Good afternoon and welcome to Nightingale Financial Year Webcast. My name is Teemu Suna. I'm CEO and founder of Nightingale Health. Today we will be covering our financial year. I will be talking together with our CFO, Tuukka Paavola, who will be joining me on stage later in the presentation. We will be going through. We will talk about Nightingale. We go through the key achievements of the fiscal year. We will have the financial review. We will be having a look at the targets for the next financial year, and then we go through the financial calendar.
In the end of the presentation, there is a possibility for Q&A, so please post your questions, so we will be covering those in the end of the presentation. All right, let's go. Nightingale in brief, we are a company aiming to bring preventive health for the world. This means that we aim to build a system that is bringing the preventive side of health in parallel to the current healthcare system. The idea is that instead of only taking care of sick people, which is very important, we build a system that keeps people healthy. We are a biotechnology company, but at the same time, we are building solutions for the consumers.
We are actually covering the preventive health landscape from the core biotechnology to the consumer applications. This technology is production ready. It is very broadly published technology, so there are very strong scientific validation internationally. The technology is regulatory approved, so it is being used already in healthcare applications. This is very international. We have laboratories in Finland, Japan, U.K., U.S., so the operation is already very international. Let's have a look what the technology is doing and what it is all about. On the left side of the slide, we have the traditional blood tests. Traditionally, when blood is being analyzed, typically the technologies and the healthcare system is looking at the individual molecules in the blood.
Good example, cholesterol that many knows about. LDL cholesterol is one of the cholesterol molecules in the blood and the current technologies in healthcare, this is one of the molecules that they are testing. It's a very good approach when you want to detect diseases. If you want to look something different, if you are not looking to diagnose diseases, but you are actually looking to do prevention. What you need to do prevention is the ability to detect what will happen in the future. To understand that, you need to understand the biology better. You need to capture the systemic biology around health and disease. This is where Nightingale comes in. Instead of looking the single individual biomarkers or molecules from the blood, we have built a, let's call it a scanner.
We have built a scanner that takes this exactly same blood sample and scans through it, and while it scans through the blood sample, it detects a very big, very large amount of different molecules, more than 200 different molecules from single blood sample with a single analysis. The significance and the meaning of this is that when we capture more of this molecular data, this biological data, we can understand the future health and disease a lot better. When we can see the future better, we can take actions early, we can build prevention. So this is the fundamental biotechnology behind the preventative health system that Nightingale is building. But this alone is not enough. I mean, we have a bunch of molecules. So the next question is, what do these molecules mean?
How can we connect those molecules into the actual health outcomes? This is the second core part of the Nightingale's technology. We have captured a position in the market where we have access to the world's largest health outcome databases. These are called biobanks very often or cohort collections. What they are, what it means, how it works is that, for example, in the UK Biobank, there are 500,000 samples from 500,000 British people. Those samples have been collected 10 years ago when those people were all healthy.
There is a 10-year follow-up to see what happens to those people, if they develop a disease, if they end up in an accident, if they are completely healthy. All the health data of those people is stored in the UK Biobank over 10 years. Now, these 500,000 samples in the UK Biobank, Nightingale Health has measured all of those samples and analyzed this very big amount of molecules from each of the sample. Now because we know what happened to those people in 10 years, we can connect the molecules we measure to the actual health outcomes. With this, if we take now one fresh sample outside of the UK Biobank, we do the measurement, and we can connect the molecules to the future health outcomes. This is groundbreaking.
The scale where Nightingale operates in this, we are number one in the world. If you think about it, if you really think about it, how difficult it is to capture these sample collections, to follow up the people, how difficult it is to develop this kind of a proprietary biotechnology that can actually measure these samples. I mean, it's not trivial to measure hundreds of thousands of samples routinely. This technology to measure the samples that we have created, it's the scale where it operates, it's unprecedented. There has not been this kind of technology never before. Putting these two things together builds massively exciting opportunity around preventative health. For the first time, we have the statistical power, we have the technology to really build preventative health applications.
This is why we are so excited about what we have built. There is the third element, which is putting these, the capability of measuring the blood, number one in the slide, and then these big biobank and health outcome data collections, putting these two things together. That requires algorithm development that we have been building Nightingale for a very, very long time. The question is, like, how do we automatically provide these deep health insights from every single sample we measure? The different parts needed to make this happen, they are immensely challenging. Then number three, the analysis, the outcome, it looks so simple.
