All right, hello, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for continuing to join us throughout the day here at the Lytham Partners Fall 2024 Investor Conference. My name is Robert Blum, managing partner of Lytham Partners here. Extremely excited to welcome BioSyent, ticker symbol of RX on the TSX, and BIOYF on the OTC, and joining us today from the company is their chief executive officer, René Goehrum. Before I turn it over, I want to remind everyone that management is available for one-on-one meetings throughout the conference here today. If you've not already signed up and would like to schedule a one-on-one, you can send me an email. That's Blum, B-L-U-M, @lythampartners.com, or visit the landing page for the conference. That's lythampartners.com/fall2024. From there, you can click on the Investor Registration tab and make your one-on-one selections.
So with that, René, thank you very much for your participation today, and the floor is all yours.
Great. Thank you, thanks, Robert, and thanks for inviting us to the conference. And thank you, everybody, for listening in. BioSyent is a, well, actually, I'd like to just start with our forward-looking statements disclaimer, and then jump into the presentation, so BioSyent is a Canadian specialty pharmaceutical company. We're based in the Toronto area. We look for unique and differentiated innovative products that address an unmet medical need that are not yet available in the Canadian market. We do commercialize some select products outside of Canada, and I will make mention of that as I go through the presentation, so our business today is, you know, more than 90% Canada-based, with some customers outside of Canada. We look for these unique products around the world.
We've got licensing agreements in place with companies in the United States, in Europe, and in other markets, and in fact, we do have customers in more than 20 markets around the world for the products that we do sell ex-Canada. We look for products that are already in market or late stage, so we're not really an R&D shop, and we're not looking so much to further develop assets. We look for products that are already approved and proven in their markets or in home markets or in some other markets that have not made their way to the Canadian market yet, so as such, you know, we're very measured in what we do from an R&D perspective.
I would say mostly our investment is around development of products, and we've done that with our FeraMAX brand, which I will speak about in a couple of slides. So if there's one slide to kind of stay focused on through this presentation, if you've got kind of one burned into your memory, that this would be the one. BioSyent is a profitable company. We've been profitable now for over 12 years, 56 consecutive profitable quarters on a trailing 12-month basis. Our last reported quarter was Q2, ending June 30th, so that'll kind of impact a number of these figures here. Everything reported in Canadian dollars, that's how we report.
So TTM revenue of just under CAD 34 million, just under CAD 9 million of EBITDA, and CAD 0.60 earnings per share on a fully diluted basis. We also keep an eagle eye on our return on equity. It matters to us a lot in terms of maintaining a high-quality business, and our ROE for the trailing 12 months was 21%. We launched three new products last year, and I'll touch on them in a couple of slides. We in-licensed a new product in June of this year, an endocrinology product, and we just made an acquisition a couple of weeks back that's been closed that I'll speak about as well. Our assessment of our current portfolio is that it supports a business in excess of CAD 65 million in revenue on the top line.
For perspective, last year, we did about CAD 31.5 million. We've got a strong balance sheet. We have no debt. We have operating lines of credit available to us at just under CAD 26 million in cash. That supports our strategy to grow the business and diversify our portfolio. We have a scalable commercial platform. We have three sales teams, but full national coverage across Canada, 11 products approved for commercialization here. We like to think of ourselves as shareholder-friendly. We have a shareholder-friendly cap table. In fact, we've been buying back shares now for almost six years. We started paying a dividend at the end of 2022, and in fact, we've taken that so far as to make changes to our equity compensation structure.
We stopped using share options and gone to RSUs, and in essence, what we do is we go into the open market and buy shares and hold them in trust to meet our obligations under the RSU plan. So we've issued no shares now since I think it's March of 2019, so we're now five and a half years into that. We've got an experienced management team long-tenured committed to the business, and in fact, if I sound like an owner, that's because we are owners. We're 26% insider owners. So this is what 14 years of profitable growth looks like.
