Good morning, and welcome to AFT Pharmaceuticals' annual meeting. I'm David Flacks, chair of AFT. I'd firstly like to direct your attention to this important notice on the presentation, which along with my prepared remarks, has been released to both the NZX and ASX this morning. On behalf of the board, thank you for attending the 2021 annual meeting. We have this year enabled the option to join the meeting by audio conference, and we extend our thanks to those of you who have joined by this means.
We will be using slides during the meeting. These have been posted to the NZX and ASX and are available on AFT's investor website. For those of you who have joined by audio, you'll be able to see these and follow along. Before we start with the formal business of the meeting, I do have a couple of housekeeping points.
I'd be grateful if you could make sure your phone is switched to silent. In the event of an emergency, please make your way out through the door which you came through and follow the instructions of the staff. Could I also ask, if you've not already done so, to scan the QR tracing code on your phone before you leave. Let me start by introducing those on the stage to you. Hartley Atkinson, who'll be presenting to you shortly. Jon Lamb on the far side, Doug Wilson here, and Marree Atkinson here as well. One of our new directors, Anita Baldauf, unfortunately can't be with us today as she's unwell, but you will hear from her later. Also Jim Burns, who's based in the U.S., is attending by audio. Jim is retiring today and not seeking re-election.
Our other U.S.-based director, Ted Witek, also clearly is not able to attend. He's going to be attending by audio and will also talk to us shortly. I would just like to mention that Doug Wilson was named the Senior New Zealander of the Year at this year's New Zealander of the Year Awards, a well-deserved accolade, and one that we at AFT are very proud of. Thank you very much. He wasn't expecting that.
Our auditors, Deloitte, are here in attendance and available to answer questions later in the meeting. Our lawyers, Harmos Horton Lusk, are also present. Could I also introduce you to some of the senior management team who are here with us today? Perhaps you could stand as I call your name. Malcolm Tubby, CFO, and Company Secretary. Ioana Stanescu, Head of Drug Development. Vladimir Ilievski, Regulatory Affairs Manager. Louise Clayton, Director of International Business, and Murray Keith, Group Marketing Manager. You can find details of all the directors and senior management team in our annual report and on our website.
The company's constitution prescribes a quorum requirement of five shareholders. As you can see, this requirement has been met. Accordingly, I declare the meeting formally open. The items of business for this meeting and the resolutions to be considered by shareholders are contained in the notice of meeting, which was sent to shareholders on the 6th of July. In terms of the order of the meeting, to kick off, I'll say a few words, following which AFT's founder and Managing Director, Hartley Atkinson, will give a presentation. We will then consider the formal business and resolutions of the meeting.
In relation to the resolutions, there will be opportunities for shareholders to ask specific questions as we address each resolution in the formal part of the meeting. There'll also be an opportunity to ask general questions after Hartley has given his presentation. At the close of the meeting, we hope that you will join us for refreshments.
It's a great pleasure once again to be standing before you to report on the past year and the outlook for the year ahead and beyond. I clearly remember the evening prior to last year's proposed annual meeting, when, at about 9:00 P.M. in the evening, the Prime Minister announced a lockdown for the next day, and we had no choice but to postpone the meeting and hold it virtually. These are indeed strange times, and there is no doubt that the pandemic has impacted the entire global economy.
Although the pharmaceuticals and healthcare industries should be relatively protected from the general ebb and flow of economic activity, given healthcare needs are fairly constant. Nevertheless, when faced with a global event such as COVID-19, it is unlikely that any company is able to escape unscathed. That said, we're pleased with how AFT has performed during this period. While we bear some battle scars, AFT is emerging from this as a stronger and more resilient business.
Let's start with the positives. First, AFT has once again extended its longstanding record of year-on-year growth. As this slide shows, revenue has grown at a steady pace over the last two decades. In the most recent decade, we've delivered compound annual growth rate of 13%. We have delivered sustainable growth by identifying health needs and developing and distributing clinically proven solutions to improve health outcomes in our markets.
This remains our focus for the year ahead and beyond, and we are confident that it is a strategy that will continue to drive increases in shareholder value into the future. However, these top-line results do not reflect the many pandemic-related disruptions that we have faced. Hartley will talk to these points in more detail, but I do just want to emphasize these issues up front. We've had to overcome significant supply disruptions, delays to product launches, delays in obtaining regulatory approvals, disruptions to clinical trials, and delays in finalizing licensing and distribution agreements.
Pandemic-related lockdowns, travel restrictions, and overseas government-imposed limits to medicine supplies also disrupted sales through our over-the-counter hospital and prescription channels. The financial effects of the pandemic are most noticeable in the operating profit result, which was lower than the prior year for the first time in four years at NZD 10.7 million. However, due largely to our resilient performance over the year and the refinancing of our debt at the start of the financial year at much more attractive rates, we have more than doubled underlying net profit after tax to NZD 7.7 million. This is a record to be proud of and reflects AFT's clear focus. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, AFT has grown in strength in the last year. Total assets and shareholders' equity have increased considerably, while we've reduced net debt to NZD 35 million.
