Shall we get underway? [Foreign language] Tēnā koutou katoa, kia ora. Good morning, and welcome to AFT Pharmaceuticals Limited's 2025 annual meeting. I'm David Flacks, Chair of AFT. I'd first like to draw your attention to this important notice on the presentation, which, along with my prepared remarks and the slide presentation, has been released to both the NZX and ASX this morning and will also be launched on our website. On behalf of the Board, thank you for attending the 2025 annual meeting. We have this year again enabled the option to join the meeting by webcast, and we extend our thanks to those who have joined by this means. Before we start, a couple of housekeeping points.
I'd be grateful if you could make sure that your phone is on silent, and in the event of an emergency, please make your way to that door over there and follow the instructions of the staff. Let me begin by introducing you to our Directors. Hartley Atkinson, who's going to be presenting to you shortly, Marree Atkinson, Ted Witek, who's come all the way from Canada for the meeting, Andrew Lane is unable to attend the meeting today, he's in Europe, but he is attending online and does send his apologies to shareholders, and our new Independent Director, Alison Yorston, who joined the AFT Board in November last year. Alison will address you later in the meeting prior to the resolution for her appointment as a Director.
Also joining us today are our auditors, Deloitte, with Bryce Henderson and Rebecca Clark, and they're available to answer any questions later in the meeting if you have any. Lawyers, Hama Sort and Lex, are also here. I'd like to introduce you to some of our senior management team who are here today. Could you stand up as I mention your name, please? Malcolm Tubby, CFO and Company Secretary; Ioanna Stanescu, Chief Scientific Officer; Vladimir Ilievski, Regulatory Affairs Manager; Louise Clayton, our Director of International Business; and Scott Porter, National Sales Manager in New Zealand. Our General Manager for Products, Scott Crawford, and our Group Marketing Manager, Murray Keith, could not be with us today. This management team has been together working with AFT for quite a while.
They're a terrific, hardworking team, and the fact that they've been with us for so long is a testament to the culture within AFT and in particular to Hartley and Marree. You can find details of all Directors and the Senior Management Team in our annual report and on our website. Today's agenda: the Company's Constitution prescribes a quorum of five shareholders. As you can see, this requirement's been met. Accordingly, I declare the meeting formally open. The items of business for this meeting and the resolutions to be considered by shareholders are contained in the notice of meeting, which was sent to shareholders on 27th of June . In terms of the order of the meeting, I'm going to say a few words, following which AFT's Founder and Managing Director, Hartley Atkinson, will give his presentation. We will then consider the formal business and resolutions of the meeting.
In relation to the resolutions, there will be opportunities for shareholders to ask questions as we address each resolution in the formal part of the meeting, and there'll also be an opportunity to ask general questions after Hartley has given his presentation. At the close of the meeting, hopefully you'll be able to join us for refreshments. It's my pleasure to report another strong year for AFT, marked by continued growth, strengthened financial performance, and significant strategic advances in key global markets. Our achievements this year reflect the robust foundations we've established for our next growth phase and extend our long-standing record for uninterrupted growth. Personally, I'm pleased to report that this year our revenue surpassed a significant milestone of NZD 200 million for the first time, achieving total sales of NZD 208 million.
Our core Australasian business remains robust and continues to be the cornerstone of our financial strength, with Australia and New Zealand collectively delivering sales of NZD 181 million. The strength of these markets positions us well as we advance towards our ambitious goal of reaching NZD 300 million for the 2027 financial year. Geographically, we have significantly expanded our presence and market capabilities in strategically important regions, including North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Our operations in the U.K., Europe, the U.S., Canada, and South Africa have moved from establishment to development, and these global hubs position us effectively to capitalize on substantial commercial opportunities in those markets while also mitigating risks associated with reliance on any single market or territory. We're particularly excited about our potential in North America.
In the U.S., the world's largest pharmaceutical market, we've launched both the intravenous and tablet form of our pain relief medicine, Maxigesic, which is marketed as Combogesic in North America. We've also restructured our distribution arrangements in the United States, which we believe will maximize both the commercial and patient care benefits that come with following the intravenous form of the pain relief medicine in post-operative care with the Combogesic Rapid Tablet form of the medicine. We've also just begun in July sales of Maxigesic IV in Canada. Together, the North American market of the United States and Canada offers a combined addressable market opportunity in excess of $8 billion. We are making progress globally, both with our operational hubs and through our distribution arrangements.
Progress has been slower than planned, but we are working hard to increase sales and are confident that we will see significant revenue growth across both distribution channels over the next 12 months- 18 months. In line with our geographic expansion, our product development pipeline remains dynamic and offers diverse products that are progressing well towards market readiness. We have eight patented products in active research and development, an improved migraine treatment formulation, and we're progressing 24 off-patent injectables in several markets, including through our global hubs. These products collectively offer significant global market opportunities. We also have five advanced research and development programs now entering commercialization across multiple international markets. These include multiple dose forms of Maxigesic, our antibacterial cream, Crystaderm, Micolette, our microenema for bowel construction, Capsaicin for treatment of osteoarthritis pain and neuropathic pain, and Kiwisoothe tablets and sachets.
Together, these products demonstrate our continued capability to develop innovative healthcare solutions that meet real clinical needs globally. We believe that our investment in research and development will lead to significant opportunities, and Hartley will discuss these in more detail in his presentation. Just going off script briefly, we had a Board Strategy Day a couple of days ago, earlier this week, and we all, as a Board, got really excited as we went through this R&D pipeline and program. There's plenty of hard work ahead of us, but the opportunities are amazing. Financially, we've balanced these strategic investments with continued enhancement of our financial position. Despite sustained investment in our future growth, we have consistently increased shareholder equity while also managing our net debt. Specifically, our net debt at year-end reduced to NZD 14.5 million from NZD 16.2 million in the prior year, well within our targeted range.