Back in 2010, when we became profitable in the second quarter of 2010, we were under CAD 2 million in sales and had two products and about 14.3 million shares, fully diluted. That share count has gone down significantly over the ensuing years. Our top line has gone up significantly in the ensuing years, and we've managed to do all of that, launch all of those products you see on the right-hand side of your screen, and drive a profitable business over time. In our last reported quarter, we're up 12% on the top line. That was a record quarter for us. Performance on an EBITDA and net income after tax was 10% and 7% on NIAT.
But take a look at our six-month basis, we're up 15% on the top, and solid 26% growth for both EBITDA and net income after tax. You'll note that our Niat and EBITDA margins are strong as well. So what do 56 consecutive profitable quarters look like when you break it out on a earnings per share, fully diluted? You'll see here, trailing 12 months of CAD 0.60, 13 cents in the most recent quarter, compares very favorably to 43 cents in the previous trailing 12-month period of time. I would like to run through a few highlights on our year to date. So this is updated through September. In March, June, and September, we paid quarterly dividends, which were 12.5% above the dividend paid in the year ago period.
We were named to the Venture 50, the top-performing venture companies on the Canadian TSX Venture Exchange in the life science categories, where we were named to that select group of I think there's over 1,100 TSX Venture companies, and so we're in the top fifty of that group. I'll talk a little bit about FeraMAX in a moment, but FeraMAX was named the number one recommended iron supplement in Canada for the ninth consecutive year. We also pushed out our licensing and distribution agreement on RepaGyn and Proktis. We moved that out to 32. So these are two products that we've had in our portfolio for about a decade. Performance has been solid, and our partner is quite happy to have us continue to promote those products and to commercialize them in Canada.
In June this year, we in-licensed a new endocrinology product. We have not yet disclosed the product details at this stage. We're preparing the dossier to be submitted to Health Canada, that's the Canadian version of the FDA. We expect to submit this new product to Health Canada late this year or early next, and that would put us on a track to launch this asset in 2026 . Now, what's of note here is that our assessment of the peak penetration revenue value of this asset would be pretty well larger than anything that we've got in the portfolio today, other than our FeraMAX business, and so we have high expectations. It solves a real problem in the market, and we're looking forward to commercializing that asset.
I'll be speaking a little bit more in detail about our NCIB activity, buying back shares. We've been active this year. In the January-June period, we've repurchased over 162,000 shares, so about 1.5% of our shares, fully diluted, outstanding. Then, just a couple of weeks ago, we closed on a transaction to acquire the global rights to Tibella, and I'll speak about that here right now. This is an asset purchase agreement. It doesn't come with people or bricks and mortar attached to it, and in fact, no manufacturing. We've got contract manufacturing in our supply chain for this asset.
Tibella, as it's known in Canada, is a hormone replacement therapy for treatment of vasomotor symptoms, so think hot flashes, night sweats, and also for managing osteoporosis in post-menopausal women. The assets that we acquired include all the intellectual property, global rights, the dossier, the data, pharmacovigilance data to manage a business with 20 customers around the world. It gives us the rights to further commercialize this asset in other markets that have not yet launched this product. We paid EUR 2.8 million , which was less than a five times EBITDA. What do we get out of this from a strategic and financial perspective? As I said, we get an opportunity to look for new markets.
We are already selling our FeraMAX product in the international markets. This gives us a little bit more mass in terms of finding customer relationships in new countries around the world. In Canada, we have been growing the Tibella business nicely in the six months ended on June 30th. We're over 30%, up 30%, over 30% growth. What this transaction does is enhance our gross margin and our operating margin on the Tibella business in Canada. Sales outside of Canada, so revenue in our hands, will add CAD 2.6 million to the top line, and just under CAD 1 million of incremental EBITDA, without the further benefits of growth on the Tibella business in Canada, and which will drive more margin, so more EBITDA margin, and of course, finding new customers globally.
