Thank you very much, and thanks for joining us today. Just to go through the presentation that we have up on the NZX. It's the Investor Presentation May 2021. That's the cover page, and flicking through, if you could please, to page two, are the disclaimers. If you could just be aware of those. Thank you. Moving on to the main part of the presentation itself, on page three, AFT Financials at a Glance. Here we've just tried to show you the sales progress. Literally, the top graph showing the sales over a period of time. We've had our 23rd year of uninterrupted sales growth. We were pleased during the global pandemic to still be able to grow our sales line from NZD 106 million the year before to NZD 113 million this financial year.
On the bottom of the page, we have operating profit and profit after tax. The operating profit, you'll note that was NZD 10.7 million, and that was slightly down from last year, NZD 11.4 million. Last year, we had some effects due to NZD 9.8 million one-off from Pascomer where we acquired full rights to that. Last year, though, last year we did also have an NZD 1.7 million R&D grant from an R&D agreement we did with a collaborating partner. If you do back those out and look like for like, it's pretty much line on line in terms of the profit. If you look at profit after tax, the normalized profit after tax, you can see that last year we had NZD 2.8 million, and now starting to benefit from our refinancing, we're up to NZD 7.7 million.
A good improvement in the net profit after tax. Moving through to page four, the FY 2021 financial highlights. There's a number of things, over this year, we were able to increase the number of countries that we're selling our first R&D product, Maxigesic, in by 54%, so we grew that number to 43 countries. If we look at operating revenue from product sales, that is disregarding any licensing income. We have our main source of revenue is either product sales or licensing. Product sales, we grew that by 9% to NZD 111 million. As we mentioned before, the normalized operating profit did drop 6%. If we do, as we mentioned before, back out a one-off item, namely R&D credit, there's a slight amount of growth.
If we look at the normalized profit after tax, last year we were NZD 2.9 million, this year NZD 7.8 million, so it's 164% increase in that bottom line on a normalized basis. That we were pleased with that transformation. Net debt improved by 5% to NZD 35 million. Now, you may recollect that we had talked about a target of NZD 25 million-NZD 30 million. What happened was we made a conscious decision to increase our inventory holdings by around about NZD 10 million. The reason we did this was we foresaw an increasing likelihood of interruptions to supply chains. In fact, what we've seen is that is exactly what has happened. In benefit of hindsight, we're still very pleased we made that decision.
Yes, our net debt is NZD 35 million versus our target of NZD 25 million-NZD 30 million, from an overall business perspective, we are happy with that and it's not out of line with our revised plans. Shareholders' equity improved 111% to NZD 36.5 million. Basically, all in all, considering the pandemic, we were satisfied with the results that we got. Moving to the next page number five, revenue growth. You can see here, if you look at the different segments, like Australia, we grew that to NZD 68.3 million, grew it to 11%. New Zealand was relatively flat. We did have some interruptions on a monthly basis.
We sold very large amounts last March, with the shutdown looming of things like vitamin C, which slightly maybe inflated or increased the results last year and then made it harder this year to grow past that, but still we were able to grow it by 1%. Rest of world, we grew by 8%. If you back out licensing amounts. We relatively had less licensing amounts this financial year.
Product sales grew by some 47%, which is probably the better indicator. Asia, we did have a decrease by 10%. However, having said that, the Asian profit significantly grew, and part of this was a transition to higher margin products. Whether or not the sales are slightly behind or not, the profit importantly still grew. What we've also done, some of you may also notice it, is we had predominantly talked about Southeast Asia.
This was based around our sales offices in Malaysia and Singapore. Really, as time's gone on, that has grown and spread out where we're now selling into Tmall sites in China. We also have deals across most of Asia, Indonesia, Korea, et cetera, Thailand. Really, it makes sense now, or more accurate in terms of descriptors, to talk more about Asia as opposed to Southeast Asia. In fact, just a couple of days ago, we got our first opening order from Korea, as well, which clearly is not Southeast Asia. That's a slight change there. To flick forward to page number six. Just what we sort of wanted to give you a flavor for here is that clearly our R&D portfolio is predominantly at this point Maxigesic, but we actually are spreading it out.
