and this has now increased to 10. We have 25 U.S. sites live, 5 Canadian sites are being enrolled, and we expect patient recruitment to increase as more sites are activated. This trial will be a total trial of 120 patients, so a very large trial.
Second half 2022 and FY 2023 will see higher BARDA income commencement with the patient recruitment, and BARDA is committed to $15 million towards the trial. BARDA is a very valued partner, and we maintain a strong relationship, and we're continually looking at further opportunities to participate with them. The other major clinical trial which we have underway. We completed, as I said before, the 10-patient diabetic foot ulcer pilot study successfully, on chronic wounds between 1 and 25 centimeters. Mean time to closure was 6.25 weeks, with the fastest being two weeks. Seven out of the 10 ulcers had complete wound closure within 12 weeks. The remaining ulcers did not achieve wound closure, did show a significant reduction in wound size.
Results will be submitted via a poster at the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care in the fall, in October 2022, and the study protocol for the RCT comparing SynPath with collagen alginate dressing has been finalized with the goal of 138 patients in two equal groups. Recruitment for this trial is also to commence in April 2022. Results of this study will be used to support the U.S. reimbursement of the SynPath product to manage chronic wounds in the outpatient setting. We anticipate U.S. market entry circa late 2023 with reimbursement. I'd now like to pass over to Jan to take us through the financial results. Thanks, Jan.
Great. Thanks, Max, and good afternoon, everyone. Group highlights on revenue for the period. Total revenue up 41.9%. As Max mentioned, BTM product sales up 44.6%, and we recorded AUD 16.3 million in sales for the half. Some record results. We turned over or had sales of over AUD 3 million in the U.S. for the first time in December. As a group, we had sales of just over AUD 4 million in January. Market highlights as both Max and Ed have already mentioned, but worth covering again. U.S. BTM product sales were up 57.9%. ANZ was down 25%. Well, for reasons we know why. We've endured long lockdowns, and as a result, there's been less trauma.
Elective surgeries in the burn season, it got pushed back. Pleasingly, recovery in January was 6.5% up on target and we were up 72.5% up on January last year for Australia and New Zealand. U.K., Ireland, up 254%, but off a low base and impacted by Omicron. Distributor sales flat with mixed results. The DACH region, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, impacted by lockdowns and so forth. Finland had strong recurring sales. We've got a great distributor up there. We also had first sales to Denmark and Cyprus in the half and recently to Poland in January. A really great number to see is the amount of accounts we've added in the half.
66 new accounts in all direct markets, increasing from 295 customers to 361. Just moving on to operating expenses. As expected, the bar chart's gone up, 'cause we're trying to grow our business, operating expenses up 53%. We continue to invest in growth. A large part of that increase is due to the increase in headcount, growing by 34% from 91 to 122. A large portion of those are sales reps, and they're having the desired effect on revenue, as you saw in the previous slide. We also have the impact of annualized hires coming through from the prior year. In that, there's a really significant number in recruitment fees, and that's a one-off cost, that's close to AUD 500,000 for the period.
That does have an impact, and it is not recurring. We also expanded regional operations for the period in the U.S., EU and Australia. All this resulted in a net loss after tax, excluding non-cash items, so share-based payments and realized Forex gain. The net loss came in at AUD 2.5 million. I guess the number to focus on is the EBITDA number, excluding non-cash items, which was -AUD 1.4 million. We did break even last year for FY 2021. In the half as planned, we had an acceleration of sales reps being hired, mainly in the U.S. The increase in head count is having that desired impact on sales with a record sales result in December in the U.S. and January. We've also increased our customer base significantly.
As of today, we're up to 164 customers in the U.S. You'll see a pattern recurring. We're in the same place this time last year where we have a loss for the half. We invested in the half, we hired more reps, and we came home strong, and we had an underlying break even for the full year. For this year, we expect profitability to improve and cash flow to improve significantly in the second half as we get a return on the investment of the reps we've put on board and they start to get traction out in their relative territories. Moving on. Cash flow. Cash flow from operations for the half is negative AUD 3.3 million.
Referring back to what I just mentioned, the investment in growing the sales team and expanding the business and also including R&D. Cash on hand ended at AUD 3.3 million at the half, but it's exactly where we thought it would be in our budget plans and our forecasting, so no surprises at this end. CapEx continues to reduce. We completed our clean room, brand new clean room, last year during the calendar year. As a result, we're not expecting to spend anything significant for some time on CapEx, just incidental requirements. For the half coming up, we're looking at about a couple hundred grand just for incidental needs, which are completely discretionary.