Reflecting the strength of our financial position and your Board's confidence in our future outlook, we've declared an increased dividend of NZD 0.08 per share, up from NZD 0.06 per share the previous year. I want to comment on our share price performance. We do not believe the current share price reflects our considerable achievements, the Company's decades-long record of growth, the depth of our development portfolio, nor the considerable potential we see as the Company establishes a stronger presence around the world. We understand some of the reasons for the share price. We've experienced some unexpected headwinds, such as declined de-stocking and a doctor's strike that disrupted first-half earnings in the 2025 financial year, importantly, this was followed by strong second-half earnings. Overall, we have chosen to invest our earnings into growth projects rather than focus purely on short-term profitability.
We make no apology for this. AFT has achieved an enviable record of growth precisely because of our long-term perspective and our commitment to creating enduring value. We are always attentive to finding ways to improve the information that we provide to shareholders so that you can better appreciate our future potential and the rationale for our investments. Today, for instance, as I mentioned earlier, we are releasing more information to our investors on our development portfolio with a goal to better illustrate the value we are creating. We have also this year begun giving quarterly updates to investors to better illustrate our progress, and we've also initiated an outreach program to enhance investor engagement in Australia. We believe these efforts are gaining some traction.
We will continue to focus on growth, both with existing products in a broader range of markets and new products in our R&D pipeline. AFT remains committed to best practice governance standards and operating sustainably. We're developing a significant number of innovative products for patients in real need that larger pharmaceutical companies would likely not undertake. However, these still offer an interesting market opportunity. We have aligned our business and community initiatives with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and have focused in particular on the six initiatives set out on this slide. More information on each of these priorities is set out in our annual report. This year, we welcomed Alison Yorston to our Board as an Independent Non-Executive Director. Alison brings over two decades of experience in blue chip, fast-moving consumer goods, telecommunications, and retail marketing.
Her insights and market expertise are making a valuable contribution to the Company, and Alison's skill set rounds out our Board expertise. The Board hopes you will support her election today. It is, however, with deep sadness that I also acknowledge the passing of our former colleague, Dr. Doug Wilson, earlier this year. Doug served as an Independent Non-Executive Director from 2012 until his retirement in 2022, significantly influencing AFT 's strategic direction and development during a critical period of growth. Doug was widely recognized for his expertise in pharmaceutical innovation and healthcare development, and beyond his contributions to AFT , he was also a celebrated broadcaster, author, and a respected member of our wider community. His wisdom, experience, and friendship will be deeply missed by all who had the pleasure of working alongside him, and we sincerely appreciated his guidance.
As we look ahead, we remain optimistic despite the complexities of the global trading environment. Our geographic diversification, robust product pipeline, and solid market positioning provide us with a strong foundation to continue our trajectory of sustainable growth. Our target revenue goal of NZD 300 million for FY 2027 is ambitious, but we believe it is achievable, supported by ongoing significant investments into market expansion. In closing, I wish to extend my sincere thanks to my fellow Board members for their support and guidance. I'd also like to thank our CEO, Hartley Atkinson, our Chief of Staff, Marree Atkinson, our executive team, and our hardworking, diverse, and committed employees, whose tireless efforts have made these achievements possible. Lastly, many thanks to you, our shareholders, for your continued confidence, support, and trust in our vision and strategic direction. I will now invite Hartley to discuss our performance and prospects in greater detail.
Thank you.
Thanks, David. Thanks, everyone. Look, I'd just like to run through a few slides and explain some of the projects we're working on. Obviously, in terms of the sales side, this gives you a snapshot and an idea of what our progress has been. Effectively, if you look at the graph on the left, I still do very much believe we're a growth stock. It's interesting to notice, sometimes we see various forecasts and analyst models, and often they have our growth leveling off. I don't know where they get that from. It's certainly not going to happen as far as I'm concerned and as far as our company's working towards. Last year, as David mentioned, was a real tough one in the first half, but we put that behind us, and then we got really good rebound growth in the second half.
This year so far, we're making good progress. Sales are going well. There's no headwinds, but obviously, there's always lots of things happening, as you'd expect, but we're making some good progress. As David's mentioned, certainly that target of NZD 300 million is something we're strongly working towards. You can see as well, maybe just to point to the graph on the right, what's effectively really happened is we do have that dark blue as chunks of licensing income. That tends to be lumpy, and we use that to offset some of our R&D spend. The light blue is the profitability. Certainly over the last four years, you can see it's up and down a bit, but it's relatively flat, and that's really because of the investment in the new affiliates and also the R&D, which we have significantly stepped up investments on multiple fronts.
We are doing that for a genuine reason, and I think if you just give us a bit of time, you will really start to see the benefit of that because really New Zealand and even Australia is really a small place. That's the point. The world is so much bigger. The opportunity is massive versus just Australia, just New Zealand, and that's really what we're aiming at. Here's just another slide. If you start to split things down, typically how we've looked at things is the Australian market, the New Zealand market, then we have Asia, and outside there we have international. You can see looking at it, look at that Australian revenue. That's grown really nicely over the last few years. There's huge ongoing potential in Australia. It's not a walk in the park. It's a competitive market, but, you know, we have a very good team.
We're one of the largest sales forces in the Australian market, which is actually really important. If you think back a couple of years ago, I think we were explaining that we had significantly increased our sales force on the doctor side of it, and, you know, that depressed a little bit short-term our Australian revenue, and that certainly concerned some people. They're saying, "Oh, you've got a big problem in Australia," or blah, blah, blah. Last year it rebounded much as we said, and that grew 60% or 70% the profitability as well as the sales. We were confident the decisions we made in time were proven to be the right ones. New Zealand, look, is making really good progress too, although it's a more mature market.
When we say that, there's no reason, and Scott here will confirm this if you talk to Martis, there's no reason things are going to stop here either, you know. We've still got a lot of potential in the New Zealand market. Asia, as well, is very much in a sort of infant stage. Last year we did, you know, cop a bit of a hit with Korea with a doctor strike, which really did stop sales, and we are making very good sales in South Korea. This year we're making good progress again, and the doctors are certainly back at work in South Korea, which is great. We talked to Korean companies, and, like, their sales were down like 30%. It was a real thing. It wasn't just something that was made up, you know. Certainly, look, we're getting good progress.
