Hello and welcome to this Q3 presentation and Q&A with Stenocare. With us today, we have the CEO and the CFO of Stenocare. First, there will be a presentation and afterwards a Q&A with the management team. There have already been pre-submitted questions on Stokk.io, and the Q&A is still open so that you can submit questions live as well. I will now hand over the mic to Stenocare to start the presentation. Thomas and Peter, your line is now open.
Thank you very much, and welcome to this Q&A with Stenocare. For listeners that do not know the core business of Stenocare, I can briefly say that we are a supplier of prescription-based medical cannabis in several markets in Europe and Australia. Today, we will first share with you some of the highlights from our Q3 report, and then we'll move into the exciting news that we announced this week regarding our Stenocare 3.0 strategy and what that means for the future for the company. But let us start with the Q3, and my colleague Peter, he will take us through that.
Yes, thank you for that, Thomas. I will just briefly go through the highlights of the Q3 report, starting at the top with the sales. We have defined sales in two ways: gross sales and net sales. And the difference between those two are products that are returned from our distributors, mainly due to expiry. This figure shows the running 12-month sales, saying that it's always three to four quarters summarized. And you can see here that we have a decrease in the sales over the last year.
This is mainly due to three things: it's returned products from the decreased sales in Australia, that's the main driver, decreased sales in Norway, and in the U.K. The difference between the two columns is due to, as I said, returned products. And in Q3, we have experienced large returns from Norway, the U.K., and also the Danish market.
The reason for Norway is that we have products mainly sold through hospitals. As a consequence of this, not delivering, so to say, the sales, we have decided to change strategy. We will, for the Norwegian markets in the future, focus on our new Astrum product, which is sold or prescribed to patients by normal pharmacies, and therefore easier for the patients to reach. In Denmark, we have also had some returns of products that are due to our new balanced products or mixed products, which is in some competition from the magistral products that have the benefit of an 85% subsidy, which, as compared to our products and all the products in the trial program, which only have 50%.
What will we do for looking into the future for the next quarter, short-term and long-term, is that we will expect products in Denmark to increase sales of the magistral products. We will, due to this strategic change in strategy in Norway, expect more sales of products in Norway. And due to price reductions and a new partner in Australia, we will regain our market share there and increase sales in Australia also.
The next figure shows our cost quarter-over-quarter for the last, say, seven quarters. And as you can see, we have managed to reduce our cost. That is mainly due to just very, very high focus by each and everybody in the organization on cost savings and only spent cost on what is really necessary. As you can see, the organization, that's the blue bottom of the figure, are quite stable.
It's the same organization, very lean organization of nine people we have been all over the period. And then the green part of the figure are the more variable costs, including cost of goods sold, but also maintenance, power, electricity, heating, etc., all the costs that we have been very cautious on spending. Then I have just a brief figure. Thank you, Thomas. On the capital structure of the company compared to end last year, where you can see our solidity or equity ratio has increased from 68%, I think, yeah, to 72%.
Mainly, and also a big influence here is the loans that we have reduced from DKK 8 million to almost DKK 3 million. This is a movement that has been made by our capital increases and also where we have spent some of the incoming cash to renegotiate our loans. This gives an effect on the P&L as we will experience less interest costs. Other debts are increased. That's mainly due to the return of products that I told you about before. And these are debts that will be either repaid or offset against new deliveries in the coming quarter.
Thank you very much, Peter. I will then move on and share with you the thinking and the goals behind the Stenocare 3.0 strategy. Sort of the big headline is really becoming a leading trading company, and so selling medical cannabis is kind of the core business going forward, but we will still be using all the existing assets that we have created over the last six years that are really critical to become a successful and competitive trading company. If you look at the journey we've had since 2017, you have the three versions of the Stenocare strategy: 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. I won't take you through all the details, but the 1.0 strategy was all about being an early adopter, first mover in the Danish market with products.
