Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the AFT Pharmaceuticals 2023 full year results analyst briefing. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. Finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Your speakers today are Dr. Hartley Atkinson, CEO, and Malcolm Tubby, CFO. I'd now like to welcome Dr. Hartley Atkinson, CEO, to begin the conference. Dr. Hartley, over to you.
Good. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone for joining the call today. Look, what I'd like to do is just to flick through the presentation. And I'll do some of it, and Malcolm will do other parts, the financial parts, and then as you said, questions. Obviously, there's page number one, which refers to this full financial year, then page number two is the standard disclaimer. If you can please read that in your own time. Page number three, basically, what we're saying is we're pleased to be declaring our maiden dividend, and we're pleased to also have yet another year of record revenue.
In fact, if you look at the graph on the bottom, you can see that over the last 10 years, we've almost, not quite, but almost, quadrupled revenue, which we're really pleased with, just getting that ongoing growth. If anything, we're pleased to see it starting to almost slightly hockey stick as well, which is what we've been working hard to achieve. The overall operating revenue grew 20% to NZD 157 million, with primarily organic growth. We had launch of 22 new products in Australasia, and we continued our international expansion. Operating profits excluding licensing income, I think as we've tried to deal with before, we do have, which is positive in many ways, but also can skew things or make it harder to interpret.
We do have some lumpy licensing income that comes around various milestones, mainly at the moment connected to Maxigesic IV in the United States. If we just look at the basic operating revenue from product sales and profits from that, profits did actually grow 38% to NZD 18.8 million. As we signaled at the half, what we had done is we did want to make the decision to put quite a lot more investment, NZD 8 million of investment into new Australian sales force and new global distribution capabilities, and also new product development as well and new products. If we include the licensing income, we're getting profit of NZD 19.7 million, slightly down on last year, where we had very positive contribution from some lumpy licensing income.
If you look at the graph, I guess, at the bottom on the right, I think that gives you a reasonable representation of how things are going. Yeah, very much FY 2017 was our first full year after listing, where we'd explained to people that we did need to spend quite a lot on R&D, and that we would make losses in the short term. Then we did explain to people that we would aim to break even, which we did then in FY 2019. You can see that, you know, we are making steady progress, and obviously that's what we're working on going forward. So we have our standard business areas, Australasia, Australia, New Zealand.
We have about 150 products presently going out across 7,700 pharmacies, with the majority of those in the Australian market. Asia, we have a range of products presently that are sold through licensees and distribution partners. We have strengthened things up, though, with offices, a head office in Hong Kong and offices in Singapore as well. That's part of our aim too. Rest of the world, overall, we are commercializing product presently in 61 countries, including Australia, New Zealand. Take those out, it's 59 countries outside ANZ. We do have agreements presently in more than 100 countries. It's continuing to roll those out as well. Moving to the next page, number four.
If we just look at the overall summary, we can see that we did get growth across all our markets. Basically, the major part, chunk of the growth came from our Australasian business, where we grew that by NZD 26.3 million. International, if you include licensing income, it did dip from NZD 13.1 to NZD 11.7. If you smooth it out and take out the licensing income, which was over NZD 6 million, we actually did grow product sales by 71%. We did see good underlying product growth, and we would be working hard to get that to pick up further. The growth primarily has been led by the OTC channel. You can still see we're getting significant contribution from hospital business and prescription business.
Certainly, quite a lot of our growth did really come this last year from the OTC business. That's that page. Moving on to page number five. Looking to Australia, which is our key market presently. Sales grew 22.8% to NZD 94.1 million. We had always, Tentatively hope we might hit 100, but we haven't quite. Certainly obviously that is a target we very much want to do, to move through that NZD 100 million sales, in the Aussie market. OTC channel was the standout performer, up 29.7%. We got some really good growth, in our pain segment, had a very good launch of our Maxigesic hot drink sachet , which also helped, the result.
We did invest a fair chunk of money in product promotion and also a new GP sales force, which we do believe in the long term can deliver some good results. Just to also increase that promotion to doctors as well. That sort of did have a bump up. Look, we're not looking to hire any extra GP sales reps. We're really just bedding that down and getting that going. Hospital channel, we saw a bit of growth 14%, and that was mainly with injectable products. That's that page. Moving on to page number six. New Zealand, we got pleasing growth. It grew 26% from NZD 35 million-NZD 44 million.