I mentioned, the FeraMAX brand was named number one recommended, so this is an independent survey of, doctors and pharmacists across Canada. We've been so named now for the ninth consecutive year, and, this gives us a great foundation to drive a life cycle strategy. We launched the FeraMAX brand in Canada about 15 years ago, and in 2020, we reformulated with a new compound that's FeraMAX Pd, polydextrose iron complex, and we've essentially re-staged a couple of products, so FeraMAX 150 and FeraMAX 15 for specific patient types, and then just last year, we launched new FeraMAX 45. We have a new asset, a new product in development under the FeraMAX brand that will see market in early 2026, so what do we see as driving our business going forward?
And I mentioned that we're quite excited about the endocrinology asset. We're leaning into the FeraMAX brand and our FeraMAX lifecycle strategy and obviously, Tibella, both in Canada and Tibella distribution. We're just kind of early days into that, working on building those relationships out and finding new markets. There are a few markets where the product has been approved and has not yet been partnered. And then we've got a couple of other assets in Folic and Gelclair, which were part of our triumvirate of product launches last year, which we expect will contribute growth going forward. And of course, when you're not an R&D company, your R&D is also in licensing and acquisition, so that's something that will continue. I mentioned before that we've got a strong balance sheet.
The cash figure I gave you was as of June 30th. Obviously, in September, we closed the transaction and deployed some of that capital, about CAD 4.5 million into buying the Tibella asset. That leaves us in a very strong cash position to continue to drive portfolio growth and continue to look for acquisitions as we go forward. So our cash balance, as I mentioned, on June 30th, was CAD 25.8 million. That number will be less, but it won't be lower by the CAD 4.5 million we deployed into the Tibella acquisition, 'cause we've been profitable since then.
I don't know exactly where that number will shake out, but I think the other benefit of our Tibella acquisition is that our return on equity will look a little bit better with less cash in the business and more earnings coming out of our portfolio. We've been really focused on growing the business, growing our top line, diversifying our portfolio, and deploying that capital that I mentioned on the last slide into the business. Starting in the summer of 2020, when we launched Tibella, we've been engaged in a number of innovations and launch activities, and then finally culminating with the acquisition of Tibella in September. We're leaning into growing the top line, and we're leaning into diversifying our portfolio.
And so you shouldn't kind of interpret a company that's buying back its shares and paying a dividend as not being as interested in growth. It's just, we think we can do all three of those things. That brings me to some comments around allocation of capital. So the first dollar that we've got available is to be deployed into growing the business and diversifying our portfolio. That has been the way for quite a long period of time. I've talked about those eight new product launches since the summer of 2020. Nevertheless, we have found ourselves in a good position, which is a strong balance sheet, no debt, and a strong cash position, and so we started deploying some of that capital back to shareholders.
We started buying back shares in the fourth quarter of 2022, sorry, in fourth quarter of 2018. I misspoke myself there. We've returned just less than CAD 19 million through share buybacks. And then we've also paid CAD 4 million of dividends, including the dividend paid in September, for a total of capital returned to shareholders of CAD 23 million. Over that same period of time, we've grown our business both the top line, the portfolio itself, and our peak revenue potential, and feel that we're in a good position to continue to add new assets to the portfolio. So before I turn it back to Robert, just kind of leave you with a couple of thoughts around BioSyent being a profitable business. We're well-capitalized.
We have growth assets that are in our control, and we're focused on delivering in the long term, both total shareholder return and adding value to our portfolio as we continue to commercialize new assets. With that, I'll ask Robert to step in.
Fantastic, René, a great presentation there. Have time for a couple of questions here. So first one here, maybe just help, for those that may be new to the story here, what sort of is your background, and how did you come to, to be involved in BioSyent?
Sure. I came actually as an investor, so the company had a different name and really a different business, and I came as an investor. I got involved in a couple of financing rounds and then joined the board of directors, and I had been building a different business, a marketing and sales services business, which I had, which I'd sold, and I was asked if I would come in and help the company, so I came in as an investor, then the board, and then into management. I essentially led the pivot to being a pharmaceutical company. We were a non-chemical insecticide company, so in the killing part of life science.
Mm-hmm.
Now I'm in the life part of life science, but essentially led the move to be a pharmaceutical business.
Excellent. You had a slide, you know, sort of talking a little bit about the acquisition here of Tibella, but, you know, when you sort of think back about the rationale, what was some of the thoughts that went into that acquisition?