Long term, what we're tackling is China, which is a particular, you know, it's the second largest pharma market in the world. It does have a lot of complexities. It's not simple either, but we do have, you know, some really good staff that work in that area. Lorraine works up out of Hong Kong, and internally we do have a lot of native Mandarin speakers as well, which certainly makes things like meetings with them so much simpler. Otherwise, if you think about some of the simple basics, it takes twice as long when you have to have English, Mandarin, English, Mandarin. We literally say to our people, "Off you go," in Mandarin, and we leave them to it, and they just chip in now and then and ask a question. That's sort of something that's been really important. David mentions diversity, you know, etc., etc.
We have got a staff that pretty much covers every language in the world, you know, all the main languages, and that is really useful in practice once you start to deal with Brazil or Spain or Italy or something like that. It just always helps. If we have a look at our sort of global map, which we've shown you a few times, the areas we're selling in are in yellow. As you can see, we are, you know, gradually getting more and more yellow. The main one, I think, this year was probably China. We are making sales in mainland China at the moment. We've got some other big chunks of blue. I mean, Brazil is a key project we're working a lot on. Brazil's actually really complicated. They have their regulatory agency called ANVISA.
They don't quite have the same regulatory rules as the rest of the world, so there are quite a few significant differences. We are working on that, and we are making good progress. We launched in South Africa and Namibia and Mozambique, and actually South Africa sales are going very well. That's a good example of a market there. We have our areas in white. The main one that we're really focusing on is Japan. Japan, we have exercised an option agreement with a company. We're working on it, but we really wouldn't color that in until the option agreement really became real and moved to an actual contract. Certainly, the Japanese market, there is some good potential. That's the third largest pharma market in the world. It's certainly one we are taking seriously.
Some of our other products also too, like Kiwisoothe, we've got quite strong interest out of Japan. We're working on that as well as our prescription medicines. The circles in red, those are all our affiliates or whatever you want to call them or business hubs. Obviously, Australia and New Zealand have been around quite a while. We have an office in Singapore, making pretty good progress in Singapore, actually. Then Hong Kong, which primarily there is a reasonable market in Hong Kong. As you know, there's over 7 million people. Also, that's a good hub for China. Our cross-border runs out of that as well from into China, and you're making good progress with our cross-border sales as well. We did purchase a company in South Africa, which has a large pipeline of products. I can fill you in a bit more on that in the next few slides.
Obviously, Europe, we've got our European businesses run out of Ireland and our U.K. businesses in London. In Canada, we've got an office in Toronto. The U.S. has more of an office to run some of our OTCs and to work more closely with our partners, and that's based in Detroit. A lot of work has gone into all of these to get them going, and certainly that is something that it's not simple, but it's set up now and kind of ready to really accelerate it. In terms of our international expansion, as we mentioned last year, we did have some really big bumps last year with the international sales. There was some de-stocking, and people ordered up quite a lot the year before. The graph is actually distorted on the left.
That light blue again, that's the licensing income, which is always going to be a little bit all over the place. Certainly, in terms of this year, we do have quite a lot of licensing agreements underway. This year will be a year we'll see some more licensing income, where last year was relatively, you know, fairly small, basically. The number of countries, you can see we're up to 80 countries. We have had a number of launches, and even markets that we thought maybe were quite modest, like Slovenia, we found actually going really well with selling up to half a batch of Maxigesic IV a month, which is actually very impressive. Some of those sort of markets are certainly performing well.
It really is just a matter of building, and that's what makes up the international business, which I think if you watch over this year, you'll see a more significant sales bump in that market, especially in comparison with last year for sure. It does take you through a quick walkthrough, you know, the different sort of places. As we said, the U.S., we're really using that to run our OTC launches. There's a lot of potential in the U.S., being the world's largest pharma market. I think they'd just be really clear that our strategy to date has actually been very diversified. The obvious question you get is, "Oh, President Trump, oh, tariffs, oh, it's the end of the world, isn't it?" No, it's not. Some of our manufacturing is done in the U.S., so we have flexibility around that.
At the moment, only a small proportion of our sales are in the U.S., under 2%. It's sort of an opportunity, but also too, like if things do go a bit slow, our whole strategy is not based just on the U.S. for sure. That's quite important. Markets like, say, the Middle East, we certainly get good sales out of that. The U.K., we've launched both Combogesic IV and tablets. We're in Boots, Superdrug, Independents, all the main places. We are scaling that up. We've launched a number of new products this year. We have a pipeline of about 30 products. That's still only partly done. There's a lot more products to come. We are starting to scale that up. That's our largest single potential market with a population of about 68 million, much bigger than Australia at only 25 million. That's pretty important.
Certainly, Europe, we mainly use Europe for selling our own products. We won't have physical offices all around Europe. We have partners. Europe is run out of Ireland, and we do have a number of projects there. Our joint venture called Sinoject which manufactures injectables. We have opportunities to sell those around Europe. We sell Maxigesic around Europe. If you remember last year, we purchased the German cannabis company. For some reason, it had some pharmaceutical licenses. It went broke, so we purchased pharmaceutical licenses, and we're now going to sell those this year in Europe. Just to give you an idea, we're buying things. We're not raising money. We're funding it out of profits. The return we get, I was talking to some bankers the other day, and I said, most of our investments, we're getting the money back within two years.
They thought that was quite surprising, but I don't know. That's what we normally do. That money we spend there, we'll get it back pretty quick. We got another offer at the moment for something else. This is not stuff that's going to change the whole company. We have to announce to the share market, but we got offers in for quite a few things. The company in South Africa, we purchased that and all the pipeline. Once again, that was done out of profits. We just quietly did it, so we're not running off and raising money and everything else. Sometimes I think people don't give us credit for that. You know, we're doing so much out of existing money we're making, and that's probably the reason that, yeah, the profits are a bit flat, but we're doing a lot of stuff.
