Optibiotix Health (LSE:OPTI) — Full year results briefing

0:00 Good afternoon, and welcome to the OPTIBIOTIX HEALTH PLC investor presentation. Throughout this call presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time by the q and a tab situated in the right corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives in the meeting itself. However, the company can view all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to CEO, Steven O'Hara. Good afternoon to you, sir.

0:31 Good afternoon. Thank you very much. So just to introduce myself, my name is Steven O'Hara. I'm the CEO and founder of OPTIBIOTIX, and I'm joined by my team today. And what I want to do is just have a a brief overview of 2024. I want to talk about the history and structure of OPTIBIOTIX and the company vision and strategy. But I'm gonna go through that fairly quickly because it's really just a review for new investors, and most of you will will know this. More importantly, I wanna focus on the progress that we've made on the strategy we set out in annual report back in 2022, 2023, and I think you'll find that interesting. Then look at some of the the big markets, some of the opportunities in terms of SlimBiome, WellBiome, and also our second generation products.

1:23 Then I'll pass over to the business leads. So these are in ecommerce, India, and USA. And each of those will talk to you about the progress in each of their their areas. And then we'll we'll summarize at the end so people get a good overview. So just in terms of the overview 2024, it's looking good. Okay? So 2024, you can see that there's a big increase in revenue at 35% on the previous year. But probably more importantly, there's a big increase in sales orders of 56% to just over a million pounds. And those are orders that were placed that weren't delivered within 2024. So they enter 2025 accounts, so it's a good start to 2025.

2:10 And what you're seeing within OPTIBIOTIX is a result of a big investment over the last two years in ecommerce, India, and The USA. Started initially with the appointment of the business leads in each of those areas, and now you're seeing the growth in those areas and return from that investment. So just in terms of some examples, so ecommerce sales were up a 108%. Amazon sales, they're growing very, very quickly, and will elaborate on this later on by having 56%. Equally important is the big increase in number of subscriptions. So this is guaranteed future revenue. And this is what if you come to a position of value in a company, people value on your customer base and also your subscriptions.

3:00 But also quite interestingly, we've got a big increase in our number of customers both on Amazon and our website. Back in 2022, it's about 2,000, just over 2,000. 2024, it was over 10,000. So you're seeing we're attracting more customers, and you'll see later, we're attracting more customers that are making larger orders. The other thing I'd bring out is good progress in terms of India. I think most of you are aware of the launch in December of MoorPen, and that's going well. And Terry will cover that later later on. But a good start to or good end 2024 in terms of revenues of $17.01, so that's a big increase on previous years. And equally important, we've got some good growth in The USA.

3:48 Although a lot of these companies, Deli Nure NHT, they placed the orders in 2024, but the income or, sorry, these the launches didn't take place until 2025. And so it didn't have the product of 2025, so those will come to 2025 results. And, also, we got the first order from a really big weight management brand in The USA. Everything is looking quite good in terms of the growth in the business. Moving ahead, it's not just about growth and building revenue, it's about controlling costs and it's about improving margins and it's about looking at the broader picture. So you'll see that our fixed cost dropped a little bit this year, and that's quite surprising because, of course, for many years, we shared the cost of a number of people, virtually all the team, we shared between probiotics and opibiotics, fifty fifty, sometimes slightly different.

4:42 But as the probiotics build their team, OPTIBIOTIX took on the cost of all those individuals. But even with that, we've been able to keep the operating costs lower for 2024 compared to 2023. And that should drop further in 2025, because we made reductions in terms of PR broker and other staff costs. One of the big things that happened in 2024, and we partly cleared it in 2023, was a big stock overhang that we had in Australia and The UK. At one point, it was over 64 metric tons. So this was stock that was ordered in Slimbio, and that was ordered in the COVID years 2020, 2021, and partly 2022, which have more than sold because everything closed down during that particular time. So even in those later years, we were getting sales because people take it from stock as opposed to buying more from from us, we wouldn't report in those those revenues.

5:40 What we also did in in 2024 was buy back a lot more stock because we started to grow our Asia business. And because of the location, the geography, it's closer from Australia to to Asia, well, we bought a lot of that stock back from the distributor to service our Asian partners. But that meant we're buying back at the distributor price rather than our normal selling price, so our margin was lower. That won't happen now as we go into 2025. And and part of the rationale behind that is we brought in a new partner, Brenntag, I didn't really want to have our old distributor, Maxim, and our new distributor, Brenntag, competing with customers with stocks.

6:30 I wanted to clear that stock as best we could. Just to finish off this particular slide, what we're also seeing, not just with OPTIBIOTIX, but with our holdings in other companies like Probiotics and Skin Biotherapeutics, they're all showing really good sales growth. So if the value of their their sales grow and the value of their business grows, we should see an impact in terms of the OPTIBIOTIX share price. And just a little temper in terms of 2025, We've entered 2025 in terms of h one very successfully, and the rate of momentum of sales increase has actually increased. So we're getting great momentum in terms of 2025, so in the first part of it. And and just so an overview, what we have is a a company which got a number of positions in the microbiome space with probiotics, with skin biotherapeutics, with ourselves.

