Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AFT Pharmaceuticals FY 2023 half year results analyst briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the Star key followed by one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Dr. Hartley Atkinson, Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Good. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone for attending. Look, perhaps just to work through initially the investor presentation. Flick through that, I'll just talk to the pages. Page number one is the cover page. Page number two is just the disclaimer, please be aware of the details of that. Now, moving on to page three. What this is looking at is basically our growth from... We have had strong growth across our local Australasian business. Just a background, we have 150+ products across seven key therapeutic areas, and they're distributed across 6,800 pharmacies. There's about 5,800 in Australia and about 1,000 in New Zealand. Asia is our other region.
We have a broad range of products sold in the Asia region. Anywhere outside Australasia and Asia we characterize as Rest of World. We're primarily commercializing our R&D pipeline, and that's across, presently across some 51 countries, including Australia and New Zealand. We do have agreements in more than 100 territories or countries, and that's what we're working on to get out to that 100 plus. Basically, in the first half of this financial year, we delivered overall revenue growth of 18%. That's including licensing income. We'll talk a bit more about that later. We also launched 11 new products in Australasia, with the majority of those being in Australia. We also continued on with our international growth with additional countries launched for Maxigesic.
To flick to page four, to start to drill down into the results a bit more. What we can see is overall the half year sales were NZD 65.8 million, which is an increase of 18.4% from last year. These sales do include licensing income, which is actually a lumpy item. Basically we had quite a good amount of licensing income in last year's result. This year, we didn't really have any significant licensing income hit the first half result. If we look at just sales and royalties, we actually increased product sales and royalties by 30%. We actually had strong underlying growth in our sales. In terms of operating profits, they were, we'll talk about this in more detail as well.
They were down a bit from NZD 5.5 million to NZD 3.5 million, and their net profit after tax was down a bit. Primarily this is due to impacts of licensing income, and when we recognize it, we'll talk more about that. Also increased investment which we're making and actually increasing in the new product launches. You can see looking at the graphs underneath, revenue by region, we're growing as we always have, year on year. Revenue by territory in that middle kind of pie graph, you can see essentially, Australia is the major chunk of our revenue. New Zealand actually had a pretty strong half, so that actually has increased a little bit. International, we'll talk about that in more detail.
Although it appears smaller, product sales were up quite a lot. We also include licensing income, so that went backwards a bit when we look at overall the overall licensing income plus product sales. Product sales increased. Asia is a relatively consistent kind of 5% or 6% chunk of the pie presently. Flicking over to the next page to start to look a bit more at, and that page number five, to look at a bit more at the Australian market. Basically, sales in Australia were up 24%. Certainly we've seen some benefit from normalization of trading post COVID restrictions. Also we had 11 new product launches, which only really started to come in towards the end of the half year.
We will see those contribute as well in the second half. We're seeing good growth in our OTC channel, where sales are up 36.9%, and then we also have growth across our hospital and prescription channels as well. You can see looking at the bottom right, the pie graph of what our product split is. We were getting actually more or higher percentage of sales from OTC this half year, which is an area we have been focusing on. That was positive really. That's page number five. Page number six, looking at New Zealand. We didn't really have a lot of product launches in the New Zealand market, but we actually had strong organic growth.
Sales grew 35% from last, same comparable time period last year. You know, a lot of that was due to easing back of COVID restrictions, but also we had a number of business activities that worked pretty well, and that's behind that 35% growth, which is, in our view, a really good result. We can see in the pie graph, we actually did get quite a lot of growth in the prescription, area as well. We saw some strong growth there, but still OTC was the majority of our sales in the New Zealand market. That's New Zealand on page number six. Page number seven, just having a bit of a look at the overall Australasian growth, and investment.