The subsequent event that's occurred just recently, which helps our cash on hand situation, which is not a situation in my view. We've got an offer of AUD 6.35 billion for the sale and leaseback of unit 1 Lorimer Street, Port Melbourne. We have two adjoining units, and in those units we have our manufacturing facility and our corporate head office. We paid AUD 4.6 million for the building back in February 2019, so it's a good return. We're not in the property business, so best to put the money back into growing the business, which is a better idea at this point.
The sale is conditional on due diligence ending, which is the earlier of 14 business days from the 28th of February or the exchange of contracts, and that's underway at the moment. The lease term is for 10 years with two 5-year options at a yield of 4.3%. Our existing lease on the adjacent building will be synchronized to match the new lease. With the funds, AUD 3 million of the proceeds will be used to reduce debt, which is our equipment finance facility. That will actually free up AUD 750,000 in repayments each year.
In addition, we get to keep the balance of the proceeds, so add another AUD 3 million to the existing AUD 3.3 million, you know, and our cash on hand is starting to look really good. Just moving on to the net effect of all the above, the P&L. Product sales, as I mentioned, up 44.6%. Total revenue, including BARDA, up 41.9%. Another really pleasing number is product sales gross margin actually increased by 1.5% from 93.1% to 94.6%. We've had further improvements in the manufacturing process and the yield the guys are getting down there is fantastic. Well done to them. Employee-related expenses up 45%, but as I mentioned before, we had AUD 440K in recruitment fees for the period.
They're one-off. Corporate admin and overhead expenses are up. The business has expanded, but we are incurring still logistics fees, which have been higher than normal prior to COVID, insurance and so forth. R&D spend is up 86.3% as planned. We've expanded the team and we're working on multiple hernia devices. We've got a number of trials running, including the DFU trial and other projects the R&D team are working on. We actually had a net profit after tax, accounting aspect for the period, but that does include the reversal of AUD 4.7 million in share-based payments. It's just a book entry relates to share options, and that's as a result of the CEO and COO resigning last year. The net underlying loss for the period, excluding non-cash items, was only AUD 1.7 million.
We're looking forward to a strong half, and ending the year FY 2022 on a really good note. I'll hand that back to you, Max. Thank you.
Thanks, Jan. The five things that we're concentrating on, having completed the commissioning of the plant and most of our major capital works, is to increase the sales team to intensify sales efforts in our direct markets. That's paying dividends, and we're seeing an increasing both intensity and productivity in our existing developed markets. Optimize our distributor model and emerging markets model. We have negligible sales in those areas. We're going to optimize those models, expand our geographic footprint, expand our key opinion leader program, especially in the UK and EU, and focus on product development and faster commercialization.
Five very focused efforts that we're going to concentrate on. We have a very, very strong growth at the moment. We see that continuing to increase, and we're very optimistic about the following second half period that we're entering into. Thank you very much, and I'll pass back to David.
Yeah. Thank you, Max. Thank you, Ed, for staying up to be online. Thank you, Jan. That's great stuff. Look, we're very excited about the growth in this business. What can you expect? All of those five things that Max has just talked about, really important. You know, the key message is, a salesman in the U.S. can sell $118,000 worth of product in a month that we're gonna pay $100 for. Our key focus for me anyway is to get more people on the ground in the U.S. and broaden our footprint and get more depth in our sales force so that they're seeing more accounts and keeping up with the surgeons.
I've encouraged people in the past to have a look at our site and have a look at the videos on there for some of the key opinion leaders in the best universities in the U.S. with their patients, pushing and pulling them with amputations and diabetic foot ulcers and burns and so forth. Please look at that, because that's where our growth is coming from. Our growth is coming from keeping up with the surgeons, number one, getting more depth, increase in number of hospitals, and increase in the footprint. Not just in the U.S., so Max mentioned the U.K., we've got a lot of work to do there. But it's heading all in the same direction. We're seeing record results December, record results January.
We haven't asked Ed to sort of comment on February 'cause he's not done February yet, but the early numbers look pretty good to me as well. The fact that we can get record months, who cares. He cares. It doesn't matter because it's an old. It's just an extrapolation of what we got. Expect more of that. Because of that, expect what Jan's already preempted, which is that we will be cash flow positive by the end of this financial year. We've got cash. We'll be cash flow positive, and we've now got cash off a sale of the building we bought a couple of years ago after paying off our debt.