7:28 We've got multiple products, so we've got SlimBio and WellBio, the second generation products. We've got multiple channels, so we've got ecommerce, we've got b to b, we've got retail, and we've got multiple territories. So we've got Asia, America, Europe, etcetera. So we've got quite a broad company which means that we're not relying on a single partner or a single territory to grow. That's important in a very volatile world. Just to pick up a couple of things on the history, and I've shown this slide before, and I've just updated it. But just a couple of things to mention for new shareholders and for existing shareholders. And we have three subsidiaries that I've mentioned or associates held into these various businesses.

8:14 We've also got subsidiaries now in The USA and India. So we're building our base not just in The UK, but we're building our base in America and and India. Another thing I think which is interesting to point out is if you look at our current market capitalization, which is 11,000,000, and you look at our holdings in our associates, probiotics and skin biotherapeutics, they're worth about 6,600,000. So the difference is 5,000,000. So the market values our company at around about 5,000,000 with all the things I mentioned earlier and the growth that I mentioned earlier. It seems to me, like, a a little bit of an undervaluation. But I'll let you make that that judgment.

9:00 Just in terms of the strategy, again, I won't go through this in detail. I just wanna pick up a a couple of things on the commercial part of the of the slide. This is about us really growing our sales in terms of b to b, first of business to business, selling our first generation products whilst in parallel de risking our second generation products, so which are sweetbiotics and microbiome modulators. What we try to do is build the

9:28 brand to the as the Intel Inside, and that's helped us then to move into a final product solution, so sign selling final product. And as I mentioned earlier, what we've also done, and you're seeing the results of that now, is we have a a focus more and more now on America, a big market Asia, a rapidly growing market with some big customers and, of course, ecommerce. And each of our team, as you will see later, is taking more and more responsibility for each of those areas as we build the p and l for each of those areas. I just wanna cover now a bit more on the progress on the strategy, go through things in a little bit more detail before we go to our business leads. So first of all, I touched on this earlier. I just wanna show you some of the growth on on ecommerce here. I don't wanna steal too much of shares you send there, but you can see in terms of revenues, this is revenues for all the ecommerce accounts. You can see some big increases from 2022 to 2023 over 300%, 2023, 2024 over a 100%. They can see good revenue growth.

10:39 But equally important is this increase in in customers. And these are customers just on our own website in Amazon. So again, some big increases from just over 2,000 to over 10,000. So we've got a good customer base now. What we're finding is that as we build our product range, we add more products, so you've seen we've added bars, we've extended a range of bars, our basket is increasing in size, increased last year by about 14%. And our business conversion rate is also very, very high. And as people are probably aware, our attention rate in terms of customers who buy a product is very, very high in this particular market, around about 85%. I just wanna show you now what this all means in terms of the shift in the revenue stream with these pie charts.

11:31 So what I've got here is three pie charts from 2022 through to 2024 showing the distribution of the revenue. On the top line is the change in the revenue overall. And so what we've got is in yellow, we've got b to b, so business to business. In orange, we've got India. Gray, USA. Red, ecommerce, and blue is the license fee. I'm just gonna use $20.22 and $20.24 as examples to simplify the explanation. Let's start off with with b to b. Okay? B to b, you could see in 2022, is a large part, more than half of our sales. Okay. Here is 23%. So the percentage has dropped, but the overall numbers haven't dropped. They've increased a bit, but the overall numbers haven't dropped, but it's a lower portion of our of our sales.

12:24 Then look at India. Okay? Here, that was largely Apollo. Again, 14% of a lower number. Here, we've got 18% of a number, which is more or less twice the four five seven. So a big increase in the income from from India. USA. USA is a little bit variable because, okay, it's increased, so we get more of a contribution, but we had a big order in 2023 for that from BustleTech. And in 2024, as I mentioned earlier, a number of orders were placed, but they weren't delivered until 2025, so they'll count more in the 2025 results. Ecommerce, look at this change here now, just under 10% and now just under half of our sales. So you can see the bigger contribution in terms of ecommerce, and, course, we get the money in immediately within ecommerce, which helps with cash flow, and the margins tend to be greater, although there's obviously investment in marketing to get to that particular spend, which is not infinite. Okay? And then license fees. License fees remain more or less the same. This is our sweet party license, But as a percentage of the overall revenue stream, it's a a lot less. So you can see we got a a greater spread now in terms of the the relative distribution of income from the various various areas, which is good for a company.

13:46 Then I just wanna give you a quick overview of Asia. Most of you remember, I went to Asia last year to meet our our distributors. So we brought these distributors on board in late twenty twenty three and 2024. So the process is you bring the distributor on board, you then have to educate and train them, then those distributors have to go out and meet customers. That's always a difficult time because the distributors may have over a 100, in some cases, a thousand different ingredients that they're trying to sell. So you wanna make sure that yours is up there. And so I went to visit them. And as a consequence of those visits with them, we were able to get some new customers. You can see here. So we look at Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, Indonesia, Philippines. We got 30 new customers, some of those in 2024, some in 2025.