Certainly we saw things easing up after our release of COVID restrictions, and we got some good growth as well in our Maxigesic product as well, which is very pleasing. Hospital, we grew 20% and actually we got a lot of prescription growth too. That actually grew at 50%. Certainly we could see better access to GPs as the pandemic pressures kinda eased off. I think a lot of people didn't go to doctors during the COVID period, and that certainly restricted some of our sales, and we could see that turn around as things eased off. Moving now on from page six to page seven. Just a summary slide, talking about an NPD and new product pipeline.
This is what we worked on a lot over the COVID period, where we were restricted and basically we couldn't travel, but we're able to really pad out our pipeline and actually we're carrying on doing this. Basically, we were able to launch 22 products during this last financial year. 11 of those were OTC, and we have been able to. I think we talked, at the half year, we had about over three-year period, we had about 70 products or 72 products, but even taking this financial year off, we're still continuing to pad out our NPD pipeline, and we've got 68 planned new product launches over the next three years.
Some of these products, what we're also doing, there is definitely an angle where we can, we believe we can significantly grow Singapore and Hong Kong by choosing those markets and putting some of the products we're launching in Australia and New Zealand and put them into those markets as well. That's something that we're working on at the moment to really accelerate the product offerings in those markets. Moving on to page number eight, Asia. Basically, sales rose by 24% to NZD 6.8 million, which is a reasonable result. Certainly we do see better potential in Asia to accelerate and grow that more as time kinda pass, you know, time sort of goes by. It takes a while to get some of these things into place.
The OTC channel is still relatively small, but we certainly saw that starting to contribute more. If you look at the graph on the pie graph on the far right side, the OTC was relatively small at about 8%, and now that's closer to 15% and we want to keep on growing that as well. We are working through our Tmall Global site. We have a number of products approved for cross-border trade into China. There are other angles around that as well, which we're looking to expedite. Also looking at further product approvals and then launches in China, not just through the cross-border channel. Obviously there's a lot of people in China. It is the world's second biggest market.
That's one that we are, you know, interested in and see some good potential. We have expanded our distribution capabilities across the region. We've launched in some new markets, like for example, we launched in Indonesia, I think the world's fourth most populous country. We also launched in South Korea as well. We're really pleased to see something like Maxigesic IV. The sales have gone very well in South Korea and certainly well ahead of their forecasts. That's only the first six months, and we see further progress kind of going forward. That's slide number eight. Moving on to slide number nine. Yeah, look, probably the important thing here, just to clarify, is that if you look at the top graph on the left, we had quite a lot of contribution last year.
We had a big chunk, $6 point something million of licensing income, which we're obviously pleased to get. It does make the result a bit lumpy, and looks as though the sales went down, which it did overall. If you take the licensing income out, we grew the underlying product sales, and royalties grew by 71%. They grew to $10.8 million, and we see good potential for further growth going forward. Certainly, a number like 10.8 is nowhere near where it should be, and that's working hard on getting that number up. We did make progress in other difficult regulatory jurisdictions. We are pleased to get our first U.S. approval with Maxigesic Rapid tablets. Presently, we're having a number of discussions, just working the best way to get the launch in.
When I mean that, I mean the best way for AFT. There's various options there. Probably we look to sacrifice, license the income in return for a bigger profit share down the track, and that's really what we're talking to people about. Also Europe. Europe's probably still our main market at the moment, is Europe and the Middle East. We're getting some good sales growth out of Europe. What we've done is we set up our own European, own, sorry, U.K. entity, AFT Pharma UK Limited, and also some of that NPD that we are driving in New Zealand, Australia.
We're also going to route that through up into the U.K., which there is a good opportunity for that now because the key change is the U.K. does not sit in with Europe. It literally sits out by itself and actually fits in quite nicely with Australia. Those two markets do go together quite well. And certainly the U.K. is a decent size market with a population of about 65 or 67 million people. So that is obviously a work in progress. We don't have any sales from it yet, but we should start to record our first sales during this financial year. Maxigesic IV launch. We, this, the upfront payment of about NZD 6 million, that depends on the launch date. The launch date we said will be in calendar 2024.
Obviously that's gonna have quite a swing factor on this year's profit, which is why we've actually pulled licensing income out. All going well, presuming we get U.S. FDA approval in October, the launch could be anywhere from February to March to April sort of thing. It could slip into this year or it could slip out of this year. Overall, in the big picture, that wouldn't be a disaster, but clearly, it would have an impact on the profit for this year, just to explain that. You can see the graph, top right, number of countries continues to grow. I guess the only comment is, yeah, I mean, although we look at countries, probably also have to consider large countries like the U.S..