Second was really expanding beyond the Danish market into more countries, which we are now in six markets, and then building a lot of the assets that we are benefiting from today and also will be using extensively in the Stenocare 3.0, so the Stenocare 3.0 strategy is, as I was saying, becoming a leading trading company of prescription-based medical cannabis. There's two key points to understand. One of them is that we will be using Astrum, which is our new hero product, a product we have been investing and developing in since 2019, and it's now ready to reach the market in the markets that we serve, so that's going to give us a very competitive advantage over competition because it's a patented product that no one else can match.
The second part of the Stenocare 3.0 is really having a laser focus on markets with a very high sales potential and also growth potentials. And we'll be focusing on Germany, Australia, and the Nordic markets. And I'll come back to that in a second. But first, let me just highlight, so what's really new with this Stenocare 3.0? There's two key points. Of course, we'll be focusing 100% of our resources, energy, staff on being a trading company with medical cannabis.
And as I said, we'll have target markets with high potential. And then we'll also be looking at the existing Nordic markets that we are in, where we have a low touch, meaning we don't have a lot of resources, we don't spend a lot of our own time engaging with the market, but there's a high margin opportunity in those markets.
Then the second part is becoming a trading company also includes that we are exiting our production facilities, meaning our cultivation facilities, where we are spinning off the Danish cultivation facility, which is reducing the cost burden on the company, both from rents of the building, the operation, and the staff. So we're basically reducing staff from nine to four, and thereby turning the trading company into a very lean and efficient organization with one purpose of trading.
You can look at the graph on the right-hand side, and it gives you an idea. The green portion of the graph, that's the production costs and resources that are being removed. Then you see the trading part, and then the two organizations or activities have some shared costs, which is, for example, the cost of being a publicly traded company and other life insurance and so on.
So that's kind of the key points of Stenocare 3.0. If we look at the markets that we are then going to target, I was mentioning Germany and Australia. And if we take them one at a time, we can certainly look at Germany, which is a very interesting market. It's the biggest medical cannabis market in Europe. They have 87 million people. Of course, it's a big country. The analysts are expecting the market to grow 276%, meaning it will grow from EUR 400 million- EUR 1 billion in the next three years, and also in 2024, with the legalization of medical cannabis in Germany, they actually simplified access to treatment for patients.
So even though it was fairly easy a year ago, it's become even more simplified from both a doctor's point of view for prescribing and from a patient's point of view, finding the right doctor for entering treatment. So that's a really exciting and large market we will focus on. Secondly, the Australian market that Peter also mentioned in his introduction. This is the biggest market in Asia-Pacific with 27 million people. They also have a very high expectation on growth of 250%, meaning it will grow from today AUD 1.2 billion-
AUD 3 billion. And today, they already have almost 1.2 million patients approved for treatment in Australia. So two really exciting markets. We are already there. We have infrastructure in place. We have products approved for sales. Our new Astrum, as I was mentioning, the hero product of the future, has been approved for these markets.
Very soon, German patients in Germany are going to be the first to benefit from this exciting product from Stenocare. If we look at the Nordic markets, Stenocare is already represented with products approved for sales in the three Nordic markets, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. What is really interesting to understand is that the markets compared to Germany and Australia are small, of course. There's a smaller market, but there's a high penetration of illegal use, meaning the potential to switch patients away from illegal cannabis to legal is an interesting one. Also because there's very high barriers to enter with products in these markets, it's very difficult to get your products approved. It's a competitive advantage for Stenocare that we are already there with approved products.
If we look at Denmark, it's the largest market in the Nordics with an annual size of DKK 60 million. We know approximately 1,400 doctors have already prescribed, even though most prescribers are less than 20 doctors that are really specialized in treatment with medical cannabis. If we look at Sweden and Norway, there's limited insight on data because medical cannabis is not legalized formally. So it takes special regulatory models to operate, and we do have that in place. But it's really a nice area to be in because the margins are high. So it makes a bit interesting business case for Stenocare. Also, if you look at the graph at the top, it gives you an idea of how the market moves.
