risk assessment. We'll be ready to report against the new climate standards for the current financial year. I also want to note a couple of other efforts that we've undertaken, and we do so generally without publicity, which indicate the values of this company. One weekend last year, some children in Indonesia were poisoned by a tainted medicine. The poison could be mitigated only by a product called famotidine, and the only supplies available were in our warehouse in Sydney. During the weekend, our team worked with the Australian government to get those supplies on transport from our warehouse in Sydney to those children in Indonesia. We also worked with Chemist Warehouse in Australia to raise money for men's and women's mental health charities by contributing 5% of gross sales of Maxigesic tablets sold throughout Chemist Warehouse over a promotional period.
We expect the momentum we have seen in the last year to continue, supported by growth in the core Australasian markets, from market share gains in existing portfolio, and also new product launches. We're also targeting increased growth in international and Asian markets, and from an expanded presence in the United Kingdom. Hartley will be expanding on this shortly. For the 2024 financial year, we continue to expect an operating profit of between NZD 22 million and NZD 24 million. We also expect licensing income, not included in the guidance range, of at least $6 million on the launch of Maxigesic IV in the U.S., following the expected FDA approval later this year. Depending on these timings, this license income could fall into the end of FY24 or early in FY25.
The one caveat on the guidance is that it does remain subject to the manner in which we decide to undertake our Maxigesic Rapid commercialization strategy in the United States. Before handing over to Hartley, I just want to thank the AFT team for all that they have delivered over the past year and their ongoing commitment. We place a high priority on supporting and developing our people and promoting a diverse and inclusive culture that makes AFT an attractive, an attractive to talented people. We're proud of the way they have embraced the challenges of the last year and delivered such an outstanding result for all our stakeholders. On behalf of the board and shareholders, we thank them for their efforts. Thank you also to my colleagues on the board and to our director, Managing Director, Hartley Atkinson, for their efforts and commitment to the company's success.
In particular, I would like to thank John Lam for his dedication and commitment to the company over a long period of time, and to wish him all the best in his retirement. He has played a pivotal role in the growth of the company and personally gave me great support when I joined the board. On behalf of the board and the company, I'd also like to thank you, our shareholders, for your continued support. I will now invite Hartley to address the meeting.
Thank you, David. Thank you, everyone. Look, I'll just go through some slides. What we wanted to do, just to give you an overview of what we're working on and maybe a little bit of a summary, but not going on too much about what we have already presented. As you probably know, the overall business, as David mentioned, grew by 20%. What we were pleased was every single area, Asia, New Zealand, Australia, grew. The only point just to point out is the rest of the world looks as though maybe it didn't grow, but that was due to we had some very lumpy licensing income. If you look at product sales, which are probably a better indicator, of overall progress, we grew by 71% on the international side.
I'll talk about this more later. Certainly, we have a lot of focus on both Asia and international, where we see some really good growth potential. Now, some of this is driven, it's driven by two things as well. It's driven by organic growth from products we already have, but it's also driven by growth from new products. We do have a lot of new products coming. Last year, we talked about this, and we said, "Look, over the next 3 years, we have about 74 products." We did, in fact, launch 22 new products last financial year. Now, if we look at this year and the next three years, once again, we have about 68 new products to launch. We have been able to also replenish some of our NPD pipeline.
What is also important, though, is that some of these products, too, though, we've mainly targeted initially on Australia and New Zealand. Some of these products, though, we have been able to look at some of our other business hubs, which is Singapore. We do have a lot of focus on that, and Hong Kong, and now the UK, and we're able to draw quite a lot of that NPD up into these hubs as well, which helps then to accelerate our Asia business and our international business, which is include, the UK is included in, in, that. What I should, you know, maybe just one example that was announced, I think, about a week ago. We do have some really interesting products in our NPD portfolio. I mean, this is an example of product from a company called Crossject, which is a French company.
They have a very unique needle-free drug delivery system. Their first product that we've licensed is ZENEO Midazolam. Now, what the practical, you know, use of that, if someone's having a fit and it carries on, they can have major health problems going right the way through to brain damage. Now, if there isn't a doctor around or something, it's very difficult, what do you do? What this enables you to do, is someone can actually give it to the patient through jeans or anything. Literally, you go like that, and it's the same as getting an injection. This is a product with a real, you know, positive use, and we've been able to license that. That's just one example, and that's included within that, you know, 68, that pipeline of 68 new products. Now, this.