We'll only tick that number up by one, obviously makes more of a difference because the U.S. is the world's largest pharma market. That's page number nine. Flicking on to page number 10, you can see our global graph where the aim we have is to turn as much of it possible from white and blue into yellow. We are making progress. We're getting more yellow as time goes on. Yellow meaning where Maxigesic has been launched. Launched it across a good chunk of continental Europe now, also Canada and Mexico and Central America. We're still working on licensing in more difficult markets like China. We certainly got interest there. Just come back from a two-week trip, meeting various parties in Mainland China also Japan as well.
Brazil is the other market that's quite different, and also quite challenging. We are working on that as well. Look, we're making overall progress where we are getting more countries launched, which is the yellow colors. That's page number 10. Page number 11. What maybe isn't so apparent, but we do believe is really important, is our R&D pipeline. We do see some significant potential for that in the medium to long term as well. As you can see, Maxigesic IV in the U.S., we're targeting approval this calendar year. We have a PDUFA date from FDA of October 2023.
That's when they have to get back to us with a viewpoint on the additional data, which was only just around something called extractables and leachables, which we got various U.S. labs to do tests on it. We worked closely with Hikma, who are very experienced in that area to also help us. We would be hopeful that we should secure approval. Maxigesic Dry Stick, we continue to work on that and target to complete that during this calendar year. We've got a day/night variant, which we are filing at the moment, literally doing the first filing. We also have a patented Cold & Flu Sinus Kit , which we have already launched in Australia as our first market, and we would look to commercialize that in some additional markets.
NasoSURF intranasal, we have had some challenges with that project. We visited the factory that makes the transducers in China. We're doing a bit of work around that, so that is delayed, but we still see that getting back on track and getting clinical studies underway next year. We planned on them this year. This can happen with R&D projects. They're not everything simple, and that's also why you do have a variety of projects, but we are confident we can still expedite that project. Antibody eye drop. This is potentially pretty big market. We licensed in technology from a U.S. company, and we're just underway with the drug development presently. This is for antibiotic-resistant drug infections, which could cause people to go blind. It's pretty important, and that's underway presently.
Flicking to the next page number 12. Got a number of projects here. Some are at early stage, some are quite well advanced. We have one we call SD, so that's been filed. We've got our first filing. It's a dermatology drug. strawberry birthmarks, we licensed that from Massey Ventures, which is part of Massey University. just doing the initial formulation work on that. That has a patent going out until the mid to late 2030s. That's a topical treatment of strawberry birthmarks, which does affect quite a lot of newborns. Certainly presently, there aren't treatments that are topical for this sort of, you know, condition. There is an oral formulation, which is quite toxic, and therefore is only used in really serious cases. This potentially also is a really big market as well.
Gastroenterology is one of our focus areas. We've got a number of advances we've been able to make. We have a project we've called KW. We have three different dose forms. The first two we will be filing this year, that's really good progress. We've got a combination one, which we're still in the development phase. Got another enema that we're filing this year as well. We do have work in CBD. We're making some good progress there. That is certainly a very crowded area. Main target would be the Australian OTC market.
Given it's just so crowded, we'd rather keep the timelines confidential on that one, where most of our competitors are crying from the rooftops when they've advanced something or other, we'd just rather try and see if we can get to market first or second or something like that. That's at page number 12, and flicking onto page 13, I will hand over to our CFO.
Yeah, thanks, Hartley. Looking on the top line revenue, up 20% to NZD 157 million. Gross profit up 18%, NZD 73 million. Operating expenses up a little bit more at 28%. As we explained, the main reason for that is the investment behind the new products and the full-time GP sales force in Australia. Operating profit of just under NZD 20 million, which is in line with last year. Bear in mind that there's an additional NZD 6 million licensing income in last year. Good growth, if you, if you extract the license income. We're back into a tax paying position now. The higher tax cost to leave us with profit after tax of NZD 10.6 million. On the next line, we're introducing EBITDA. We will continue now to talk about EBITDA.