That's a good thing as well and allows us to synchronize our leases so that we can go forward with some certainty. For us, you know, it's happy days and it's even happier days because by definition, we're changing the way in which surgery is done. We're saving lives, not just for diabetic foot ulcers, but, you know, have a look at some of the cases on our site that other competitors couldn't have achieved. It's a fantastic business to be in, and I encourage you, and I thank you for staying with us as shareholders in these trying times, but certainly not trying times for us in terms of the way in which the fundamentals of the business are going. Thank you.
I think we might have a few questions, so we'll take those, and we'll push them around among the four of us, depending on what they are.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Andrew Paine from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. Just focusing on your commentary on the U.S. salesman. Can I just get some clarity? Is that $100K per year their base salary, or does that include sales bonuses? Will that kind of ramp up?
I've sort of sized it as a base. Those really super performers of which we've got many are making good commission on top of that as well. Ed made a comment that he's got at least one guy. I saw, and I looked at the complete list this morning. There's one guy doing $2.5 million worth of sales, and again, think about our margin. I'm not gonna be upset if we're paying him, you know, a few pennies extra in commission on the back of that.
Yeah. Great. Thanks. Just so on the kind of I guess the revenues are growing well, you know, January is looking good, incremental gains in December. What's this look like for the sales team? Do they get these contracts and, you know, can you expect those to continue rolling forward and then the salesman, you know, refocus on new accounts? You know, what I'm kind of looking at here is, you know, do you have this base from one month, and then you can kinda go out and generate more business with that base recurring, you know, ongoing in a sense?
I might ask Ed to make a comment about that, please.
Yeah, sure. It takes a lot of work to get into the hospital initially, and usually we have one or two surgeons who are very supportive of us. Getting them up and running, and it's not only the hospital sale that we focus on, it's also the post-operative care and making sure we're there for the patient dressing changes because the product, it's not just put on and we walk away. There's a lot of aftercare that takes place. If you've got a large center that we bring on, there's a number of different specialties. There could be 20 surgeons within that hospital that could use our product.
It's not just about opening new accounts, it's also about going deeper in those accounts and establishing ourselves across the different specialties for different types of wounds and trauma cases. Each area is a little bit different, and it allows us to expand, as David was saying, within each area a little bit focused. But everyone's got their key targets that they're focused on, and that's what we follow up with them on very frequently when I talk about the pipeline. The idea is basically to do a little bit of the both or a lot a bit of both.
Andrew, I just wanna embellish that a little bit because I think one of the comments that Max made was about the hospital load, for example, that the salespeople have in Australia vis-à-vis the U.S. Somebody like our very excellent lady in Sydney has got 27 hospitals she looks after, whereas the average in the U.S. might be 10. It's not because they're lazier. It's because when you start off, you start with no clients, so it builds up. As you start to sell, it enables you to then broaden your wings a bit and go further afield in terms of the number of hospitals you can get through.
I think Ed's then raising another layer to that as well, which is that two years ago, when we thought we were mainly burns company, you could go into UCLA, sell to the burn surgeon, come out, get in your car, drive to University of California, San Diego, for example. Now, that salesman will stay in the hospital, and he'll go down a floor to the diabetics unit. He'll go down a floor to where they're doing oncology burns. He'll go down a floor to where they're doing wounds and amputations and so forth. That's what Ed's talking about when he's going deeper in, into this. It's a fantastic opportunity for us, 'cause on the one hand, just to broaden the footprint so that we're in all sorts of places that we're not at the moment, is gonna be powerful enough.
The ability to go deeper, as I refer to it, follow the surgeons even better. If you just think about the opportunities for us in the States, I mean, it sounds big when we say 40 or going to 54 salesmen, but, you know, we've got somebody in Perth now. We've got somebody in Brisbane. And we're just talking this morning about putting in a second person potentially in order to just do North Queensland. In other words, even though we don't have a person in Idaho, which has got a population of 2 million, or in Wyoming, which has got a population of 600,000, I personally don't see that as any different than having somebody in Innisfail or in Perth or in Geraldton. You know? The opportunities for us are enormous in expanding that.