We're also doing a lot of our own drug development work. I know we've talked a lot about Maxigesic. In fact, things have shifted on quite a lot, where we're busy commercializing Maxigesic, but in terms of R&D, we do have a healthy pipeline. We do also work with partners a lot as well, which sort of helps us, you know, with our execution, lessens our risk. Hyloris is a company based on the Belgium Stock Exchange. It primarily has quite a similar pipeline to ours, actually, about the same size. It has a market cap of about EUR 326 million. The difference between them and us, is they don't have product sales like we do. We are doing the existing Maxigesic IV with them, but also we're looking at a number of new projects.
What I thought I'd do, just to give you a bit of a flavor, for another company, is their co-founder kindly offered to make a quick, say, quickish, I apologize, about five minutes, presentation clip. Which sort of hopefully give you a bit of a flavor for what someone else thinks about the sort of things that we're doing.
My name is Thomas Jakobsen, I'm the co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Hyloris Company. Hyloris is a Belgian specialty development company, founded in 2012, listed on Euronext Growth. Hyloris has the objective to become a global market leader in reformulation and repurposing of added-value medicines. We currently have 16 products in various stages of development. When Hyloris was created, Maxigesic IV was the first and only product. The idea originated within AFT, following AFT's extensive knowledge of analgesic drug synergies. Hyloris managed the pharmaceutical product development, AFT managed the clinical trials. At that time, we already knew AFT from several other projects and were amazed by the dynamic, the insight, and the drive of Kathy and the rest of the AFT team. In many ways, our companies are very similar.
We both have a clear ambition of meeting unmet medical needs by reformulating and repurposing existing and well-known molecules, where the safety is already established. What many people don't know is that this is a common development pathway, allowing you to build large projects at a fraction of the cost of a new chemical entity, and this much faster. The average patented repurposed product in the U.S. was calculated to provide a sales totaling 26 times the investment in the first five years after launch. There's a plethora of examples of repurposed products many just don't know about. How about the IP? Long-term protection can be obtained, not through molecule patents, but through several other protection mechanisms, often rocking specificity, which is a protection product that targets small groups of patients, which can still be as much as 200,000 people in the U.S.
Indication patterns that protect the combination of your drug in the chosen indication, and formulation patterns, the patterns your formulation of the product. Since the development process is much faster than for a new chemical entity, all these protections give the average repurposed patented product more than 10 years of exclusivity in the U.S. market. What is really important is that Hyloris share the same mindset as AFT, where we prefer to invest in progressing development programs rather than building extensive pipelines or ineffective organizations. In essence, we know that 1 NZD saved, is one NZD more for the next development program. We believe that this cost consciousness is very unique in the pharma world. Another important similarity is that both Hyloris and AFT are convinced that success or reformulation or repurposed product is driven by value. Value to patients, value to physicians, and value to product providers.
This means that all products we develop need to generate value to all these different stakeholders. Coming back to Maxigesic IV, Hyloris is very excited about the formula. We still have only scratched the surface of the potential. We've seen the approvals happening, and we are all looking forward to the U.S. registration goal date of October 17. Providing this is achieved, launching in the U.S. will be a transformative event, as this is the world's largest pharmaceutical market, and ICMA is a very strong partner. Besides the U.S., there are plenty of countries still to launch. We are rolling out Maxigesic IV in regions of the world, even in countries where many people don't believe there's an established pharmaceutical market. The fact is that the world is a huge place, and Maxigesic IV poses a clear unmet need.
As you can hear, we are extremely excited about our collaboration with AFT. The organization is not perfect match with many complementary skills, and we're discussing ways to expand our collaboration. The current economic climate has made it very difficult for some companies to raise capital. This makes it a perfect time to expand the portfolio of well-funded and cost-conscious companies like Hyloris and AFT. We get a tremendous amount of good product offered from companies that do not have the cash, the experience, the vision, nor the manpower to complete the development process. All in all, I would like to summarize this thought: We are extremely satisfied with our long-standing relationship with AFT. This is a great company with a great management. It's bringing enthusiasm about the global role model Maxigesic IV, which we believe have a very substantial potential. We're looking forward to expanding our collaboration with you.