Primarily with the banking facility is now the covenants are based on EBITDA, and our dividend policy is also based on EBITDA as the ratio to net debt. We've just shown at the bottom what the revenue and the gross profit looks like without the license income. Again, you know, targeting the gross profit margin in that sort of 45%-50% range. We're obviously very pleased to be announcing a dividend today of NZD 0.011 per share, which is 11% of our net profit after tax. A little bit lower than our policy. We've indicated that we want to get into that 20-30 range of normalized net profit. It will always be dependent on what our capital requirements are.
We were a little bit higher than we wanna be with our target debt. We want our net debt to be around about one times EBITDA. At year end, it was 1.4. Of course, with the growth opportunities we've got going, we think that that is a prudent way to start the dividend at 11%. If we turn on to the next slide, the balance sheet. Net debt is in line with last year at just under NZD 30 million. The new facility with the BNZ goes out to April 2026, there's one more repayment of NZD 1 million in June, then there's no more repayments required on that facility.
repaid NZD 4 million. By the time we will repay NZD 4 million.
In this year, we've repaid NZD 4 million.
Yeah.
Yes. The working capital, which is the current assets and the cash less the current liabilities, that grew in line with revenue at about 20%. It's NZD 48 million at the minute. Our total equity is NZD 73 million, up from NZD 62 million last year. If we turn to the cash flow, NZD 11.6 out of the operating activities, NZD 9 of that into investing activities, just under NZD 7 million of cash financing activities, that includes the NZD 4 million repayment. That's really the NZD 4 million going at lower cash is the repayment of the net debt, with the net debt staying level at just under NZD 30 million.
We had closing cash of NZD 3 million. I'll turn back to you now, Hartley, for the outlook.
Yeah. No, look, thanks, Malcolm. Just to summarize the sort of you know, the outlook, I mean, we're looking at the momentum continuing in this new financial year, supported by growth in the existing portfolio. I mean, Although we talk about new product launches, we are still getting growth in our existing products. Certainly also with something like Maxigesic, when we launch it in international markets, it doesn't just go straight up, it literally grows year on year on year, and that's what we're also seeing in our local Australasian markets as well. There's that ongoing growth from the existing portfolio. There's also new product launches is something we're very focused on as well, and also just sales growth in our core Australasian markets.
When we say that, I think it's important then that leads on to the next point, just because, yeah, we are working hard on our existing core Australasian markets doesn't mean to say we're also not really targeting where we do see the biggest potential upside growth in international Asia markets. Also things like expanding our U.K. presence where we set the company up. We've got people working there. You know, we've also taken over some of the Maxigesic launches ourselves. Like, that means we will launch Maxigesic IV ourselves in the U.K. market, and we have other products ourselves that we're launching over this financial year ourselves in the U.K. market. Operating profit guidance is up to about NZD 22 million-NZD 24 million, excluding licensee income. As the following note says, we are expecting licensee income, which isn't included in that guidance.
If we're able to launch in this financial year, there is a further $6 million for Maxigesic IV in the U.S.. We'd need to get that FDA approval in October, and we need to be able to get the stock and time et cetera to be able to launch in this financial year. That potentially is another $6 million. Now, the guidance, I guess, is still subject. The other sort of swing factor is the U.S . Maxigesic Rapid commercialization strategy. We are working on that presently with a number of parties. Probably ideally, we would launch the Rapid tablet at about the same time as the IV. That could have an impact. We really can't say at this time because it's still under discussions.
I mean, generally, possibly our ideal scenario would be not really focused around so much licensing payments, be more around profit shares, where we have a bigger long-term upside for AFT, but can't really say at this stage 'cause we're still working on it. Look, we definitely do have a target in mind of NZD 200 million on a rolling 12-month basis. I mean, when we say that, if we were kind of performed exceptionally well, we might get there this financial year, but we think it's probably more likely to be a 14 or 15-month target, but certainly we can see it clearly in sight. That growth is something that, you know, we are really focused on the growth. Profit obviously is important, but I think in this last year, we really saw the opportunity to really grow the business.
We did invest a bit more, which obviously resulted in a flat profit. Even with a lot of extra investment, like an extra NZD 8 million, you know, we're still able to deliver what was a pretty reasonable profit and an interim dividend as well. Thank you very much and open for any questions.
Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Matt Montgomerie from Forsyth Barr. Your line is open.