Look, this is part of the story behind our profit and the reforecast that we are looking at a lot more investment in the new products. Basically, we launched 11 products in the first half. A lot of those come in towards the back end of the first half. Then in this half, we have a launch of about 15 products. We did launch products like, for example, we launched five OTC products, which included Maxigesic hot drink sachets, which went very well, actually better than we expected. One of our biggest challenges was staying in stock. There are still quite a lot of challenges with logistics and lead times for product launches because there seem to still be quite a lot of shortages of some of the ingredients and excipients.
Often launches do get delayed, and often we have had to air freight some stock in to try and keep to a reasonable launch timeline. That does tend to eat into our product margin, but really, it's primarily a short-term thing, and we think it's better to get the product launched even if we do wear some extra cost to do that. Over time, we do primarily sea freight, which is generally a lot cheaper. By the end of FY 2025, so that's over a three-year horizon, we are launching 76 new products into the Australasian, Australian, New Zealand market. This year, we just signed off an additional NZD 10 million of expenditure on sales and distribution to really support the new product launches. In fact, it's a bit more than that.
In our budget it's about NZD 10.7 million, so almost NZD 11 million. Also too, we are, we've got a new dedicated GP sales force for the Australian market, which we're going to bring in-house, so they are working directly for AFT. Look, that's a bit of a snapshot on our, on our new products. Moving on to page eight, which is our Asian business segment. Sales in Asia grew 26% comparison with last year. What we've been focusing on is the OTC area, where in Singapore, we've taken on ASX-listed McPherson's to assist us with distribution and selling at a local level and to drive those OTC sales.
We saw more than doubling of our OTC business, which in part was Singapore, but also we've seen good Maxigesic growth in Malaysia and Hong Kong as well. Yeah, we are starting to pick up some momentum in that area. Our hospital business as well, which is still quite a large chunk of the pie presently, also grew by about 44%. That's still quite a chunk of the business. Certainly we are focusing on the OTC side as well because that's an area we want to grow out in the future. That's slide number eight. Moving on to slide number nine, international. We saw strong organic sales growth. The licensing income, as I mentioned, is relatively lumpy, so we didn't have any significant licensing income.
Overall, there was a decrease in international sales if you're looking at overall sales being licensing income plus product sales and royalties. If you strip out the licensing income, the product sales and royalties grew by 68%. We're certainly seeing good growth of product sales and also good growth in royalties as well. One of the key items that also did does impact for the whole year, the licensing income is United States Maxigesic IV. Presently there has been a delay. We're still confident of registration next calendar year.
Basically we have to go back to FDA with some additional data on what's called Extractables and Leachables, which is out of the glass and the bung of the Maxigesic IV container, and that work is presently underway in the U.S.. We did have a slightly slower rollout of Maxigesic dose forms. We had originally targeted 90 countries. We believe for this year, it's going to be more like 70, or sorry, next year, we believe it's more going to be like 73 down from 90. We have put Russia on hold, and also in countries like a lot of the African countries, certainly, COVID has slowed down the regulatory progress in those countries. That has slowed some things down a bit. Still we're getting good growth in overall product sales and royalties.
It's that page, going on to page number 10, which is our global map. Look, this is just a snapshot. I think as we've explained before, we basically have countries we've launched in are in yellow, countries we're in registration are in blue, or have agreements are in blue, and then countries where we haven't got agreements are in white. The key countries at the moment are China, where we're still undergoing discussions, and China certainly has been very much slowed down by COVID restrictions presently. Also Japan, we have discussions underway still, and Brazil as well, and we also have some discussions starting in Argentina. Those are really the primary bits of the blank white on the map. And countries like India, we decided not to target that at all, so that won't change.
That's page number 10. Going to page number 11, the R&D pipeline. The approach we've taken is that we believe presently is an opportunity. Like effectively, we've gone shopping, I guess, is one way of putting it. Where we've gone out to seek additional in-licensing, additional R&D, whereas a couple of years ago, we were focused on paying down our CRG loan facility, but now we're actually looking at investment and putting our foot on the accelerator, both with sales, but also with R&D as well. Our expenditure though is relatively flat. In the first half, it was pretty much as expected and still sticking within our guidance of spending about NZD 12 million per annum. The projects we have underway is our NasoSURF, which is our patented ultrasonic nasal mesh nebulizer.