I wish you a continued great year. Thank you.
Thank you, Thomas Jakobsen. We didn't write that speech for him, by the way. Okay? That hopefully just gives you an idea of what someone else thinks, you know, working in a similar area based in a company in another stock exchange. One of the other areas we're working on as well, you may have read about recently, is our e-commerce offerings. We started up our Amazon site in the United States. Also we've added this into Australia as well, which makes good sense to add to our existing business. China, Tmall, what we've done there is, from the 1st of August, we've taken over the running of the whole thing ourselves. We see that's pretty important to sort of really drive the long-term business.
We're making pleasing progress, but we see, you know, long term, there's certainly much better sales that we can gain from Tmall. Australia, New Zealand, we do also offer the option of having our own AFT Pharm shop effectively as well, which is relatively minor in comparison with Tmall and Amazon. Also, the United Kingdom, which we mentioned a bit about. Look, this is just to give you an idea. It is a really interesting market. The reason why is that things have changed, obviously, with Brexit, and it used to be really easy. Companies used to do a deal for the whole of Europe, U.K. was tagged on to that. That doesn't work any longer.
In fact, tying the UK in with our existing business in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, actually works pretty well, and we've been able to do a number of deals. We've included the UK as well. We have a very healthy pipeline. We're doing four product launches this financial year into the UK, and we now also have a team of four people there. Our own office, just next to London Bridge, or very close to London Bridge. The gentleman, just on the far side, this is Summer Taslak. He's a very experienced UK pharma executive, but also he's a medical doctor. He's an anesthetist, very smart guy, and we're really pleased to have him on board.
He has very good contacts and knowledge across the whole of the NHS, which is one of the key driving things in the UK. Chap in the middle is Thomas Gumbley. He went to Europe about two or three years ago, and he's our commercial manager in Europe, and he's been working there for quite some time, certainly, it's really good to have him there. Just recently, Bailey has left our New Zealand office, and he's moved up to the UK to strengthen our team as well. Look, we have got, you know, good sort of significant plans for the UK. New product, development. What we've always done, actually, for years and years, is we've always done a, a kind of five-year plan.
We've looked at potential, we've done a bottom-up estimate of, you know, launching products, what our licensees have told us, et cetera, to see what things could look like in the future. Obviously, the key thing is, you know, that's the plan, and the key thing is then to execute it. Certainly, we do know something like COVID, looking back at it, it did really slow a number of things down, especially things like launching Maxigesic IV into Europe, when hospital doctors were literally buried with patients with COVID and major problems. Therefore, they're not really open to hearing about a new analgesic. And now we've really seen that turn around, and that's sort of been pretty clear. Basically, we've got a number of ongoing product launches, and this sort of drives the business.
When we look at it, if we, say, take products that we're launching from this year onwards, about 47% of our projected sales come from new launches of new products or new geographies. There is also existing organic growth, though, so it isn't just new products. Our R&D pipeline, obviously, we've talked about Maxigesic. You probably know a bit about that, but we do have quite an existing other pipeline, so it isn't just Maxigesic. We have a number of other R&D products in our pipeline. It is sort of leveraging the, the line extensions and the new launches. It's also growing our presence in, in Asia with OTC products and online. Also the U.K. does also have some impact.
Certainly, what we're doing at the moment is we've done a lot of work on expanding our pipeline in Australia and New Zealand, but now we're expanding that to our other hubs, being Singapore, Hong Kong, and the UK. Then also we have the Amazon launch in the US. It's all these sort of things working together. At the moment, you'll see in these top bits here, you know, that's Asia, that's international. That's sort of a fairly modest part of the business, you know, if we can get things right, we do see that there's a lot of potential in international and also Asia. Which is not really a no-brainer, because there's so many people, obviously, outside Australia and New Zealand. In the UK market, there's 67 million people, which is over double the size of Australia and NZ.