I'm going on a bit. I'll stop myself right there. Other questions, please. Thank you, Andrew.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Lyanne Harrison from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon all. David, Max, Jan and Ed. I've got a question for Ed, and it really follows on from, I guess, what Andrew was asking. In terms of the momentum seen in December and January, obviously, there's a lot of moving parts there with the United States, with Omicron, improving theater access, added headcount. What, in your view, has been that key driver of the growth that we've seen in December and January?
I think that it's simply that we've added more heads to the team over the course of the, you know, the end of the fiscal year last year, earlier in the fiscal year this year, and it's just being present in those accounts. You know, if you've got somebody that covers two, you know, a whole state, you can only be in certain parts of that state so many times. You can't just live in one part of the state 'cause the rest of the state won't see you. As the territories have gotten more contiguous and people can actually stay, as we've talked about, and go deeper into those accounts and establish better relationships within those accounts. So more people, better relationships, more surgeons, as David said, following the surgeons and where the opportunities are, has...
That's probably been the biggest factor that I've seen, is that just our ability to have a presence and stay present. Sales is a vacuum, right? If you're not there, somebody else is. Our goal is to make sure our people are there and that we're seen, and that we're thought about when they're taking patients back to the OR.
Yeah.
Coming back to going deeper then into those accounts, you know, if you look at, you know, the revenue per hospital that you're generating in the United States, you know, have we got to a point now where that is higher than what we saw pre-COVID? If so, how much higher is it given that you managed to go deeper into other units within the hospital?
I'd say that some hospitals are obviously we're able to go deeper in. We've established ourselves into some major burn centers and major trauma centers where there could be 25 potential surgeons who could use our product there. We may have gotten in during COVID, but we haven't really been able to expand beyond those initial surgeons because of COVID lockdowns, and they're not gonna really allow you to bring a new product in and spread it around the hospital if people aren't properly trained. If you're not allowed to go in and get trained, then you're not allowed to sell the product.
We have found ways around those in a number of different accounts, and places where we already are in, we've found ways to go, as I've been saying, go deeper and, with more different types of pathologies, like different types of wounds that we've been talking about. I mean, there's still a ton of opportunity. That's the whole thing. There isn't an account, in my opinion, that we are tapped out on. I think there's truly opportunity to continue to add to the teams and build a structure that can support the growth within each of those territories and within each of those hospitals.
Adding to that team, you know, there was talk about, you know, adding, you know, whether it's 10, 14 more sales reps, you know, and David mentioned as quickly as you can. What sort of timeframe are we looking at in reality? I'm just thinking this through in terms of when can we expect the revenue growth to come through, but also looking at the employment cost side of things and perhaps you and Jan can elaborate on that.
Yeah. I'll hire the right people when I find them. We've had territories that have been open for nine months, and it isn't because we haven't interviewed, it's just because we haven't interviewed and found the right person for that territory. Making a bad hire is very costly, and it's not something that we're willing to do. We've had other territories that were open for a week, and we were able to find multiple candidates within those territories.
One of the initiatives that my leadership team has is to always be interviewing and to make sure that we have not only a funnel of accounts, but that we have a funnel of people across the country that we can tap on the shoulder for either a territory that they're in or potentially move them to a territory if they're the right person to join our team. I expect out of those
Mm-hmm.
14 that we will, you know, we'll start to see those trickle in, you know, early. Some of them will be filled in early March already, and there will be others that-
Mm-hmm.
It'll just depend on our recruiter and finding the right people for those areas. It is a primary focus of the team.
Would you add a good majority of that 14, you know, this calendar year?
This fiscal year.
Is that the sort of timeframe we're looking at it?
Um-
Calendar, so till December this year. Or you think you'll get it in December.
Uh-
Fiscal year?
If I could get them all by the end of March, I would get them all by the end of March. Let's just put it that way.
Okay, but I'm trying to understand the likelihood of that happening. Is that
I-
Would you then, like, the likelihood of getting all 14 by the end of June, or should we be thinking more December?
Yeah. I would say June, give or take.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. On while we're on sales regions, you know, you're adding Canada to your in terms of market expansion. What's the size of the market there and how are you looking to enter that market and how do you go about you know getting penetration into Canada?
Yeah. We already have some penetration through what we call the special-
Mm-hmm.