14:34 And you can see what happens. These new customers come on, so these are customers that are brought on board by our distributors, and then they then start to produce products and develop products, and then they then go to a launch phase. And I I think the other point to bring out here is if you remember in Australia, we had one distributor, Maxim, and we had one customer, OPTIFARM, who do about six to 10 tons per per year. Now we've changed to Brenntag. They've still got OPTIFIARM, but they've added new customers. Okay? So we'll start to grow that business above and beyond having a single customer in in Australia. And Brenntag placed their first order in h one twenty five of six metric tons, and we'd see that grow over the next year or so.

15:23 Just then a little bit on products and market need. Okay? In terms of weight management, really interesting market and is changing quite markedly. This is being driven by what many people call the anti obesity drugs, which are the GLP-one agonists. This is a really big market, okay? And what you're finding, these drugs were developed really for people who are clinically obese, but being used more and more by people who are overweight, and there the risk benefit ratio has changed. So they're probably inappropriate for that particular group and you start to see more and more issues with these. The probably important thing I want to bring out is the impact it's had on traditional weight management companies, whether it's SlimFast, whether it's Weight Watchers. These are really, really struggling. What we're finding is that many of these companies are coming to us and saying that we've got a traditional meal replacement. We've got these traditional meals. They're not really working for us more because people want a bit more. They want some functionality, similar functionality to what the the anti obesity

16:29 drugs have. And that's where they're finding that, you know, with our publications, we have four three publications now and one in press, are proving really valuable to them so they can add functionality to their particular products. So watch out some for some announcements with some of these companies, these additional weight loss companies who have come to us and asked us to provide functionality for their products. But these have got ready made products, but they're lacking functionality. And watch out for news on that in the in the months ahead. And this really is a new world of weight management, and we're ahead of the game. Just to make the point that I made earlier in terms of obesity and overweight, that if you look at the WHO data, about sixteen percent of the population are obese, overweight forty three percent.

17:20 So nearly three times as many people are overweight as obese, and that's our market. Okay? The anti obesity drugs, the clues in the name, were developed to treat obesity, a medical condition. Slimbine was developed to treat overweight people, okay, in very, very different sectors of the market. And the overweight group is much, much bigger. And these are the studies. Now I won't go into these in any great detail. They're all available because they've been published. I just want to explain to people why we publish, okay, and why we have different publications. So SlimBiome can be used in a range of different ways. It could be used alone. It's what this shows. So what happens if you give people SlimBiome and they're not on a calorie controlled diet? They're just total wheat normally. This is then on a calorie controlled diet, so fitting quite nicely with those weight watches and and SlimFast type products. What happens then?

18:13 And then what happens then in terms of overweight and healthy people? And partly this is linked into the situation in The US where obesity is categorized as a clinical condition. So we have to test people who are healthy and non obese. So that gives us a great range of publications that our partners can use to publish in their marketing material to show the value of this particular product in their areas. Okay, very, very important. I just want to finish off with a couple of things in terms of Wellbiome on the second generation. This is really interesting. Wellbiome, a big market, okay, digestive and gut health, okay? Going quite rapidly. This is an established product in the market.

18:59 Okay? And I brought it out because this is up for sale at 250,000,000. 250,000,000. Okay? It's got sales of roundabout 21,000,000, and it's got profit after tax of just 500,000. So you can start to see the multiples you've got with this in this particular marketplace. And if you look at the difference between Wellbiome and Symprove, we're cheaper. Okay? And we have all these health claims for Wellbiome. So I think that Wellbiome is a stronger proposition than in Symprove. And also, it's got a good shelf life three years where it's three to four months unopened for Symprove. It's a liquid format, and once it's refrigerated, it's opened, it has to be refrigerated. So we think we have a good proposition here, and I think that will grow rapidly in the months and years ahead.

19:47 Finally, something I know you're all interested in. It's something that I can't really talk much on, but I will give you a a really detailed update as we go through the through the summer. Just wanna bring out that we've got a lot of things happening in this particular space. And as you're probably aware from if you're best in Skin Biotherapeutics or other companies, as you go into the commercial discussions, you wanna keep the things under wraps. You don't want people to to speculate. And we have had a number of our investors contacts and the partners that we're working with pretending to be OPTIBIOTIX employees and start discussions with those. So I just want to be very careful in terms of some of these areas. But the other thing to bring out in terms of the microbiome modulators, which is particularly interesting and really playing to our strengths, is what you find in increasingly is that scientists are starting to discover the link between particular bacteria and chronic diseases. So this is multiple sclerosis, this is also autism.

20:49 And we have a means to actually increase or decrease the growth of those particular bacteria according to whether they are a benefit or disbenefit. So this will come into its own potentially as a boost to particular strains, maybe as a pharma product. So that's looking quite exciting in those areas. And as I say, I'll pull those together as we develop the discussions commercially, and I can talk a bit more openly. So that was a very quick overview. What I wanted to now is pass you over to Shiraz, who's our managing director of consumer health, who will take you through ecommerce. Over to you, Shiraz. Thank you, Steven. So first and foremost, it's good to start with the 2024 sales review. So the consumer health division had a 108% increase year on year sales.