Actually, to file and register a drug in the U.K. costs the same amount as New Zealand. The whole cost thing isn't, isn't that bad, you know. That's the sort of thing that we've been carefully working through and is underway. Look, just quickly as well to recap, so Australia, you know, we, we grew sales, you know, pleasingly by 23%, so making good progress. There's still a lot more progress, and one of the key targets we're wanting to knock off this year is last year, we got close to NZD 100 million. This year, we're very confident we'll roll through NZD 100 million. That's certainly one of the things we'd be really pleased, you know, to do. Australia is, is a very key part of our business strategy.
Most time, well, not most times, pretty much every time when we get a new product, it's, it's Australia first, and then we look at New Zealand second. We are very much focused on Australasia, with Australia leading the drive. New Zealand, look, we got a superb result in New Zealand, led by Scott Porter. We got 25% growth. In fact, a few years ago, just talking about doing these strategic plan things, we thought New Zealand probably was quite flat, you know, we might only do about NZD 42 million, sort of, going forward. Well, clearly, we weren't quite right, and we've managed to really get, get New Zealand growing again, and we see it has a lot of ongoing growth potential. Certainly, we're pushing very hard in the New Zealand market as well.
Asia, that grew modestly, you know, at about 24%. We do see a lot of potential, though, as we're getting new things going. Basically, we have got some new geographies. China is obviously the big chunk of it, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand. We had some launches last year. We launched in Indonesia, and we launched in Korea, and those are actually going very well. We're very pleased with them and making some great progress. Obviously then, if we can start to replicate that in the other countries and start to beef up the portfolio in Singapore and Hong Kong, that will help to drive things. With clearly also, I guess, the wild card being China, we are having a number of licensing negotiations with China-based companies.
We would hope to be able, within this financial year, to make some further announcements around that as we make progress. International, I think as we mentioned, it has been a bit lumpy due to licensing income, and we recognize, you know, it has not been that helpful in the past when we've been given guidance, and it's included large, lumpy bits of licensing income, which can swing from one financial year to the other by some event, like a delay or something like that, with, you know, regulatory things.
If you do look at the ongoing sales, you can see they grew at 71% last year, which is satisfactory, but certainly, you know, we'd, we'd invite you to watch closely our reporting and see how we progress the international, because that's certainly, you know, what we're working hard to get some significant progress on. This is our global map, which I think we have shown before. What we have is where we've launched products, we have it in yellow. The yellow is getting more and more, which it should. We are pleased we did our first launch in Africa, in Kenya. You know, it's still not maybe a market we'd think of straight away, but we still sold two batches of Maxigesic IV.
You know, so that kind of all sort of adds up and is literally going across all these different countries. The clear bits in white are ones we have not yet done a deal. The important bits are China, so we're working on that at the moment. Japan, making some progress there, and Brazil is the other kind of big, chunky one, which is a bit different in terms of regulatory approach. Is China, so is Japan, so these actually are more challenging countries, but we are working on them and do expect to make some further progress in terms of licensing. Now, this is our R&D pipeline. We've touched on this a little bit. Also Thomas Jakobsen mentioned it's a good time at the moment. What does he mean by that?
I mean, look, this is just something out of Fierce Pharma, an example. This company in Singapore called Tessa Therapeutics, over the years, this company had raised $200 million, and it went back to the market because it was loss-making for another raise, couldn't raise any money, just shut down the whole thing. That might sound bad, but actually, for people like us, that's actually good news because what we've been able to do is, in the last sort of six months, we've signed two deals for new projects, and we're working on some more projects, which really, 10 years ago, would not have been available. A lot of these companies at the moment have some really good R&D, but they can't raise capital.