Sure. Well, now if you think about our strategic drivers, so growth, diversification, and longevity is really core to our strategy. We want to deploy capital productively. I think it works about a 4.6-4.7 times EBITDA multiple, which converts on a pre-tax basis to a better than 20% return. So we think that's a good use of capital that then also opens up some international opportunity for us, even for our FeraMAX business, so, like, create new relationships with new distribution partners that we might be able to take advantage of.
And our licensing deal on Tibella had a sunset to it, and not to say that the partner wouldn't have continued with us because we've had great success in continuing these relationships, but this put control of that in our hands. So that's part of the longevity story that we think that we now have got more control of the asset we own outright, just as we do with FeraMAX, and it's at attractive rates of return.
Okay, that's helpful. Again, another thing you had a slide on there was sort of the growth drivers here. When you think out over the next three to five years and the main contributors to growth, where do you sort of see that coming from?
Yeah. You know, we think the existing portfolio has got a ways to go, and I... What I mean, the existing being those products that are in market today. So there's more growth to come there, and I think that's a this year, next year, year after story. We still have a new FeraMAX asset that is doing well in its development program, and we are quite confident that that'll be approved by Health Canada. It's really in our control in terms of shepherding it through the process. We've got lots of experience with that. So we think there's considerable growth in the FeraMAX brand under the various products that we've got, including a product that has not even been launched, and then that endocrinology asset.
I think those are really what I would look at as the key growth drivers, along with obviously the most recent acquisition that we made.
Okay. You know, you had a slide there that talked about sort of the uses of cash, right, in terms of buybacks, dividends, growth, and acquisitions. You know, if I sort of looked at the size of each one of those squares, it almost looked like sort of 50% allocation towards acquisitions and growth, 25% buybacks, 25% dividends. Is that sort of how you think about the business in terms of how you're going to have a capital allocation going forward here?
Yeah. You know, as I mentioned, the first dollar goes to growth of existing assets. So we've got a number of assets that we think can grow some more, and we're leaning into that and investing in that. You know, we didn't start paying a dividend with any intention of not continuing to pay a dividend, and in fact, we took it up 12.5% to, I guess this year. So you know, we would try to ensure that there's sufficient capital on dividend and growth, and then we'll take advantage in the market when the market gifts us shares at attractive rates to continue buying back those shares. So you know, I call it the triumvirate of a growing, profitable business, buying back shares and paying dividends.
I think we have successfully done that now for a number of years, and we don't see any reason why we can't continue to do so.
... Okay, last question here. On the, you know, sort of the, the listing here, right? You have a, a TSX Venture listing, you have an OTC listing here. What are your thoughts in terms of, of a U.S. listing going forward?
Yeah, we think of our listing as really should serve our strategy. We have not been a capital consumer, quite the opposite, obviously. I've been talking about that. So we at this stage have found that interested U.S. shareholders, of which we have many, both individual retail investors and institutional investors, have had no issue with buying us on the TSX Venture. We do have that OTC Pink ticker, that I guess it's just something that happens. It just was there one day, I didn't even know anything about it.
Yeah.
We have looked at upgrading that to the OTC, the best.
Right
...listing there, I think it's the QX. We have looked at doing that. I think there's something attractive now about the 24-hour trading, so that we do have some shareholders that are in Europe, and I think there might be an advantage to giving them a way to invest in us, that it goes beyond just what the TSX Venture can offer. But at this stage, I'd say would a kind of a full-blown U.S. listing, unlikely. Probably the most likely next step is upgrading our OTC listing.
I see. All right, great. Fantastic. Well, look, we're just sort of at the end of the time here. René, thank you so much for that, the presentation. I know you've got a busy day or you've had a busy day of meetings here, so hope you enjoy the conference. Hope you continue to enjoy the conference. Again, to anyone out there that would like to schedule a one-on-one meeting, please reach out to me. Again, that's Blum, B-L-U-M @lythampartners.com, or, again, visit the landing page for the conference, Lytham Partners.