Just the main part of the business still at this stage is a diverse Australasian-based portfolio around seven key therapeutic areas, being pain, eye care, medicated vitamins, allergy, gastrointestinal, dermatology, and hospital. There's a lot of work has gone into growing that portfolio through additional in-licensing and additional product development, which has carried on during the pandemic.
For Asia as well, so as I've mentioned before, we are growing our Asia base in terms of geography with the opening of our Tmall sites. At the moment, we just started off with three products, being our liposomal vitamins as a trial, and that has gone well. What we're doing now is we're broadening out our product offering from the Tmall site as well. Basically in Asia, we have our pain products, our medicated vitamins, dermatology, and hospital. That's our Asia business on page seven.
Page eight is our global portfolio, and that is centered primarily around our R&D products that we are developing ourselves. We have our pain product being the Maxigesic oral dose forms, and then in hospital, the Maxigesic IV. You would have seen recently we did a large deal in the U.S. just after the 31 March closing date. Certainly Maxigesic IV, we believe, and our partners around the world tell us, has a lot of potential across multiple countries.
We also have our NasoSURF, patented nasal drug delivery system, and we're rolling into our first pilot clinical study during this year. Dermatology is another area as well. We have Pascomer primarily in North America and Europe. We have a large study going on in multiple countries at the moment, which is our pivotal study, and we're planning to finish enrollment around about September.
Certainly, that hasn't been any easier with the current sort of restrictions in many parts of the world. It is still progressing well, and our team's done a good job to achieve that. Crystawash Extend is a product that was basically born out of lockdown, where we looked at different combinations of coating agent and benzalkonium chloride. We've also licensed that in Canada and the Middle East as well, and we've launched in Australia and New Zealand, where it's going well.
Crystaderm is another product that avoids antibiotic resistance. It's a slow-release hydrogen peroxide. We're selling a lot of that over years in New Zealand, and we're basically spreading out that product, and we've done our first licensing deal in Canada. Part of it as well is expanding our R&D. Look now to hand on to page nine and to hand on to Malcolm, our CFO, to talk about the financial details.
Thanks, Hartley. Yes, on slide nine, the income statement. Total revenue is on the top, up 7% to NZD 113 million. Gross profit of NZD 49 million has gone down 2.5%, and that's for two reasons. The first is the cost of the inventory went up during the pandemic as we were building the stock levels up. If you look down at the bottom of the page, we're showing gross profit from the product sales and royalties, and we can see that margin's gone down by 1.6%, which is basically the currency went down.
We were buying up the stock at the start of the financial year, the New Zealand and Aussie got quite weak against the American and euro, and we're carrying that in the inventory levels. We also used some air freight to make sure we had enough stock here. Predominantly, we use sea freight, and we did move stock on in the air, which is expensive. The second reason for the gross profit down at the top there is the lower license income of NZD 2.2 million versus NZD 3.8 million last year. Looking at the underlying expenses, 33.6% of revenue, down from 34.9% last year.
A little improvement in sales and distribution, saving in general admin and an increase in the R&D, but predominantly that's because of the credit we got in the last year. Looking forward in terms of guidance, that percentage will probably stay about the same for next year with the launches of new products that we've got into Australia and New Zealand. Over time, that will become a smaller percentage of revenue as the international business grows. That doesn't have a very high overhead structure to it.
That gets us down to the operating profit of NZD 10.7 million. Significant savings in the finance expenses, NZD 2.8 million versus NZD 8.3 million. There was a little bit of it. The currency did come back, as you know, at the year-end, so there's a bit of a gain in the restatement of the assets there. The new facility is giving us significant savings. We were able to execute that at the height of the pandemic at the end of last year. Now we've made some further improvements on it, and we're down to around about 5% cost of funds now.