21:37 Amazon UK, a 156% year on year, and UK online with an incremental 5% increase year on year sales. We did face some challenges throughout the year

21:46 in regards to China specifically, and, we still achieved a 28% increase year on year sales. This was due to the fact that there was a a ban on TikTok, regarding the weight loss category, which affected multiple brands. We were able to quickly identify this and also identify that there's slower payments through TikTok and migrated to another platform, which is called Tmall. So Tmall is actually owned by Alibaba, but the beauty about this is we actually get directly paid into our accounts, which is, as Steven mentioned earlier on, fundamental to the business for cash flow. And moving forward, what we've already done is just have a clear focus on just that channel because it has proven to have the highest return on investment as well. The other area of challenge was, India, which we were hoping to launch in April 2024. However, the prioritization of more pen was the most important thing, and, this went live first whilst India, from an ecommerce perspective, went live, just now in q two of two thousand twenty five.

22:42 Also, the challenge that we face, of course, is the brand awareness aspect, but we have invested in this area a little bit, and we've expanded the customer base and converted interest to subscriptions as Steven has alluded to earlier on. And as you can see on the right hand side, a nice even split within the channels of our sales. So we've shown, obviously, growth within our business. But why ecommerce? Why would you continue to invest in ecommerce? So global ecommerce is projected to continue growing, capturing an increased share of retail sales. This still outpaces the growth of traditional brick and mortar retail. So by 2027, ecommerce is predicted to account for 41% of global retail sales, which is a substantial increase from 18% in 2017. Our focus should be market share expansion. So ecommerce is expected to represent 20.5% of total global retail sales in 2025, which is up from 19.9 in 2024.

23:37 So what we understand within ecommerce is as more market share will be consumed by ecommerce, we must play in this market because other competitors will recruit those customers and build them into their long term subscription models as we just saw with Simplu, which makes it increasingly difficult to lure them back in. So for us as a brand, it's very important for us to have a direct relationship through ecommerce. And how do we do that? That's through customer contact details and really building some communication with them and driving the brand's value directly. When you're in retail, it's a lot more difficult because you're sitting with a lot of other brands there and you don't necessarily know who the customers you are speaking with. You won't have the email addresses, etcetera. And if retail choose not to have you on board, you you will lose that placement. So it's a very risky strategy. So I've discussed here how ecommerce is an area of investment, but also the industry of supplements is the fastest growing channel within the industry.

24:29 The UK supplement market today has 40.1% online share and is expected to rise by 44.9% by 2028. So this is where our consumers are. I won't go into detail too much with the graphs, but the first one basically entails ecommerce sales growth worldwide between 2015 to 2026. And on the right side, you'll able to see how Amazon is towering above the competition with over 40% of US ecommerce sales. So now that we've touched upon the growth that, OPTIBIOTIX has had and what's going on in the market in regards to ecommerce in general, what is actually happening with a couple of brands that's in this area? So Symprove is a gut health prebiotics company that were launched in 2005 with a size backed gut health product, and the vast majority of their sale are from ecommerce.

25:18 So in 2022, they actually had a net loss of around 700 k. What they did was they increased their investment in marketing with celebrity endorsements, influencer marketing, and TV presence. So in 2023, they were actually able to turn this around with the sales of approximately 30,000,000 with a with a profit of 500,000. Business The is actually up for sale now for 250,000,000 as Steven alluded to before. So they're doing quite well. I worked at a business called PhD Nutrition, which was owned by Walgreens Boots Alliance. So I was brought into this business because retail was slowing, and they wanted to get ecommerce growing before they could sell. So I made this ecommerce channel the fastest growing channel within their business. So PhD started in 2006 and was sold just after I left for for Ivy, a bigger company, for 52,000,000 in 2018 due to those increase in ecommerce.

26:06 So why would a business buy PhD? So the value is actually in the customer details because a business such as SIS, able to science and sport. We're able to obtain those details and add them into their current portfolio and effectively increase their basket order by having those customers under the same bracket. So how do I do this at PhD? So apart from the sales aspect, we obviously have to grow from a a brand awareness. So just to give you some typical ideas of costings that were at PhD, we did a 150 k on Amazon support from the head office. This was in Shoreditch. And the large marketing campaign is approximately 300 k per year. And then, of course, the influences that came along for about £10,000 per month. So we're able to achieve sales of 20,800,000 before it was sold. So so this this page is effectively just trying to give you guys an idea of PhD who are owned by Walgreens Boots Alliance

26:56 and Simprove, what they did. And they invested in these areas to build build the awareness and then the sales and ecommerce platforms, which then enabled them to achieve sales growth, which entailed loyal customers being able to purchase directly and increase their subscriptions. So what really matters to in terms of a key evaluation to a business is scientific verification, product differentiation, and a loyal large customer base and subscriptions. So now we've seen what other brands are doing. How are we doing? So I mentioned already in 2024, a 108% increase within the division. But what are we doing this year? So Amazon h one sales 2025 versus h one two thousand twenty four is experiencing 84% increase with SlimBiome and the SnackSmart gummy showing in a 150% year on year increase in sales. It's performing very well.