We just got our first study is underway, which we're expecting to complete this financial year. We want to move into. That's our first entry into human study, we're looking to move out to do some larger clinical studies with the first initial indication having an addressable market in the U.S. around about $1 billion. That's the one that we're targeting first. Have a number of other projects, HS, BT, that's a gastrointestinal medicine, which we're just starting to get the dossier ready to file during this financial year to be ready to be filed.
This is an example of a product where we were able to pick this product up from a company that was having a few financial difficulties, really, we've got the whole product for about 3/4 of a million dollars by the time all the various amounts are paid. We think that's an example of good expenditure, you know, which previously we would not have had the opportunity. Strawberry birthmarks is another area. We have reached agreement with Gillies McIndoe Research Institute in Wellington and Massey Ventures to in-license some of their IP. We're starting a big drug development project around strawberry birthmarks, which is an area we feel there's a good opportunity. Also we feel it's something, you know, that would be really good for parents and children to have a topical treatment.
Presently, there is an oral treatment which is only used in a limited number of patients because it can be toxic. Yeah, really we see there is a good need, you know, for this sort of development. That project is underway presently. We've got a number of other ones, Project KW, Project SD. medicinal cannabis is progressing. We're keeping most of that confidential, but we're making, you know, reasonable progress on that as well. That's certainly, it's not our prime focus, but it's just basically one of our R&D areas. Yeah, we're making good progress and still looking at potentially adding another significant R&D project, but we're basically still looking around presently.
The advantage is, though, is that a lot of companies in the United States, for example, it's very difficult to raise capital presently, so normally they would have been able to do that. Presently, they can't. What we typically do is we would be able to take over the drug development, and they would get a share of the proceeds once provided we're able to successfully complete the R&D and to commercialize it. I guess in the past, those wouldn't have been available as companies just would have gone to the market and raised capital and done it themselves. There are a number of opportunities like that that have come to us. Moving on to the next page, to number 12. I'll hand over to our CFO to talk about the numbers. Thank you, Malcolm.
Thanks, Hartley. Revenue at the top, just under NZD 66 million, a growth of 18%. Gross profit up to NZD 28.7 million. Margin overall comes down to 43.6%. If we look at the very bottom of the slide where we're showing you, the gross profit on just the product sales and the royalties, so they stayed the same or improved a little tiny bit to 43.6%. Operating expenses overall stayed around about the same at NZD 38 million. Operating profit of NZD 3.4 million, down on the total from last year of NZD 5.5 million. If we take the licensing come out of last year, that would have been NZD 700,000. A good uplift there in the product sales side of the business.
Finance, interest rates are going up a little bit, as we all know. Tax, we are back into a tax paying position now. We've utilized all of the losses that we ran for a couple of years on that R&D program. That leaves us overall with a pro-profit after tax of NZD 1.4 million. If we move over to the next slide on the cash flow. We've generated NZD 6 million from our operating activities, and we're holding high inventory levels still on the existing stock, plus we've been bringing in the new product launches, higher inventory levels at this stage. Investing activities, we've spent for NZD 4.8 million, that's our ongoing investment into R&D and intellectual property.
Financing activities, the NZD 3 million outflow is the interest, and we've repaid NZD 2 million of the BNZ facility. At the half year, down a couple of mil, but leaving us overall our cash balance around about the same at NZD 5.8 million. Moving to the balance sheet. I guess the key pieces here are net debt remaining around the same, just under NZD 30 million. We are in the process of renewing, the banking arrangements with the BNZ. We've signed the committed term sheet, and we'll be signing, the documentation. We anticipate it'll be in, probably next week or the week after. That'll extend the facility. The main facility then goes out to April 2026, and there is, a part of it is the NZD 5 million, which actually goes out to May.