Access that we've reported on. We've done a number of different cases up there through special access at three different hospitals. We're still discussing, as Max had mentioned earlier, the challenge of working with distributors sometimes. We're still discussing what we believe is gonna be the best focus for the country just because of the expanse of the geography itself. You know, the market at different pricing than the U.S., it's more in line with Australia. I think the potential is going to be, you know, probably. I wish I could remember the number. I'm not gonna just spout off a number 'cause I don't remember what I pulled up as the market potential. I apologize for that, but it's something I do have that we can get to you.
That's fine. We can follow up on that after the call. One final question for Jan is, you know, looking at corporate costs, obviously significant increase on prior corresponding period. If I look at it sequentially compared to the second half of 2021, corporate costs are down. How should we be thinking about it for, you know, second half 2022 and then into first half 2023?
I guess the first half we have had, I guess with professional fees has been one that has gone up.
Mm-hmm.
Our shareholder base has increased and our corporate registry fees increased as a result. Another really huge cost, well it's significant is D&O insurance, and we're looking at different ways of managing that like every other corporate. It is expensive. Also just with the business, the way it's expanded, you know, your general insurance, your ISR policy does go up. You have to insure your gross profit and we're making more gross profit now and so forth. As the business continues to grow, particularly in FY 2023, this will plateau. It's not gonna grow at the same rate as sales, obviously. We've had some one-off items that have occurred during the year as well, that won't be happening in the second half and or in FY 2023.
It is up on, I guess, in percentage terms and dollar terms, but it was meant to be an increase, it's budgeted. I'm not concerned about the rate of growth in that in those expenses.
Okay. My other question was sequentially compared to the direct half before, so compared to second half 2021,
Yeah.
Corporate costs and administration costs were down. In terms of that trend, would we expect it to be down in second half 2022 or would it start to go back up again?
I'd expect it to be slightly up, but then FY 2023 would start to plateau out.
Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Thanks.
Sorry, can I just embellish something, Lyanne, just on this issue about the 40-54 and I got the impression that you're gonna take a more pessimistic view about this than, say, the board is. You know, to be very clear, you know, Ed's instructions are to get those 54 on as quickly as possible, and he sort of intimated it, but he's got quite a few already of those people in the pipeline. Will he get to 54 by the end of March? Don't know. We certainly would love him to, and he knows that's his written instructions, but it's certainly not gonna be December.
Soon as he gets anywhere near that 54, he knows that, you know, what I'm gonna be telling him is, "How do we get that to 70 real quick?" You know, we're looking to keep this. We want this momentum to keep going because there are so many centers and jurisdictions that we're not covering and we wanna get that going as quickly as possible. The other thing I just wanna mention, Lyanne, which is really important, and we tend to gloss over, is how long does it take-
Between when you put a salesman on and when he, number one, covers his costs, and number two, gets up to AUD 1 million worth of turnover. Well, let's put the second one aside just for the moment. I think I've had this discussion with Ed, and he's super confident that when he puts a new salesman on, that it takes him about six months to train them, give them a call program, get them on the track, and for them to start, you know, generating enough sales to pay for themselves. Now it's important, I think that discussion, because we internally debate it and there is no right or wrong answer 'cause it's an individual thing. It's an important discussion when you look at expanding very quickly the headcount, because is it working capital?
Like, if I can prove to you that of the 40 people we've got, you know, each of them can be up and running and paying for themselves within 6 months, then it's working capital. In 6 months I've paid them AUD 50,000 worth of salary. As soon as they start generating, you know, the profits just fall straight to the bottom line. It's a really important thing just to concentrate on, is what's that delta between starting and being relevant.
Thanks, David. That's very helpful.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Rachael Harwood from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Just my first question is just around exit rates. I guess obviously Jan was the record month. How is Feb tracking and how are you seeing the COVID impacts in this half so far?
Sorry, was that question to Jan?
I think it's probably to you, Max, in terms of.
Oh, yeah.
You know, answer for Australia and Ed can answer for the U.S.
Okay. We've seen a very strong start in January. February is looking extremely positive. I think the thing that's very encouraging is the lumpiness seems to be not quite so lumpy anymore. Very strong November, very strong December, very strong January, a good solid February. There's no indication that we're seeing a slowdown in terms of momentum. I think that's what we're buoyed by. It's our largest market. You know, we're not expecting record on record every month. Ed, would you like to make a comment? We really don't wanna get into month by month sales reporting. You know, it's starting to look very consistent.
