Thank you and welcome everybody. As we've got a quorum present, I declare the 2021 annual general meeting of PolyNovo open. I'm David Williams, the Chairman of PolyNovo. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to you all, and especially our shareholders who are participating through this online platform. Let me start by introducing my fellow directors. I hope you can see them on the screen, but I've got Dr. Robyn Elliott, and I'll ask him just to do a little wave. Christine Emmanuel, Andy Lumsden, who joined the board in June this year, and I'll get him to say a few words when we come to his election. Mr. Bruce Rathie. He's up for re-election this year as well, I'll get him to say a few words. Dr.
David McQuillan, who's in from the U.S., and Mr. Leon Ho. I would also like to introduce our Managing Director, Paul Brennan, who'll be talking later, and our CFO, Company Secretary, Jan Gielen. We also have on the line Ashley Butler and Ross Burt from our auditors, Ernst & Young, and Bart Oude-Vrielink from the company's lawyers, MinterEllison. As we are holding the meeting virtually this year, as last year, if we experience any technical difficulties, I propose to hand over the chair, or he'll take it without me handing it over to Bruce Rathie. Let me talk about the notice of meeting. The notice of meeting was dispatched to shareholders in compliance with the company's constitution, and is also available from our ASX announcement. I take the notice of meeting as read.
Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. To provide you with enough time to vote, I'll open the voting right now on all resolutions. If you are eligible to vote at this meeting, a new voting tab will appear. Selecting this tab will bring up a list of resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to hit a submit or an enter button, as the vote is automatically recorded. You can change your vote at any time as the meeting progresses until the end of the meeting, and I will give you notice at the end of the meeting, fair warning about when I intend to close the voting. I'd like to appoint Angela Liapis from Computershare Investor Services as the Returning Officer.
Results will be compiled and released to the ASX after the conclusion of the meeting. There'll be no need for us to all hang around. It'll take Angela and her team a few minutes to do all that, and they'll be subsequently released to the ASX. Questions can be submitted at any time. To ask a question, select the messaging tab at the top of the Lumi platform. At the top of the tab, there is a section for you to type your questions. Once you have finished typing, please hit the arrow symbol to send. For those shareholders who wish to ask a verbal question, an audio question facility is also available during the meeting. To use this service, please pause the broadcast on the Lumi platform, then click on the link under Asking Audio Questions.
A new page will open where you'll be prompted to enter your name and the topic of your question before being connected. You will then listen to the meeting on this page while waiting to ask your question. If you have any issues using this system, please return to the Lumi platform. Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will not address them until the appropriate time. Please also note that your questions will be moderated by our company secretary, Jan Gielen, and amalgamated if we've got multiple questions on the same topic. If we run out of time, which I doubt, but if we run out of time, then we'll answer them, after the event, either by email or I'll call you myself personally. Let me go on to the financial statements.
Item one on the notice of meeting is to receive and consider the annual financial statements for the 12 months ended June 30, 2021 for the company and its controlled entities with the reports of directors and auditors. Are there any questions with respect to the financial report of the company's auditors? Angela.
No questions, David.
We've got none, Jan?
Thank you. No questions, Dave.
If there are no questions, I'll consider the financial report and directors and auditors' reports received and adopted. Let me. I propose to say a few words myself, then introduce Paul, who will say a few words about the year just passed and the year ahead. We'll go onto the formal part of the meeting.
As is my want, I'd just like to make a few editorial comments about the year just passed and the year ahead, without taking too much of Paul's thunder. I think everybody on this call needs no prompting as to what the effects of COVID have been on the hospital system worldwide. Not just in this country, but in every country we operate. It's the place where we do our business, in hospitals with surgeons, and it's been a disastrous year for hospitals whichever way you look at it. Trying to get into a hospital, trying to get a surgeon, trying to get elective surgery done. I think there's none of us that won't have a war story, either from our own family or others, who couldn't even get in to see a loved one that was dying.
In that context, I think everybody should be able to appreciate the difficulties that lay in front of us. In this year just past, FY 2021. Standing here a year ago, giving the annual general meeting for FY 2020, and I talked then about the problems ahead, who could have imagined the difficulties? Who could have imagined, even if you're in Australia, that Victoria and New South Wales might have been closed two months ago? This is what we faced as a business, and it's easy to see that a year back from where we sit today, that it could have easily been a disaster for us. But the results were magnificent by anybody's standards. You know, we had growth in the U.S. of 49%. We had growth in the EU, over 50%.
We had growth in Australia of 25%, with all of the problems about getting surgeons and getting into hospitals. How do we do that? How do we come to do that? We clearly had to pivot. In many hospitals, there is no entry. Sometimes it's patchy. We didn't know where it was. Maybe they were closed in Louisiana this month, but Florida next month. Maybe they were closed in New South Wales this month, but not in Victoria. We had to pivot very quickly as a team, and we met surgeons outside of hours, outside of hospitals, emails, phone calls, but more particularly, made a very, very good effort with webinars.
For those of you who haven't seen it, please do yourself a favor and go onto our website and have a look at some of the key opinion leader videos we've got, not just used for you as shareholders, but for training for medical purposes. You'll be blown away, I'm sure, about what that's done. Standing here a year ago at the FY 2020 AGM, I talked about things like sales not really having taken off in the U.K. yet. We had people on the ground. We had people on the ground in Germany, and that was going quite well. One of the things I mentioned, slightly tongue in cheek, but I meant it at the time, was that the leading indicator of sales in these markets is clinical trials.
We had six or eight going, if I remember rightly, in the U.K. We had 30 going in Western Europe. I said at the time, and I meant it, that maybe people are keeping things from me, but I haven't seen a trial happen where the doctor at the end of it, the surgeon at the end of it, doesn't say, "I'm gonna use this now. The results are spectacular. I'm extremely happy with them." And that is in fact what happened.
Even though a year ago I was bemoaning the fact that we were paying our reps in Ireland and in England, and the sales weren't as fast as I would've hoped, in this last year, and more particularly just in the last three months, you'll see the release we put out the other day, but the U.K. sales were up 300%. The EU sales were roughly up 200%. The U.S., on the other hand, was still patchy, up 21%. All in all, I think the results for FY 2021 and also for the 1st three months of this year have been spectacular. They're not the 100% type growth we saw in 2020, but look what we had to face. At the same time, this is coming off.