What we can do is we don't want to shell out money and buy them or something like that, but we can do a deal with them where, where we say: Look, we'll take over your, your program. We will execute it over the next three or four years in terms of doing all the clinical studies, doing the regulatory, doing the commercialization, and then, as it succeeds, you know, you can get some royalties or some milestones as we hit certain milestones ourselves. It's a very good win-win scenario. For some of these companies, literally the only other choice they have is like Tessa Therapeutics, where it's shut down. You know, we've been pleased. We've been able to do two deals. We have a deal for...
an eye drop for antibiotic-resistant eye infections, and obviously, the danger there is, if you have one of those, you could go blind. This is not a minor thing. It's something therapeutically that's important. We've got that program underway at the moment, and we're also pleased we did a program in strawberry birthmarks or infantile hemangioma. Kiddies are actually quite commonly born with strawberry birthmarks, sometimes quite bad. At the moment, there really aren't any easy treatments. They can use an oral treatment, which is actually quite dangerous, and they only really use it for severe cases, and what we're developing is a topical treatment. That's working with Massey Ventures, which is part of Massey University, and a Wellington-based plastic surgeon called Swee Tan. They've sort of done the preliminary work, then we've taken it over.
We'll do all the drug development side, go through FDA, et cetera, et cetera, and that's kinda how it works. We have got, like, a whole string. We've got the Maxigesic projects at the top, but we've also got a number of other projects. Some of those are quite close. They've filed. We've got a number of those, we've filed them as well. It's good to have a mixture, 'cause you don't want everything being promised as a jam tomorrow. You know, so we've got a mixture of things that are quite close, we're rolling out now, and then some things that are a bit further away. We'll sort of spend. At the moment, we're planning to spend about NZD 12 million in R&D.
This may go up a little bit over time to 15 or 16, but nothing really. We're not planning on anything really extreme. Also, we don't plan on it being a set percentage of turnover or something like that. Now, just quickly, this is, three slides on the finance stuff, which is normally more Malcolm's domain, but, I mean, look, we're pleased. I think, as David's mentioned, we have, EBITDA was, you know, pretty even on the year before, but we did spend a lot more. We invested another NZD 8 million or so into Australia and expanding our sales team. We have seen another company say they've got the biggest pharmacy force in Australia, but we're actually pretty sure we have. We've got a pretty big team. We've got 25 reps visiting pharmacy. We have six merchandisers.
We have a new doctor team of 10, 10, and then we have another hospital specialist team of 6. We've got about 56 people, Marie, in Australia, isn't it? Yep, 56 people in our Australian office, which is mainly a sales office, but we've got a very strong sales presence in the Australian market, and that's something we have invested in. We believe that's really important long term to get a really good return out of Australia. That's the reason behind that, but, you know, we still managed a pretty good result, we think. Balance sheet is basically, David's touched on that. We are targeting the debt at being about one times EBIT. We are starting to ease off a little bit on stock at the moment.
It, it honestly has been really hard in the last sort of few years to even get a boat to stick your container on. It used to take our logistics people about a month of running around to actually get the boat to get the container on. That has definitely eased up very much over the last sort of three months. That will also enable us to start to cut back a little bit on stock, which will certainly help the balance sheet as well. Our cash flow. Look, at the moment, on the cash side, we're well within our banking covenants, and we're happy with the cash flow. You know, it's just. We don't see there being any major event around that. That's just basically fine.
Then, look, just to sum up in terms of summary and outlook, what we're really working hard on is growth, momentum, about picking that up and making sure that goes on during this financial year. Basically, we've got the ongoing work around Maxigesic and the line extensions and the international markets, et cetera. Then after that comes the R&D pipeline starts to kick in after Maxigesic. Just really important to keep saying, yes, we have primarily been a Maxigesic company, but we're not really. We've got this other pipeline that follows it, so that really kind of follows on. We are strongly targeting increased growth in international Asia markets. Look, we do recognize it has been a bit muted in the last few years, hasn't been where we really think it could be.
We do believe, looking back, that COVID really did slow that down. We can see that going, going now, and we do think that, you know, we can show better results there, and we'd invite you obviously to keep watching, because obviously talk is cheap, but it's actions that really, really matter. Keep watching that. Expansion in the U.K. and e-commerce. Certainly the U.K. is a nice add-on, and e-commerce is something as well, which is pretty important, and that can also help the overall growth. There is still organic growth in Australia and New Zealand, 'cause sometimes people say to us, "Look, is it all new products?" No, it's a mixture of new products, new territories, but also organic growth with the existing products. Then we are targeting increased R&D pipeline.