The refinancing that we undertook at the beginning of the financial year reduced our interest costs from nearly NZD 7 million in FY 2020 to NZD 3.4 million in the last financial year. Operating earnings cover these costs by more than three times. We took the decision to invest approximately NZD 10 million into inventory because we foresaw the potential for global supply chain disruptions. In hindsight, this has proven to have been a good decision. We intend to maintain these elevated levels of working capital until we are confident that these disruptions have been resolved. I should add that AFT showed its agility and ability to respond quickly to the pandemic by introducing products such as face masks, developing our e-commerce platform, extending our Lipo-Sachets products, and developing our Crystawash Extend product range.
The board continues to target debt levels of between NZD 25 million and NZD 30 million, and it remains our intention to consider a dividend policy once we've reached that level. AFT is now looking ahead beyond the current turmoil to a time when the world has overcome the current challenges of the pandemic. The future we see is a company with a larger and stronger business, with an expanded product portfolio in our core markets in Australasia, a growing presence in Asia, and a significantly expanded International business founded on our family of Maxigesic pain relief medicines, but also introducing new products such as Pascomer and our nasal nebulizer, NasoSURF. Reflecting this vision, the board has developed and periodically reviews and updates a comprehensive skills matrix to inform succession planning.
The matrix considers each director's experience against identified industry-specific and broader governance-related skills. Industry-specific skills identified as being particularly relevant include global pharmaceutical industry experience, pharmaceutical regulatory and ethics experience, pharmaceutical manufacturing and quality, R&D product development for drugs and devices, commercial operations experience, both domestic and international, and pharmaceutical sales and marketing. A summary of this matrix will be shared in the next annual report.
In line with our evolving needs, we have recruited two new independent directors with the skills and experience to help us on that journey. Anita Baldauf comes to AFT with broad international experience in fast-moving consumer goods and corporate finance, having gained experience with multinationals such as Nestlé and L'Oréal. Ted Witek brings to AFT more than 3 decades of international clinical development and leadership experience in the pharmaceutical industry. He also has an in-depth understanding of North American pharmaceutical regulators and markets. You will hear more from Anita and Ted later in the meeting. On behalf of shareholders, I want to thank you both for the way you've already contributed to the board and AFT in the short time that you've been involved.
Ted and Anita replace Nate Hukill, who retired in June last year, and Jim Burns, who today retires from the board after nearly seven years as an independent director. Jim has played a key role in AFT's development, assisting the company through its initial public offer, our listing on the NZX and ASX, and our international expansion. He has prepared a short video address, I'd like to play that for you now
Hello, my name is Jim Burns, and I'm pleased to be with you today from my home in the U.S. As of today, I am retiring as a member of the AFT board of directors, having joined the board prior to AFT's going public. My background has been as a co-founder, CEO, and director of multiple public and private companies in the pharma, diagnostic, and medical devices industries. It has been my privilege to work with Hartley, Marree, and the team through major growth and international expansion of AFT. I depart knowing that AFT is on a really good footing. Certainly fast-growing New Zealand pharma company operating in the global market. The company has a solid product line and a strong competitive position.
Key features, at least from my perspective, for a strong growing pharma company, AFT has a diverse product line, OTC and prescribed medications, strong patent portfolio, strong R&D capability, and a solid management team, including superb marketing skills. It is one of the top performers in the space and certainly for its size, its ability to work with regulators to register the products in multiple countries. This is a top pharma company requirement that is really quite unusual in a small company of AFT's size. The company has built international partnerships and distributorships, which will carry on in the future and cause continued expansion and growth for the company.
At least in my view, coming off of the board now, the groundwork has been laid for continued global expansion for AFT, and it's really been my pleasure working with Hartley, Marree, the team, and the board on helping to build the company. I am very optimistic for the growth of the company, and I'm optimistic for its ability to continue to have a place in the pharma industry and a place in the global pharmaceutical marketplace. With that, I want to thank all of you as shareholders for your continuing support of the company. I know as a shareholder, I continue to support the company, and I look forward to seeing the company continue to expand in the future and have a great time.
Again, thank you all for your confidence in the company, and thank you for Marree and Hartley and the team for allowing me to participate with you on this vast journey. Thank you all so much. Thank you.
Thanks, Jim. Jim has provided the board and AFT with clear thinking and great advice. On behalf of shareholders, I would like to thank him for his time on the board. On a personal note, I'd like to thank Jim for the guidance and support that he has given to me during our time together on the board. A further evolution in our governance follows the recognition of the growing appetite among investors for information explaining how environmental, social, and governance factors influence and drive value in our business.