We're growing, and we're building the infrastructure for the future. We've continued to sign distributors. In this year, we signed Finland, we signed Taiwan, we've signed Belgium, The Netherlands, Greece, Turkey, Poland, Italy. We're about to sign, we hope, Cyprus and Czech Republic, and we've clearly got in our sights for next calendar year, places like France and Canada, and we've done a lot of audit work on Canada to get in there in the next 12 months and so forth. We've continued to build our distributors. We've continued to build our accounts. Our accounts are up 56% year-on-year in terms of new hospitals we're selling to. We've continued to build our staff. In the U.S. alone, for example, I think we've put on six or seven in the last four months.
They're now trained and going into new jurisdictions and so forth. Whilst we've there’s been plenty of headwinds that come with COVID, we know it's coming off. We're still getting fantastic growth rates, but we're sort of building for the future so that when it really does come off, we're gonna go pretty hard. I think the other thing that's happened this year that people should think about is that, you know, two years ago, we just talked about burns and we've started to talk about wounds. The use of the BTM is now across the board. You're seeing it used in amputations, you're seeing it used in venous leg ulcers, in diabetic foot ulcers. You're seeing it used in all sorts of burns and wounds and cosmetics.
We're getting to the stage where we can no longer afford to have one of our salesmen going to, let's say, for example, University of California, Los Angeles Hospital, seeing the burns or wounds surgeon coming out and then going to the hospital at University of California, San Diego. We've now got a reason why they can go from one floor to the next. Go and see the guy in diabetics. Go and see the guy in oncology. Go and see the guy in amputations, et cetera, et cetera. The breadth of our product range and how it's being grasped by the surgeons, oftentimes on their own, not oftentimes because we've driven it proactively, but because they've driven it proactively.
I point you to our website, which again will blow you away, used widely by doctors. As a consequence of that, we had a pretty good year financially, and you'll see I've already noted this in the last time I talked to you, but you know, we've now stuck our head up into profits. If you take out the non-cash items in terms of share-based payments and FX and so forth, we just broke even. For a company that didn't really have a product four years ago, we didn't have any sales, you know, to be in a position where we've got significant growth in sales and tapping on the door of profitability, I think is a magnificent achievement for us.
I can go on for some time, but, sorry. The other thing I should have said, 'cause there is still talk, loose talk about do we need a capital raising and so forth, but, you know, if you're making profits, that speaks for itself. If you looked at our December cash balance at bank versus our June 30th cash balance at bank, it was actually slightly up, not down. We're not the typical, you know, burn rate that you're gonna see with a lot of startups, notwithstanding we're spending money, a lot of money on R&D now and on clinical trials and the like.
I thought one thing I might just do, and this is a bit of a risk for me, but there's a lot of talk around about our share price and I suppose the loosest talk I get is from people who say, "Gee, David, what happened to the share price? It was AUD 4 a couple of months ago, and now it's AUD 2." I just wanted to not to turn this into a corporate finance lecture, but perhaps just give you something to think about. What I've got is a graph here which has two things on it. The blue graph is the short position in our stock. The blue graph is people who have shorted our stock. Typically people who don't own the stock.
They've come to somebody like you, but more likely a big institution said, "Can I borrow your stock, and I'll pay you a sort of return on interest for it?" They borrow the stock, and they sell it. They sell it because they're betting against the stock. They think the share price is gonna come down. That's the blue line. I'll come back to it in a moment. The green line is what's happened to our share price. Just for your interest, I thought you might just like to reflect on this. On the left-hand side of this graph is roughly where we had our AGM last year. As you can see, I've got the share price on the right-hand axis and the short selling percentage on the left-hand axis.
On the right-hand axis, you'll see that at last year's AGM, the share price was roughly, as you can see there, depending on when our AGM was, but let's say AUD 2.50 just for argument's sake. As you can see, if you follow that green line up, it goes up in a very short period of time up to sort of mid-January sort of thing, and it hits AUD 4. Then it comes off significantly back down to around AUD 2.50, where it bounces around a bit, goes up slightly, comes down a bit, and then more recently in July, August, September of this year, as you can see, it comes off the AUD 2.50 and it goes down to just below AUD 2 where it is today.
What I wanted you to do is just see what's happening to our short stock, because I think people look at that AUD 4 and thought, "Well, gee, what happened to the fundamentals of the business? You know, did the business fall in a hole?" No. As you can see on the blue line, at last year's AGM, we were 6% or 7% shorted. That is, somebody had borrowed some stock, sold it to somebody and we were something like 7% of our stock short sold. Now, that's people betting against the stock. Now, I can't read exactly off this we're at 6.5 or 7 or what, but it's a big number. At that stage it was probably pretty close to a top 10 shortest stock on the ASX.
The meeting itself was quite bullish because we had very good growth in the U.S., and so I imagine, this is me guessing, that some of those people who had shorted the stock thought, "Gee, I'm gonna have to buy back that stock pretty quick, because I'm gonna have to give it back to the person that I borrowed it on." What they start doing is they start buying stock back in the market, and as you can see, the blue line drops off very quickly. People are buying back their stock in order to repay it, no doubt. As you can see, it goes from over 6% in a month and a half down to just under 2%. Now, imagine how much stock you have to buy back if you're 6% or 7% short.
To buy 5%-6% of a billion-dollar plus company, you're in the market probably trying to buy AUD 60 million - AUD 70 million worth of stock. What does that do? It drives the share price up. The share price spike to AUD 4 is much about because of this buying back of the shorters trying to cover their position, and then it gets down under 2%. By that stage, the stock's AUD 4. Shorters are now looking at it again going, "Gee, this is too expensive.
I might sell some of those at AUD 4 on the hopes that I can buy them back at AUD 2 or AUD 3 or whatever it happens to be." What happens then is you start selling again as the blue line rises, and as you can see, it goes all the way up past 5% and it drives the share price down again. I can go through this for the whole year, but I don't wanna turn it into a corporate finance lecture, but what I wanted to just show to you is that there's quite a few people betting on the ups and downs of this stock, and particularly on the downs, and that is causing quite a lot of volatility in the market.
Now, in our own time, we can have a much longer discussion about where the price really should be, what could you read out of that, and so forth. Don't think that we got to AUD 4 and somehow, you know, the company didn't perform. You can see with your own eyes what's happening in terms of people buying and selling shares and what it's doing to the share price. These numbers are huge in companies worth AUD 1 billion plus. You know, trying to buy AUD 50 million, AUD 60 million, AUD 100 million worth of shares in the market can only have one effect. All right.