I think the other key feature on the balance sheet really is the current assets, and that's primarily the inventory holdings. That's it for the balance sheet, Hartley. I'll pass back to you.
Yeah. Look, just the final page, the kinda outlook and the summary. Traditionally, we have always had a stronger second half with more like 60% of the sales carrying the second half. We expect this year, this period to be at least the same or even more so as we have a lot of additional launches in the second half planned. Our key focus at the moment is getting those launches completed and things on time, which is not always 100% simple presently with shipping and production lead times. We're certainly focused on that.
Look, we have had higher, and we are increasing our investment as well in the second half in sales and distribution because we want to make sure we that those launches are successful and have the right amount of investment behind them. That together with delayed licensing income, we have revised our guidance to NZD 18 million-NZD 23 million for this financial year. We do expect. If we split it out, we see sort of the sale of existing products and product royalties to generate profits of between NZD 17.5 million-NZD 21 million, which is up quite a lot from last year, where we did also have a chunk of licensing income as well.
Basically, then in terms of looking separately at licensing income, you know, this by its nature tends to be less predictable and lumpy, and we're looking at that contributing between NZD 0.5 million- NZD 2 million to operating profit. Going forward, we are looking at splitting this out, 'cause certainly people have said to us that this is the area they find is a little bit confusing and hard to follow, and certainly, there is that lumpiness, and the timing can cause issues. Look, that sort of is what makes up the NZD 18 million-NZD 23 million. What we're doing too, very much so, is we wanna put our foot on the accelerator. We are looking to exceed our target. Our near-term target is to exceed a couple NZD 100 million in annual sales, and we're pushing on to that.
It wasn't that long ago we broke NZD 100 million, so we're certainly making sure and gearing the business to really ramp the sales up, which long term is what we see as the key item going forward. We are confident of securing that previously budgeted licensing revenue around Maxigesic IV, which we see as basically delayed by additional regulatory questions. You know, so we see that as occurring next year as opposed to this year. In terms of a maiden dividend, look, we're still on track. The cash position is good and positive. We're normally always tighter in terms of cash flow in the first half, and the second half, we've always found is more positive.
Even despite the extra spend, we're still looking at declaring a maiden dividend for the FY 2023 financial year. That is hopefully an overview to give you an idea of where we're at, and happy to try and answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Sue Rovner from Edison Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, Hartley and Malcolm. Congratulations. Nice performance here.
Thank you.
I just have a few questions here. Great. In the first half, we were strong across almost all the regions, I think particularly in the domestic markets. Was this broad-based, or is there any particular product categories that you wanna highlight that drove this uptrend?
It's generally quite broad-based actually. In New Zealand, we're having very strategics performed well. Eye Care is one of our biggest segments and that sort of performed pretty solidly as well. Plus we've had some new product launches in Australia, which have generally gone well, like the Maxigesic hot drink sachets went much better than we thought, to be honest. They really helped to contribute to Maxigesic sales. Really it's not any one product. It's quite broadly based, which we always prefer because we think that's generally safer. We have quite a broad portfolio, we think that's much safer than being reliant on just one product or product line.
Yeah. Yeah, even though it's strong, I think we're still waiting till the second half. You mentioned several product launches. I think there's some seasonality also here.
Yeah. We traditionally always have stronger sales in the second half. On top of that, we've got additional product launches, you know, which also will have a contribution. I mean, in Australia, for example, we just launched our liposomal vitamins, which made a couple of months of sales contribution to the first half result. Really the major contribution's going to start, you know, over this time period now, including going into the southern winter. You know, we get usually quite good sales in March, where we have our winter deals and our winter sellings, and we've got a number of winter products that we're launching into the Australian market. Sort of things like that will really shape the whole second half, really.
It looks like we maintained our R&D guidance of NZD 12 million for the year. In the first half, we didn't have to spend as much. Can you give me a little bit more granularity, like the key drivers and programs for this uptick in the second half?