It's many times with these simple things, the underlying complexity can may be, like, unbelievable. This is especially true in health technology and in and particularly in biotechnology. What is when putting these all elements together and getting the analysis of getting the health insights as a result. What is it? It is the world-leading, the outcome we have brought to the market. It is the world-leading ability to detect from a single blood sample with a single measurement, hundreds of different health outcomes, future health outcomes, hundreds. This is because the data asset, this is because of the technology to capture the molecules. This is because of the algorithms we have built.
We can, in a fully automated fashion from a single blood sample, provide understanding of the future health risks. It's more holistic, it's more comprehensive than anything else in the market, and it's also more accurate. It's better detection than the currently available clinical technologies. It really builds up the groundwork for the preventative health system. The validation is rock solid. This is, in medical research, we can even say the Nightingale technology is the gold standard. When it comes to the regulation, the technology also complies with diagnostic level quality standard. This combination is also very, very rare, that there is a technology that is so comprehensively scientifically validated, and it is also diagnostic level quality.
As I mentioned in the beginning, the technology is being used very broadly internationally. I mentioned also this, that it's we can say that we are the gold standard in medical research. You can see here more than 350 different research studies, more than 150 different institutions, more than 25 different countries. It's everywhere. It's everywhere because we are creating value that is unprecedented in the medical community. All right. That was the brief recap of Nightingale. Let's move into the key achievements for the last fiscal year.
Before going to the achievements, I heard about this. Someone said to me like, it was formed in a way that life starts slowly. I was thinking like, "Okay, what does it mean?" It means that when trying to build something great, it usually starts slowly. If you think about like, life, if you go and have university education, what is the return on the investment for the university education? How long it takes to capitalize on the investment in education? Well, many times it takes decades. It takes a very long time. It starts slowly.
However, if you don't do it, and if you don't do the right things in the beginning, you get nowhere or it's very difficult to get anywhere. It doesn't have to be education, it can be, it can be anything. The things that we are doing now, even though the return is not here the next day, it defines where you will end up. This is with the early stage growth companies. I've been like a million times in discussions about, so what is the early stage growth company? What it means? This is what it means. Things start slowly. This is not linear progress. The real question about early stage growth companies, for me, the most relevant question about early stage growth companies, are we doing the right things to reach the long-term goals?
This is what I'm very proud about Nightingale. When I'm looking at the things that we have been doing, and I'm looking at the long-term goals that we have, building a preventative health system globally. This company is in a better position now than ever before. I very strongly believe that we are doing the right things. Let's talk a bit about these things that we are doing. We set up the targets for the past financial year. We had the target to launch a new version of the mobile application. We managed to do it. Why we did it, why we build it?
Because if you think about the chain from the biotechnology to the data assets to the algorithms, how can we bring the technology available for people? What is the tool to let people access what we have built? It's Livit. It's the new mobile application. That's why we build it. It actually matters when we are looking where we are taking the company in the long term. We launched also the first commercial services based on at-home test. Why we did it, why it's important? It's important because we need to start getting also feedback from the people to understand better how we can communicate, how we can help people to prevent diseases, build better well-being, better individual well-being and health. We also took the technology to our commercial partners, commercial international partners.
The same idea here, getting people, getting the technology to the people. We've been in the process of working with the U.S. officials, with the FDA. The FDA, why we are pursuing the FDA approval, it is helping us in a very particular field in our business to business operations. That's why we are going forward with the process with the FDA. We didn't achieve it, but it may be good to note here that getting the FDA approval is typically three to five years. Even though we didn't get it's we have done very good progress around it. We will continue with that, and we will take the time needed to get the approval. Of course, it's not completely in our hands.
Is it something meaningful? It is something meaningful when we look at a certain area of business in our business to business market in the United States. Number 5 here, reaching the order book target. We set this target. The meaning of this target was to get the technology to be used by customers, to get more customers, to get feedback, to get this development loop working, building it stronger. We did not reach it. Reason for this is simply that forecasting these financial results, it's very difficult for the stage that we are as a company. I think we did very good progress in this area.
when we have a very kind of strict cutoff point for the order book, it's extremely hard to forecast where the number will land. Those were the targets we set. there were a lot of other things as well that we managed to do over the fiscal year. the key thing here, now going back to this thinking like doing things that actually matter for the long term. we managed to reach a lot of achievements in several areas of our business that really matters when we are looking at the long-term goals and where we are taking the company.