As I said, I didn't want to turn that into a corporate finance lecture, but I just wanted to top and tail what I had to say about what I think has been a fantastic year for FY 2021, and what I think has started off very well for FY 2022. I hope I haven't taken too much of Paul's script, but I'd now like to introduce you to Paul Brennan, the Managing Director of PolyNovo. Paul.
Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for your attendance at this AGM. Virtual AGMs are very different in interaction, and we always enjoy the face-to-face personal touch. I'm looking forward to next year when we can be in one room with all of you again, and we can have some of those chats that I'm used to. They're very enjoyable. The past year, as David said, has been very challenging, not just for us, but for everybody in society. Running a global business from a remote base is not easy. Despite these challenges, we've had a lot of positive news and achievements with our team growth and our rapid and significant changes in the way in which we conduct the business.
I think in summary, the highlights for 2021, and I'll get to 2022 shortly, but just to recap on last year. With the U.S. up 49%, distribution sales in Europe up 53%. We doubled the U.S. sales team. We're currently doubling the U.K. Irish team. We completed the unit one factory build and the commissioning of all those new production machines, and we've expanded the R&D team and also the production teams. That's led us to have the ability to manufacture several thousand Syntrel hernia devices, which are being used in laboratory and animal studies. Capping all of that off, we returned a small profit, excluding the non-cash items.
I think by any measure, that's an outstanding result in a pandemic when you consider that this time last year in the U.S., there were 4,000 deaths a day. Today in the media, that's 1,200 deaths a day in the U.S. It's a significant improvement. Sales revenue for FY 2021 was AUD 25.5 million for NovoSorb BTM sales, another 3.7 in BARDA funding for the pivotal clinical trial, which totaled AUD 29.3 million. Now the revenues for FY 2022 have started strongly, particularly at June. July, August was strong and September was a bit softer. The group revenue for that first quarter is AUD 8.05 million. Further, we're having high volume growth in purchase orders. The small and intermediate products are taking more of a percentage pie.
Our large 20 by 40 sheets in our total revenue now are making up around 47%. That's a positive trend in that we need to get more sustainable, predictable revenues from elective surgery and the smaller cases because their volume is significantly higher. It's encouraging to see these sizes grow. I'll cover all the regions separately shortly. This increase in our number of accounts, the geographical spread, the expansion of the sales team, these are all the fundamentals that are giving us confidence and certainty that as we go forward, we do have a strong business that post-COVID will continue to grow very strongly in the rebound. It's been a rapid journey over the last five years and a significant need for change.
Our team have grown, and the talent and capacity within the team will continue to improve. The U.S. business itself, they achieved a growth in FY 2021 against that COVID backdrop, and the impact on the hospital system was significant, and yet they grew the U.S. sales by 49%, doubled the sales team, signed three GPOs, and opened 44 new accounts. That's a very impressive outcome for a team who very quickly got shut down in the lockdowns that you've all been experiencing. What these numbers do not show is the pivot our team made in their approaches. That includes recruitment, induction of staff, training, surgeon and customer engagement, clinical support, trade shows moving online, and webinar development. All of this happened in a very short space of time and very effectively. These activities remain staples of the business ongoing.
They're part of our new environment of how you do business, and it's a very positive change for the long term. This pandemic is abating, and as we go forward with increasing hospital access, we will continue to have some challenges from the Delta variant in the unvaccinated population, and we're seeing that particularly in Southern U.S. and more recently this week in Wyoming, Montana and Alaska. Thankfully those three states are not pivotal for our business and sparsely populated. July and August were good sales performing months, and September, as I said, was a little bit softer. The number of purchase orders is significantly growing.
The first quarter of FY 2022, the U.S. team have added another 16 new accounts and a record number of purchase orders of, in September, 131 individual purchase orders, which is a really good trend to see and sets us up well for the future. We'll continue to work on further GPO agreements. We have moved Kevin Hays into focusing directly on GPOs. We've also built a series of internal financial dashboards tracking GPO activity against CRM activity, et cetera. The U.S. Diabetic Foot Ulcer Trial for reimbursement has completed the 1st 10 patients, and out of that, within six weeks, seven of the 10 patients had complete closure, which is an outstanding result. The remaining three patients showed significant rates of closure but had not reached full closure, and this is normal in diabetic foot ulcer physiology.
The surgeons involved are extremely excited about the product. The next phase that we will do in this is finalizing the CRO and protocol to go to ethics committees, and we anticipate to enroll the patients in early 2022, and those patients will be concluded in about a seven-month period. We'll meet our goal of reimbursement submissions in advance of 2024. As a part of the pivotal trial, we have two patients currently enrolled, but we've got 16 active sites, and we've got another four in the U.S. about to come on stream, and then we will start on the five Canadian sites being contracted in. We still anticipate this process take three years, but both BARDA and ourselves are very pleased with the progress of this trial.
For Australia and New Zealand, the border closure's been extremely difficult with travel. However, we've adjusted to this with employing Penny Crawford in Western Australia, and that's enabled us to grow our Western Australian business. We've continued our growth in New Zealand despite the lockdowns. The Australian hospital capacity for particularly New South Wales and Victoria looks like it's going to be re-constrained to some extent probably till March 2022. However, we've still seen good sales and good performance in some significant hospitals throughout the lockdown period. We've also had significant growth in the private hospital market in elective surgeries in a wide range of indications, and this is fantastic work and effort, and I'd like to call out Lyndal Jones, our salesperson in New South Wales, in particular for her spectacular efforts in her account acquisitions there.
As I said, we've increased the sales team in Victoria and Western Australia with the addition of Chloe Van Staden in Victoria, and we anticipate further growth in Australia and New Zealand on the rebound of COVID opening up. For Asia, I'll start with Singapore, where we go direct. What's been very interesting in Singapore is the high use in elective surgeries. There's a wide range of chronic and acute elective surgery wounds where we're having very good uptake in Singapore. We've even got Singaporean surgeons on the cusp of publishing some of their results of their use of BTM in the last 12 months. Very good performance in Singapore, but we don't see large burns in Singapore. It's a very controlled environment. If anybody's been to Singapore, they'll be aware of that.
Taiwan has achieved sales already, and we've introduced the 5x5 size to Taiwan, and they see great opportunity for the chronic wound space in Taiwan. I should add those 5x5s are also on sale in the U.K. and Ireland at the moment, and Italy and Germany have also taken on the 5x5s. India with Myovatec Surgical Systems as a distributor have delivered sales in the north, and what we're working on there is the opportunity to partner with some other distributors in the south to reach some of the areas where Myovatec Surgical Systems have been slow to advance our market penetration. We're looking at how we can augment and accelerate our Indian business, and we'll keep you abreast of that as we move forward.