Yeah. It's, the NZD 12 million is, that's the total cash spend, and it's roughly NZD 6 million in the P&L and NZD 6 million capitalized. It's around about on track at the half year, the spend.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Thank you for the correction. I have a few more, but I'll just do 1 more last one, since you probably have a lot of folks in queue. The FDA decision on Maxigesic Four, Does that have any impact on the traction in any of your international markets? How has that been in the performance for the overall portfolio across the regions?
Yeah. It may have some impact on regulatory approval in Canada, where they may wait, which is. You know, they do pay more attention to FDA. It doesn't really have any impact on our other territories where we've got Maxigesic IV approved across all of Europe presently, and we're just focusing on rolling it out. I mean, the sort of thing with Maxigesic IV is it is a product that's a slow build because literally, you have to get it in certain hospitals, and then you get it in other hospitals, and it's literally kind of building it, you know, leg by leg. Once it sort of gets that momentum underway, you know, it goes well. We've seen sales in Germany. We had record sales last month.
You know, generally, we're getting sales growth literally every month when we look at big markets like Germany. Austria, we've got on a number of the guidelines and stuff, which is also part of the process. Like it's on a, on the guideline for cesarean, postop for cesarean pain relief. It's sort of things like that. It's just very much a kind of rollout, and that's really the process that's underway. Look, Won't be an instantaneous thing. This will be three, four, five-year project, really.
Okay. Thank you so much for answering my questions. Again, congratulations.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Matt Montgomerie from Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead.
Hey, Hartley and Malcolm. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe firstly, I'll just start with the gross margins. I guess that was the key area of slight surprise for me, particularly given the strong OTC growth in New Zealand and Australia that you're talking to. I guess on an ex-licensing income basis, sort of 44%. I guess if you look in a pre-COVID world, it was quite volatile, but, you know, FY 2019, you reported 47%. If I cast my mind back to that time, commentary then was, you know, that's sort of a reasonable steady state guidance on a go-forward basis. I guess my question is twofold. One, you know, despite the strong OTC mix, is this, you know, principally just reflecting COVID impacts in the half, air freight, et cetera?
Two, is that prior guidance that you'd, you know, given to the market around that line still current in a post-COVID world or from FY 2024 as these sort of pressures abate?
Yeah. Thanks, Matt. Yeah, longer term, we do see the margins improving into the late 40s. The suppressing in this half, partly that was, we have spent quite a lot of money air freighting product in. We've had to blip in the U.S. dollar. It's come back now, but we did have to buy a little bit, which we will so we'll see that coming in the second half in our margins. We think we're gonna be lower in our margin in the second half. We don't think it'll be up in the late 40s. It may be a slight improvement in what we've seen in the first half as we go through. We have put some price increases in, so we will get a benefit from those. Again, that it's easier to do it on the OTC ones.
If we can, we are reviewing an opportunity which we haven't put in the forecast, but we are looking to see if we can put some more price increases in as well.
I mean, we are seeing some changes in freight and shipping, certainly on some of the major routes like China to L.A., where they've almost come back down to what they originally were, but those certainly have not come through to Australia and New Zealand. They're not going up any longer. They're starting to come back. Our guess and our estimate is Australia will start to ease sooner, and New Zealand will ease later. We're gonna be behind the major markets, to be honest, in terms of shipping. We would expect to see some improvement in shipping costs, you know, which really have gone up a lot, like a 40-footer container used to be NZD 6,000-8,000 , and even at the moment we're paying NZD 26,000 US.
you know, there's quite a lot of difference in that, but that'll ease going forward, and that'll help margins as well.