We have got three projects at the moment under diligence. They're actually all with-... Hyloris, you saw that company speaking before, so we're working with them on three very, very, we think, very nice R&D projects. Working on that, and we would hope to be able to make some further announcements in the next few months around that. As David's mentioned, look, we're targeting that guidance of $22 million-$24 million. There is some licensing income which we hope, if all going well, we can get them this year, but if there was some slight delays in stock or shipping, it could slip into next year. That's certainly the $6 million part with Hikma for launching Maxigesic IV in the United States.
We are targeting in, in the sort of 12-month stretch, cracking through NZD a couple hundred mil turnover, so that's certainly well underway. I mean, the only thing I guess, is that we are looking at various options. We are having discussions presently around Maxigesic Rapid to launch that in the United States with a couple of parties. We haven't fleshed out the exact details. Those discussions are underway. Maybe if we did have to spend some money on that, that could have an impact. We don't think that's the case at all at this stage, but we just wanted to at least have that caveat in there, but I don't think it'll be an issue. Look, that's everything from my side, and I'll hand it back to David. Thank you.
Thanks, Hartley. Thank you, Hartley. Okay, now we're at the stage where we can ask for questions on the financials or business update or any other, any other matters you want to raise at this stage. As I mentioned before, all of us and management are around. We'll stick around and have a cup of tea with you afterwards, and we're happy to answer any questions then. Anyone who wants to ask a question, please could you raise your hand and state your name prior to asking your question, but could you please wait until the microphone, which is there, is available for you? Because otherwise, those who are now actually attending by audio won't be able to hear your question.
Also, in the interest of fairness to everyone, if you speak, please do so concisely and be considerate to other shareholders who may want, want to ask questions. So opening up the floor to questions. Anyone first? Sir.
Thank you. Thank you. My, my question is. My name is Peter Houston, and my question is, in 2020, I purchased some AFT shares, and again in 2021, I purchased more. The average cost of those shares was NZD 4.65. As at the end of last month, they're trading at NZD 3.70. Having listened to the good news, can somebody up there tell me why the share price hasn't risen?
Okay. That's a very good question, if I may say so. I wish I knew the answer to that. It's not an easy question to answer. If I look at the company now compared to the company, we were, well, two to three years ago, and actually, back in the IPO, when we IPO'd in 2015, we're a very different company. You'll have seen from the, the graphs that we've had significant and ongoing growth and, and now profitability as well. We're continuing to grow, and we're, and we're now starting to pay a dividend. I don't know that I can answer your question as to why the share price is so low. I mean, obviously, we discuss this matter regularly. We'd like to see the share price higher.
We will continue to do what we've said we're going to do, and try our best to grow the company and pay a dividend. We're not just a one-product company selling in one region. We've got multiple products, and we're selling globally. Hopefully, we can turn that around for you, at the end of the day, we're not in control of the share price.
Good.
The economy.
Perhaps, you could do or, or take a leaf out of the Labor Party's manifesto and pay the, pay the, TV people NZD 55 million?
I'm not in control of that either, unfortunately. Thank you for your question.
Hi, David. My name is Haley Ching. I wish to inquire whether you have business in Texas. You, Texas, of USA.
Well, well, I'll.
Not presently.
I mean, we don't at the moment. We'd like to, but, at the moment, we don't.
Oh, that's good news. There's a big, big opportunity for this company, and your share price will rise many times. Yeah, because I have read the economies that is stated this year, 18th of March to the 24th of March, that issue. They have three pages about Texas. It's very, very different from the early 1990s at that time, many times more. Why? Not just because of this booming oil price, only accounted for not yet 40%, and then one third is IT, and then the other one third is manufacturing. According to the earning power, Saudi Arabia is number one, earning power last year per person, and the second one is Belgium. That's very good.
That's just one that pharmaceutical company in the we, we do there, and they can expand our business in Europe. Then the third one is Texas. Texas only have about 30 million people there, but all its earning revenue is number one in USA last year. USA have 50 states, and it is the number one earning power. Guess what? The Republican there is very business open, and they don't have income tax for people working there.
Thank you.