We're not throwing the money away, and this is what will leverage things kind of long term. In Canada as well, Canada actually is an exciting market. I spent a week up there about two weeks ago. The interesting thing is it kind of gets overlooked because a lot of companies think, yeah, America, and they ignore Canada. It's too small. It's too boring, everything else. Apologies, Ted. There are 43 million people in Canada. Canada is not a small market, and it's a really interesting market. There's actually often not as much competition. If we look at Australia and we look at Canada having a really good look, to me, there seems less competition in Canada than there is in Australia. It is a very interesting market.
The other thing we've done too that's quite important to mention, and we picked this up the other day, we went to an NZTE, their top 25 export companies, which we were one of them. What everyone said is you don't go hire some junior kid to run your overseas affiliate. We haven't. I was glad when I heard that, and they said because you need someone who's pretty senior, who knows everyone, who's probably done it before, and then can just do it. The guy we have in Canada is called Sylvain. We're his fourth company. He says probably his last gig. He's set up Aspen in Canada, turned it into a multi-hundred million, you know, NZD 100 million company sort of thing. The same in South Africa as well.
We've hired this other chap who's worked for Aspen as well, set up their hospital company, turned it into a NZD 100 million + company. These people are experienced. They do know people, and that gives us more kind of confidence too that we can make these things work. Canada, we've got a pipeline at the moment of about 17 products, but hey, look, this is nowhere near enough, and we're going to add lots more in there. That just sort of maybe gives you a flavor that, you know, there are things behind. We're talking about the Combogesic IV launch, which we're just launching now, but there's a lot of other things that will actually follow up as well. The other part just quickly as well with these international affiliates, as I mentioned, we've got South Africa. We're launching products within this calendar year.
The orders are in with the manufacturers. We put them in the other day, and that's all getting organized. It was pretty important to buy that company. It got us a really good pipeline straight away and also saved us a lot of time as well. That was important. We've got about 30 products in the pipeline there, but there will be more. Once again, we've got about 30 there. There is a lot of potential. We've had our toe in the water in Hong Kong and Singapore for quite a while. We're seeing some good potential there. Both of those markets, we have at least 40 products in the pipeline. They're either filed, the dossiers are getting prepared to file, or the dossiers are coming soon. A lot of work to be done in Hong Kong and Singapore, but certainly getting some really good progress.
Especially Singapore seems to be a relatively very well-structured market. You can probably guess it would be, but we've had some really good success there. What the Singaporeans really like actually is they really like the Australian connection. In a lot of places, Australia, to be frank, is their main pivot point. A lot of times you can get products registered much more easily if they're approved in Australia. Everything we do, we usually register in Australia first. We're very Aussie first, to be honest. We just do what makes sense for the business. Certainly the Australian part of our business is important, and we can leverage a lot of these other countries off our Australian side. Now, if we look at our existing R&D, what's important obviously is R&D costs money. You've got to get your money back. You've got to commercialize it, and that's pretty important.
We've got a significant number of deals underway at the moment. We've completed some deals already, which you'll see when we report our six-month results. There is some licensing money there, which is always great. Maxigesic, we've still got a number of different dose forms that we're working on and things like pediatric indications, which are important as well. They really help things like Maxigesic IV by having the pediatric indication, which we're working on. We've just got FDA approval on all our protocols around the IV. We're doing a study soon on that, and then we'll expand the indication out from just adults to also include children between the ages of two and 17. We also have new dose forms, like we're developing a patented oral liquid formulation, which is of special interest to the U.S.
A product like that can actually probably sell quite a lot, quite a few million, tens of millions, and the patent would go out till, assuming we can get all the patents sorted out, which we're working on. Just as an example, if you're successful with that, the patent goes out till 2045, and there's a lot of money from something like that in the U.S. that can be made. That's our sort of angle there. Rather than just use our standard formulation, we're developing an improved formulation, which we would then seek a patent around. In a market like the U.S., that can actually be quite significant because it literally is such a big market. We've also got Crystaderm, Micolette, Kiwisoothe product, and our Capsaicin product. All of these we're actually getting interest in licensing.
Some deals are underway, some are being signed, and those are all underway, and we'll be filing a number of those dossiers in Europe as well. We already have some registrations, like Crystaderm we've launched out in Canada and China. There's a couple of markets, but there certainly will be other markets as well. The sort of complicated, maybe tricky one, but actually, to be frank, the most important one is the whole R&D pipeline. This is getting quite reasonable in size now. It's carefully balanced too, though, that we have some projects that are quite close, then other projects that are a bit further out. What we've tried to do is share a bit more information, I guess. You can see we've got a column in the middle that says dossier filing.
Once a dossier gets close to filing, it's particularly suitable for licensing, so you can start to get the licensing money in the door. Typically it'll take 15 months, 18 months, 24 months from filing to then launch it, but often quite quick. It can be 15 months. Then you'll get the sales will then start to build. We've done a number of things. On the first line, hospital injectables, we have a significant joint venture. We're the 70% majority partner for that. It's called Sinoject. There's a lot of potential for that, we believe. You know, it's about a NZD 450 million target market, and we have some really good competitive pricing and things like that. I mean, one example, there's quite a popular product that the cheapest we can get it for is about $8 U.S. We can make it for $2 U.S.
There's some interesting things that flow off that, and that's something that can also make money kind of more quickly. It's not as sophisticated as the ones further down, but it kind of balances out. We want to make some money now. We're also doing a migraine product, an improved migraine product. Target market for that's about $ 180 million U.S. That's closer where it's probably either the end of next calendar year or the start of the year after. That's reasonably close. Pascomer for port-wine stains. This is where people get a port-wine stain growth on their face. What they do is laser them off. The problem is they grow back, and this will, we believe, will slow. There is data to show it slows down the regrowth. We're just undertaking clinical studies for that one. One of the most important exciting ones is this iron injection.
This one's a new chemical entity. We've done a deal with the people we work with at Hyloris in Belgium and another company who were the original people that developed it. We got 45%, Hyloris 45%, and the original company maintains the balance. Now, injectable iron is a popular growing market. It's about $3.5 billion U.S. at the moment, growing to over $7 billion. This product, we have got the first lot of clinical data back, and actually, to be frank, it's really exciting. This is a valuable market. Just to give you a flavor, CSL, a company in Australia you've probably heard of, they bought a company called Vifor in Switzerland. CSL wanted to extend away from it just as blood products. They bought Vifor for multi-billion dollars, about just under $12 billion U.S. One of the reasons they bought it was because they had an iron injection.