27:46 So if we were to invest more, this would lead to higher sales growth. However, we have a focus on double digit growth with no increase in spend because we want to increase our return on investment. Our subscriptions are fantastic with a 20% of our orders coming from subscriptions, which indicates loyalty and also the consumers enjoying our products. So much so that this has led to an Amazon choice badge on our products and a best seller status in our respective categories. So if you look further down, you see the two screenshots. That's directly from Amazon on their page of us being in their best sellers. So on the left screenshot, you can see our SlimBio, and on the right, you can see our indulgence bars. So we are continuously achieving this with little investment and little brand awareness. So there would be huge potential if we're investing further like like the brands such as Symprove and we onboard influencers, etcetera, to really build that awareness.

28:34 So what we're gonna do with UK D two c? This has continued to be a profitable channel for us with no marketing spend. The way we I'm increasing the year on year sales here is really focusing on our current database through email campaigns, and also we're looking at how we can sort of convert the consumer from Amazon to come directly to us. Because by coming directly to us, we can give them some extra offerings by email promotions, something that would appear more to them rather than just from Amazon. China, as I've indicated before, had a 28% increase even through the difficult period of 2024 in regards to the TikTok platform, but it was profitable a number of months of the year for 2020 yeah. 2024. So our goal of 2025 is to align with the new trading partner, which we have done, and focus on the Tmall platform because this indicated the most potential, especially in return on marketing spend.

29:24 This strategy will also allow us to grow a brand store channel that is our own IP. So excitingly, we envisage high growth due to our opportunity not only focus on one channel, but we'll also be able to introduce our hero products, SlimbioMX three, which hasn't even been sold in the Chinese market yet. So we have to keep that in mind. The growth has been there without SlimbioMX three even being introduced. India is a big focus. So I used to work for IFA. We would do about 10,000,000 per year on in the ecommerce channels. So it's a real opportunity for us to push our current best sellers in The UK through local production and and propelling our business in the territory with their top three ecommerce marketplaces. This includes the likes of Amazon, Flipkart, Healthkart. As I mentioned before, we have achieved bestseller status in UK, so our current strong reviews of rankings can easily be copied across to Amazon India once we go live with local production, and this will actually propel our business further, in India.

30:23 So what does the future look like for ecommerce and most importantly for OPTIBIOTIX? We will continuously strive to improve our return on investment within our current channels. We most definitely will be building ecommerce sales in India. Just to give you an idea, the India sports nutrition ecommerce market alone was valued at $1,760,000,000 in 2023 and will reach 3,310,000,000 by 2033. We've also had other big marketplace, players get in touch with us called Tenmu. So Tenmu is big in China, but they've actually opened up operations in UK. I want

30:54 to go head to head with Amazon. They reached out to me a couple of months ago and have particularly selected OPTIBIOTIX as the first gut health brand to push. So our overall aim is to grow our ecommerce sales globally, be present on a range of platforms in different territories whilst driving ecommerce business to profitability. It has been a huge success story so far to achieve year on regrowth on ecommerce of a 108%, but there's still that huge potential for OPTIBIOTIX online now and in the future with the right investments and an aligned vision on the strategy and pace the business wishes to grow. So what I'd like to leave you with today is the key points. Ecommerce is growing globally fast. OPTIBIOTIX is growing at a very fast rate as well, and there's still plenty of opportunity for us to achieve sales and market share. And the screenshot below is is simply from a a presentation they did for me in regards to why they've sort of invested in this area, particularly in UK, and it's really because of the global ecommerce market expected to surpass 8,000,000,000,000 by 2027.

31:52 Thank you. And I'll just pass it on to Taru to handle the Asia side. Thank you, Shiraz. So I quickly first introduce what the country landscape in India looks like. So if I had to very simply say it, it's a huge market. So So we are 1,400,000,000 people, one third of who are urban population. Urban population is the population that engages in the purchase of supplements, prebiotics, probiotics. And according to the current data, there are one fifty five million people as of 2025 who fall in the category of obese and the and the overweight is even larger. So the product categories in India right now are for prebiotics and weight management.

32:40 It's almost not it has not been present. We have traditional players like Herbalife who dominate the market still. So what has happened with SlimBiome coming in? We have a unique product which is patented, has clinical trials. It's also has a global backing of being awarded. It's sold globally, and it is also FSSAI approved, which is our regulatory approval in India, which is a good thing. And also after 2020, after 2020 and COVID, the preventive solutions have increased in the urban population. So another thing that has happened is that we've just had Mounjaro about two months back in India, and Ozempic is due only in 2026.

33:28 It has opened the market in the in the space where people know that there is a solution for weight management, which can be opted for. And the moment Indians see an option in anything, they first want to go for natural. So slim my own fits the bill greatly when it comes to the category at this point. Let me take you through the trajectory of slim my own since introduction in India. So when we brought the product to India, the whole idea of a solution or a a partner that will help anyone in weight management was absent. And for that to be prebiotic and nonchemical, nonpharma was absolutely a new idea. But when when we see the sale growth, we understand that the market has warmed up, and we have also structurally defined and positioned the product in a way that for the company and for the consumer along with all the stakeholders, whether it is a manufacturer or it's the marketing partner, it is it's a good deal.