I will be covering a couple of these to talk a bit more. Let's start from the UK Biobank. Maybe good to kind of provide a bit of background for this. Now this is something, the UK Biobank collaboration, this is something that we started in 2018. We kind of took a leap of faith here to see if the Nightingale technology is capable of bringing the novel insights into the medicine. If this technology is actually doing the things that I was talking today. If we can actually detect from this one single blood sample, hundreds of different health outcomes. Here is the evidence after multi-year investments and development, this is the result.
The answer is, I know the figure is from the scientific publication. That's why it's maybe somewhat complicated. To put it very briefly, yes, we can. Yes, we can detect from the single blood sample hundreds of different health outcomes, and the detection power in these disease areas is better than the currently used clinical technologies. Think about the significance of this. Now instead of looking these individual biomarkers, individual molecules that I was talking earlier. Take Nightingale technology, you get everything you are getting in the kind of the previous technologies. You get it all. But then in addition, you don't have to look only at these individual, these single diseases. You look hundreds of diseases.
When you can look at hundreds of diseases, if we can capture, or in this case, when we can capture hundreds of different diseases early in their development, we can take action. These actions are actually something that in many disease areas, let's think about cardiovascular disease. This technology allows to detect cases in cardiovascular disease that are not being detected by the current technologies. When we detect those cases that are now being undetected, applying the exact standard and routine treatment, preventive treatment, protocols, we save EUR billions, EUR tens of billions in terms of money, and we save a lot of lives, and we build better well-being in the society. It makes a lot of sense. It's not only cardiovascular disease, it's other things as well, because from the single blood sample, you can detect hundreds of different diseases.
We can run this in any scale. Our price point is public health compatible. This is low price point. This makes a groundbreaking value promise, and the validation, the biggest, most comprehensive datasets and scientific validation in the background, and it's regulatory approved. I think it really matters. I think it's really exciting. All right. The next thing we did, I wanted to talk a bit more about the Livit. Here, the key thing about the Livit and our consumer service is that we believe that the future of well-being, individual consumer well-being, is that the measurements that we are doing is going away from the world when we look at the individual molecules and biomarkers.
I mean, you can measure your vitamin D as much as you want. How that measurement connects into your healthy life? The connection is not very strong. Let's put it that way. What Nightingale is saying and where we believe that the whole well-being market is moving into is to answer the ultimate question in well-being and health. Why do we focus in our diet? Why do we focus in exercise? Why do we focus in sleep? Why are we doing the health actions? What is the reason? Yeah, we want to enjoy life, we want to feel good, we want to look good. In the background, I think we want to live healthy as long as possible, because living healthy is enabling us to enjoy the life.
What Nightingale Livit is actually doing. It's giving you the estimate. It's giving you based on the data I showed in the previous slide. It gives you an estimate how much healthy years you have in the future. The healthy years is calculated based on the risk of catching one of the top ten life quality reducing diseases, based on the world's largest data asset that I just showed in the previous slide. I know this may sound scary for some people, but actually this is just an observation. It's not your judgment day. Because when you make some changes in your lifestyle, many of us, we are already focusing on our diet, we are already focusing on exercise, sleep, many things.
Wouldn't it be nice to actually understand what is the impact of the actions you are doing? This is what we tell to you. We help you to understand how the health actions you are taking in your life are actually impacting your future health. With that information, it is possible to optimize your health trajectory for the future. I very strongly believe that the whole well-being and health, this is the direction where it is going. We are moving away from these non-connected single parameters here and there into a more holistic analysis, what it means in terms of real health outcomes. All right, moving forward. Moving to Japan. This is a bit of a similar story I mentioned earlier, about that things start slow.
It's the reason if you think about the Japanese healthcare market and the Japanese health system, it's, I think, one of the most difficult health systems in the world. It's one of the most difficult markets in the world. What we have managed to do at Nightingale and what is the achievement that is actually meaningful when we look at the long-term targets is that Nightingale has managed to integrate into the core health system in Japan, which is the occupational health system. The Japanese occupational health system, it's most likely the world's largest occupational health system. It depends a bit how you calculate it, but anyway, it's very substantial in size, and it has the preventative thinking in the background very strongly.