Hi there. Good morning. Good morning, Hartley and Malcolm. I might just start on the gross margins, if that's okay. The second half was close to 49% if we strip out the licensing income. You know, it's always a bit second-half skewed, but, you know, appears to be a very strong number aided by, you know, the strong OTC performance in ANZ. Can you maybe just talk to the dynamics here in terms of pricing, the impact of the mix effect, freight costs, et cetera? I guess the key question is how sustainable do you think that level is around, say, 48%, you know, looking ahead on a, on a full year basis?
Yeah. Thanks, Matt. Yeah. The skew in the revenue is more OTC skewed as well. The, you know, prescription hospital tends to be more static. The better margins that we are getting is out of OTC. That is explaining the kick up there. In terms of extra cost for freight, we are seeing in the main shipping lines, the pricing has improved coming back. It's been taking its time into New Zealand. We are seeing it start to happen now, and Australia is happening in. There is improvements in those freight costs. We did air freight a fair bit this year, particularly with the hot drink that was selling so well.
We will think if, you know, if we, if we need to, we will air freight if we have to meet demand.
There's probably relatively more air freight in the first half as well.
Yeah.
In the second half, we were really trying to avoid air freight as well, which may have helped the margin in turn as well, wouldn't it?
Yeah. We see the margin going forward to being still in that, you know, the broad range is 45%-50%, but targeting the sort of upper half of that.
Great. That's, that's very clear. Maybe secondly on Australia, just, you know, again, a pretty good number. Just trying to get a feel of sustainability. Are you able to split out growth drivers between, say, mature products, you know, those that have been in market for a few years versus those that have been recently launched? Like, do you have a metric you can reference here in terms of like for like sales or, you know, of the incremental growth this year, how much of that is from new products versus, you know, mature products?
Yeah, we try. If we're launching a new product, we will try and make sure that there's plenty of stock in the wholesalers and in the trade. Normally you'll get our sales to the market will be exaggerated in the early months, and then it'll come back a little bit as things settle down and the product takes off. It does take a little bit of time to get a regular pattern of what's happening with the new products. We're seeing growth pretty much in across all the existing range and then of course adding the new products on top of that.
I mean, so I just would be quite keen for specifics, if you have them. You know, of the NZD 17 million incremental increase in revenue in the financial year 2023 over 2022, you know, do you know how much of that would be from the new products that you've launched this year in NZD?
I haven't got that on my fingertips at the minute, but I can dig something out on that. Yeah.
Okay. No, that'd be good. Thank you. Then maybe on the rest of world, you know, the second half, if we strip out licensing, looked pretty solid. Can you just talk to, you know, where specifically the growth is coming from? You know, there's a couple of key geographies that have sort of turned around post COVID, or is it sort of broad-based across markets?
Yeah, it's fairly broad-based, to be honest, because things are very slow, like especially Europe, during the COVID period. Like we did start launching Maxigesic IV into places like Germany and Austria, you know, it really was slow because the sales force of our licensees couldn't get into customers like the hospitals because literally, you know, when the doctors are buried with COVID patients lined up in the corridor, they're not wanting to hear about a new drug. We've just generally seen things start to pick up. It is sort of general. I mean, although this is in Asia, we've seen some new launches in like Indonesia and Korea, South Korea. Certainly the South Korean one's gone very well, much better than they'd forecast.
Even though that started to contribute last year, it's probably gonna contribute more this year because as those sales build. It's really just new launches and then ongoing kind of growth. It's, it's fairly broad. It's not really any one specific area.
Great. That's clear. I might just leave it there and let others jump in. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Christian Bell from Jarden. Your line is open.
Hartley . Can you hear me okay?
Yes. Thank you.
Okay, cool. first question for me. your guidance of $22 million-$24 million of operating profit, does that include you commencing sales in both Maxigesic IV and Rapid in the U.S.?
No. No. I mean, it has maybe some very small IV sales. There's no oral sales at all written in, because it was too hard for us to put an estimate on when, how much, et cetera, until we've done some sort of agreement. Certainly there's no Maxigesic oral. I think we might have put a tiny bit, like a couple of batches or something at the end of the financial year for Maxigesic IV. Whether that happens or not, it's not really gonna have any kind of incremental effect. It could potentially have upside, but it's not gonna have a downside as it launches later for the IV.
Okay. In forgive me if I'm wrong, in one of your recent announcements, it mentioned that you'd be expecting sales to commence for Maxigesic IV, I think it was towards the end of this year. Is it, firstly, is that a true statement or have I got that wrong?