The iron injection was about 38% of their sales, and they paid just under $12 billion for the whole thing. Obviously, they thought the iron injection was worth something. Our product, the first study we did against that product, which is the current market leader for the iron injectable market called Ferinject, there's one sort of quite, I mean, I'll just give you a flavor without telling you the exact thing because we've filed a lot of papers. For instance, there's one side effect that's quite important. We were one-fifteenth of the incidents. This drug is really good. The problem with iron is it's not that well tolerated. It actually is, in some ways, can be quite dangerous. This product, to me, is very interesting because the data we've got to date shows it's really well tolerated. That's a project, but it's not a simple one either.
We're going to do, we've been to FDA already. We're going back to FDA about the end of the year. Next year, we will roll into an 800-patient clinical study. This is the sort of thing we can tackle. Our team is well set up for this. We've been audited by U.S. FDA. We passed with zero observations, which is almost unheard of. We know we're doing things properly. The injectable iron is, to me, a very exciting project. We've got other projects as well. We've got an antibiotic eye drop for drug-resistant iron infections. This product's very much needed in the United States. They compound it a lot at the moment. The problem is the FDA hates compounding. Eye drops are something you don't want to compound anyway because if some pharmacy contaminates it, then you're going to have a problem.
This is a good target product for that sort of thing. We're developing that. Strawberry birthmarks is another interesting project. There is quite a big market at the moment where there's an oral treatment. The problem is it's quite toxic. They don't use it in a lot of the patients they could use it in. If you think about it, if your kiddie or grandchild is born with a few strawberry birthmarks on them, you'd quite like them to go away or get rid of them. At the moment, the only treatments are quite toxic. We've developed a topical treatment, and we're just going to FDA I think about next month or next couple of months, aren't we? Literally, next couple of months to have our first discussions with U.S. FDA.
Even the market at the moment, which is quite restricted, is still, they say the estimates from the expert reports say about $650 million U.S. We see this will be an opportunity to expand that market. We've got something for keloid scars, another topical treatment. Keloid scar market's big. If you look at the data, there's no approved medicines. It's over NZD 1.5 billion presently. There's a lot of potential. Keloid scars are scars that keep growing. You think about it, you cut yourself, the scar heals up, and you forget about it after a while. The problem with keloid scars is they keep growing. There are no treatments for them. They either surgically excise them. Sometimes they use injections into them, but there's no registered treatment. We have some good data around that, and we're developing that as well. There is also something called burning mouth syndrome.
There's no approved treatment for it. Even just the diagnostic market and sort of handling that side of it without a treatment is $460 million U.S. It's not a small market either. I think the point, getting back to what David made as well, is a lot of these things like Big Pharma will gut before the latest cancer treatment. Nothing wrong with that. Obviously that's important. However, these sort of things are going, no, they're too small. They're not really worth it. We can't be bothered, sort of thing. You can see they're not smaller markets, and there is really good potential, and real patients need them. We're making money out of selling our other products. We're investing X amount into new affiliates, X amount back into this. There is a big bang and a big upside as long as we can get it right down the track.
We've had some experience to date. We've got two U.S. FDA approvals. A lot of companies in New Zealand you'll find will talk about these things. The thing that was really key, honestly, was meeting someone like Doug. He was the only guy, apparently, to this day that got two drugs approved by U.S. FDA on the same day, two patented drugs. Doug was very clever, and he knew it. He'd done it, and he was so helpful. He made a big difference. To be honest, we were like sponges. We soaked everything up off Doug, and that was quite important. We've learned a lot from him, and that is important. There is another disease, once again, that VLS affects females, obviously by the name. That's a pretty big problem as well. There aren't any treatments.
We've got a development there, once again, doing that with Hyloris that we work with in Belgium. That's a good potential one. Last, we've got our NasoSURF project, which has gone a bit slow, and we are working on some problems with it. But you know, with the whole thing, there'll always be something I should point out in that list that probably won't work. That's why we have a number of projects. We are maybe looking at another two projects. We're focusing on getting a few things in that would be a bit quicker to market or not sitting down the bottom. We want ones that'll be in the middle. It's not like a never-never thing. Your eyes glaze over. You think, God, it's going to be 10 years' time because we're the same. We don't want it to be forever.
Hopefully that gives you a bit of an idea about the R&D pipeline. We're excited about it. We honestly don't think the market's got it. Whatever, we still believe it's a good investment. It's money well spent. Last but not least, just to finish up, with the outlook, to be honest, this is very much the same as we said at the end of last financial year. We're definitely looking to extend our growth record. If you think back to that sales graph, sales are roughly doubling every five or six years. We're not really looking at them slowing down, just because we're selling quite a bit. We still think there's a lot more potential, which is why we set up those affiliates, and we have the R&D program going. We're certainly working on that. That target of NZD 300 million, all the team is working hard about that.
People say around the office there's a good buzz. People think it's pretty exciting. There's lots of new things happening, new products happening, things like that. The old products are going well as well. Often what happens, we've noticed, is people almost read the wrong thing into things. People say, oh, but you're only launching new products because the old products aren't going any good, are they? No, the old products are growing nicely, but the new products are going to help. The other thing people said, I can remember, is they said, like when we floated, they said, oh yeah, but you're going for the international because Australia and New Zealand are kind of topped out, haven't they? They're not really going to go anywhere. That was 10 years ago. No, Australia and New Zealand's gone a lot since then and will still grow more.
It's really this geographical spread is really important. The strong program for new products, both products we're in-licensing. There's lots of interesting products around the world you can then license, and we're certainly doing that at the moment. I mean, look, one simple example is a product, tranexamic acid mouthwash. If you go to the dentist and you're on a blood thinning agent, you have to stop that at the moment because the problem is if they take your teeth out or something, you can keep bleeding. Tranexamic mouthwash will then you be able to use it, and you won't have to stop your blood thinner because the mouthwash will stop you bleeding and then carry on with your blood thinner. You know, look, it's not rocket science, but it's a nice, useful product that people are going to use. That's the sort of thing we license in.