So-
I think I'll try and answer what I think your question is, but if perhaps we can move on. Saudi Arabia and Belgium, we're certainly working in those areas, obviously. As far as the United States is concerned, we will do our best to get our products in Texas and the rest of the U.S. very quickly, but not at the moment.
It will be very good to try there.
Sure.
Yesterday, because I've been to the, what should I say? AGM of Aroa Biosurgery, and they have already business opportunity there.
And i think Dr. Atkinson, yeah, good friend of Bruce. Yeah. Can talk about it, say how they do their well, and we can do their well as well. Thank you.
Thank you, ma'am. Thank you.
Thank you. Next, next question. Anyone? Thank you.
Your e- ads we see on TV, are they done in-house or done professionally?
Well, they're done professionally, but I'll let, maybe Hartley answer, if he wants to.
The reason why I ask is, I was wondering if it would be a good idea to get either Lisa Carrington or the other Lisa that does the pole vaulting. That might be someone you could approach that might put a bit more youth into the advertising, where pain may be, particularly the pole vaulter, who's been out of action for quite a long time with injuries. That might be a place to, to look to enhance your product.
Yeah, that's a good... Yeah. Well, sporting stars with, we don't know how many of them use Maxigesic, but maybe we should provide a few complimentary packs to them and see whether we can get them to do that. Thank you. Anyone else want to ask any questions? Good opportunity now, Hartley's here. He hasn't said anything yet in the questions. Sir?
You just talked about Maxigesic. I must say, the company is doing excellent at taking on the world. Very good. Can I ask you about the market share with Maxigesic in New Zealand and Australia? I always hear people talking about the other competitive products, and even my doctor talks about the other product. Is it gaining market share? It's can be difficult to turn it around.
Yeah.
because the other product is strong.
Yeah, I mean, I, I guess our main market, we're focused on both markets. The largest potential market's Australia. We are clear market share leader in Australia, way ahead of the other product, and, and, and have been for ages. In New Zealand, it's pretty close. Their sales are a bit ahead of ours. We sell more tablets than they, they do. It depends, I guess, on volume. We sell more, and they sell a bit more dollars, it depends exactly how you define it. But, yeah, look, I mean, yeah, we, we, we, we believe what's also important is we got a much bigger range than they have, and to be honest, we haven't launched and rolled that range out.
Over time, we also see that as we get other parts of our range kind of roll in, we'll get a lot stronger. We've had a very successful launch in New Zealand and Australia of our hot drink, where the product you're talking about doesn't actually have a hot drink variant. We're able really to build up our whole thing around that, a portfolio of products like oral liquid for kiddies we've launched in Europe, hot drink we've launched Australia and New Zealand. We have a cold and flu version, you know, so we have a whole sort of portfolio. Some of the other companies are almost conflicted because, you know, products like Panadol or Nurofen are very much mainly focused around those two things, where we're very much focused on the combination.
Over time, this is never a quick five second thing, unfortunately, but over time, yeah, we can build our whole portfolio, which we still think will be more, more significant over time.
Have, have you got studies that show that, that, Maxigesic is actually doing better and people prefer that? Do you know?
people think about it?
Yeah, look, we've got a number of clinical studies, and they usually, what, what they are, though, is a comparison against the individual components. Basically, being against paracetamol by itself or ibuprofen by itself, and what we've shown in those studies is that the pain relief is greater, so it's up to 70% greater, and then also it's faster acting. The two things generally with pain that people are wanting is speed of action. We don't have no one specifically has studies against the combinations, but they do against the individual ingredients.
Thank you for thank you for your question. Any, any other questions? Okay, well, as I say, come and have a chat with any of us over refreshments. We're happy to answer your questions. Okay, we'll now come to the formal matters requiring resolution. These are outlined in the notice of meeting, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions on each of those matters being put to shareholders. As is now required by NZX listing rules, a poll will be conducted for each of the resolutions, and this will be conducted together at the end of the formal business. Your board supports each of the resolutions being put to the meeting, and as stated in the notice of meeting, each director intends to vote all shares and undirected proxies held by them in favor of the resolutions.