Profit after tax of NZD 7.7 million versus the NZD 12.7 million last year, which has the gain in it. The one-off gain. Moving on to slide 10, the balance sheet. Total assets up to over NZD 100 million. The current assets, the climb there is predominantly the NZD 10 million increase in inventory levels. The increase in spend on net current assets is the capitalized development costs. Net debt has come down from NZD 37 million down to NZD 35 million. Total equity up to NZD 37 million.
Moving on to cash flow on slide 11. Most of the operating profits were used up in building the inventory levels on those operating activities. The investment activities, again, is the development costs. The financing activities was the successful equity raise of NZD 12 million that we did in June time, less the debt reduction, and a bit of interest, and then a few other costs in there. Cash is now down to NZD 3.2 million. We're more relaxed about cash. Now we're back into operating profits, and we've got plenty of headroom in our current working capital facilities.
Moving on to slide 12. Showing you the pathway that we've been going on after the IPO and the investment into development through 2015 to 2018 years. Back into profit, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, we're giving guidance of NZD 18 million-NZD 23 million. That's the difference in the green color you can see over on the column on the right. I'll pass back to Hartley for the next slide number 13.
Yeah, thanks, Malcolm. Basically, this slide looks at our new products, revenue pipeline, which effectively is the R&D that we're undertaking at the moment. Maxigesic tablets in the U.S., we did receive a Complete Response Letter from FDA that indicated we'd resolved all regulatory issues other than a final GMP audit of the manufacturing site. That to date has been delayed because FDA has only just taken up remote audits. We would be working to resolve that and clear the approval in this financial year. Maxigesic IV registrations, we made good progress on these, having completed the clinical studies, like literally the last study was completed in the U.S. during the height of the pandemic, which was actually quite a challenge for the whole team, where hospitals were being closed and patients were being restricted and all sorts of things.
We completed that study, and we now have approval in 21 countries around the world, and we see that as growing quite significantly over the next year. The Maxigesic Oral Liquid, we're awaiting our first registrations and approval in Europe and ANZ. We just recently received notification that major objections had been removed by or have been resolved, I should say, during the current first wave of approvals in Europe.
We would be confident of achieving approval sometime this calendar year in Europe for Maxigesic Oral Liquid. Kids medicines, as you may or may not know, it's actually very challenging from a regulatory perspective. They're probably the most complicated products. Maxigesic Hot Drink sachet, so this is sort of cold and flu product, lemon-flavored hot drink. The first approval has been achieved in Australia, so we're getting ready to launch that.
We'll also roll that out in Europe as well. We're getting ready to file at the moment. Maxigesic Rapid, still on track to file by the end of this calendar year. Maxigesic Cold & Flu, that is still in registration and that is progressing as expected. Pascomer. We're in the middle of the first large global multicenter study, U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Europe. That has been quite challenging, though, due to the pandemic. It's not easy to enroll the patients at clinics because they don't like going to hospitals in case there's COVID exposure. Having said that, we have got over 80 patients enrolled, and we would be planning to complete enrollment around about the end of this September. That's been really good progress, considering the global conditions for these sort of studies.
NasoSURF, we've completed the development of the drug delivery device, had various remote audits of the manufacturing site. Development of the first dose form is underway at the moment in the United States, and we're also looking to start our first clinical pilot study late this calendar year. Making reasonable progress on that and really want to put our foot on the accelerator and get these projects underway.
Those are those ones. Flicking on to the next page, number 14, you can see this is our global map, where we have three colors. We have yellow for where we've launched Maxigesic. We have blue for where we've licensed it or have a distributor, and the launch is pending. The gap there between getting someone signed up and actually launching is due to drug registration, which typically takes a couple of years, sometimes three years.