There will be other markets coming on stream, as David's alluded to, and Cyprus and Czech Republic are soon. We are obviously still working on some of the others with the terms of the distribution and the capacity of those distributors in other markets, and we'll announce those in due course. The distributor sales for FY 2021 were up 53%, and the strong growth in Europe in very difficult COVID conditions has been very good. Life in Europe is relatively normal. Our U.K. team report really the only time they wear a mask now is getting on a plane, and their life is normal, and they're in theaters. They're doing face-to-face trade shows. They've even gone to trade shows in Finland in the last couple of months and getting some leads.
We will have some further expansion on the back of all of this in France, Spain, and Portugal, being our high priority markets. We're looking forward to bringing those on stream. Our manufacturing facility here in Unit 1 has been completed and all the machines validated. I'd like to thank all of our team here at PolyNovo, particularly the R&D team who have had to learn some pretty amazing engineering skills in the last year, to commission these machines. It hasn't been an easy process, but these are now up and running and working and manufacturing finished goods essentially. For our research and development pipeline, with the Syntrel VP, we've manufactured several thousand of these products for validation purposes, and they're being used in a big study at the moment, which is in progress.
The data from this study will support not only the Hernia device, but also breast and many other devices that might be a NovoSorb foam and film combination. Research and development is not a straightforward process, so the purpose of these studies is to look at the performance in a clinical setting in their intended use, but also misuse. The things that we discover in these trials will inform what we do with product designs, but also it might give us opportunity for new products that we might not have considered. For the breast product development, we'll benefit from a lot of the learnings of the Hernia studies. We've employed a dedicated marketer to assist in gathering end user design inputs, and we're establishing an advisory board on that design input from the clinical interface.
We'll provide a more detailed time estimate, probably in the half-year results period in February. For the beta cell diabetes program, the beta cell team in South Australia inform us that they will be starting the human trials of type one diabetes and the use of NovoSorb as a depot for islet cell implantation, and that trial will start within the next two months. They've identified the types of patients they'll be using. Pardon me. Which are patients who are type one diabetics who've had a renal transplant and are immunosuppressed. That decomplicates the analysis of results because their underlying condition is already a solid baseline. The Adelaide team will keep us informed, but they've got their funding secured from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation of the USA, so that's moving along quite well.
We're also looking at launching NovoSorb foam, just as a foam product, for use in cavities, wounds and tissue layering. It would also enable us to have what's called a one-stage closure, where you could put a 1 millimeter thick piece of foam on a freshly debrided area and put a skin graft immediately over the top. There's no sealing membrane on this and it's an exciting market opportunity for us, and we're in the early days of that project. I'm happy to take questions at the end. I'll hand back to David. Thank you all for your support, and particularly thank you to all the PolyNovo staff and teams who have really stepped up to the plate during lockdown and with travel restrictions and all the traumas that this brings. They've done a spectacular job.
Even though sometimes we haven't hit everything that every analyst in the world would like us to hit, I'm very proud of the achievements of the PolyNovo team. Thank you, David, back to you.
Thank you, Paul. Jan, you're filtering the questions as they come in, verbal or otherwise.
Thank you.
Are there any questions for Paul or myself?
There is. There's five questions at the moment. The 1st question, what is the target budgeted expected annual revenue for this financial year?
I might let Paul or you answer that.
Well, Jan, perhaps, as CFO.
Sure. I can answer that. Thought I'd throw it to you 1st. We haven't put out a number as such. As you know, we don't disclose that, and because in terms of growth, if we look at last year, as I mentioned with the full year results, we're looking at significantly having an uplift on that growth rate that we achieved during FY 2021. If that helps. We haven't disclosed our revenue target for this year. There are analyst reports out there that you can refer to.
Those analyst reports cover a range that we're very comfortable with, and that's the goal to meet those targets.
There we go.
All right.
Next question.
Yep.
Regarding the DFU trial and the anticipated date of 2024 submission to insurers for reimbursement, would you please provide more details about the timeline, when trials are expected to be completed and when 1st sales are expected, and help explain why this timeline is so far out?
Yep, Paul.
Well, as I said, we'd be starting the DFU trial of patients. There'll be 100 patients in that next arm. It takes seven months, so that should be completed sometime around September 2022. Those results then get compiled or followed up, and health economic studies get written, clinical studies get written, then they get submitted to the insurers. Currently, the way the reimbursement insurance system works in the U.S. is that you have to have all your data in by October. Our goal is to get it in by October 2022 if possible, and that may bring that timeline forward. There are nine insurers, so in total it could be anywhere throughout calendar year 2023 that we could achieve reimbursement sales.
It's really in the hands of the insurers and how they process their meetings and the products that they're reviewing. It'll be some time in calendar year 2023. The start of 2024, we should definitely be having sales in market by 2024. That's why that timeline said, but it may be earlier.
Thank you.
Right. Thanks, Paul. Next question. Notwithstanding sensational margins, can you talk about what, if any, movement you can foresee going forward?
What do you mean by movement?
Well, I think the question is more around margins and if that will change 'cause they're quite high at the moment, and I can help answer that question. If you like, Paul. Margins will-
Yeah. Feel free, yeah.
Yeah. Oh, margins will, you know, expect to be as they have been for the year that's just passed. We expect that to occur for the half and for the full year. We're increasing, you know, some prices in the U.S., which does have an uplift in margin impact, and the U.S. is the biggest market overall. Keeping that in mind. Distributor sales are at a slightly lower margin, but still quite really high. Overall it'll be a mixed bag, but it will retain. I think we'll retain a high margin in the low 90s% to mid-90s% over the short to medium term.
We are working on yield and waste reductions and some other programs as part of our ESG, and so you'll see some movements there. We're making very good margins and our focus as a business is to be efficient in production, increase our volume and sweat the assets essentially, and to get more productivity out of each shift that we're running. Currently we run two shifts, five days a week. We've obviously got the capacity to go to three shifts, seven days a week, but we see for quite a duration we'll be able to get significant volume growth out of our existing shift allocations and infrastructure. I think that's where we'll see the movements and I'm very confident that we've got a very solid and progressive business on that.