AFT is built on integrity and a clear purpose of working to improve the health of its customers. It's a mission that has at its heart a commitment to sustainability, the maintenance of best practice corporate governance, the highest ethical standards, and a determination to contribute positively to environmental and social outcomes. However, for these statements to have meaning to our stakeholders, we understand our efforts need to take place within recognized frameworks that allow them to compare performance across companies, sectors, and borders. Recognizing this, we last year benchmarked our ESG performance against our peers, the NZX Corporate Governance Code and Guidance Notes, and Standard & Poor's assessment of material issues for the pharmaceutical sector.
The review, which is detailed in the annual report, has demonstrated that the company has made further progress on a broad range of fronts. It has also identified opportunities for further progress. AFT is determined to take a pragmatic approach to these matters. We see them ultimately as an extension of our duties and obligations to our shareholders and our broader stakeholders, including our people, our customers, and the community more generally.
As an initial comment, I think it is relevant to remind shareholders that Maxigesic is a proven analgesic and that it does not contain opioids. We all know that opioid abuse is a significant problem in the U.S., but it should also be noted that it's a real and growing problem in both New Zealand and Australia. Hartley will talk about the Maxigesic line extensions, including Maxigesic IV, which is designed to be used in the hospital system and as alternative to opioid IVs.
AFT is not just a one-product company. Although we are proud of our Maxigesic stable of products, AFT now has more than 130 individual products with approximately 300 SKUs in the market. I would encourage you to look through our annual report, which provides more detail on our ESG initiatives. For example, I'd also like to point out the progress that we've made driving sustainability in our packaging of products. This is a great example of initiative that not only makes sound business sense, but is also good for the environment. We will continue to identify and progress such initiatives.
I'm proud of our efforts to make our products available where there is an urgent need. For example, our eye care products to firefighters in Australia, and over many years, we've assisted charities working to improve health outcomes in developing countries. Again, these are detailed in our annual report and on our new website, which I encourage you to review when you get a chance. Turning to the outlook for the year ahead. It's clear to the board that the pandemic and the associated travel restrictions and supply chain disruptions will continue to pose a challenge to the company, at least in the immediate future.
We're encouraged by the significant ramp-up in vaccinations in important target markets such as the U.S., Canada, Europe, and China. However, new COVID-19 variants, low vaccination rates in developing markets, and vaccination resistance all elevate the risks of continuing disruptions. The government has indicated it wants an export-led recovery. We're supportive of that and are ready and willing to play our part. We urge our government to work with industry and with us to enable our people to travel overseas to conduct essential work. We fully support a careful risk-based approach. However, we do not believe the current border restrictions are calibrated to take account of essential travel needs of those who have been vaccinated.
As an example, we really need to have one of our senior staff to be able to travel overseas in the near future in order to finalize a multi-center global clinical trial, which is at a critical point. Importantly, a successful conclusion of this study will help to make a treatment available to sufferers, including children, of a disfiguring facial skin disease. AFT prides itself on its resilient culture. We're determined to work through these challenges just as we have over the past year and a half. We've done what we can through Zoom and other such tools well. In many cases, it cannot replace face-to-face interaction.
In the face of the ongoing risks to our supply chain, we believe it is appropriate to continue to maintain higher levels of inventory than we would normally hold. Ultimately, we remain confident about our prospects for this financial year. Despite some headwinds in Australia with the ongoing lockdowns, we are overall trading in line with expectations. We expect continued growth in the year ahead, we maintain our target of an operating profit of between NZD 18 million and NZD 23 million. That target is, of course, contingent on no material change to current trading conditions.
On behalf of shareholders, I want to thank the AFT team for their work and the results that they have delivered in what have been very testing circumstances. I also want to thank Hartley and the rest of the board for their efforts and commitment to the company's growth and prosperity. Finally, I'd also like to thank you, our shareholders, for your ongoing support for AFT. I will now invite our Managing Director, Hartley Atkinson, to address the meeting.
Thanks, David. Thanks, everyone. Look, what I'd like to do is to go through some slides to give you a bit more of an overview of the company, because I think what we maybe picked up in even chatting just before the meeting, we talk a lot about Maxigesic, but as David's tried to mention, the company actually has a lot deeper product portfolio than one product. Although I'm not saying that it's not important, but we have sort of got quite a broad portfolio. In terms of our strengths and our growth, as we're saying, there is this broad portfolio which we have also extended as well. Effectively, we've really got three pillars to our business. We've got our Australasian business, Australia and New Zealand. We've got Asia, and then we've got International.
What we do rely on, certainly locally in Australia and New Zealand, is in-licensing products. During the pandemic period and the lockdowns, we certainly were very busy increasing our in-licensing. In some ways, that was arguably made easier by the pandemic because people were more prepared to deal with us on Zoom and things like that. We were probably actually more efficient and got more in-licensing done than what we would normally have done, which is actually a very good positive.