This is the total market in Denmark, and it tells you it's kind of it goes up and down and up and down constantly, the demand, so it's not a very linear and forward-sloping graph that we're looking at, so that is also something to know about the Nordic markets, so with that, we'll conclude our introduction presentation and open up for questions.
Thank you, Peter and Thomas. Let's move directly into the questions here. The first question is, your Q3 report indicates a need for additional capital. Can you share some information about this?
Yes, I think that one, yeah, that's right. We had a cash position of DKK 52,000 at the end of Q3. And in October, actually, we announced a plan to raise capital, both on the short term and also the long-term needs to do that. As part of that plan, we have just this week called for an Extraordinary General Meeting to allow us to proceed with the plans that we have. We haven't disclosed the full plan yet, and that will come shortly in connection with the EGM.
Also, we can say that cash flows for the fourth quarter usually are influenced by the tax credit that we have from the Danish tax authorities. That is a positive cash inflow for the company. And then we still have very focused on our organization and our costs. It's not very complicated, just that everybody in the organization always asks, is this cost really necessary for the company to spend? And that's how we try to stretch our cash as long as possible.
Maybe that was already a bit of an answer to one of the next questions here. You also showed a continued reduction in expenses. What are the key drivers behind this?
Yeah, as I said, it's not very complicated. And in short, it is that everybody in the organization is very, very high focused on spending costs. And as long as we see the sales that we have, what we can push forward to the next month or the next quarter, we will do that.
The next question is.
Maybe I could also say that this is also part of the Stenocare 3.0 plan that we will reduce costs, as you may remember from the figure Thomas talked about. 20.45% of our total costs today are allocated to the production activities.
This week, the Danish Minister of Health announced a permanent legislation of medical cannabis. How will this impact your business?
I mean, that was really, really good news, both for the Danish patients because now they have certainty of continuing treatment with medical cannabis, but for Stenocare, it's equally a great story because it's been our home market since 2018, and now the uncertainty of what is going to happen with medical cannabis is gone. It's here to stay. It's permanent, and what we've also learned when talking to doctors and health professionals is that they've always been looking at the pilot program as kind of a trial.
So is it going to go away, and do we really bother getting into it and being educated, but now it's a normal part of future treatment offerings to Danish patients, so we expect that to, of course, create a demand. More patients will be allowed and able to enter treatment. Of course, Stenocare, we have been one of the leading suppliers for the trial program since 2018. We, of course, expect it will also impact positively on our sales of our products going forward.
What are the financial benefits from spinning off the cultivation facility?
Yes, as I also mentioned before talking about the costs, we will have large savings on the cost base. We will have, for the next six years, we have obligations for DKK 14 million . And then also, as I said, 45% of our cost base is allocated to the production facility that's around DKK 4 million or DKK 5 million each year. So that will be cut away from doing this. And this gives, looking forward, Stenocare being a very lean and small organization, we will go from nine to four people. And also, we will have a lot of savings on insurance, power, etc.
You listed the target markets for Stenocare 3.0. Will you be expanding into more markets?
Yeah, I mean, right now, it's all about building on the assets we already have. We're not talking about going out, trying to do something new, hoping it will succeed. So the strategy for 3.0 is really building on what we have. And that is, we are available in Germany with products approved for sales. So that's first market. Then Germany, Australia, the same, Denmark, Norway, Sweden.
So that's kind of where the focus will be in the near term. But of course, we always have one or two, even three, really exciting markets with high growth potential and a market where we can position our new Astrum product as a competitive offering, which will give us a unique opportunity to grow our sales. So of course, we'll have eyes open. We have a pipeline, but short term, it's all about executing on the assets we already have.
That maybe brings us to the next question. Your new Astrum oil product is the hero product for Stenocare 3.0. Can you explain the value proposition for this product?