Just talking on ESG, you know, as we've outlined, we're anticipating being carbon neutral by Christmas. That will be a significant step change for us as we achieve an environmental goal that others have been some distance from.
All right. Thanks, Paul. Next question. Can you talk about any traction PolyNovo has had with GPO sales?
Yes, as I alluded to, there have been dashboards set up to track the sales. We've got many hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales now into GPOs. Account acquisitions continue through the GPO networks. We've moved Kevin Hays from a sales director in the south to be dedicated in what we call strategic accounts, which is the GPOs. Kevin will put more staff in with Kevin to manage those GPO accounts and activities. His role is to drive from the top down with the GPOs while the sales team and the sales directors in the regions are pulling sales through from the bottom. It's growing quite nicely, but now we'll have the opportunity to grow that even faster.
Great. Thanks, Paul. A few more questions. What is different today compared to earlier this year, for example, that has caused the 18-24 month delay in the rollout of the hernia product?
Well, we covered that at the half year. There's been getting the factory done, and getting finished goods off validated machines. The regulatory process is the product that you use in trials has to be the product that you're gonna use in market. You can't do that until you can physically make the product. We've got a finished factory, we've got commissioned machines, and we've pumped those products out. As I outlined in my speech, we've made a couple of thousand products to be used in bench testing and destructive testing and animal studies. That's the reason. We had significant COVID delays with supply of machines, commissioning of machines and delays in building a factory.
Thanks, Paul. Next question. What will a successful BARDA trial mean for PolyNovo in a commercial sense?
In a commercial sense, the real upside is bragging rights, in that you've got a product that's got an on-label claim for full thickness burns. The other thing is that BARDA is a Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is what it stands for, and their brief was to have a stockpile of product that could be used in a mass thermal burn disaster. If you look at the U.S., burns over 20% total body surface area, there's around about 330 in a year. If somebody let off a large bomb in a major city, you may have thousands of people that are burned in a day.
What they're looking for is a non-biologic that's got an extended shelf life, that can be stockpiled and readily deployed throughout multiple hospital sites where they could spread the patients to be treated as fast as possible. The upside for us will be the U.S. government buying a stockpile of product, and the other one is that we'll then be one of only two dermal matrices in the U.S. with the PMA claim of full thickness burn, the only other one being Integra's DRT product. Just to be clear to all of you out there are 20 or 30 different tissue scaffolds used by surgeons on burns. They've all got the same 510(k) as NovoSorb BTM does today.
It's really the bragging rights that we're the gold standard of the synthetic up against what's been the standard for 20 years of biologics of Integra DRT. Our commercial opportunity is extending the uptake of skeptical surgeons into burns, because we'll have that on- label claim and all of the data to support their decision, and a stockpile.
Thanks, Paul. Next question David might be able to answer. As a publicly listed company, is there any reason why you don't provide revenue targets for the following year?
Look, I mean, many publicly listed companies don't provide revenue targets for the following year. In this case, you know, even though we've now got quite extensive footprints in different jurisdictions, they're still patchy in the sense that it's lumpy. You know, I mean, I'll give you one example. I think in July, and I'm making these numbers up, Dan, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but in July, I think our revenue growth in the U.S. was 150% year-on-year. Then it was 50% in August. It'd come out on a weekly basis, it'd come out on a monthly basis, and I'd have these huge spikes in terms of performance.
Until we get, you know, a much more consistent footprint across these jurisdictions and across countries, we'll be reluctant to sing out those targets and to release information on a more regular basis.
All right. Thanks, David. Next question. To what extent has elective surgery opened up in the various U.S. states and mainland Europe?
Mainland Europe is pretty much open. It's individual hospitals whether they've got capacity with COVID blockage or not. For example, in Louisiana, there's been some blockage of hospital beds because of COVID patients admitted. Likewise in some of the Texas hospitals. It's individual hospitals, it's not the whole state. You know, our sales in Texas for the first quarter of FY 2022 were actually very healthy. There are some individual hospitals within Texas who have been slow to uptake BTM because they haven't had the throughput capacity. There's no longer the broad brush of regions not doing elective. It's more the individual by hospital case.
Thanks, Paul. Next question is, any update on replacement of the Chief Operating Officer?
We're still looking. There's not a lot of chief operating officers who have worked in the medical device area in Melbourne. It's an active process. We do have some candidates currently in train. We're hoping to have that closed out as soon as possible.
All right. Thanks, Paul. We have an audio question from Paul Fanning at the Australian Shareholders' Association. If Lumi, you could please patch Paul through. Thanks.
Good afternoon. Can I be heard? Is that you, Jan Gielen?
Yes, Paul, we can hear.
Yep.
Thank you. I'm Paul Fanning, representing the Australian Shareholders' Association. This is the 1st year that we, the association, have monitored PolyNovo for and on behalf of individual shareholders. We're in receipt of proxies to the tune of about 750,000 votes, and we'll be voting them accordingly. Look, thank you for the both reports given. Surely this is a growth company, and we're very impressed by what we have seen to date, and we have actually done—we, the ASA, have done a lot of analysis on PolyNovo to date. Look, like with all companies that we monitor, we always have some focus issues that we want to look at, and I'd like you to either the Chair or Mike to perhaps address.
In early December, two board directors and Paul concurrently sold shares in late November and at around the price of AUD 4. PolyNovo issued a trading update on the 12th of January this year, which triggered a precipitous drop in the share price from AUD 3.39 on Monday, 11th of January to AUD 2.68 on Wednesday the 13th. I may observe since then, the share price has not recovered. This sequence of events has triggered an inquiry from the ASX in matters concerning the wording of the trading update, the timing of the trading of shares by these board members and senior management. How does the company operate corporate governance?
What can you do better next time to perhaps avoid this type of precipitous drop in share value and also share trading policies which may or may not be related to pending news? I thank you for the opportunity to ask the question.
I'll answer that. Look, we've got pretty strict trading policies in place in terms of approval to buy and sell shares, depending on who you are, whether it's me, whether it's one of the other directors, and whether it's signed off by the CFO and the head of the audit committee or whatever, and that happened in this case. One of the difficulties, Paul, in this company is that there's a lot of surprises in terms of what happens to earnings that we don't see even at the start of a month, and I'll give you an example. In the U.S., for example, we can be way behind budget for the 1st two weeks or three weeks, but it's very common in the U.S. for all the sales to sort of stream in in the last week of any month.