In terms of our Australasian business, which presently at the moment, as you know, is the major part of our business. It's been close to about NZD 100 million. Look, we don't want people to think, because it wouldn't be true, that this is sort of a bit of a sunset business where it's going to chug along, growing very slowly. We're working very hard on increasing this business, and we would want to grow it significantly over the next five years. That's certainly part of our plan.
We are executing well within that market. Like for example, in the eye lubricant category, which in Australia is a very big market with it being hot and dry, really. It certainly helps these sort of products. We were able last year to move from the number 3 position to the number 2 position.
We overtopped Allergan, which is those of you that know the industry, Allergan is a very big eye care company, but yet we were able to overtake it, which is a pretty good achievement. Also in terms of Asia, when we first started and we first floated, I think those of you that have been with us a while will recall we always talk about Southeast Asia, and what really we were talking about was Singapore and Malaysia, and not really much further. Actually, since then, we have made a lot of progress.
We've actually broadened out our licensing to other parts of Asia. Last year, we were able to conclude deals in Indonesia, Korea, Pakistan, and Thailand, which clearly takes us further afield than our original remit. What we also did was we extended our presence and started to work in China.
Clearly, China's 1.4 billion people, that is the big chunky market in Asia. What we did initially is we opened a Tmall site. That's their version of Amazon. Very big, very popular way in China of buying products, because they are very digitally focused, which actually happened going right the way back to the previous SARS epidemic, where their e-platform sales really rocketed.
They're very used to, in fact, more used to than us, in buying stuff over the Internet. We started with our trial. We took three products. We took Ferro-Sachets, we took Vitamin C Lipo-Sachets, and Vitamin D Lipo-Sachets. Look, our first trial, which we started back in about September last year, actually is working very well. Almost surprisingly, we were selling more Ferro-Sachets on our Tmall site than we were in the whole of Australia and New Zealand.
Certainly, some products have actually really gone well. What we're doing now is we have the opportunity to expand it to include pretty much all our over-the-counter products. That's what we're just executing at the moment. This also acts as a foil towards the Daigou trade, where some of you have probably heard with some companies, they relied quite a lot on the Daigou trade, which was local Chinese students in Australia and New Zealand, or Chinese residents that would buy product and send them back to China. The Daigou trade, clearly, with border lockdowns and the pandemic, has become less of an influence. It wasn't our major channel, but it was certainly one that we sold some product through. This is us pivoting to look to work around the fact there's less Daigou trade at the moment.
In terms of global licensing, we extended our Maxigesic registrations. We increased the number of countries we're selling in. To be frank and to be honest, though, the pandemic did restrict, even though we're doing these launches, it did restrict the sales uptake, because if you're trying to launch, and we did delay it, Maxigesic IV into Europe, if all the hospitals are closed down with the pandemic, it's not really easy or practical to launch an intravenous drug. We did, as David mentioned, yep, we did have some delays, but we're now seeing hospitals are opening up, and things are definitely freeing up a lot in Europe and a lot in the U.K. This thing has decided to play up on me. Sorry, I'll just get rid of this and push that.
Hit the maximize button.
Yeah, well, sorry. It is working now. It was just doing a scan. Okay. Look, in terms as well of leveraging our global markets as well, one of our other capabilities we probably don't play up a lot or might not have explained enough is our R&D capability. We've learnt a lot over the last five years since we floated about R&D. You're always learning. Certainly, we have also learnt a lot. We're able to do very cost-effective R&D. Like for example, one of our studies on the orphan drug side, these studies are always expensive and difficult to run.
Our partners tell us that it would cost about $50,000 a patient. We're able to execute this sort of study for about $13,000 a patient. A lot of legwork on our part, that is really a key thing. We have our own internal R&D department run by Ioana, who you've met before. That really is a key thing. Basically, there's the R&D. Manufacturing as well, we've done a lot of work on that. Our regulatory team and our R&D team actually did, like in Europe, we did 1,260 variations to add manufacturing sites to make sure we didn't have too much influence from certain manufacturing areas like India. We were able to add a European site using Eastern Europe, and that gives us a lot more flexibility and security of supply going forward. That was important as well.
Now, look, just quickly looking at our different markets, because like we say, there is some Maxigesic, but we do have well-established local Australian, New Zealand markets that do perform well and do have good growth potential. The real exponential hockey stick growth comes in our international markets, but these markets still are good business, and there's a lot of growth potential. We grew the Australian business to NZD 68 million last year. There certainly were some COVID challenges in Australia as well.
We had some lockdowns and things. Despite this, we're still able to get growth. We would have got more growth had it hadn't been for COVID, but still, we were able to get that growth. Maybe what's important to explain as well is it's not sort of a random process. We generally have about seven key categories that we work in. Pain is things like Maxigesic, but we do have other pain products. Eye care is one of our current big areas. What we do with eye care is all our products are preservative-free.