Proxies have been appointed for the purposes of this meeting in respect of approximately 87 million shares, representing approximately 83% of the total number of shares on issue. We'll show the proxies cast for each resolution shortly. Resolution 1 relates to the remuneration of AFT's auditors. The proposed resolution is to authorize the directors to fix the auditors' remuneration for the current year. In accordance with the Companies Act, Deloitte has been automatically reappointed as the company's auditors. Details of the statutory audit fees paid to Deloitte for the financial year ended March 31, 2023, are set out in the 2023 annual report, and the 2023 audit fees are expected to be comparable to last year's fees, with appropriate provision for an increase as the audit scope broadens with the company's expansion.
I now propose as an ordinary resolution that the directors are authorized to fix the fees and expenses of Deloitte as auditor for the 2023 financial year. Are there any questions concerning this motion? There appears to be no discussion, so the poll on this resolution will be conducted at the end of the formal business. We will now move to the next resolution, which is that Marie Atkinson be re-elected as a director of AFT Pharmaceuticals. Marie is retiring by rotation in accordance with the listing rules and offers herself for re-election. The board recommends Marie as a director and unanimously supports her re-election. Marie's bio is set out in the notice of meeting, and I'll now invite Marie briefly to address the meeting on her proposed re-election. Marie? Oh, quick.
Do I not want to hold on, really?
Yeah, we should give you.
Can you put it down slightly. Gotta hold it. Me? Good morning, everyone. Thank you, David. I'm very pleased to be offering myself up for re-election to the board this year. As a co-founder of AFT, 26 years ago now, I've got great experience across all departments. At the very beginning, it was just the two of us, and I can tell you that I've done most of these people's job at one time or another, although at a much smaller scale, of course. In my current role as, as chief of staff, my day to day job is for the care of our biggest asset, which is our 113 employees and a few contractors amongst them as well. I'm fully involved in every employment decision and deal with HR issues almost daily. Good, good things.
I've seen AFT grow from a team of two, as I said, to 113. We continue to grow. Our employees have great job security, and we have great retention rate. I think that speaks volumes to our culture and how the company operates. When we, when we launched 26 years ago, actually 25 years ago to the market, we had two ethical products and another over-the-counter product. As you've heard today, we've now got 150, and we're operating right across the world with various hubs, amongst them, with our own team members in those hubs. I'm proud to have been part of this journey so far. Our ability to, to adapt and perform, in the international pharmaceutical market at a really high level is something to be proud of, and I know that we've got a lot further to go.
I bring to the board a comprehensive understanding of our operations and what's involved, as well as international relationships with all of our suppliers and people that we've out licensed to. I have personal relationships with all of them and ensure to keep that up so that it's not just to any one part of our company, so we spread that around. Many of these relationships we've had for more than 15 years, and it's really important to the running of the business. I'm able to translate these communications through to the board, who don't have the executive role that I have. I'm excited for AFT. I don't know why I have to read this, because I am actually very excited about AFT's future. I look forward to supporting my fellow board members and employees in the near future.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marie. I now propose that Marie be re-elected as a director of AFT. Are there any questions or matters for discussion on this? She's a great contributor to the board, by the way, so, well, that's why we're all supporting. Okay, thank you. Now we're just setting out the proxies for each of the resolutions, and you'll see those on the screen. Now, ladies and gentlemen, as there is no further business, we'll conduct the polls on the matters described in the notice of meeting. Please use the voting card that you received when you registered on arrival, and please complete your voting paper by ticking for, against, or abstain in the appropriate place on the form for each resolution. If you have any difficulty, please raise your hand and someone from Computershare will come and assist you.
Please remain seated until your voting card's been collected, and Computershare will come round with the ballot boxes, which they are, they've, they've got now, and collect the voting cards. Are there any matters of general business to be discussed? In that case, please just carry on, do your voting, and put your cards in, please. Any more? Thank you. On behalf of the board, thank you for your attendance at the 2023 annual meeting. We'll announce the results of the polls to the stock exchanges this afternoon. I now invite you to join us for refreshments, which are obviously over there.
They're not there yet. I didn't know we there.
Oh, they're not there yet. Well, the biscuits and the coffee anyway. Thank you. I now declare the meeting closed. Thanks very much, everyone.