Yeah. Basically our present view with the FDA, the timing of the data back in PDUFA. The PDUFA's October, so assuming that the approval is cleared, which we're hopeful but can't guarantee it, but we believe it should be, then, we would hope to be able to get stock into the U.S. market about February. If that swings and goes late, then we'll miss that. The present plan is about February, maybe March, but that's quite close to the end of the year, so it's still possible it could flick into April, which would be another financial year. That mainly-
Okay.
Affects the licensing, not the product sales targets.
Sorry, what was that?
I mean, the, the key impact of that is not really on the product sales targets, it's really on the licensing income makes the difference there. In terms of effect on profit from product sales, it's not gonna make a lot of difference, to be honest.
Yeah. So yeah. What you're saying is, while sales there is a chance that sales do commence in, FY 2024, you're not really attributing-
Mm-hmm.
-much to that, which is reflective-
No.
of your current guidance? Yeah.
Correct.
just, I mean, given that rest of world sales is probably, you know, is the swing factor going forward, the U.S. being an important country for that, are you able to give any sort of sense as to what type of sales you are expecting from that market? For example, do you think that it could do 10 times the average country sales as of today or just as a starting point?
For which one?
The U.S.
For IV in the U.S.?
either one. Either one.
Yeah, I mean.
Yeah. Sorry about your phone there. Your average rest of world sales per country right now is about NZD 140,000 a year. When you start selling Maxigesic Rapid or Maxigesic IV, are you sorta envisaging the average, well, the amount of sales going into the U.S. for one product, for example, being more like $1 million? Or what are we kinda thinking?
Yeah, I mean, we have to, I guess, finalize our forecast for the Rapid with a partner to have a firmer view on it. Certainly, potentially, it is a significant market, could have many multiples of the current per country sales. Yes, the IV, we're still working on forecasts with Hikma. Forecasts certainly are, you know, reasonable, like at least $1 million. And then they grow over time. It's not just a one-off thing like year one, year two, year three, year four, et cetera, you know, continue to grow.
Okay, cool. I mean, and then just to follow on that line of thinking, obviously, Maxigesic has been successful in Australia and New Zealand, which is, you know, partially because, a lot to do with the fact that it's pretty mature in these markets, and you've had a lot of targeted marketing towards that. Just how realistic do you think it is that you will be able to replicate that sort of success in the U.S. market, given, you know, you're using a third party to sell and distribute?
Well, certainly we know that. I mean, we are meeting with Hikma literally in two weeks' time. We do know they've spent quite a lot of money with various U.S. parties to look at, you know, the sales and marketing, et cetera. They are successful presently. One can never be 100% confident, you know, which is why, I guess, one of our things we've always said is that we're quite careful that we don't just do one global deal with a big pharma. We see it safer to do it with various local country or regional partners, which has been our approach. I mean, we'd set...
Look, I mean, if we're selling NZD 10 million at the moment, our certain targets overall by the time we grow and add the different product lines in, it certainly would be a lot greater than NZD 10 million obviously. Well, not obviously, but it is.
Right. Okay. What kind of marketing will Hikma actually do? Like, using New Zealand and I assume Australia as an example, you've got, you know, TV ads and sort of all that kind of stuff, selling Maxigesic. What type of marketing would Hikma actually be doing specifically for this-
Yeah. Given it's IV though, it ends up being very much a rep-based promotional program really, and then working with hospital formulary committees, which is somewhat torturous to sort of get different approvals really. That particular, the IV line is very much a standard kind of pharma angle where you have reps and you have committees that you have to go through. This is really a standard promotional OTC model. They certainly do have reps and all of that, and that's the angle really in the U.S.
Mm.
Before we move on to our next question, I will remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of John Hester from AFP. Your line is open.
Good morning, Hartley and Malcolm. Really nice result, boys. Well done. Just a question for you on the license, prospective license income for next year. The 6 million, Hartley, is that US dollars or Kiwi dollars?
That's Kiwi dollars, John.
It's $6 million on registration by the FDA. $6 million on approval and then a further $6 million on launch. Do I hear that correctly?
Yes. Sorry, just to clarify, it's actually $6 million upon launch. We're relying on Hikma making their first sale. If we, like, October, we can get approval by the PDUFA date, assuming that's sorted out. Yeah, it's probably gonna be about February till we get the stock, you know, maybe March. If something slow, it could be April. Yeah. That's
I understand. There's no milestone on approval.