Yeah. I would agree with that. I think one of the questions you asked was about COVID. It's still very regionalized, right? It moves a little bit. We've watched it go from New England down to, you know, across the Midwest. Where it spiked, we may have had a little bit of challenges getting in, but we still had customers maybe using the product, just weren't able to get in as much as we wanted to. Like Max said, we're starting to see that kinda come to an end. This team has been extremely resilient in the face of COVID and the unpredictability that COVID has provided us as an organization.
If you look at where we were two years ago and you look at where we are now, and it's been two years of COVID doubt, this team has been able to achieve a number of different things, and that's what we expect of them. That's that they're very accountable for their actions. They know what they need to go do, and they find a way to do it. That's what we continue to ask of them and what they continue to deliver on.
I think just to add to that, the big indicator for us is we're back to face-to-face conferences. We're back to having access. I think the world is learning to live with COVID, and that open access and that face-to-face conferences, having people actually on the podium, that's what we need to have. We're seeing that right across the globe. We're seeing it in the U.K. at the moment. You know, the U.K. is starting to look much stronger in terms of account acquisition. We're gonna have a very strong February there. We're bullish about how we're coping with COVID, and we're also bullish with how the world is starting to cope with COVID. There's still a big backlog in terms of surgery that's gonna help.
Yeah, we believe that we're coming into a good half.
I think the other thing, Rachael, that's clear in my mind is that in the early days this was a very lumpy business. To some extent it's still a little bit lumpy. The more hospitals we get and the more jurisdictions we're in, it's just evening it out. It's not that we're any better at our job, it's just that by definition, the more hospitals you have and the more regions you're in, it's gonna become much more predictable. That's within that, when you dig into it, you'll get salesmen who had fantastic sales last month, but not this month. Across the board as an average, we're gonna. This will turn into a much more predictable model.
That's great. Maybe another one for Ed. How are you seeing the sales through the GPO network progressing? I guess with this new Matrix product, will this also be able to be sold through the existing GPO network?
I'll answer the second question. Yeah. We just were talking about that this week, and one of the things we'll do is as we go to get FDA approval, we can't do anything till we get the FDA approval for the product. We will start to go sit back down with those, with our GPO contacts and start to talk about moving this product onto the current GPO. It should be a much easier process. We'll have to obviously make sure we provide the clinical data that they want to go along with the product, but I think there will be an opportunity to do that. What was your first question? Part of the question again? I'm sorry.
The first part was just around how they're tracking the existing sales through the network at the moment.
Since we moved someone into the role, we saw a 68% increase in revenue in our GPO IDN partners Q2 over Q1. We're seeing more and more activity in our partnership within the GPOs, with their key people and hooking them up with our key people. Having somebody just strictly focused on that has certainly seen that number start to rise quarter-over-quarter, which is exactly what I would expect.
I can add a bit to this because I looked at the numbers in detail this morning myself, and about, it's roughly, I can't remember whether it's 10 or 12%, but at roughly 10% of our sales in the U.S. to GPO hospitals. It's early days. We're just scratching the surface. I think we need to realize that even though it's a big help for us when a surgeon decides to order, that we still have the hard work to do to go and make sure that the surgeon knows who we are and what we are.
That's great. Thanks for that. Just moving on to cash flow, I guess one for Jan, maybe. I guess the cash flow was down this half, and you expect to expand headcount pretty aggressively. Do you expect to be able to fund this, I guess, through existing debt and then the sale and leaseback alone?
Absolutely. No concern over that at all. As I mentioned during my presentation, we're in a similar position we were last year where we had a loss for the half, and then we came home with a really strong result and an underlying break even. There's no reason why the pattern's not gonna continue. You can see the early indicators with the January sales being AUD 4 million for the group. If I look back at, you know, for example, U.S. sales right back through to October, there's outstanding results.
That's gonna help significantly on top of the hires that we've made with cash flow and ending with AUD 3.3 million and add on another AUD 3 million from the building that we can use, and then a reduction in the P&I payments because we pay down debt, I'd say around AUD 50K a year. It puts us in a good position. There's no concern at this end about cash on hand.
That's great. Just last question from me, I guess, R&D spend was up this half. How should we think about this, in the balance of the second half 2022, and then just going forward, just given the number of clinical trials ongoing?
Sure. We've made a number of hires in the first half. You know, that will have an annualized effect moving forward. The number of projects we are working on, you know, we expect the cost to increase a little bit in the second half and also in FY 2023 as we build out our projects and work on our pipeline.