What have we done in Japan? What is the achievement we should be thinking about? It is the fact that we are in the system. It's very, very difficult to get in there. Now when we are in the system, we have the possibility to build up the commercial journey as well. There is no shortcut. There is absolutely no shortcut. What we have done and the timeline, how quickly we have done it, this is based on the feedback we have got. This is extremely fast progress in the Japanese market. We are very proud of that. Then the final thing in the achievements that I wanted to bring up.
I have now said today many times that we are focusing in doing things that really matter when it comes to the long-term targets. Now, one way to evaluate if we are actually doing these things is to look at the impact we are creating for the world. Because in the end, if a company manages to contribute for the world, it is very likely doing something that also builds a very strong foundation for the commercial operations ramp up. Now we, the Upright Project, one of the leading international measurement tools for the net impact of companies evaluated Nightingale. Nightingale's net impact ratio is plus 70%. This is in the top 7% in the world.
In just to give the comparison, in companies listed in Nasdaq Helsinki, the net impact is -16. Are we doing the right thing? I think I very strongly think we are for the long-term mission that we are on. All right. Those were the highlights. There were lots more of very interesting things, but those were the ones we wanted to highlight and that's it. I think we are in a better position than ever in the history of this company to continue the journey to build the preventative health system globally, to continue the work towards the vision and the mission that we have communicated. It's a journey.
It will still take time, but the things that we are doing, I think we are on the right track. All right, let's move on to the numbers, and I will ask Tuukka to join me on stage. Tuukka will walk you through the numbers, and then we will come back to the next fiscal year targets.
Good. Thank you very much, Teemu. Great to be here, talking to all of you guys. Yeah. Like Teemu said, let's look at the second half and full year numbers for our financial year 2021, 2022. Starting from the top, our revenue for the last financial year was roughly EUR 2.2 million, which is slightly higher than the previous financial year. On the back of that, at the end of June, we had an order book of roughly EUR 3.8 million, which actually gives us a good foundation to continue our top line growth.
We've continued executing our strategy, rolling out our services to the market and expanding internationally, which can be seen on the operational expenses, which are increasing year on year and also slightly higher on the second half of last financial year compared to the first half. Like Teemu said, we are still investing heavily in our key assets. We made considerable investments in, for instance, the new mobile application, Livit, on the data assets such as the UK Biobank collaboration, and in our laboratories to increase the capacity, for instance, in Japan. These investments are the cornerstone for the company that enables the future growth, and the journey we are on.
On the net income, there's a negative impact from the decision to write off the convertible loan made to Weavr Health Corp., which can be seen as one of item there. The most important thing here is in the light of what's happening in the world right now, the global uncertainty, rising interest rates and increasing inflation is that we have a really strong position. I would say we are in much better place than many other similar early-stage companies. We have a strong capital structure. We have really good liquidity position, which enables us to focus on executing our strategy, continuing our journey, and taking Nightingale towards our vision. Briefly, those were the numbers from last financial year. Back to Teemu on the targets for the ongoing financial year.
Yeah. Thanks, Tuukka. Let's have a look at the targets for the ongoing financial year. Now I will say it again that we are looking to do the right things to achieve the long-term targets because we are trying to build something groundbreaking for the world. We are trying to build something that actually contributes for the world. It's very difficult, but we are in an excellent position to do it. We are in an excellent position when looking at the substance, when looking at the things we have already achieved. As Tuukka was saying, we are in an excellent position also capital-wise, which puts Nightingale in a very exceptional situation in the growth company domain. Let's have a look at the targets.
Three targets. Starting from number one, we aim to win a significant commercial contract in the public healthcare sector. Now, I think like more important than the target line is the rationale why we are doing this. Target number one, we are aiming to reach this target because taking the technology as a part of the public health, making it a preventative health in public health context, that is what we are aiming to do here. That is the way to bring the technology as a part of the system. It's been a very long journey to get here. I mean, when you go to talk with these leaders of public health systems or public health initiatives, you need to have the best scientific evidence. You need to have the world's largest data assets.