No, there isn't. Correct.
Okay. Okay. Fair enough. You just made some comments there about the Hikma's plan, planned launch in the U.S., and I understand that that's a slow process. It can take a little while. Have they given you sort of any estimate of what they believe the addressable market is? You know, people talk about TAM and all that sort of thing. Have they talked about that with you at all?
Yeah, we're just starting to do that now to really have. I can't give the exact figure presently. Like, we are meeting with them in two weeks' time in New Jersey to sit and go down through a number of items, including that. I mean, it is a reasonable size market. Obviously, it is the biggest market. We're just still working through exactly. I mean, usually it'd be a bit slower the first year and then build. We've generally seen that with most of our markets. As I was saying, year one, year two, year three, it kind of builds.
Yeah.
year upon year.
Yeah.
The fastest market we've seen is South Korea, which has actually kind of rocketed, but not a big country, but yeah.
Yeah. Okay. well, I mean, I don't want to harass you on this, but would you expect that it's, the market in the US is sort of north of $10 million for Maxigesic IV, or is it underneath that number?
I think the sales that Hikma could make should be north of $10 million. Not straight away, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we would almost have to be.
Okay. Okay. just on, you mentioned South Korea there, and, you've got, you've got Asia and also international. South Korea, is that in Asia or is that in the international slide?
Yeah. That's in Asia. Basically the area we're looking at is Southeast Asia plus China plus Japan plus Korea.
Right. Okay. The Asia operating revenue, it says on the slide that I'm looking at, went from NZD 5.5 to NZD 6.8. Korea is somewhere in that NZD 6.8, right?
Yeah.
This is on slide eight in the pack.
Correct.
Yeah.
They've only really just launched the IV, but certainly, we've seen, them, they've reforecasted about two or three times so far, due to sales growth being further ahead than they expected. It's certainly pleasing to see some good progress in that market, for a start.
Yep. On slide nine, with your product sales going up from about NZD 6 million to about NZD ten and a half million it looks like based on that slide. What's been the standout sort of country there?
It wasn't really any one country. Yeah, it was honestly, it was just broad-based, and you know, we got some new launches that have just started in places like France, they haven't really been, you know, they're just sort of getting orders just in at the end. I mean, we had about at least NZD two million of orders got stuck, too, waiting for a container, you know. The things like that are I guess are business as usual, but quite frustrating. It is just what it is.
Unfortunately, in the interest of time, we do need to move on to the next question. Your next question is from Sam Arcand from Mint Asset Management. Your line is open.
Morning, Hartley and Malcolm. Quick questions on the Aussie GP sales force that you brought in. Initially, I think you'd said that it's gonna be about NZD 10 million, and it's come in at NZD 8 million for the year. What was the reason for that? Why did that miss?
We were able to, I mean, that was a combination of marketing and also the sales force costs, being able to pull that back a little bit without affecting the endpoint. I mean, that's really why there's a little bit of variance there. What we've also done with the sales force this year actually is we've taken the whole sales force in-house. It did start off as a contract deal for us to get underway quickly. We've taken it in-house, which has been quite a lot of work, that does save us money going forward, which will, yeah, we'll see those savings during this kind of year. A lot of the money was marketing money, with new product launches, we still have been needed to spend, you know, money to make sure the products were successful.
A lot of it was around that as well.
Right. it wasn't, nothing related to them, you know, not hitting the sales targets and maybe there's a component of compensation related to the sales targets?
No, it's just really about some swing factors. We've probably saved a little bit on various sort of marketing and co-op costs and stuff. It's just swings and roundabouts, really. We're, I mean, we are doing quite a few things. I mean, we've almost being careful, but we're doing what we're saying, but we're doing a lot of things and also working to save money. Like we're, you know, switching some suppliers. We're doing other things in-house with advertising costs and promotional costs. We bought our own graphic designer in-house and able to make some savings there. See, there's a whole lot of things going on as well, you know, that we're also working on that side of it as well as expanding the business. Those things we're able to make some savings and that's probably why you're seeing that.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks for that. I'll leave it there in case there's anyone else. Cheers.
That does conclude today's Q&A session. As there are no further questions, I would like to thank our speakers, Dr. Hartley and Malcolm, for today's presentation, and thank you all for joining us. This now concludes today's conference. Enjoy the rest of your day. You may now disconnect.