There is the odd exception, like South Africa is particularly slow, and there's literally seven or eight years in South Africa, but that is really the exception, where most countries are about 24 months. We do have some areas still in white, where we are looking to license, and those are still areas we're working on. The major ones are China, being the second largest pharmaceutical market in the world at the moment. Also Japan, where we have had licensing discussions, and we are working on that, same in China. The other area, key as well, is Brazil. There are a number of other areas probably are not really priority. India is definitely not a target. We're not concerned or looking to commercialize there, and places like Argentina as well, which is the other kind of big chunks of white.
Really it's just working on this, so most of the world then turns yellow. That's literally the plan. Then going on to page 15, we have a chart of the number of countries where we've launched Maxigesic in. This year, we're up to 43. This current financial year we're in at the moment, we're targeting 54, then 85, and then get it up. We have licensed in 120 or so countries. We will look at getting it to over 100.
There may be some sort of small countries in some places, really, where at the end of the day, we may still not launch, like Sierra Leone or Guyana or somewhere like that. Really, the key thing is more the major countries, which is across Europe, Russia, North Africa, Middle East, United States being a key market, Canada, and then places like China and Japan.
That's that slide there, slide number 15. Moving on to slide number 16, which is the outlook, what we're working on. Really, it still remains driving international sales. We want to accelerate the number of new countries that we launch in. One example that we would expect to come up this year would be Russia, which is a significant market for Maxigesic. With a population of about 140 million people, it's certainly a decent-sized market with good potential. As I mentioned before, we have got our first order from South Korea as well, so we are looking at expanding in quite a lot of countries. It's also growing sales in those newly launched markets. We've recently launched in Canada, Germany, Switzerland. Certainly, the pandemic hasn't really helped product launches.
It is generally more difficult to launch a product where there's a number of lockdowns or things like that. Definitely slows things down and makes it more difficult. As the lockdowns in the main markets generally ease up with increasing vaccination rates, then we see that this would be favorable. It's launching the new line extensions, Maxigesic IV, and there's a good spread of countries there, and clearly it's working hard on the registrations, which we're doing, and then doing the launches. Extending international licensing agreements is still a project that we're working on. We have got a couple of major territories being China and Japan. I haven't mentioned it here, but Brazil is not as important, but still is a key target that we're working on. It's really getting something finalized there.
What we find as well. Interestingly, in places like China, is once you do a U.S. deal, it really piques their interest. As much as they compete against each other, they also look to each other as well. Certainly we've had a lot of interest out of China since we've completed our Maxigesic IV deal. As well is working on banking these increased licensing payments. We recently signed the U.S. deal for Maxigesic IV, which was a significant deal in terms of upfront payments and also licensing payments. The total amount, I think we announced just recently, is about $18.9 million worth of upfront and milestones over the next few years. That was the Maxigesic IV. There are also other milestones that we get as well for the oral dose forms in various jurisdictions.
Adding additional territories, as we mentioned, China and Japan. There are additional milestones for Pascomer. What we're able to do with that is we announced this about, I think it was about 18 months ago, we did a big deal with a North American corporation called Timber Pharmaceuticals. They pay for all our ongoing R&D, which is very attractive for us as it lessens our risk. As well, there's various milestone payments for successful completion of clinical studies, and also registrations as well. Still key though is driving our local Australia, New Zealand sales. Still at this stage, the majority of the sales come from the Australian market with New Zealand also as well. Maxigesic sales, we still have good potential to drive them.
We launched Maxigesic IV in the Australian market, which we're still, the hospitals have been quite closed down, which sort of really has put that on hold. As they open up, we're starting to drive that to get on formularies, then that'll drive sales. We have the line extensions, such as I mentioned, we've got the Maxigesic sachets in Australia. It's just looking to drive the sales plus the line extensions. We've done a lot of in-licensing work. Our regulatory team and BD team have been working very hard during lockdowns. We're targeting up to 31 new approvals across Australia, New Zealand. That would be 15 in Australia and 16 new approvals in New Zealand. We have still got ongoing in-licensing work to expand our Australasian business. There's a lot of potential for that.