You need to have a correct price point. You need to have the scale and repeatability. You need to have the regulatory approvals. You need to have the capability to bring out the results from your system. You need like a massive amount of different things to prove that you can do it. Now if you reflect what I've been talking today, we start to be in a very good position to pursue the public healthcare sector. I think that's something that really matters. Target two, even though the public healthcare sector is, of course, very important, not all health systems in the world are strongly built around the public healthcare sector. In those markets, the business-to-business market becomes very important.
Because in the background, the question really is, how do we get the technology to be used by the people? In some of the markets, there is the corporate health, for example, may be very significant player in the overall health system. There are many other examples. That's why we are also looking to reach the business-to-business deals. Target number three, I talked quite a lot about, and you can see from the slides that our position in the medical research field is very strong. We are looking to make more contracts in that area.
There is also more behind this target, and the more is that it's not only about making business in that segment. That's also important. I think very important is also to work together with the global medical science community and show and demonstrate the impact all around the world, what can be done with the Nightingale's technology. Being part of that scientific ecosystem, to be the partner in that area and help the scientific progress forward. These are the three key targets. Making this happen is something that helps the company to go to the next level. In addition, we will continue the development of our consumer, direct-to-consumer service. It's a key focus area in our strategy.
We will release the financial targets for the consumer business when we are ready to do so, and we are not ready today to do it. We will collect more data to build a forecast that we are comfortable sharing with you. It's work in progress. As a final thing here, the regulatory approval, the FDA approval in the United States, we will continue with that. The important point is that this is not a question about can we operate in the U.S. market. It's not a question like whether we get it or not, it defines can we operate in the United States or not. It's not about that.
The specific thing we are aiming has an impact for some of our business-to-business offerings. We think that the impact is important. That's why we are putting our efforts to get it done. It's important, but it's not like black and white situation. This summarizes the targets for the ongoing fiscal year. Next, Tuukka will walk through the financial calendar.
Yes. Let's look at a few key dates for this financial year. First of all, we have decided to transition to start reporting in accordance with IFRS starting from the previous financial year, which means that we will release our first IFRS-compliant consolidated financial statements end of October. A few days prior, we will also publish unaudited comparison numbers from the preceding financial year, including the most significant impacts of this transition. The annual general meeting or the AGM will be held on the seventeenth of November. Finally, our half year report from this financial period will come out on the second of March next year. That's it, briefly on the dates.
About the IFRS, one important thing that we have seen when we talk with some of our customers, especially outside of Europe. Nightingale, this is very international business. The technology and the offering is very global. Particularly with very big customers, they are looking also at the company backgrounds pretty carefully. Let's put it this way, that the Finnish accounting system is not very well known, especially outside of Europe. Taking the finance also to more international direction is very key. It's a very important step for us also business-wise.
This is not only a financial thing. This is part of the growth journey of Nightingale.
Mm.
All right. We have nine minutes for the Q&A. As it has become already a tradition, I would like to invite our Chief Operating Officer, Satu Saksman, on stage to go through some of the questions.
Good afternoon on my behalf, too. There have been a lot of questions. I've been following the discussion. Many of the questions have been answered. There have been questions about FDA and Livit and so on. Now kind of like talking about the key achievements and the highlights. I mean, based on those and I'm saying doing the right things, based on all this, have you seen a market pull in any of the markets business concept you have entered, or does the sales require a lot of push? In other words, kind of startup concepts, is the product market fit good enough anywhere?
Well, this is a very, very good question and I think very central question for any company. What we have actually seen now, and there's been a clear shift when we look at the history of the company. Now, the capabilities that we have launched. When we have managed to integrate, for example, the Japanese health system, when we have published the very groundbreaking UK Biobank publication, when we have brought the Livit service to the market.
All of these like small things that we have done have led into a situation where actually we are getting quite a lot of inbound requests asking like, "Okay, this seems very interesting." Many times the question is like, "Well, it seems to be too good to be true." Our kind of the data and everything we have built, we have very solid way to prove that it's real. I think there has been a shift and doing the right things. I think this is exactly what we want to do with these actions.
Okay. Then, let's make one question related to numbers. It has been asked many times. Can you describe the dynamic between your order book and your revenue? You started and ended the financial year with a higher order book than you realized revenue. Why has the order book not converted to the revenue during the fiscal year?
Yeah. Maybe Tuukka, you can start.