No, that all makes sense. Maybe secondly, on the Australia business, you know, another good half. You know, you're on an annual basis, I guess you're approaching that NZD 100 million revenue target that you'd, you know, had published previously. You know, arguably, you know, you probably got there quicker than what people may have thought. You know, as I said, continue to perform well. You can see a scenario here where continue to grow quite strongly on the back of the new launches. Just interested in, I guess, broad base comments you can provide on the trajectory of that business, you know, over the medium term. Acknowledging that you've sort of put out a target to the market today of NZD 200 million for the group, but just more specifically on the Australia business, going forward.
Yeah. We, yeah, we still see that growth, you know, continuing. To be honest, New Zealand surprised us at 35% on the positive side. You know, Australia we see there's a lot more growth potential which is why, you know, we're doing the increased focus on doctors in the Australian market with that additional in-house rep force. We have got one at the moment where we have, we do pay for some other reps as part of a team, but we see it's better to bring that in-house, and that's what we're gonna do from the start of next financial year, you know, to sort of increase our focus on that Aussie market.
Yeah, we see there's, you know, lots of potential going forward, and we wanna make sure that we take advantage of that, really.
Do you have a feel for growth in that market organically over this period? Now you've got a lot of new products coming to market, you know, primarily in that market.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, just the breakdown. Then just what you're seeing in the key products there today to give you confidence in that underlying growth.
You know, we're still, for most of our products, we're still seeing pretty good growth. We've obviously, with quite a broad portfolio, you know, we have got some products are declining a bit, some are flat, but overall, we've still got organic growth. It's not just coming from new products, 'cause really those new products, they are contributing, but they don't contribute quite as much when they're first launched, you know, and they contribute more as the growth starts. We certainly had some really good growth of some products we struggled with a bit, introducing them over COVID. Like we had a kids' diarrhea product, Dioralyte, which we're very confident in, and it actually didn't go that well. Now, things have eased up in terms of travel and everything. We're actually seeing that performing really well.
It is important we have access to hospitals and access to doctors and pharmacies, and that's what really hammered us during COVID period, to be honest.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. The next question comes from Christian Bell from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Oh, yeah, hi, guys. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah.
Yes. Thank you.
Okay, cool.
Question.
Hi there. Just the first question, I'm just trying to reconcile from your original guidance of NZD 27 million-NZD 32 million to the new range. Just firstly, when you had provided the guidance for NZD 27 million-NZD 32 million, what was your investment budget for the sales and distribution at that point? Now that it's NZD 10 million, what was it previously?
The change is. That is the change. The change in the budget is NZD 1 million in total.
Yeah. What was it when you set your original guidance, the change?
Uh-
A bit more line in mind.
I'd have to. I'll have to come back to you on that one, Christian.
Do you see what I mean, though? Like if you had originally planned on spending an additional NZD 5 million and now you're planning on spending an additional NZD 10 million, that sort of explains NZD 5 million of the, of the change in the guidance.
Yeah, it's something like that. It's not-
I think it's higher than that. Yeah.
Yeah. I think it's a bit higher. I can figure that out.
Okay. But sort of broadly, that's kind of.
Yeah.
That's where you're kind of wondering about. Yeah. Cool. Secondly, I guess the second key driver would have been the change in licensing income. You've gone from, it's now NZD 0.5 to NZD 2 million. Originally in that guidance, it was probably more like NZD 7 million, from memory. Is that, is that kind of the other-
Yeah.
NZD 5 million?
Yeah. 7+. Yeah.
okay. If we put those two together, that basically explains the 18-23.
Yeah, the NZD 9 million build is more, it's actually more skewed in more of its license. It's probably about NZD 6 million, something like that. NZD 6 million and NZD 3 million, something like that.
Okay. Cool. Great. Just secondly, following on from there, does that FY 2022 plus NZD 10 million sales and distribution budget, is that the new base level in ANZ or is that gonna come back next year or are you gonna grow from there or what's gonna happen? What's happening?
Yeah. The dollars, the dollars will grow, but they'll become a smaller percentage of revenue. When you launch a new product, a fairly big cost is what we call co-op, which is your listing fees in the main buying groups, and that's a set fee. You have to put that money up before you know, to get the distribution, but then that becomes just a much more acceptable. You feel it in the first year, but then it just becomes business as usual as you go forward.