The problem with preservatives in eye drops, it's a bit like dilute dishwater. If you think about if you want to put dilute dishwater in your eye, it's going to kind of irritate it over time. The advantage of preservative-free is clearly that it doesn't have these preservatives in them, so it's better tolerated, which obviously are things like lubricating eye drops that people use time and time again, is pretty important. Medicated vitamins as well. We have a big iron market in Australia with medicated iron products on the PBS and selling to doctors. Allergy, gastrointestinal, dermatology. We also do have a big hospital business as well, and that certainly performed pretty well during the pandemic. We generally saw the Australian health authorities were actually a lot more proactive. They talked to us closely.
They increased stock holdings of critical antibiotics and things like that in case there was major pandemic effects. It was sort of interesting to see the difference between the two countries. Australia certainly planned out those sort of things and executed more than we saw in our local New Zealand market. New Zealand, we had an interesting time, as you're all well aware. We had quite major lockdowns. We really couldn't do a lot. All our sales force was basically locked up. Look, we were able, though, to still grow sales a bit. Probably, though, the year before, to be frank as well, though, we did have quite a boom in sales right at the end, just before lockdown.
We did have quite big stock holdings of our winter products at that stage, like vitamin C, like our sachets. We literally sold about 20x our normal sales in one month. That's one of the reasons that the year before kind of had that big jump. Certainly, we still managed to grow sales. What we're doing at the moment is we've in-licensed a lot of products. We're doing new launches at the moment. As David Flacks mentioned, Australia, we have got a rolling kind of lockdown from state to state presently. We've certainly seen in New Zealand, though, at the moment, sales are growing pretty strongly because things are kind of freed up. We're getting good New Zealand sales growth. Our reps are able to operate easily.
Look, Asia a s I mentioned before, it's changed from Southeast Asia to Asia, which is important. We've done work with partners, which we employ to run these things like Tmall. Part of linking into Tmall is Little Red Book and things like that. The thing about e-commerce, actually, is I know sometimes you talk to people. They kind of think you just stick it on the internet. It kind of runs itself. It's actually very labor-intensive. That's why we work with people that literally have whole teams based in Guangzhou.
They make sure that everything runs properly. Certainly, our trial, as I mentioned at the moment, has gone very well, at least up to expectations. Now we're pushing on to that next stage to leverage that. We did have a planned slight drop in sales. We did that to also improve margins. Margin last year improved significantly in Asia.
The key thing really is that those current sales are only really a foothold, and we will be looking to significantly grow those over the next five years. Just for example, we do have our first product in registration in China right now. Yeah, we will then have other products coming in. China clearly is a big market, and we have got our first products that we're working on there. Long term or medium term, we see there's a lot of potential. As well as that, we're getting growth in Singapore. Malaysia was certainly very impacted by the lockdown. They had very hard lockdowns for pretty much the whole year. Certainly Malaysia last year was definitely hit quite a lot. We are doing launches as well in Hong Kong, and we strengthen that side.
What we've done is we've looked at where we're going to get big growth in the next few years as part of our planning process. Certainly, Asia, China was one of those. We've established a separate office now in Hong Kong. We've employed someone there. We're starting to build that. Then as well as that, we've also started, as you may have seen, an office in Europe as well, because when we analyze our sales, we also see Europe sales are going to be quite significant as well.
This is our International, talking about Europe. We were still able to grow the business last year. We did see in last year versus the year before, we actually had less licensing income. We had worked, and some of you may have picked up and seen, we did a large-IV deal with Hikma for the U.S. The upfronts and milestones for that are published. They're about $18.8 million, will come over the next few years. The major value, though, comes, basically, we have a profit share agreement with Hikma. They are one of the largest suppliers of injectables to the U.S. market.
Most of the money, though, will still flow from the profit share that we have with them, and we also supply product to them as well. There's basically sales and income from product sales. There's additionally a profit share, and this is not inconsequential, but it isn't the major part of the pie, potentially $18.8 million of milestones and various payments as part of our agreement with Hikma. Yeah, that's a bit about that. We've got over 100 countries, so we're increasing the number of countries. We've got licensees and distributors.
A number of countries, we do have distributors as well. It just depends really on the country as to how we structure that. Certainly, going forward, we see this just under NZD 10 million was a reasonable sales figure, but our aspirations and our plans, as long as we execute, are significantly greater than that. Australia, New Zealand grows. Asia, we see we can get significantly more growth. International is where we see as well we can get significantly more growth as we execute. As the effects of the pandemic start to fade, it makes it easier to launch products like Maxigesic IV.
This is our global map that we've shown over time. What has happened is the yellow is where we are selling Maxigesic. The blue is where we've licensed it, and it's still in registration. Some of these places do take quite some time. The whitest areas we have not yet have an agreement. The key areas that we see that are significant holes that we're working on at the moment is obviously China for Maxigesic.