Obviously we have the new launches as well. We've got quite a lot of launches coming up in Australia and also NZ as well. Working hard on those to just grow and expand that local business, as well as the international business as well. Key to all this is growing the operating profit. We're targeting NZD 18 million-NZD 23 million. Also we are looking, as we've said, to get our net debt down to NZD 25 million-NZD 30 million. What would drive that really would be the profit. Over time, being able to normalize our inventory levels, to reduce the days cover. We do see this will probably take up to 12 months till freight normalizes around the world. We're keeping a close eye on that.
Regardless, the profit anyway by itself also brings us back to that net debt target position. We're pretty comfortable with that sort of level of debt because really mainly it's funding our working capital. As we've always said, and we're consistent with this, is that once we get our net debt down to our target and we're getting to our targeted profit range, we would look at the end of this financial year to look at whether we pay a dividend. That's certainly something that we want to do once we've got the net debt down to target levels and we've got our operating profit to expected ranges. Thank you very much for your attention, and can now pass it back to the floor to open up for questions.
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 speaker phone, please pick up your handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Chelsea Leadbetter from Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead.
Morning, Hartley, Malcolm. I guess if I could start with a question maybe for you, Malcolm, in terms of gross margins. You gave us a little bit of context around some of the pressure points in FY 2021. Are you able to quantify the FX impact and the freight impact? Then I guess how do we think about this as we head into FY 2022? Just noting your comments, Hartley, around the fact that it may take still some time for freight to normalize. Should we be thinking about some pressure as a result in the FY 2022 gross margin as well?
Yeah, thanks, Chelsea. It's around about, we worked out around NZD 2.5 million . It was NZD 1.5 million of currency, which we put that into the inventory, as we sell the inventory, that's where that comes through. Most of that should be through by now. We've got about just under mil of air freight costs. We don't do much air at all, and we have gone back to sea. Sea is still very slow, and there is extra money being paid for sea freight if you want to get the containers on an urgent basis. It's not overly significant. It doesn't have a huge impact on the margin.
We see the margins broadly as recovering, don't we, Malcolm?
Yeah.
We are looking and have had some small price increases as well, because there have been some inflationary increases in costs as well. We have passed on some costs as well, and we're keeping on looking at this really as well.
Yeah. We think it'll go to at least, on the normalized one that was on slide nine, where it was 43.7, we think it'll be at least that.
Okay. No, that's clearer. Then in terms of guidance, I appreciate the range is wide and there's still a number of moving parts in the world at the moment, but I just trying to understand a little bit more context for the bottom of the range versus the top of the range. Specifically one thing around licensed income as well, if you can provide some clarity on what you've actually included within your guidance for that.
Yeah. The biggest moving parts are, there's three really. There's the license income, it's the launch in the international markets, the launch of the new products into Australia and New Zealand. There's a product we've been waiting to launch in Australia for a while now that we're expecting anytime for it to come through, it hasn't arrived yet, the approval. There is a range of the license income. We're working on a range that's between four - six or six plus. The revenue is just variable on those launch times.
Okay. When you talk about timing of approvals, et cetera, in Australasia, is that easing now? Or what's the sort of handbrake point that's happening in this market in terms of getting those processes through?
Yeah. The regulator's actually been extremely good, especially in Australia, very much on time. It is just there have been some hold-ups with things like GMP inspections. There was one example where the particular agency, the inspectors wouldn't move out of the agency due to the pandemic, at all. They just sat there, and they haven't done inspections that would normally have occurred. Because you are literally waiting for that final sign-off of the site, which you then need that sign-off and that piece of paper to file with TGA to complete the registration, that is literally what holds things up. You can have a NZD 3 million or NZD 4 million product kind of sitting there waiting on that. That is a little bit hard to forecast. It is in Europe, and it is easing up. We would anticipate getting it during this financial year.