Mm-hmm.
There is promotional stuff around that, like for example, in Australia, starting, I think very soon, we've got what's on in the warehouse. They're doing a big thing with liposoluble vitamins and things like that. When we talk about co-op, it does also include that sort of activity as well, you know, like in-store promotions going right the way through to TV.
Mm-hmm.
Things like that. That ends up being, yeah, more chunky relative to sales when you first launch, but once sales pick up, you still have to keep doing it, but then, you know, it doesn't really have the same impact on the P&L because you've got more sales and more gross profit from the launched products.
Yeah. You get your leverage in years-
Yeah.
Years forward.
Which, you know, sort of the angle. I mean, we could have decided to, you know, trim things back and done that sort of approach to manage our guidance numbers. Really, we thought, well, what we really wanna do is put our foot on the accelerator and really hit that sales growth, which we think in the long term will have a much better impact on the overall business. Then that's really our strategy that we just sort of, yeah, finalized. The other step that we talked about is that the GP sales rep force, so that'll be a fixed cost going forward. The same thing, you know, revenue will catch up to that and overtake it.
With that being said, just looking at your Australasian product launch pipeline, you're actually planning on launching more products in FY 2024 than in FY 2023. I mean, does that sort of mean like, do we expect an additional NZD 10 million again in FY 2024 or is it kind of flat?
We're actually right in the process of budgeting. We approved those in January timeline. As I say, yeah, there's an increase. Marketing and co-op will be an increase in dollars but a reduction as a percentage of revenue.
The increase in dollars, can we expect an increase as large as another NZD 10 million in FY 2024?
No, because once we've hit that number for the marketing and co-op for these new products, then the rep sales force won't go well. It'll go up by, you know, how much the salary increases, but it's fairly fixed in its nature, like the other salary costs.
Okay. Yeah. Cool. Thank you. Then just curious as to the Maxigesic IV. What's kind of just interested in your recent discussions with Hikma, if you're able to sort of shed some light on that. Sort of what are they saying to you? You know, how are they sort of positioning themselves at the moment? Do they see it as quite a strong competitor to the paracetamol type of IV products, or are they expecting it to sort of cannibalize some of their opioids as well?
I mean, they're still working through. They've done an agreement with this with a sales company as well to further increase their reach in addition to what they already have. That, that's certainly underway. They are looking at doing quite a lot of promo around it as well. Certainly in terms of that kinda work at the hospital level, which is what we've seen elsewhere as well. It takes a bit of work, literally hospital by hospital. They've done a lot of work with a local American company on that. That's really the sort of point they're at. And they're looking, we're looking to finalize the approval to, you know, sort of quarter four, start of quarter four, or during quarter four next calendar year.
After that, we'd look to launch it.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Chris Steptoe from DMX. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Just a quick question on the gross margin. Overall the gross margin was 44% for products, so excluding licensing. Can you just sort of break it down between what would the international sales or gross margin be?
It'll be in that same range. In that, around that 44 range. The main difference you'll get is in, it's really more in the channel. You'll see more of a difference between OTC, which is the best margins. Obviously that needs sales and marketing spend behind it, and then the hospital and prescription will be a lower margin. It doesn't need the promotional support.
Yeah. That's all. Okay, thanks.
Great. Thanks, Chris.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Dr. Atkinson for closing remarks.
Good. Now look, thank you very much. That is, I think all from us. Yeah, the old message really is we want to push our growth. We wanna take advantage of the opportunities we've got, you know, which is behind our in-licensing, where we've done a lot of that over the last couple of years. Really now is to push hard on the product launches and existing organic growth and really to push out to new sales territories for Maxigesic in the international markets and also to grow the existing markets. That's really where we're at, looking forward, you know, to that NZD 200 million target as soon as possible. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.