I guess just to add to that, though, Jan, in terms of the clinical trials, our reimbursement from BARDA will be increasing quite dramatically as well, as a result of the recruitment of patients, et cetera.
That's right. The DFU trial as well, Max, sorry. A 138 patient DFU trial is to kick off soon. That runs for, well, just over a year. That's a cost that will hit the R&D line. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, that's great. Thanks very much for taking my questions.
No worries.
Thank you. Your next question comes from John Copley from ENP. Please go ahead.
Hi, team. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking the questions. I just wanted to dig deeper on your profitability and the return on each dollar spent to grow sales. As the top line growth is impressive, but when I look at total sales, less adjusted employee and general and admin expenses, the margin this half did fall back to about 3.8% from 14.4% the prior half. 3.8% is pretty well in line with what we've seen since about first half FY 2019, including even during COVID, when your sales growth was constrained. You know, for this reason, it seems as though PolyNovo hasn't seen a great return on each additional dollar spent to drive sales growth. When do you expect the return on the new operating expenditure will improve?
I think, as I mentioned before, and I see what you're saying, John, and nice to hear from you. You know, we're in a similar position to last year, so we expect the second half to come in pretty strong. We've seen that, as I just mentioned, with AUD 4 million in sales. I know you're looking at the actual metrics itself, but in terms of how things play out, it's FY 2023 that will be the really interesting year, I believe. You know, we apply the growth rate that we've achieved on sales to date to where we end up at the end of the full year for FY 2022, that becomes a large number in revenue in FY 2023, and it's achievable.
To give you an example, before we go into the metrics, which I understand what you're looking at, but you look at the headroom we've got. We've got 160 hospitals now in the U.S., and there's 220 level one trauma hospitals. There's the mid-tier trauma hospitals. There's 136 burn centers. There's actually 6,000 hospitals in the U.S., so we've got a long way to go. I guess my point is, you know, FY 2023 will be a really interesting year for the company. I think, you know, in terms of profitability, it'll be something that we'd be happy to achieve more so than what we've done to date in terms of breaking even.
Let me just add to that. I looked at each of the employees in the States this morning, a full list of them, and I'm sort of making a little bit of it up 'cause I can't remember exactly the numbers, but the bottom 4 who've just come on have got $0 sales. Within the next 6 months will, you know, significantly increase. There's probably another 6 that have been on recently that are in the sort of like $20,000-$10,000 sales for the month. There's a lot of people that have come into the system, new salesmen, that are just getting their training wheels off. We should get a big uplift on those people in the second half.
John, we're gonna be chasing our tails because as we just heard, Ed's got another 14 coming through the pipeline, and they take about a good six months to you know, to get their training wheels off and get to cover their costs and get their first good sales in the door.
Yeah. I think one of the very interesting metrics is if you look at the U.S. at the moment, and this is just an average number, you're looking at an average territory manager carrying about four accounts on average. You look in New South Wales, we've got somebody handling 27 accounts. Ed's already set himself a target of 10 accounts minimum per representative once they're up and running. That's the huge productivity gains that we're going to get over time. We had a choice to make. One was to wait and get the productivity gains and then start again or continually flow and continually build, and we've opted for continually flow and continually build.
We've put an infrastructure in to support those people now, and we're feeling very, very confident that that infrastructure is getting them, A, productive earlier, B, able to handle more accounts, and C, get into more departments.
Okay. Thank you. The reason I asked for a timeframe is because it's difficult then to get the cash flows to work with the existing cash balance, unless, of course, you do see some quite material uplift in that margin, probably by the latest first half 2023. Do you think then by that stage we would start to see some material uplift, that is first half FY 2023?
Yes, John. You've got to realize as well the auditors wouldn't sign off on going concern after seeing the modeling that we do if there was an issue. Yeah, expect to see an uplift in the first half of 2023.
I think we're seeing an uplift month-over-month. That's the point.
Yeah.
Because you've got you guys coming on all the time. You know, we've just put somebody on in Perth. Okay, well, fine, what do you expect the sales to be? Well, we actually do have some, but, you know, it's gonna be a good year before I see her get anywhere near AUD 500 or AUD 750, you know? But at a zero base, you know. We're gonna see that uplift. We are seeing that uplift.
Yeah.