We've got quite a lot of products like that that we're licensing in. We've got the growth, as we're saying, and that. We're still maintaining. Our sales are going well. We don't have concerns around that, and we're keeping with that NZD 20 million- NZD 24 million. We'll update you if there's any changes in that. That's progressing fine. Thank you very much, and I'll hand it back to our Chairman. Thank you.
Okay, thanks, Hartley. At this point, we're going to open up the floor for questions on the latest results, the business update, or any other matters you'd like to raise. Directors and Senior Management will also be here at the end of the meeting to answer any questions you might have while we're having refreshments. Any person who wants to speak or ask a question, could you raise your hand?
Please, could you state your name prior to asking your question? Also, please wait until you've got the microphone. Otherwise, those people who are online won't be able to hear your question. I ask in the interest of fairness to all shareholders. Anyone wishing to speak should be as concise as possible and be considerate to other shareholders as well. Opening up the floor now for any questions, please. Sure.
My name's Britt Boyce. Could we just touch on the shares or the share thing? Now, some of the issue about the share is in the liquidity. I think there's certainly something there. I'd like your sort of comments on that. With a major shareholder, you've only got 30% of your share base to give you your liquidity to give you your kick-up. You can overcome that in a way by maybe reducing your major shareholder. If you were considering doing that, I think you should, if you could, take on board the fact that retail investors are often undersubscribed and stuff like that. Instead of going institutional and then retail, retail is the way to go, I think. Secondly, things like dividend reinvestment programs, if for shares, you get your capital back, you get to retain your capital for your R&D as well.
Are there any sort of thoughts on that?
Sure.
Yeah.
Thank you. Thanks for your question. Yeah, we do hear that comment about liquidity a lot, obviously. Actually, if you go out and buy shares, you can buy them. They are not unavailable. The shares are available. Hartley, for example, has just bought some more shares. It's been disclosed to the market. Quite a number of shares had no problem buying them. If you want to go, if any of you want to go into the market now and buy shares, they are available. Liquidity is not as much of an issue as people think it is because you can go out and buy shares. That's what liquidity is all about. In relation to the dividend reinvestment scheme or possibility, I mean, we've only just started paying dividends. This is our third year. Shareholders, we understand, do want dividends.
We are in a position, fortunately, of being able to pay a smallish dividend as well as reinvesting, as well as making a profit as well. We think we've got the balance right. We obviously keep an eye on it all the time, and we will continue to keep an eye on it. Thank you for your question.
Sure.
I don't think I want to be a shareholder. Some of the most important people in the business will be your salespeople. Can you just explain a typical salesperson in Australia? Would it be working out of an office? Would it be just managing AFT products? Would it be working with other products? I guess it'd be a good commission, good for the top salespeople.
Thank you. That's a good question. Basically, our sales team in Australia is split around sort of customer. We have a pharmacy sales team of 25. We have a doctor team of 11 or 12. We have a hospital team of three or four. We have merchandisers, then we have key account managers who handle, you know, the offices like Chemist Warehouse or something like that. Typically, they're quite varied, but they're probably a science graduate sort of thing. They only work for us. They're not doing anything, any other person's drugs. They're totally our sales force, which is really important. Everyone has an incentive scheme. It's pretty typical of the industry. It's probably 15% - 20% sort of thing as an incentive thing. We're certainly paying. We always look at this carefully. We're paying pretty much as the rest of the industry. We're not paying people less.
Our people are well paid. We have a pretty good retention with our sales force. We've had reps there for years and years. We cover every Australian state. In New Zealand, we have a spread as well, which is spread out over the whole country as well. It's trying to keep the amount of travel done by having some local people. Like WA, we have three pharmacy salespeople inside of WA. That's pretty important. It's having that coverage. To be honest, we have very good salespeople, and it's pretty well organized. They have computerized call systems that log everything. There's no hiding or anything like that nowadays with those sort of systems. It's definitely a good investment because the key is getting your product on shelf, educating pharmacists, presenting it to doctors, all those sort of things. Doctors are really important. We sample a lot with doctors.
That's also very important. It definitely helps by having salespeople to do that. Hopefully, I've answered your question.
Hello, everybody. My name is Yuri Zelt. I'm a happy shareholder with one comment and happy questions. Firstly, I would have expected a little bit more self-criticism rather than self-laudation overall after the, say, five or nine-year performance. If you look at the chart, that's common. Otherwise, three questions, please. I heard in a side sentence that you're producing something in the U.S. I thought your production centers are in India, in China, and in the East European country. Maybe you can comment on that. Second, at the very beginning, did you say that you start with a quarterly reporting? It was also in a side sentence. If so, what is the depth going to be of these reports or whatever you intend to publish, please? Number three, Hartley, can you please comment a little bit more on the first month, how this is going, the magnitude of growth?
I mean, obviously, it's consistent with your current guidance. Otherwise, that would have been an announcement. Is it building a bridge to the NZD 300 million a little bit? Maybe you can comment a bit more on that, please. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. First of all, your comment on self-criticism is fair. We're all in the same boat here. We're disappointed with the share price. I mean, we can't control that as much as we'd like to. We'd like to be able to control it more. I mean, as I think I showed last year, our revenue has quadrupled since we IPO'd in 2015. From NZD 50 million, we're now over NZD 200 million, and we're looking to NZD 300 million. We feel good about that. We feel good about the work we're doing. We feel great about the pipeline. We would like to see the share price follow. That's a fair comment. Thank you. One other one I'll respond to, and then I'll hand over to Hartley, is on the quarterly reporting.