I think the order book, first of all, was 1.5x larger end of June this year than the previous year. We managed to increase the size of the order book. The nature of the deals that we have in the order book is that some of them are running for quite some time, more than a year. It's on one hand quite difficult to predict when we get the income. We have a lot of different customers with different maturities in the order book.
When it comes to the EUR 3.8 million we had in end of June, there are projects that will become revenue this fiscal year, and then there are also projects that will become revenue over the next coming financial years, I would say.
Yeah, I think this is like very important point, like the nature of the business, as you said. It's like that many projects and many deals they run over several years, which leads into a situation that forecasting at the moment is pretty challenging. But it comes from the nature of the business quite a bit.
Okay. There are also a couple of questions around this same topic, so combining a few of the questions. You mentioned that Nightingale is a gold standard in medical research. Kind of like how to convert this gold standard and access to this, the sample collections, how to convert that to money, meaning revenue?
Yeah.
What's the rationale behind this?
Yeah, that's also a very good question. Especially the medical research is a business area that moves very. The timelines are very long. Just to make it a maybe a bit more concrete, if there is a project initiating, let's say like a very significant project. First, the scientist or these health initiatives, they need to apply funding. They apply funding from the governments, for the foundations, from maybe some private funding, et cetera. Then that process can take, like, it can take. It's more likely to take years than it's months. Once the funding is secure, then doing all the planning.
This is like planning these very large-scale initiatives scientifically. It's a very demanding thing to do. It's important to remember that we are part of the initiatives that have never been built in the world. Making those happen requires massive amounts of expertise of the medical research institutions. Then at some point, it becomes kind of the sample collection starts, and then the project is rolling. It puts these initiatives in a very long timeline. Now Nightingale Health's position, we have a very good position, but capitalizing that, it's just a long timeline to make it happen. On the other hand, it also puts us in a very good situation because we have been part of the many key initiatives in the world.
The new initiatives, it makes sense to also take Nightingale because you build, kind of you can build connection with the other things that we have been done previously with Nightingale. There is a bit of this kind of a positive network effect in business and in value creation.
A question related to the target number two. New target include multiple deals where you would integrate to the existing blood sample flows, but the sample flows sound quite small compared to what individual healthcare companies process in a year. Kind of referring to this 50,000 samples. Can you give a practical example of what kind of contract you are targeting? What it could mean in concrete terms?
The B2B market is that the size of the deals varies a lot. There are like in some markets there are a lot of different players, a lot of different B2B players where the individual deal size can be pretty small. Then there are some markets where we have bigger players, where the numbers are bigger. The common factor here, however, is that the nature of B2B deals is typically starting pretty small and then iterating there to build it bigger and bigger. It's kind of continuous validation when we start building, you know.
That's why the ramp up, or for two reasons, the ramp up is taking the pace what we set up in the target.
Okay. We're actually running out of time. I think the final question, because this is also really relevant, thinking about the long term and how kind of, like, what is the position of the company? Kind of thinking the future. How does the inflation, rising interest rates, and the war in Europe, what kind of impact do you see that having in Nightingale?
Well, first thing to say is that the situation will impact every company. From Nightingale's point of view, however, our position is pretty strong, as Tuukka was saying. Our cash position is good. The technology position is also very good, so we can move forward with the commercial track. Then at least when looking to history, health and healthcare has been pretty resilient industry in the times of crisis. In that sense, I think we have a relatively strong position in the market, despite of the very difficult situation at the moment.
Maybe just to add on that, we are really equity heavy. If you look at our capital, which especially in this situation when the interest rates are rising, is really good. We don't have that much exposure to the rising rates. On the inflation side, if you look at our gross margin is also rather okay. We see the possibility to potentially take those increasing costs to our prices. From that point of view also, we are in a rather good position.
Yeah. Maybe that is. We are a bit over time. Sorry about that. I think this is important point. Like, what maybe differentiates also Nightingale in this growth company field is that we are kind of the operational model is very strong. Looking at the gross margin level, getting the volumes up, there is actually, it's pretty healthy, the underlying business model. I think that's a very strong, one of the very strong assets. We can, in this pricing situation, I think we have a strong position in that as well.
Okay.
All right. Sorry for running a bit over time, but we need to conclude the Q&A here. Final thing to say is thank you for watching, and have a great day.
Thank you.