Okay. No, that makes a bit more sense. Then just in terms of last question, while we're in the Australia-New Zealand markets, I'm just kind of interested in your hospital growth is obviously very strong in FY 2021. Is some of that I guess abnormal or are you thinking this is a new base and there's still potential to grow off the levels that you're at now? Just trying to understand, I guess, context for opportunities in that particular area.
Yeah, we did get a bump during this year because, especially in Australia, the hospitals are very proactive with taking on some additional safety stock, I think. Well, that's what they told us. However, we do still have quite a lot of launches in the hospital area anyway and right across the whole Australian business. Really we still do see probably less growth in the hospital area this financial year than last, but we still see growth, and then we see higher growth in the sort of OTC area this financial year. Certainly Australia, we do overall, we've said before that we've got a target of getting it in the next three years to be NZD 100 million business by itself. That's certainly something that, regardless of ups and downs in various sub-markets, that we still see that we can achieve.
Okay. No, I appreciate the color. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Christian Bell from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Hi, Hartley and Malcolm. Just again on the earnings range that you've provided. Malcolm, you just said before you're working on a license fee of NZD 4 million-NZD 6 million. Does that include both the Maxigesic IV U.S. deal plus the Pascomer deal that you just did in Europe?
Pascomer was in last year. Yes, it does include the U.S. IV.
Okay. Cool. Would it be fair to say, just trying to bridge this year's NZD 10.7 million of EBIT to next year's, call it NZD 20 million of EBIT. It'd be roughly NZD 5 million coming from license fees, the remainder coming from delayed product launches across ANZ and also Maxigesic launches that probably should have happened in FY 2021?
Yeah. That's right. If you look at our 13% 10-year CAGR, if we were to do that this year, that's another NZD 15 million of revenue. On our margins, that's around about NZD 6 million additional gross profit. Then as I said, on the overheads, we will need to spend a bit of money this year in Aus, more so than New Zealand, but New Zealand as well, on launching those OTC products.
Okay. Just for ANZ, keeping in mind what you said about Aussie. As the revenues grow, do you expect the cost base to increase in line, or shall we start seeing some more operating leverage in the whole ANZ division?
Yeah, just in ANZ alone, we will get more leverage because we've got pretty much the sales. The overhead, the sales force is a big element of that overhead structure, and that stays pretty constant. If we add reps, it's only one or two.
Yeah.
Yeah, that gets better as a percentage. Then the marketing, when you launch a product, our normal experience is that you get to a NZD spend that's adequate for that brand, and then as the revenue grows, you can keep the NZD at the same sort of level.
You expect for this year, R&D will be slightly up, but sales and marketing should be relatively flat this year and going forward?
Sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue will be flat this year. It'll go up as a dollar because we're launching products in ANZ.
Yeah.
As a percentage of revenue, as the international grows and comes in, the overall company will decline, improve, become a smaller percentage.
Okay, cool. Also, it looked like we hit head office costs less this year. Last year, they were about NZD 5 million, this year it looks like it was more like NZD 4 million.
Yeah, we spent a fair bit on legal fees last year, a year before, and the year that just finished, we had lower legal fees, but we always budget legal fees. It's just part of the pharmaceutical industry.
Is NZD 4 million a better representation for head office should be going forward?
Yeah, I think that was a good number. I mean, we've got a third of increase in staff. They're slowly increasing in head office, not only in proportion to the sales line, isn't it?
Yeah, NZD 4 million-NZD 5 million.
Okay. That shouldn't change too much going forward?
No.
No, I mean, it'll slowly grow like we put on, for instance, another marketing person. Yeah, but the rest of it stays relatively flat.
Okay, cool.
Certainly doesn't grow out of line with the turnover.
Yeah. Okay, cool. Just in terms of CapEx, how much have you got to go for Maxigesic across the board, across all your products? When I say CapEx, I mean the purchase of inventory.
Yeah, I haven't got the split at hand. It's about NZD 6 million we'll spend next year. It'll get capitalized.