November, December, January. I think they're material uplifts already and we've still got probably a quarter of our sales force in the U.S., you know, in a sense, finding their feet. I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but you know, getting up the learning curve and getting their call programs going.
Okay. No, look, I appreciate that. Thank you for all the detail there. Still, given the cash position is very tight, are you able to give some additional guidance as to what we should expect in second half for cash flows? Particularly as well, you know, while we are here on this issue, also some guide as to what the total lease repayment would be, assuming your sale and leaseback is successful. Thank you.
Alright, f irst question, sale and leaseback. P&I repayments are currently AUD 168,000 a month. We're gonna be paying off a big chunk of them, the outstanding debt with the equipment finance facility. It's likely to come down to about AUD 110,000 a month. Actually, a little bit more. It's AUD 750,000 saving on P&I for the year after we apply the AUD 3 million.
Yeah.
Our forecast cash position for the end of the year. We think we're gonna end up, well, we know, based on the modeling, it's been viewed by many, as we said earlier, we're expecting to have a strong second half and similar to the situation to where we were last year. Remember last year, we ended up with the same cash on hand that we did started with at the start of the half, as we did at the end of the half. Now we're hoping to do a little bit better than that. On top of that, we've got the building sale proceeds to be added.
Yeah.
Does that make sense, John?
Yes.
The building aside.
Although when, you know.
Yeah.
AUD 3 million of that has to be used to pay down debt.
Yeah. The three down-
If I'm right, AUD 6.7, isn't it? Total proceeds.
AUD 6.35. We'll pay AUD 3 off the debt, and the lease is AUD 3.35. The lease is in the release today. It's 4.3% on AUD 6.35. That's pretty much it.
Yeah. I mean, the building aside, the business is gonna end up. We forecast it with slightly more cushion where we currently are at the end of the financial year.
Okay.
You add in the building.
Thank you.
With that AUD 3 million that's added on.
Yeah.
Is that clear, John?
Okay. Just one final thing while we are on this topic as well, 'cause it is an important one. You know, the cash position is incredibly tight. You have mentioned in the past the potential for some licensing deals, which might include an equity stake in the company or some, you know, upfront milestone payments. Particularly, I note, David, you have an existing relationship, you know, based on your website, with China Grand Pharma. Are you able to comment there at all?
No. There is interest in our product and our company though from a number of people.
Yeah. No, look, I don't doubt it. Thank you. I guess then there's nothing really near term that we can point to regarding a, an upfront milestone payment or anything of that type, right? Nothing we should be thinking about in our model, I mean.
Even if there was, John, and it was happening tomorrow, which I would define as near term, what would you expect me to say today? Look, put it this way.
I don't know. Might be helpful to work out whether.
Just in terms of cash.
or not.
Yeah. Just in terms of cash, forget about China Grand or Japanese or other people that have been sniffing around. We're relaxed about our position regardless of what might or might not happen with that. We have no pressure whatsoever from our bank. It's really in our court and we're relaxed about it and that. There are quite a number of initiatives going on around the world and, you know, who knows?
Oh, hang on just one more from me then. Since you bring it up, you mentioned no pressure from the bank at all, but the bank is requiring a AUD 3 million repayment, and I note the current portion of that equipment finance lease is AUD 1.5 million. Can you help me to understand that, please?
Well, I'll answer that. Look, the bank. We went to the bank. The bank had no pressure on us whatsoever. They're very happy with their position. We said, "We're thinking about doing certain things with our capital, and one of them might be a sale and leaseback because we've been offered a profitable deal that'll help us sign the leases." They said, "Well, we're happy to do that, but if you're gonna pay down, if you're gonna get all that cash in, then we want a bit of it ourselves." Without that, there was no pressure whatsoever. It was in our court 100%. We've created that ourselves, and frankly, we don't want that expensive money.
I was very happy to pay AUD 3 of it down and use the rest of it as working capital.
John, this is the sale of the building was upside to our modeling and where we were planning and what we're planning for the rest of the year. It's not something we had to do or were forced to do. We wanted to take control of the building, and we're not in the real estate business either, and we made a tidy profit.
Okay. Thank you all.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to your speakers for closing remarks.
Thank you. I'll just make the closing remark just to thank everybody. Well, first of all, thank my own team on screen and off. Thank shareholders in particular for staying around, and I think you'll be rewarded very quickly. Thank you for staying with us.