Trying to pick those things in advance does lead to some surprises, as it did in this case, because we have a sort of fail-safe mechanism, we hope, by getting approval from the head of the audit committee or the chairman or the CFO. The ASX, of course, quite rightly, asked some questions because of the proximity to the announcement, and that's the end of it as far as we're concerned and probably as far as they're concerned. I can't say anything more than that, Paul.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your response.
All right. Thanks. We've got another question. It says, "Can you explain how revenue is booked? If you've had 131 orders in September, will this revenue be expected to hit in October or November, or do you book the revenue in the month the order occurs?" I can answer that. It's once the goods are shipped and received by the customer, the invoice is raised, and that's when the revenue is booked. Next question. "When can shareholders expect quarterly sales reports with numbers and percentages?
Well, as you know, Jan, we don't report quarterly, and I think I started to answer this with Paul from the Australian Shareholders' Association as well. There is a question always of us, this tension between can you tell us how you're going versus getting more certainty on, you know, quarterly or half-yearly numbers. We've sort of waxed and waned on this. We got asked this question at the last AGM as well, and I undertook then to provide more regular updates in terms of what's happening to sales and so forth. In the answer I just gave before about what we observed in July versus what happened in August versus what happened in September, there are huge swings. As much as I...
You know, I was tempted when I saw the numbers in July to update the market on what was happening with U.S. sales. To be honest, I'm glad I didn't because the next month was not down, but the percentage was not up as great. We're not required to give quarterlies, but we may report more regularly than even quarterlies, depending on how much depth we get in our data set.
Right. Thanks. One last question, I think before we move on. "In terms of stockpiling PNV's product, what is the approximate shelf life, and also do storage facilities need to be purpose-built or have specialized requirements?
Pardon me. The stock has a three-year shelf life. Storage is below 25 degrees Celsius and standard with medical warehousing around the world. We use 3PLs. They've got all that infrastructure there. No news there. Everything's very much business as normal.
Yep. I mean, at one point, you may have missed, Paul, unless I missed it, just tangentially on that is our new arrangements in Belgium for supplying the whole of Western Europe, and that seems to be going very well, certainly into Germany, and we're about to roll that out to other countries in Western Europe as well.
I do have another question, David. "Gender equity on the leadership team on the board is poor. Why is the company not taking the opportunity to address this imbalance?
Paul, do you wanna answer that? I mean, you've got the numbers and
Well, various board members have different levels of holding. I've got a significant holding as do some others.
I think it's an agenda question, Paul.
Oh, gender. Oh, sorry.
Yeah. Regarding gender.
Equity. Yes. Well, currently, we've got two females on our board, obviously. We always look for the best talent when we're having new directors appointed. Andrew, for example, who's new to the business, and you'll be voting on shortly, came through his pedigree of his background, and I'll leave him to talk to that. We actively do look for female directors as well. Within our business, we do have a wide number of female managers. We're very proud of our diversity. We've published that in the half year report. You can see both the gender and the ethnicity mix of our staff across the business. We'll continue to work on that. It's a very positive, active program that we've got.
Great. Thanks, Paul. No further questions at this stage. Well, thank you everybody for those questions. Thank you, Paul, from the Australian Shareholders' Association, who set a new world record of having asked the 1st question verbally at one of these meetings. Congratulations on that. I'm gonna move on to the formal part of the meeting. Just to reiterate about casting your votes, as I mentioned at the start of the meeting, 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. Please note that only shareholders, proxy holders, and shareholder reps can vote. Any directed proxies given to you by a shareholder in the meeting.
When voting is closed, your final voting selection will be recorded. If you've got any difficulties with this, ring Computershare on their helpline 9415 4024. I'd like to move on to the formal resolutions then. Put the voting up on the screen just for your better interest. I've advised at the beginning of the meeting we'll vote on the resolutions by way of a poll. I intend to vote any undirected proxy votes given to the chairman in favor of Resolutions 3 through to 6 and against Resolution 7, which is a spill motion. Voting is already open and will remain open during the discussions of the resolutions. I will provide you with notice that the polls are about to close.
We'll now move on to consider the 1st resolution, which is the re-election of the director, Mr. Bruce Rathie, who I'm gonna call on in a 2nd to say a few words. Mr. Rathie retires by rotation and being eligible offers himself a re-election. I put forward the following resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution, that Mr. Bruce Rathie, 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. Before I put that motion and go to any questions, I'd like to invite Mr. Rathie to say a few words about himself. Bruce.
Thank you, David. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. During my 20 years of non-executive director experience, I've focused on working with and assisting emerging Australian technology companies seeking to commercialize products in international markets. I'm especially motivated to work with companies whose technologies will make a material difference to the lives of its user customers. PolyNovo, with its CSIRO-originated technology, is a great example of such a company. PolyNovo is just at the start of its commercialization journey, and I believe I can add material value as PolyNovo rolls its BTM and other products out in overseas markets. I'd be most grateful if shareholders would allow me to make that contribution to what I believe to be an extremely bright future for the company. Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Bruce. Very interesting. Two things Bruce didn't say about himself, I think, is that, one, after Philip Powell retired, Bruce kindly stepped in to be head of the audit committee, and has done a fantastic job doing that. Secondly, he's one of the oldest serving members on the board, and so he brings with him some history that's been useful as the board grows and the company transitions. Is there any questions on this resolution? Jan, do you have any questions, for Bruce or myself on it?
No questions, David.
Thank you. For the purposes of taking all proxies into account and ensuring that the votes are counted accurately, I direct that a poll be taken on this item. I'd now like to move on to item 4 in the notice of meeting, which is the election of Mr. Andrew Lumsden, otherwise known as Andy. Mr. Andrew Lumsden was appointed a director on June 4, 2021 and retires in accordance with the company's constitution, and being eligible, offers himself for election. I put the following resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution. That Mr. Andrew Lumsden, being a director of the company, who is, who in accordance with Clause 58 of PolyNovo's constitution and being eligible, is re-elected as a director.
Before I proceed on that, I'd like to ask, Andy to say a few words about himself and what he's done so far on the board.
Thanks, David. Good afternoon, everyone. As David said, my name is Andy Lumsden, and I joined the board in June. I'm currently a chartered accountant, a chartered company secretary, and a member of the Institute of Directors. My current role outside of PolyNovo is I'm the CEO of Wellcom in Australasia, which is a marketing services company. I was formerly the CFO for Wellcom for around six or seven years while we were a public company listed on the ASX. Prior to that, I spent about eight years with PricewaterhouseCoopers, both in the U.K. and in Australia.