We have made good progress in China with a very strong local partner, and what we're going to work through with them is actually going to the regulator, sorting out the regulatory pathway. Both China and Japan are quite particular. You do have to do an additional, quite large, usually local study. That's something we want to work through and scope out, and you'd really want a partner to be able to work through that with a local company. There certainly are lots of strong local companies in China that are good to partner with.
It's normally actually quite embarrassing almost because what they say to you is they say, "Oh, how many reps have you got?" We kind of proudly puff our chest out and say, "Oh, we've got about 40 or 50." They say, "Oh, yeah, we got 3,000 or 4,000" or something. You're just like, "Oh, okay. Very nice." The other place is Brazil. Brazil is a really, really tricky market, and we have been working on that. We are going to start registering anyway. What we sort of see will probably happen is as we get closer to launch, we launch in the U.S. Brazil is very U.S. influenced, and it'll be much, much easier to license something once it's actually launched or close to launch in the U.S.
The other thing we do see actually is despite, as you know from the newspapers you see, there's always a bit of tension between the U.S. and China. China very much looks to the U.S. They don't really care in terms of drug registrations and approval. They kind of don't really care about Europe. They say, "Oh, yes, it's registered in Europe. That's interesting. When's it going to be registered by the U.S. FDA?" They really do look to the United States and the U.S. FDA. That all works in quite well for us, where we're filing Maxigesic IV in the United States as well. Here is the rollout. I mentioned a number of countries around the world. Last year, we went from 28 to 43.
A lot of these launches did happen right at the end of the year, so they didn't really contribute that much to the sales. It's really getting those full years in and then starting to build the sales. What we're talking about at the moment is mainly tablets, and we've got another slide coming up. It just explains, though, because Maxigesic is not just a tablet, it's a whole family of products, and almost each of those individually is almost like a new product. Certainly, the IV very much stands out. If we analyze in five years' time and say, "Where do we think, what will the sales look like?" About our estimates based on licensing forecasts, our estimates are about 40% of the sales for International will come from Maxigesic IV.
Independent market research, there's a company called DelveInsight, analyzed all the major markets. They put the report out about 2020. They said up to 2028, the largest newly launched injectable analgesic in the world, they estimated, would be Maxigesic IV. They certainly saw that it had potential, and our licensees similarly are seeing good potential for it. That is a really key product, and we were able to really advance. Even just since the close off of last financial year, we've still been able to add another three countries in terms of registrations. What we are quite proud of is quite challenging, is we also scored our first European approvals for Maxigesic Oral Liquid. Children's medicines are always really difficult from a regulatory perspective. Even doing clinical studies in kids, it's ethically really tricky.
You really shouldn't, in most cases, give a kid a placebo. That's just not ethical, we don't. They are difficult because of that. They're difficult studies to run regulatory-wise. They're very challenging. We basically managed to achieve that in July, which we're really pleased with. That gives us our set up to then expand that to the rest of Europe. We're also working on Australia and New Zealand as well. Maxigesic Oral Liquid is certainly one of the new product lines. This sort of tries to explain just what we're talking about with Maxigesic. It isn't just sort of one product. There's a whole list of them that stack on top of each other. First one's the tablets, as you're no doubt aware. The IV, we've launched that and starting to roll that out. It's still very early days.
The oral liquid, we've registered it, but not yet sold it anywhere. We also have a Maxigesic hot drink sachet, so it's a bit like if you've got cold and flu, you pour it in with a hot water and take it before you go to bed. It's that sort of product. It depends on the region. They're reasonable use to Australia and New Zealand. Eastern Europe and Russia and places like that where they have real proper cold and flus because it's properly cold. I went to Russia once in February. The warmest it got was - 20 in Moscow. We kind of don't know how lucky we are in some places. Yeah, look, they take a lot of these sort of products. Maxigesic Rapid is an interesting product.
What we've done is we did a deal with a U.S. company that has a lot of technology about making nanoparticles in a very cost-effective way. You can often do these things, but then they're not cost-effective. These people have patented technology. We've got our first patents granted for Maxigesic Rapid, which then takes us out to 2039. A lot of these products have different patents as well. Generally, with the tablets, it's probably not too important most times, because as you build the brand, the brand is what people know. For instance, if you go to the supermarket, you'll know you can buy paracetamol, house brand tablets, or you can buy Panadol. To be frank, despite we all know that, most people buy Panadol. With Maxigesic, the patent goes until 2025-2028, depending on the jurisdiction.
Even once that's come off, because it's primarily an OTC product, the brand will carry on, and the product will carry on selling. Where it's particularly important, though, is things like Maxigesic IV, where it's totally a prescription product, so once the patent comes off, that will certainly be much more open to competition. With Maxigesic IV, we've actually got 3 separate patents. We've got a ratio type patent, which goes 2031 to 2034. We've got a formulation patent, which is pretty hard to design around. That's 2035. We've got an additional manufacturing and formulation patent, which is also pretty protective as well to 2037. These are granted. This one was recently granted in China, and it's got a notice of allowance in the U.S. We've granted them in Europe.