We've decided rather than, I mean, we have so many new products coming in, things happening, which on their own are not really, are not price sensitive. We're not going to the market on those. We do sometimes, or we were providing announcements to the market on a reasonably regular basis, which were not price sensitive, but it was a way of getting our message out. I guess we're thinking that the quarterly shareholder letter that we're sending out now provides a more regular update to shareholders to let shareholders know kind of what we're doing. We've only started, I think, this year. Our plan at the moment is to continue to do that. It's not an announcement for the, it's not a price-sensitive market announcement. If we're updating forecasts or anything, we have to go through the normal NZX, ASX channels.
Hartley, do you want to answer the other one? I was trying to remember all the questions you were bringing up. Production centers in the U.S.?
Oh, yeah, production centers. No, look, we do produce globally, to be honest. We produce quite a lot. It's not necessarily Eastern Europe. Italy is quite major, Spain and Italy, Germany. We have spread there. We do manufacturing in the United States presently. We have got that option. We don't love working with U.S. manufacturing sites presently for various reasons. I probably won't go into it. They're not that easy to work with. We work in Canada as well with manufacturing sites. To be honest, we have a spread is the answer. I still think it's ultimately pretty difficult if the U.S. says it wants to get all its manufacturing onshored. I'd like to challenge that would be very difficult in reality.
We do manufacturing in the U.S., so we have that opportunity as well. Trading update. Look, as I said, we're going well. We're pleased. The growth is as we would have expected. We're trying not to release quarterly numbers all the time. There is a reason that you see when companies are quarterly reporting, they almost get too driven by all those short-term things. As we tried to say, we are focused on really driving the long term. We're trying to avoid releasing the exact trading numbers every quarter. What we can say is, sales are going good, fine. People often ask about the economy and say, oh, you won't be going very well, will you, because the economy is not very good in Australia or something. Honestly, it has very little difference on drugs. If someone's got a headache, they don't think, oh, shit, the economy's no good.
I'm not going to go buy them a headache medicine. If they're going to buy a new Ferrari or something, they probably think twice. Things like drugs and pharmaceuticals are very resistant to economic cycles, fortunately.
Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you. Sir, the bank.
John, your a shareholder. Are any of your products covered by Pharmac? Your Maxigesic for pain relief, is Panadol your main opposition to that? I was just wondering why I haven't seen a doctor prescribe Maxigesic instead of Panadol. I just wondered, are you covering, you know, private practice doctors enough to get them to be prescribing your product rather than Panadol?
Sure. I'll have a go at that first and then Pharmac, yes. Most of our hospital products are through Pharmac, but they can comment more on that. Maxigesic, no. I mean, Maxigesic is a combination of paracetamol and ibuprofen. It is, I mean, tests have proven and we advertise it this way, that it's a stronger pain relief than paracetamol. If your doctor's not prescribing Maxigesic, you could tell him you would like him to suggest Maxigesic as a more effective pain relief than paracetamol.
I was never given your product.
There may be a reason in for you. I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, look, without going into things, there might be a specific contraindication or a warning or something related to people's health conditions. Certainly, no one drug is suitable for everyone. We do know, though, we do get good support in Australia and New Zealand, certainly from a number of doctors. It is mainly an OTC product, but from the medical fraternity, we are still getting good support as well overall. That's not to say someone's not going to be able to say, my doctor never prescribes it. Sometimes a lot of doctors very much do prescribe just what's on the PHARMAC schedule or what's on the PBS. We're not really going there because I just don't think the pricing thing is worthwhile going there. We'd rather stick to the kind of higher-priced OTC kind of area really.
On that one, PHARMAC, look, we work closely with PHARMAC with a number of our products, and we've had a good working relationship with them, and they are part of our business, certainly. Yeah.
Open slide in here.
My name is Heidi Cheng, and I'm a shareholder for a number of years. Actually, this company, the killing ratio is about 20%. I think it's one of the best financially good positions out of those hundred and so many companies in the whole New Zealand market. The debt is very, very low. I wish to have some suggestions. I don't have any questions. Is that just now the shareholder mentioning about Maxigesic? It's a little bit more expensive than Panadol. I'm thinking of a way how to, what should I say, promote those products. Recently, the Defense Minister, Judith Collins, and also, what should I say, Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, all mentioned that now is a very difficult period. They haven't seen such, what should I say, dangerous position before. I agree with them.
If suddenly there is a war, what shall I say, breaking out, then medicine, it will be very important. Just like my parents and grandparents during wartime, because of the medicines of the pharmacy, they earn a lot of money. Now I'm suggesting that, for those messages of tablets, if they are three months before expiration date, then convince the government to stock them. Cheaper price, because anyway, if you cannot sell them after three months, they will be expired. For my years in Hong Kong, 31 years ago, I know that Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Queen Mary Hospital, etc., they all stock medicines. Only expire three, three months before expiry date because they are much cheaper because their turnover is very quick. I suggest to have those essential medicines promoted to the hospital when compared with the defense budget, so many billions.
Maybe use only less than NZD 1 million because from the annual report, those products that are discarded is about only NZD 800,000. I think they are out of date stock. We can save some money.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. That's an interesting suggestion, which makes it easy to get expiring tablets. So thank you .
Sir, as the other shareholder asked, are you considering a dividend reinvestment scheme for the board? I said, "My name's Neil Hartman. I'm a minor shareholder." Thank you.
Thank you. Look, it's not something that we have considered recently. As I mentioned, we always are thinking about ways in which we can best use our capital, and obviously, that is another way. I mean, at the moment, we're trying, we're looking to increase our dividend payment. If some shareholders want to buy back in, obviously, they can buy more shares. We'll certainly continue to keep an eye on it. Any other questions? Okay. If there are no further questions, then we'll come to the formal matters requiring resolution, which are set out in the notice of meeting. There will be an opportunity to ask questions on each of those specific matters that are being put to shareholders. As required by the listing rules, a poll will be conducted for each of the resolutions. This will be conducted at the end of the formal business.