Subject to shareholder approval today, I'd be excited to join the board proper and contribute in any way I can to the continued success of what I see, and as Bruce mentioned, a business which has the ability to significantly improve the lives of a number of individuals.
Beautiful. Thank you, Andy. Andy mentioned of course that he's got a chartered accounting background, and he's immediately joined the audit committee. Probably will take over running the audit committee in due course as well. He brings a lot of skills that we need to assist Bruce Rathie in that. He also didn't mention that his office is only just down the road from PolyNovo. You know, one of my thought processes when we put him on was that he could be a great help to Jan Gielen, our CFO and Company Secretary, in close proximity, similar age. Although he, as you did hear, is Scottish, so we have added to the cultural diversity of the board slightly. That's a big plus as well. Is there any discussion on this resolution?
Are there any questions, Jan?
Not on this resolution, but there is a question that's come through on Bruce's resolution, election. If I could ask that.
Okay.
If I could patch that through. That's an audio question from Paul Fanning at Australian Shareholders Association.
Just a second, Jan.
Sorry?
Can I just do-
Yeah.
We'll just finish this one off 1st. We've heard from Andy, and for the purpose of taking all proxies into account and ensuring that the votes are counted accurately, I direct a poll be taken on this item. That's done. Let me go backwards now to Bruce Rathie. Paul, you've got ahead of yourself. Two questions, it's unheard of.
It's an audio question, if you could patch him through, please, Lumi.
Ah.
Am I able to speak? Yes? Thank you.
Of course. Go ahead.
Okay. Look, I'd like to speak in regard to item three, the re-election of Bruce Rathie as a director, on behalf of the Australian Shareholders' Association. The Australian Shareholders' Association, I may inform, has a policy for directors to remain independent. The length of longevity that Mr. Rathie has given to the board has been tremendous and has been a great asset to the company, which we applaud. However, ASA has guidelines that once a board member reaches 12 years on the board, we consider that to be non-independent. We also consider Mr. Rathie's workload is slightly excessive. He holding two chairs and two other executive director roles. We wonder if the board is able to address this issue because clearly we represent retail shareholders and we are the voice that tries to articulate their feelings and aspirations. Thank you.
Paul, I'm not sure if that required a response, but as the Chairman, Bruce and I have a continuing dialogue, as I do with other directors, about their workload and their performance on the board. We have a board rating system that we do of each other, a 360 rating system. But Bruce in particular and I have talked about his workload, and how he's coping and how he's contributing to the PolyNovo board. As you quite rightly said, his contribution has been enormous, and it's been over a long period of time. At the moment, I certainly feel that he's got something more to add. He, I know, reassesses his situation as we go.
I think I'm pretty happy with his position at the moment. Thank you for your comments. I'm gonna move on to item number-
Thank you.
Sorry, are you still there, Paul? Okay.
He's gone.
Okay. I'm gonna move on to the Managing Director's long-term incentive plan, item 5 on the notice of meeting. The resolution to approve the amendments to the Managing Director's long-term incentive plan is proposed for the purpose of Listing Rule 10.11. A voting exclusion statement applies for this resolution that's outlined in the notice of annual general meeting. However, the directors recommend that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. I put the following resolution as an Ordinary Resolution that the amendment to the Managing Director's long-term incentive plan is approved. Is there any discussion on this resolution, Jan?
No questions at this stage, David.
Okay. Just for completeness for everybody that's listening, there were some institutional shareholders in particular that voted against the REM report last year, and one of their objections was that they felt that there were two issues with the LTI as far as it was proposed. One is that the hurdle, the market cap hurdle as part of the LTI could be earned not by just getting the share price up but by actually issuing shares. Quite correctly noted, I think. The 2nd one was that if the Managing Director did not make the LTI in a particular year, the amount that he could earn could be rolled forward into a 2nd year, and I think some of the institutional shareholders felt, well, there should be some penalty for that so that if it's not earned, then it could be lost.
We tried to blend. We got rid of increasing the market cap by issuing shares, and we've imposed a penalty on earning the LTI over a couple of years as well. I won't go into the details of it. It's in the annual meeting notes. Okay. Just for the purpose of taking all proxies into account, ensuring that the votes are counted accurately, I declare the poll be taken on this item. The remuneration-
There is-
Sorry.
Sorry, David. There is one question, if you are willing to answer at the moment on the LTI.
Yeah, sure.
That's from Paul Fanning from the Australian Shareholders' Association. If you'd patch him through, please, Lumi.
Thank you. Thank you, David. I think I'll direct this question to you. Look, I'm speaking in regard to Item 5, the amendment to the Managing Director's long-term incentive. Look, we applaud the Board for having made amendments to the LTI plan in the series of the tranches. Look, we still find that the structure is very complex and awarding tranches of shares, three lots of tranches of shares, and also it's an increased number of shares which is being proposed. We find that it makes it very difficult to really calculate a value of what the LTI is worth. Is it really based on the number of shares which are now going to be issued under the in the three tranches at about 1.3 million each?
Is it really based on the share price? Also the vesting is of a concern to us, that there seem to be two lots of vesting happening in one particular year, for example. Can you please give us a sense of how you devise this modeling? Is it based on other companies in the same market sector? Is it an idea that derived from somewhere in the U.S., for example? Thank you.
No, it didn't derive from somewhere in the U.S. It derived from the logic of what would shareholders really want to see. Shareholders want to see a lot of different things, but one of the primary ones they wanna see is they wanna see an increase in their wealth by holding shares in the company. A key plank of the LTI, a lot of the soft stuff, by the way, is in STIs and so forth. A key plank of the LTI is that the managing director needs to get the share price up, and the share price needs to stay up. It's based on hitting a market cap hurdle or a share price hurdle without the issuance of new capital, and having that share price stay up for at least three months in every trade. We're not...
We wanna take out the ability for the share price to spike to earn an LTI. I would have thought that's a pretty direct measure of success for shareholders over and above the other things that we're doing on ESG and diversity and so on and so forth. That's the logic of it, Paul. The details of it are set out in the papers. The other thing we've done, which I didn't say, but I'll say it now anyway, is to really extend those escrow arrangements as well. We're not only. We've got two things in mind. One is to reward him if he generates wealth for shareholders, and the 2nd one is to try and lock him in for a lot longer, if those rewards are earned.
Great. Thanks, David. There's no other questions at this stage.