Yeah, yeah. So if you look at all the products that are in the market today in Germany or Australia, in reality, they're very similar. I mean, they either have THC or CBD in it, and then it might have different strength, but it's basically the same product. So there's no value proposition that is different from one supplier to another. And we saw this trend many years ago and started developing the Astrum technology. And what that product is really doing, it's solving a problem that exists for all medicine in the market. When you ingest medicine through your mouth, it goes through your digestion system, and that breaks down probably 90% of what you put in. It's gone in your digestion system.
What we have done with Astrum is found a new technology where we can sort of shortcut that negative process, meaning that we can increase the uptake in the blood of the patient of the cannabinoids by a factor of two and a half. We've even seen in the studies we did in dogs. We can increase it by as much as a factor of 10. So it gives you an idea of the effect that can be delivered inside the patient.
We also have documentation from the study that the time to reaching the maximum effect of the medicine. We can reduce that from as much as four hours to one hour. So it gives the patients a more predictable experience with the drug. And we've also seen that from individual to individual, it's very different how you react and how your body absorbs cannabinoids.
But with the technology we have, we have created a uniform experience across each individual, across each patient. And doctors really like predictable medicine. So we think the value proposition here is that we can increase the uptake in the body, and we can deliver a more predictable dosing data that doctors really like when writing a prescription for their patients. And then the product is patented. We have the worldwide exclusivity to use it.
And this is why no one else in the market has anything that is similar. And we have a pretty unique offering right now. So we're really excited to deliver that. And the first patients are likely going to be German patients during December. So it's just around the corner before we will see this product in the marketplace. The product is approved today in three markets. So it's approved for sales in Germany. It's approved for sales in Australia, and there's a fourth, sorry, a third country we'll announce very shortly where it's also been approved, so it's looking good, and again, it's the existing assets that we are building on here.
Yeah, and the next question is, leaving the production business seems good for cash flow, but what is your competitive advantage when turning into a complete trading company?
I mean, I think part of the answer is, of course, we have the hero product, Astrum 10/10, that is approved for sales, which is pretty unique because no one can copy it or match it right now. So I think that's one part of the explanation why we have a very competitive advantage on offerings. And then, of course, being a lean organization, and that Peter was talking about is that we reduce our cost. We really focus our staff and cash on driving the trading company forward. So being the best at what we do in a very focused approach, we think those two combined is going to give us a really good opportunity to grow and be profitable at the same time.
I think you have already partly answered the next question, but I will just read it for you. Can you put some more words to the 3.0 strategy? How will you grow revenue? How will you increase profitability? And where will you focus? And what is the target over the next 12 months and three years?
Yeah, I think most of it will probably be because the 3.0 is all about having a unique product that is very competitive and that competition cannot match. So that's one really critical element. Target markets are the markets that we already mentioned that have high growth potential. We're still early in the growth cycle for those markets.
And with this hero product, we think we can position Stenocare very nicely. We can also ask because it's a unique product with a unique offering, both from a patient point of view in the effect, but also from a doctor's point of view in predictability on that. So it's a product where we don't have to fight on pricing in the same way as all the other, I would call, me-too products in the marketplace. So I think that's kind of the answer for that one.
Then the last one was, what is the expectation going forward? And I think, honestly, we learned it the hard way this year that trying to forecast where the market is going is difficult. I mean, the medical cannabis market is still very young, still very immature. Things happen. Legalization changes constantly in all the markets. So I think I will not try and jump into sharing the big crystal ball on where the market will be. I'll just say that Stenocare, we have very high ambitions. We think we have an amazing strategy and very strong product offering. And we are already available in the markets where this should happen. So we don't have to create anything new. We just have to execute, execute, and execute.
And that was actually all the questions that we have received. So that finalizes the Q&A for today. But before we end the webcast, I will just hand over the word if you have any final remarks to end with.
Thank you very much. I think this Stenocare 3.0 is really the beginning of a new important phase for the company. And I hope you heard and understood from the presentation. It's really a very natural next step considering what we have achieved. So we are very excited, very ambitious, and we can't wait to get started with being a full-time trading company. Thank you very much.
Thank you.