Your board supports each of the resolutions being put to the meeting. As stated in the notice of the meeting, each director intends to vote all shares and undirected proxies held by them in favor of the resolutions. We'll show the proxies cast for each resolution after we've considered the resolution. First resolution, auditor's remuneration. The proposed resolution is to authorize the directors to fix the auditor's remuneration for the current year. In accordance with the Companies Act, Deloitte has automatically been reappointed as the company's auditor. Details of statutory audit fees paid to Deloitte for the financial year ended 31 March 2025 are set out in the annual report. 2026 audit fees are expected to be comparable to last year's, with provision for an increase as the audit scope broadens with the company's expansion and with additional climate disclosure requirements.
I now propose, as an ordinary resolution, that the directors are authorized to fix the fees and expenses of Deloitte as auditor for the 2026 financial year. Are there any questions concerning this motion? Thank you. As I mentioned, the poll on all resolutions will be conducted at the end of the business. We'll now move to the next resolution, which concerns the reelection of Hartley Atkinson to the board of directors. Hartley is retiring by rotation in accordance with the listing rules and offers himself for reelection. The board recommends Hartley as a director and unanimously supports his reelection. His biography is set out in the notice of meeting. Although you've heard from him a fair bit today, I'm now going to invite Hartley to address you in relation to his proposed reelection. Hartley.
I'm probably not going to say too much, David. I probably really said enough. No, look, I mean, honestly, I still believe there's a lot of stuff still to happen and to do. I basically want to be involved to do that. I'm still passionate about it. I mean, when we even have our five-year plans, which we regularly have, I always like to think that I've just been jetted in to sort of look at the company afresh. We do. We're not just doing the same thing time and time again. We are looking at different ways to do things as well and really putting sort of and talking to people around the world to sort of look at different ways of doing things. We are keeping an open mind. I do think I can keep on adding to the business by doing that.
I'm keen to, and that's where I'm really coming from. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks, Hartley. I now propose that Hartley be reelected as a Director of AFT . Any matters for discussion or questions concerning the motion? Okay. I'll now move to the next resolution. The next resolution is that Alison Yorston be elected as a Director of AFT . As I mentioned earlier, Alison was appointed as a Director by the Board on the 12th of November 2024. In accordance with NZX listing rules, she retires and, being eligible, offers herself for election as a Director of AFT at this meeting. The Board unanimously supports Alison's election and considers Alison to be an Independent Director. Her biography is set out in the notice of meeting. I'll now invite Alison to address the meeting on her proposed election.
Thank you, David. Good morning, shareholders, fellow board members, AFT leaders, and guests. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today as I seek your election to the board. AFT is an amazing New Zealand-grown global organization. I've really thoroughly enjoyed the journey over the past eight months of learning and contributing to AFT as an Independent Director. As someone who's spent their career at the intersection of marketing, strategy, and consumer-centric innovation across not only New Zealand but also Australia, I've seen firsthand how powerful it is when purpose and performance really align. The purpose of AFT is very clear. It's a company that's focused on developing pharmaceuticals that make a real difference to people's lives. By our significant program of in-house R&D that Hartley has talked to you about this morning, it's super exciting.
That gives us an opportunity to take New Zealand to the rest of the world. Today, I'd like to touch on those two aspects of purpose and performance and speak to my intent to bring these to my role on the board. For me, both as an Australian and a New Zealander, I look for opportunities to be part of businesses where I can really contribute to the building and showcasing of our amazing talent, products, and brands with the objective of achieving transformational growth. I've been part of many success stories across both sides of the Tasman. Although consumer goods is a little different to pharma, the principles of performance are really the same. It's about consumer-centric innovation, nimble execution in market, persistent leadership, clarity of purpose as to what you are, and almost more importantly, what you are not, and flexibility to adapt when things change.
I think we live in a world of constant change, right? That's a really important factor. All in the service of creating value for you, the shareholders, and all of which I've seen in action at AFT over the past eight months. The last point I'd like to talk on is about purpose. My belief is that the heart of a business is its purpose. AFT is really all about developing innovative products that help people. This purpose is really aligned to my own. Regardless of the category that I've worked in through my career, I've looked for opportunities to add value and help my consumers, my stakeholders, and my teams. I do believe that I can contribute significantly to the future of AFT.
My skill sets in the area of strategy, marketing, innovation, and technology, alongside my qualification from the Australian Institute of Company Directors, place me in a position to fully contribute to the governance of AFT . I'd like to thank my fellow board members for their support, especially Hartley, Marree, and David. They're a really great group of people to work alongside, as is everyone that I've connected with at AFT. If you, the shareholders, support my election, I will do my best to add value around the board table for the benefit of AFT, our stakeholders, and of course, for you, the shareholder. Thank you.
Thanks, Alison. I now propose that Alison Yorston be elected as the Director of AFT . Are there any matters for discussion or questions relating to this resolution?
Hello. I'm Andrew Baldauf, shareholder. I have to say it's refreshing to have a marketing person talk. On a wider scale, we don't seem to be talking much about marketing and strategies. What products are we really seeing as the big products, the 5% to make 80% of the profit? You know what I mean? It would be nice to have more marketing talk. Maybe that's what the market is looking for out there. What are these guys actually going to do to the consumer, to their clients? The research and development is fantastic and a huge range of products, but it just feels like they need a bit more focus. Hopefully, Alison might be able to bring that.
Okay. Thank you very much. Good comment. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? There being no further questions or comments, that does actually conclude the formal business of the meeting. Here, on this slide, you'll see the proxies that have been cast for each of the resolutions so far. As there is no further business, we will conduct the polls on the matters set out in the notice of meeting. Please use the voting card that you received when you registered on arrival. Please complete your voting paper by ticking for, against, or abstain in the appropriate place on the form for each resolution. If you have any difficulty, please raise your hand and someone will come and assist you. Please remain seated until your voting card has been collected.
Our share register, our Computershare, will come around with the ballot boxes as they are now and collect your voting cards. In the meantime, are there any matters of general business to be discussed? In that case, I will move to close the meeting. On behalf of the board, thank you all for your attendance at our annual meeting for 2025. We will announce the results of the polls to the stock exchange later this afternoon. I now invite you to join directors, senior management team, and auditors to take refreshments, which are going to be served over here. Once again, please remain seated until your voting papers are collected. Thank you. I now declare the meeting closed. Thank you very much.