34:39 So what is happening? What we did, we started with the brand launches, and we got listed companies in India, big ones, like Apollo to launch Go Figure with five SKUs. More than another listed big company to come up with seven SKUs. Then we have Amazon coming in, like Shiraz mentioned, and we have other regional partners. So now with these top brands also backing us and our business design, which is to manufacture in India and not just have a single site of manufacturing, have two parallel sites, which risk mitigates for us. So there is no single partner that can, for whatever reason, fail our production. And, also, we get a better control on all the operation and costs and profits.

35:28 So what would I mean by that? Since there are two partners and we have entire manufacturing in India, we were able to create strategic partnerships with everyone who's an input in our product, including the ingredient suppliers, packaging material suppliers. We could also negotiate with the manufacturers way better because of the numbers that we tried bringing in. So over a period of the last three years, if you see, we've been able to reduce the cost of manufacturing in India by 55%. So the balance of costs and profits both are extremely important because if the costs are too high and we don't reach enough people, then the profits are going to be get impacted. That's been our idea when we were building the business in India.

36:18 And to add, so top companies, good business design, good profits, and we got new developments. So what would we do in new developments? For the existing partners, we have new products. For Mopen, we have seven SKUs. Right now, we're doing gummies, bars, and soups. Also for Amazon India, we're developing gummies and bars. So we do more than what we're already doing. So this is where we this has been the trajectory till now, but where are we headed in the rest half of the year and going on to 2026? We have very clear idea of what we're going to do in India. So to begin with, we first want to create stability and leverage our current wins to get noncompeting partners for the same product.

37:08 And, also, we want to expand. So that's our mantra for the next 1.5. So when we say create stability so if you look at our partner doc doctor Mopenlab, they created a huge launch. We had popular fitness influencers, top influencers in each category. We had more than a couple of dozen press houses covering up covering the event. A lot of celebrity ads have crossed 23,500,000 views. So the ad views that you see on the right runs in various millions. There are organic downloads and followers that we have for them. There is also a so what we've what they've done along with a very, very good big launch, they are selling through their own website, their own app, Amazon, health platforms, also luxury supermarkets, and quick commerce.

38:05 So quick commerce in India is like a ten minute Amazon. They're selling there. They're adding more flavors to existing applications. They have a huge social media reach. So what we want to do is we wanna be there to help them support this business, stabilize it, and whilst they do it, we have other noncompeting partners who will want same or similar products. So, like, for our partner, Apollo, we we plan to leverage the reviews that we're going to get on Amazon for their better sale and their pharmacies. And alongside, of course, we're creating a very good pipeline of clients and products. The other part of where we are headed, which is I feel expansion.

38:51 So expansion's multilayered when we look at where we are in India right now. So number one is expansion of the market for existing product applications. So like I said, for products that we've already developed with our two manufacturers, we'd like to sell them to other noncompeting partners. Then adding new applications for our existing partners like Doctor. Morphin, Amazon, Apollo, Anthem. We're adding more, more products like the gummies, the soup, the bar, then adding flavors for existing applications Like, we already have a meal replacement and a short for mopen. They're trying to add more flavors, which which increases the basket size for mopen and also allows the consumer to have more variety and to use the product in various parts of their day.

39:47 Of course, focus on WellBiome as a second generation product is going to be primary for us. We are laying the base for it. And pipeline so for the entire expansion, our pipeline in India right now is very thick. We are targeting big players who are either, you know, so top top players in MLM companies. We are talking to a few. Then there are global convalumerates, which are coming to India or or just beginning business or trying to enter into the nutrition market. Then we have Indian big pharma. So So Indian big pharma is a huge opportunity because what Indian big pharma is trying to do is they already have a supply chain. They're they're trying to add nutraceutical cosmetics to their existing ranges and supply chain. So that's a huge opportunity. We are in discussion with a few. Then there are hospital chains, FMCG chains.

40:42 Online aggregators do private label. We are in discussion with them. Very interesting is sports nutrition and apparel brands, which are international brands. They're doing very well in India, and they want to have their private label. But they only want to work with products which have clinical backing and which have a global presence. So Slimbio fits the bill beautifully there. Also, in protein and sports brand, we've had a lot of leverage. In fact, the very interesting brand that we're, engaging with is a top influencer led brand. So that's our expansion plan because we see India as a huge market right now, and it's the right time to build on what we've already laid in all these years. So these are some pictures that I put from the launch of Mopen to give you an idea of what we did in India.

41:31 These are six SKUs, the shots on the left and the pre meal on on the the go meal on the right. These are some pictures. So like I said, we were covered by hundreds of publications printed, and there were at least a couple of dozen media houses that were here in an interactive program. It was a panel discussion. Lots of questions were asked. We were covered very nicely, and there was good stuff to say because doctor Mopin's a huge name. And the combination of SlimBiome, clinical studies, patent, and doctor Mopin Life Life was a very good combination for the market. These are the products that we launched with Apollo and are going to sell on Amazon. Like I said, we are looking at leveraging our position.