Yeah, we've had some really good progress on this IP and patent area as well. Certainly, that is something with pharmaceuticals, which is quite a challenge, but it's something that we have had a lot of success with. Then we've also got Maxigesic Cold & Flu, and we've also got a Tri-Stix sachet as well. Just to give you the sort of flavor, that's not just one product. As well, as David mentioned too, though, it isn't just Maxigesic. We do have a wider portfolio of R&D products. This graph here kind of gives you an idea about what we spend. We are spending round about NZD 9 million or so at the moment, the last couple of years. That's about 8.5%-9% of our turnover. Quite a lot of big pharmaceutical companies actually do spend about 9%-10%.
Some of the top of the range are up to 15%. Certainly, people say to us, "Oh, you're not really an R&D business, are you?" Yeah, we are. We spend as much as a lot of the big pharmaceutical companies overseas, about the same percentage. Having said that, though, like I said to you, we're very cost-effective with our R&D. Even though that's what we're spending, we probably get a lot more value on top of it than that spend.
We're not really targeting a set percentage, though. We're really working bottom-up, saying what R&D do we want to do, how much is that going to cost? We sort of do it that way rather than starting off with a set percentage and saying we have to spend that. Basically, like I was saying, we've got our Maxigesic Cold & Flu.
We're just completing final studies at the moment. That one is well underway. The Pascomer, which David alluded to, we've got a multi-center study at the moment in about 16 or 17 sites around the world. It's remote. We've got a good site in Christchurch, got another in Queensland. We've got a site in Taiwan. We've got about six or seven sites across the United States. We've got a couple of sites in Spain. Marree and I personally visited the investigator a couple of years ago, and we had discussions with a beautiful trial site, honestly. The hospital there, you could eat your lunch off the floor. It's marble. It's state-of-the-art. Some of these places have some very nice infrastructure as well. We've also got further sites in Eastern Europe, like Czech Republic, and then also Serbia as well.
We're getting pretty close to finishing this study. To be frank, it's been really challenging with the pandemic, because a lot of patients won't go into hospital where they should do for the clinics. We've had to do remote monitoring, a lot of different things. We're generally getting very close to finishing the study. It probably is about six months later than it would've been, but certainly, we've been able to adapt and execute pretty well, considering. This case here is what it treats. It's something called facial angiofibromas, where patients get. This is actually a pretty mild case, where they're getting growths on their face, and these get really, really bad and can block your nostrils up and block your eyelids, so you can't close them properly.
This is an important treatment, and this is a child, a reasonably young age, but it doesn't just go away. It gets worse and worse. This is a sort of mild case, which is just starting. Basically, this drug does stop the. We believe we'll be able to demonstrate that it'll be able to stop the growth of these lesions, which is pretty important. That one has been close to finished. We have also outlicensed it in North America to a company called Timber.
We've also recently, last February, we completed another licensing deal for Europe to a very good German company called Desitin, based out of Hamburg. NasoSURF is our drug delivery system. We're just about to start soon our first proof of concept clinical study. It did take quite a lot of work to get the device fully developed.
It is a very efficient drug delivery system. There is something slightly similar that's the German gold standard that's about 10x the size of our device and performs 1/10 in terms of drug delivery. Ours is 1/10 the size of the German gold standard and delivers 10 times more. A lot of people that really know about this area really are quite surprised and say that that can't really be true, that it goes that much better than the top German technology.
Usually, the only answer we can find is we say, "Well, you know that boat that floats across the water in the America's Cup? New Zealand can do some tech quite well." Usually, if you say something like that, they kind of get you. Otherwise, they're still looking at you, thinking about mountains and sheep and things, and kind of nothing else.
That's gone well. Look, we've got other products. medicinal cannabis is quite topical. We've sort of gone down the route and pathways. We prefer not to debate the whole thing publicly. We think it's quite commercially sensitive. I can say we've made pretty good progress, and we're carrying on with that. We believe we should be able to develop a product and navigate the regulatory structure in Australia. Mainly Australia's the one we're most focused on because that's usually by far the bigger market, but also New Zealand as well. Crystawash Extend is a nice non-alcohol-based hand sanitizer. We've done a number of studies, for instance, that shows that it has a prolonged germ-killing effect that goes for 24 hours.
What we've generally seen in a lot of countries is that with the pandemic, it's kind of reminded people about those basic hygiene things, to be real careful. There's a bit more mask-wearing than there ever was, more hand sanitization than there ever was. This sort of product has sold well in Australia and New Zealand. We've also licensed it in a number of countries, and these should spread out as well. Some of our partners we work with in Europe, we're just generating some additional test data, and we got it tested in China by a lab there. Had very good results, about the same as we got here. We've got a patent as well over it as well. First patent granted. That's Crystawash Extend. This is that. I was requested to put up some numbers.