Thank you. That was the Managing Director's long-term incentive plan, item 5. As I said, for the purpose of taking all proxies into account ensuring that the votes are counted accurately, our director poll was taken on that item. Item number 6 is the REM report. This is potentially a 2nd strike. This was voted against last year, but on the numbers, it looks like it's now gonna be voted for. The Corporations Act requires a remuneration report to be included in the annual report. Shareholders will be asked to vote to approve the 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 director and executive packages. A voting exclusion statement applies to this resolution and is outlined in the Notice of Annual General Meeting.
However, the directors recommend that shareholders vote in favor of the resolution. I'll put the 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, as contained in the directors' report for the year ended June 30th 2020, is adopted. I hereby move the resolution. I'll call on Bruce Rathie to 2nd this. Bruce?
Of course, I 2nd the adoption of the remuneration report, Mr. Chairman.
Okay. Is there any discussion on this item? Jan, any questions?
No questions, David.
Thank you. Paul, have you gone? I want the Australian Shareholders' Association to get maximum value for their money, Paul. If there's no discussion on it for the purpose of taking all proxies into account and ensuring that the votes are counted accurately, I direct that a poll is taken on this item. Then the final item is now item number 7, which is a spill resolution. Normally, we wouldn't need to do this, but the vote for the Remuneration Committee, the remuneration report, I should say, is close. To the extent that somebody might change their minds on how they vote, as this meeting goes on, then I wanna put it just to bulletproof it in any case.
The proxy votes received indicate that 76.27% of the votes cast are for the remuneration report. As I said, given the small margin between that and less than 75%, I prefer to put the spill motion to the meeting now, just in case, when we find out how all the votes have tallied up from the poll. As such-
Sorry, I do have a question once you get to the end. Apologies from Paul.
Okay. As such, I will now present Resolution 7, the spill resolution to shareholders in accordance with the requirements under the Corporations Act. A voting exclusion statement applies to this resolution, as outlined in the notice of annual general meeting. However, the directors recommend that shareholders vote against the resolution, against the spill motion. In other words, that there will not be a spill motion in 90 days. Put the following resolution to the meeting as an ordinary resolution, that for the purpose of the Corporations Act, Resolution 7 asks shareholders to vote on whether a board spill meeting should be held within 90 days. There is discussion on this meeting. There's one question. Is there, Jan?
Yeah, there's one question on the REM report from Paul Fanning, the Australian Shareholders' Association, but no questions on the spill motion at this stage.
Okay. Thank you. Well, in that case, I'll finish this one then. Now for the purpose of this, if there's no discussion on the spill motion, for the purpose of taking all proxies into account, ensuring that the votes are counted accurately, I direct that a poll be taken on this item. I'm gonna go backwards now to item number six, which is the REM report on the notice of the meeting. Welcome back to the stage, Paul Fanning from the Australian Shareholders' Association.
Thank you, David. Look, Paul Fanning, Monitor for PolyNovo, Australian Shareholders' Association again. Look, I'd like to make a couple observations on behalf of retail shareholders for the Australian Shareholders' Association in terms of the remuneration report. Look, this report, me being the monitor and my assistant monitor, we did very close analysis on the remuneration report. While the REM structure is composed of a fixed annual compensation, medium- to long-term incentives, that is LTI, and also a short-term incentives plan, we still find it's complex to be absorbed and understood fully by retail shareholders. We acknowledge that the biotechnology sector does not necessarily make a profit in the short to medium term. When it does, it does well. There's a considerable time pending.
While the biotechnology sector is highly volatile, it we know is driven by market sentiment and inherently high risk. The direct link of compensation policy with key financial performance measures, such as total shareholder return or net earnings per share or company revenue in view of the board, is much more suited to a more established business. However, we, the ASA, would like to see share-based payments calculated using fair value by the Monte Carlo simulation method, not face value. STIs appear to be based on 100% cash payment rather than 50% cash and 50% deferred equity. Can I call on the chair to please address our issue and how there could be complexity reduced in the remuneration structure going forward as an enhancement to the annual report. Thank you.
Thank you, Paul. Well, there's a lot to unpack there from a corporate finance perspective, but as I'm trying to simplify it for shareholders, I'm not sure I wanna send them to the Monte Carlo method. I would have thought shareholders could get their head around pretty quickly the fact that we've issued options to people like Jan Gielen with a certain strike price, full stop. Pretty simple to understand that, I think. This notion about total shareholder returns and EPS is of course a nonsense to us, as you quite rightly say, because we don't pay dividends. There is no total shareholder return. There is no EPS. We should soon be there, by the way, but aren't all these things surrogates in a way for what's happening with shareholder value?
Even if we were profitable, it seems to me that if that's not reflected in what's happening to the share price and the total market capitalization of the company, then something's awfully wrong. I think the way we've got it is simple. In fact, Paul, the only criticism we seem to get from some of the other institutions is that it's too simple. In other words, they want other added things into the LTI calculation other than just what's happening to market cap. I think the market cap is as simple as you can get it and as direct as you can get it. That's my answer to that. Thank you for the question. We'll take it on board.
There is a remuneration committee, which Christine and Leon and I sit on, and no doubt it will go into the mix on that. We are considering it with respect to new hires such as CCO and COO. It'll get its place in that.
Thank you, Dave.
Right. That's the conclusion of the voting. The voting is still open, but I propose to leave it only open now for another two minutes, at which time I'll close the voting and end the meeting. So if you've already voted and there won't be any more business to be discussed, you can go if you'd like. The only other thing I would just say is that last year we taped these proceedings. I think we did it in video as well as audio, so it may well be that we'll package that up, perhaps just mine and Paul Brennan's talk and release that to the ASX and the shareholders, in due course. I think it took us a couple of days last time.
No promise on that, but I think that's what we'll intend to do in any case. Okay, so as I said, the voting's still open. If you could close off where you are, and in about a minute's time, I'm going to close the voting and close the meeting. I thank you all for attending. It's been very enjoyable. We always seem to get quite a lot of questions, more than in other companies, and we certainly had a lot more verbal questions. Angela Liapis from Computershare will love this because she doesn't get to see that much action, right, Angela? This will be one for the books. The Australian Shareholders' Association has certainly got their money's worth with 750,000 shareholders well represented here today by Paul.
I am gonna close the voting now unless I've cut it too short for anybody. In closing the voting, again, thank you for coming. Thank you for your participation. I'll see you at the half year. Bye for now. Cheers, everybody.