42:19 So when we sell on Amazon and they're going to be reviews, so our b two b partners at the pharmacies drive benefit from that. So if I had to sum up that what are we doing in India and how do we look at the position right now, we have good existing partners who are stabilizing business. We have new products, new formulae, new flavor to sell to them, and we have a thick pipeline of new partners to expand our business. I'm gonna hand it over to Zach, please. Thanks, Drew. Hello, everyone. Just to start things off, with how things went in, 2024. Twenty four four finished strong. We added two new clients at the end of the year, with NHT Global, a, US based direct selling organization, that sells globally.

43:14 They added a tomato soup application, formulated with SlimBiome as well as Daily Nouri, a US based ecommerce brand that also expands into retail, where they developed a feel full product, at the end of the year. The NHT global products launched in China in, q one of twenty twenty five, as Steven said. We also continued to ship, to our Canadian partner, Prairie Naturals. That, order also left in 2025. I have eight Europe's MuscleTech rollout continued. We didn't have any orders in 2024. However, we are expecting it towards the end of the year in 2025, depending on how, the market continues.

44:07 Overall, we're pretty happy with, the continued expansion, in 2024. You know, for some of the larger companies, it does take a while to get products on the market. We're talking about a two year lead time sometimes, for those. The smaller companies like Daily Nury are able to work a lot faster. So when we look into 2025, we're still you know, to see what the clients are doing there. MuscleTech is continuing. As we said, still looking towards the end of the year, reorder. Prairie Naturals will continue with their CardioClear. It has, they're using it for cholesterol claims. This is because in Canada, the regulatory landscape allows for cholesterol claims for, SlimBiome.

45:00 It's something unique to Canada. As that expands, we're gonna also work with them on some new products in that area. We expect reorders for that towards the end of the year, if not, beginning of twenty twenty six. Daily Numeric launched Feel Full in q one. It is a new launch. The product is on Amazon currently. And right now, they're evaluating, what they think the sales will be. And as that, information comes back to us, we'll know, further how that will grow. For, to support NHC Global's launch in China, we were invited to give a presentation, in their Bangkok summit.

45:48 In q one, this gathered all of their Asian, partners in under one roof where they they announced all their launches for 2025 as well as, going into 2026. We were one of the headliners. There was a lot of excitement, through the Chinese, market for something that will address, what is a growing concern for them. The US launch will happen a little later, this month, if not in August, and that will be strictly for, The United States. For NHC Global, by far, the biggest market is Asia right now. So when we look at, you know, the strategy, what we are trying to do, here, we've just established the U. Subsidiary, and we're working on establishing warehousing to better serve the North American market.

46:48 In general, North American companies want to have product here to try and simplify their logistics, and that is especially, important given the recent, you know, instability in terms of tariffs, and other regulatory policy changes that we've seen in the last three months. Stock of SlimBiome is being shipped to The US, where it'll be stored, to shorten lead times and mitigate that volatility. When we see start working with smaller companies that, they're not able to handle logistics as well, so this will allow us to get them product quicker, and allow them to get to market sooner. And when we're, for the client base in The US, we're both working with large and small companies.

47:38 The smaller customers have much shorter lead time to market and sales cycle, while typically a lower volume and higher volatility, daily and raising up all of that, whereas lot larger customers have a much longer lead, development cycle. That can go anywhere from one to three years, but they're better able to focus and provide larger stable volumes. And that's specifically because they're going through established retailers where they can, get very quick feedback from them as to how the product is performing. They have a history with those retailers so they know how the product should sell over a period of time. When we work with the larger customers, really important is, the recent two clinical studies, which, Stephen talked about at the front.

48:26 Those were meant for The US market. Since we have a very different regulatory landscape, we needed different studies. And what those are able to do is allow our large customers to put product on the market that complies with FDA, regulatory for advertising and with without having to, worry about, I guess, could say, legal ramifications from consumers for overpromising. So, yeah, those did take with some customers up to a year or two years, for the them to work out what claims they wanna put on it. One of these is a leading North American weight management brand.

49:12 They're ramping up for a launch, which will take place in q three. First order for this project was placed in q two, and we expect further orders for the rest of the year. The first launch this is the first launch that they have developed. They also have multiple, SKUs that will then be able to roll out later on depending on the success of the product and where they see the product, is heading. This launch has been accepted in a leading retailer, which is especially important because of the weight management claims on the product. There's always a a little extra scrutiny placed on those. Right now, we estimate, the sales to be about 120,000 for the end of the year, which given the time frame, is is pretty substantial.

50:03 And we can reach up to a few, you know, three two to three, even four tons per month if the retail, launch is successful. The some of the other, companies we're working with is, you know, a high growth, direct selling company. This is a new company, that's been in the market for about, you know, five to seven years. They work both multi multinational in both in The US and in other, countries like Asia, and they are investing a lot in a slim biome based product. First trial orders are slated for the last half of the year, and we expect the launch to happen either 2025 or probably the beginning of twenty twenty six.