I'll try not to dwell on them too much. I'm not the CFO. Look, I think that the general point was, despite the disruptions and everything else, the company has grown its sales for the 23rd, 24th year in a row. We have considerably strengthened our balance sheet. We've restructured our debt. We've done a lot of positive things. I mean, overall, the normalized profit increased by about 2.7x , from NZD 2.9 million-NZD 7.8 million. That was important. Then as well, in terms of working capital, we have, as David mentioned, we made the deliberate decision to increase by about NZD 10 million our inventory.
When we first did it, I think it was last year at the half year, we did get questioned by a couple of analysts as though this was something that just happened, and we hadn't kept an eye on our inventory of stocks. Honestly, we've seen that as being a really important thing, because even our local sales guy was at a conference recently, it's the weekend, and some of the companies there didn't even have enough demonstration stock to put on their stand because they kind of more or less run out.
Generally speaking, we've got plenty of stock. We see that as a pretty important thing. Even having said that, we have slightly expanded our working capital. Yeah, we see that as kind of resolving. This is the thing here, where you'll notice that our cash flow last year did not really improve. Having said that, we did put an extra NZD 10 million into inventory. If you take that out of it did certainly, the overall cash position was improving.
I certainly do read some of those share chat things, and I know one comment I read, someone said, "Oh, they didn't mention their cash flow. Is there a problem?" No, there's not a problem. It's just because, honestly, it's something that's actually, touch wood, we're actually not even worried about it. The cash is going well. We've got sufficient to execute our business. We're not planning to do a capital raise or anything like that. Next slide. Just briefly, there's only one more slide. Just briefly, as we said, it has been sort of a challenging year, but having said that, we have got a lot of things we've executed.
We grew our key Australian market. We did get good growth in product sales in the rest of the world. If you back out the licensing income, it grew by about 50%. To be honest, long term, that's not enough. We look to grow it more than that per year. We did get a significant margin improvement in Asia as well, which is also what we want to do, and then grow sales in Asia. Look, we did have some supply disruptions. A particular unnamed foreign government actually made quite a knee-jerk decision to ban all the export of any paracetamol product from its country, which is one of the reasons now we've diversified further our manufacturing base just to avoid that sort of thing impacting upon us in future. Some of the licensing distribution agreements definitely took longer.
Like everyone says about how lovely Zoom is, it is, and good, but sometimes I know for deals, we've done them where literally, we more or less got locked in a room with an Italian lawyer for about two days, and funnily enough, by the end of two days, it all got signed and done. By doing it on Zoom, it can take a lot longer, and that's kind of what happened, to be honest. Yeah, look, but having said that, we still did do a lot of deals, even though they took a bit longer, including the Hikma one, and we're well set up, we believe, going forward. Then just last slide, promise. This is the summary and outlook.
Look, the key things really we're working on now is really driving and delivering the International sales according to our five-year plan over the next five years. It's accelerating the number of countries as well. There are some countries like Russia, say, for example, which are on our launch target in the near future. Then we have got a number of newly launched markets, like Canada is certainly a nice, significant sized market with a population of about 30 million people. Germany, we've just launched in that with our IV, and slightly earlier, we launched our oral dose form as well. Then Switzerland, even though population's only about 8 million, it still is a nice, well-developed market with good sales. We've launched there, and it's going well. They've ordered more stock.
Then we've got our line extensions, pretty important, rolling out the Maxigesic IV, and then after that, the Maxigesic Oral Liquid, which we're certainly looking at our first launches in sort of the next six or seven months sort of thing. Extending our licensing. As I mentioned, we made good progress in China, and we're happy with that. Japan, we're still working on that. Those two countries are our two key ones. We do want to bank and benefit from these increased licensing payments. I mentioned even just the Hikma deal by itself does have potential payments of up to $18.8 million. Clearly, these, over a period of time, are going to certainly help the profitability. This year, we do have a nice pipeline of licensing income, which should come to us over this financial year.
Also Pascomer, once that clinical study finishes and is analyzed, provided it's positive, that also starts to trigger additional milestone payments for the Pascomer project as well. Last but not least, is really driving our Australasian sales. We've got the line extensions, the oral liquid. Australia is a big market for kiddies' oral liquid. Once we finalize the registration in Australia, we see that as a significant market. We have the hot drink sachets approved, so we will launch those in Australia, and New Zealand as well. Literally across both countries, Vlad's team is targeting 31 new approvals. That's about 15 in Australia and about 16 in New Zealand. This is all our in-licensing work I've talked about starting to flow through. There are then other products coming up after that as well.
Yeah, it is really working on those new launches and expanding the business. Look, that's sort of it from me. Hopefully, it gives you a bit of an idea. The company has different pillars that we can grow in. Maxigesic is an important product, especially for international business, but we're not just a Maxigesic company. We do have pretty broad portfolio. Yeah. We look forward to executing over the next few years.