That's all on Maxigesic?
No, it's spread around. That NasoSURF's costing a bit of money.
Yeah. Okay, there'll be a bit of Maxigesic next year, from maybe FY 2023, will it be predominantly NasoSURF, and maybe a little bit of Pascomer, keeping in mind that you're sort of.
Yeah.
Is that the right way to think of it?
We're not looking at escalating out of line R&D spend, but we are looking at carrying it on year on year. We actually want to step up R&D activities. I mean, we did see initially some of the really expensive studies with the Maxigesic IV ones and some of these follow-on studies are actually cheaper, relatively, or we're able to do deals where our partners pay for them as well.
Like part of the Hikma deal as well is we do have to do some pediatric studies in the U.S., but we're able to get payment for them. Same with Timber. We did the Pascomer deal where we got a couple of big studies we have to pay for, well, we would have had to pay for, but then they paid for them. It makes a lot of difference really. It keeps our R&D costs down.
Thank you. Your next question comes from John Hester from Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Just have a couple questions again about the guidance.
Good morning.
Good morning. The four to six that we've got in there for next year, how much of that is represented by the Maxigesic deal that you've just completed after year-end? How many additional deals do you think you need to do in order to achieve that guidance now, to achieve that four to six?
Yeah. The bottom end is the Maxigesic IV, U.S. To get to six, there's a bit upfront. There is some commercial milestones coming through now on existing products. As they're selling in market, when they get to certain levels, they give us the next milestone, the commercial milestone.
Okay. You pretty much got the bottom end of the four to six in the bag, and then the commercial milestones coming through. Okay, that's helpful. Just in relation to the gross profit calculation there, Malcolm, can you just confirm for me that that gross profit excludes those one-off items? Or what does it include or exclude? Is it in the current number?
Yeah, it excludes it.
Nine
Nine, down the bottom there, that has no licensing coming in at all. That's just sales and royalties.
Okay.
That's the NZD 43.7 from the year before, and we're confident that it'll go back to that level or better.
Okay.
Yeah. That mix is not instead of unfavorable forex, unfavorable freight and things like that. Then we do also the option to put some prices up. We do have various levers we can pull to maintain margin.
Okay. Now just looking forward to slide 15, which is the graphic on the new product launches for Maxigesic. I just want to chat about this for a minute. You've got nine countries coming on in FY 2022 and then 31 in FY 2023. I'm just wondering, how much control you have over these product launches, if any? My concern is that, if Europe, okay, it's still pretty bad with COVID, are these distributors going to take a punt on launching the product in these circumstances? Are they really going to continue to defer until social restrictions are lifted? I'm just wondering what you're assuming in that guidance there.
Yeah. We're basically assuming that they do launch. A lot of those countries are Europe. We see, as you know yourself, in the Western world, typically the pandemic is starting to recede as vaccinations increase. Clearly, though, there is some more risk in some places. There's been a lot of vaccinations throughout the Middle East. Certainly, they are, UAE, for example, is miles ahead of Australia or New Zealand in its vaccination rates.
Yeah, there always are some risks, but we still see, though, that as vaccination rates increase around those various places, that it does make it easier to launch. It's really like the concern in many ways isn't just the launching, it's launching effectively. I know that we slowed down our hospital launches in Europe because really launching Maxigesic IV into closed hospitals is not a particularly good idea, really. We are seeing European hospitals starting to open up. That launch stock that's been ordered for Germany, for example, is being made at the moment, and we'll start to roll that out. There is some risk, yes.
Thank you. That does conclude our question session. I will now hand back to Hartley for closing remarks.
No, look, thank you very much everyone for your attention. It certainly feels like it's been a challenging last 12 months. Really pleased overall the way, despite the various challenges, we are in a much better position where we have much better balance sheet, much better funding than we've ever had, and we're also well set up as a platform to drive the business going forward as well. Thank you very much, and we'll certainly continue to work hard on delivering our plan. Thank you.