50:50 There's potential of two to three tons annually depending on how the ramp up goes. Finally, if an example of a large company, how they work is we are, you know, conducting a product with a project with a leading supplement brand. This is a North American brand, almost exclusively. Although they do do some export, right now, they're working on their spring twenty twenty seven launch. They do have SlimBiome slated for this 2027 launch, but and product develop is ongoing. Projections are about a 20 ton per year once the rollout happens. And so this really does, show the difference in between small and large companies. Larger companies are very methodical.

51:36 They want once a product goes on the market for that product to stick, they invest a lot of money in the marketing to make sure that happens. And so we talk about about a year, year and a half. And so, you know, just summary, US, we're really happy with the growth. We're gonna keep pushing to try and expand on our partners. Thanks. I'll let it go, I think, back to Steven. Taru, Shiraz, and and Zach. And I hope investors can see that there's a big build business building here across the across the company with strong growth in each of these each of these areas. Just wanna finish off now if I can with just summarizing where we where we are.

52:29 And I describe it somewhat when you build a business, it's a bit like building a house. The first, you know, number of years is the grunt. You don't get much benefit. You got a lot of the cost. And if I look at the the business here, we've put a lot of time and energy into building our partners, educating our partners, building the claims that we discussed earlier. So this is because all the scientific verification, the clinical studies, and that's a lot of investment and investment in people to grow the business. Now we're starting to see that return. So what we're seeing now is strong revenue growth across the business, and we see that momentum increase as we go into 2025. We see the margins in 2024 down a bit because that was down to the overhang I mentioned previously.

53:15 But as we grow the volumes and you saw what Tara did in India in terms of reducing the cost of goods by about 50%, so you start to improve your margins. And what we'll do is leverage the the work that Tara's done in India with the lower cost of goods, with the lower labor cost to maybe ship more to Asia from India if you go forward. So our margin should should improve. We have to control our fixed costs. Those are our PR broker and staff costs. And then I mentioned in the annual report, we've made some standard changes in those fronts. We've got our regulatory guide even as the next week or two, so a further reduction in staff costs. Then we need to control our our marketing costs. And as Shira has said, we want to as we go forward, we will not be investing more Penn indefinitely. It's only for the first year. And as Sherry said, we'll be building our sales. We get a greater return on our our marketing investment, so more sales for the same marketing investment.

54:21 There are some risks in terms of regional conflicts and tariff volatility, and we need a few more partners. But I hope you can see across the board whether it's in ecommerce, whether it's in India or in America, we've grown that base. We've got some really nice new customers who invest in marketing. We've got these customers coming back and reordering. We've got these customers now wanting to expand their range of products as as Taro and Zach showed earlier. And we've got a pipeline of new customers that would will reduce our part dependency. What we're looking for is maybe three or four big partners in each territory and three or four maybe smaller partners to give us that that spread and reduce the the the partner alliance.

55:13 And finally, just to finish off, we've got about a couple of minutes now. Look. We're in a good position. K? We've we've done the grant. We've put all the groundwork in in terms of building the the business or building a house, if you'd like to use that as a as a metaphor. Now we're starting to reap the rewards. Now people have tried our products. They're coming back and buying more. We've got a great retention rate. We're in the right markets. Are we're really starting to see good growth with some main partners in terms of our first generation. We've got a second generation coming through, and we are in a good position in terms of the financials. We've got no debt, which is often unusual for a company of our stage development. We've got a strong balance sheet over 9,000,000, and we've got lots of plays not just in the microbiome field, but across a whole range of growth areas.

56:06 So I hope you found this presentation useful. Thank you very much to my team to Shiraz, Tara and Zach for their presentations. We've got a great team here. We'll build a great future for OPTIBIOTIX. That's great. Well, you very much for your presentation. What I'll do is I'll just bring your cameras back up now. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions. You can do that just by using the q and a tab that's situated in the top right corner of your screen. But just for the company, for you those questions that have been submitted today, I'd like to remind you that the recording of this presentation or with a copy of the slides published q and a can be accessed via your investor dashboards. You can see, we have received a number of questions, Stephen, both pre submitted and throughout today's live presentation. And what I'll do is I'll just hand over to you to share the Q and A, and I'll pick up from you at the end. I'm just reading through the the questions. A lot of those have submitted. I've answered already, so you can pick those up when they're when they're published.

57:06 There's some strange questions that are difficult to answer in terms of whether I was in the coma or not. I was seriously ill. I I as you can see, I'm feeling healthy healthy now. And people and a couple of people are asked about Amazon sales. I think Shira has largely answered those particular questions that we're building a business. We're investing in terms of in Amazon. And people are asking about the sales are profitable. Well, the sales are profitable. We're making money on the sales, but we're actually investing in Amazon to grow the customer base. And as Shiraz mentioned earlier, then the customer base brings the value for any company we're looking to, you know, to acquire or to merge with a business.

57:55 They're critical elements to the to the business. And that's largely it, really. I I think these questions are dominated by one or two people who are asking questions that are maybe generated from bloggers. So I'll leave it for now because I think the presentation stands as it is, and I wanna thank the team for all the inputs and their presentation today. That's great. Well, thank you very much for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback and all the management team can better understand your views and expectations. It's only take a few moments to complete, but some should be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team for OPTIBIOTIX HEALTH PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.