Symphony Environmental Technologies (LSE:SYM) — Interim Results for the six months ended 30 June 2020

0:03 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the SYMPHONY ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES PLC Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type your question in the box beneath and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. These will be available via your Investor Meet company dashboard. I'd also like to remind you that this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand over to Michael Laurius, CEO and Ian Bristow, CFO of SYMPHONY ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES. Good morning.

0:54 Morning. Okay. Good morning, everybody, again. And to start with, two very short videos. Microbes, more commonly known as germs, are everywhere. The good, the bad, and the ugly. These invisible invaders can cause infections and spread disease by surviving on surfaces coming into human contact where they really thrive. Changing hands multiple times as they hitchhike from factories to stores and into our homes, causing untold damage to people's health. What if the tables could be turned By simply adding one drop of antimicrobial solution into the chemical properties of plastic, and suddenly, the food container, the carrier bag, or the bank card becomes lethal to the unwanted intruder, destroying it before it can harm us.

1:50 So spread the word. Encourage your favorite brands to include it in all their plastic, and together, we'll help stop the spread of this deadly enemy. Intelligent packaging with d two w. Plastic made with d two w can be used for all the same intents and purposes as ordinary plastic, and it can be recycled if collected. But if the packaging or product escapes collection and ends up as litter on land or sea, the d two w will get to work, breaking down the molecular bonds until the material is no longer a plastic and can

2:28 be easily consumed by bacteria and fungi in the environment, harmlessly converting to carbon dioxide, water and biomass without leaving any toxic residues or persistent microplastics behind. Simple yet extraordinary.

2:55 That's good. Those two very, very brief videos are quite new, gone around the world. So the corporate summary, some of you know us, some of you don't. So for those that know us will know the detail, and for those that don't know us, I'll go through some of the detail, but not too much. So basically, we are a specialist, we're a developer of masterbatch. Masterbatch really means an additive. And that additive goes into ordinary plastics generally at 1% when it goes into the manufacturing process of plastic or rubber.

3:46 And so, we've been established since twenty five years now, getting these technologies together that I present today. And we sell through a global distribution network. We manufacture by toll compounders. So we are operationally geared. We don't own factories. We don't have heavy investments. We don't employ thousands of staff. Being operationally geared, we can push the top line up very, very quickly without the associated costs for doing so. The two main technologies, as you've just seen on the video, is the D2W, the logo, the droplet logo, seen around the world, makes ordinary plastic biodegrade if exposed into the open environment.

4:39 And our second is D2P. It's a range of additives, or master batches as sometimes called in the industry, that does something different to plastic. It will either make them antimicrobial or antiviral, which is incredibly popular and demanded today, insecticidal flame retardant. And today, and very recently, there's been various different significant milestones that we've managed to achieve with both product types and Safaris credentials. We tick those boxes today that are urgently needed. Health, hygiene being the world's top priority.

5:25 Plastic pollution is another. And briefly in this, we talk about ERANOLOVA. How we take waste, it is called UP recycle, and convert it into plastics for our ERANOLOVA, and collaboration with Vindarama Corporation, the world's largest PET producer. Commercialization is accelerating. To half one, the first developments that we announced, and some of you have asked these questions already. We had, after nearly ten years of work, FDA approval for our D2P technology for use in bread applications.

6:10 A massive market that we announced to, at the time, in The United States alone, where we have the approval, a $20,000,000,000 market. That's just spread, not packaging. Packaging is a much smaller element. But it's still large, substantial. And where we are now, following that FDA approval, is we're moving into an evaluation process. And it takes time, that evaluation process. Although we know that it works, although we know that it has tremendous benefit to extending the life of the bread by keeping the packaging cleaner, it's important that the companies we work with evaluate it under their conditions, using their formulations, and it takes time.

7:03 That's moving ahead very, well. And we do expect soon, we're not talking about months and months away, that we should be able to move into commercial levels of cells with this technology. It's taken us ten years to develop, and ten years to get to this point now. We are very, very close, and we're pretty optimistic that this will go commercial, and it will make a meaningful difference to the company. And then the most important announcement probably ever made was when our technology was proven to have positive performance against the coronavirus. That positive performance was indicated by a twenty four hour kill, which very recently was confirmed at ninety nine percent in one hour, nearly behaving like a disinfectant.

7:59 Important today in relation to dealing with this awful pandemic that we've got. And we mentioned in our updates that PPE orders are in the order of £1,000,000. And really, really interesting to give you, our shareholders, an idea of the huge amount of activity going on. And we do have a lot of activity. We have much more than 100 active projects. Commercially led projects. In other words, customers around the world that would like our technology if it proves to be a benefit in their particular needs or their applications.

8:52 So there's a lot in that pipeline, and a lot of that pipeline is moving very, close to the end. And so, on our DGW technology, our biodegradable technology, where we get most of our sales, most of our income at this moment. Outside of the EU, there are huge concerns over the use of plastics insofar as legislation that was banning plastics have been put on hold. Or in some cases overturned. Because the world needs to use plastic. They need to use plastic for PPE. We need to have face masks, they're plastics.

9:41 We need to have all sorts of very low cost economic for the areas of the world that don't have the same amount of spending power that they had prior to the pandemic. Plastics are actually growing. Surprising, but they're growing. And we go further with proving that our technology, contrary to what people suggest, it does biodegrade not just on land, but it biodegrades in the ocean. And two reports came out this year. One from the oceanic experts in France. We called it the Oxamar project.

10:29 They confirmed that our technology that's used in plastic, found in the oceans, does biodegrade. And that added to six scientific peer reviewed papers that were published over the last three years. And then finally this year there was a publication of the Queen Mary University study. Published in February. That stated that technology with d two w in would biodegrade, they found to biodegrade up to 90 times faster than ordinary plastics. These are very significant pieces of academic papers that we've now published.

11:20 They're available on our website. We communicate them to legislators. As some of these legislators, some of our critics, will continue to say

11:29 we produce microplastics when we don't. And the evidence keeps on going on and on and on. And that's what our team's doing globally. We have to communicate. We have to communicate in all different languages the importance of the technology that we have. It's proven, it's safe, and it's in use. And Saudi Arabia is a very good example of a government that understood it. They created three phases to put all plastics, roughly around 1,500,000 tons of that plastic, into our type of technology. You have to be certified to be able to supply in Saudi Arabia.

12:19 There are only three companies certified with our company, SYMPHONY and DGW, being the first and being the world's most prominent brand. We expect their rollout phase to continue because what we announced was phase one was increased by a further three new products this year. So it's moving. But interestingly, neighboring countries are following. Bahrain was the last one to announce that they were mandating the use of this type of technology. Not paper. No bands on plastic. But this type of technology that we have today.

13:04 And within our announcements, we announced ERANOVA. We announced two years ago now that we were investing €500,000 into this project. I have a slide on that further in this presentation. We've reduced that investment down to 100,000, but maintained really, really important distribution rights. The revenues, Ian, please. Yes, please. Hi. Good morning, everybody. I'll just go through the financials briefly. The income statement is up on the screen for our six months to June this year. And as we've reported, we had a 17% increase in revenues compared to the first six months of twenty nineteen.

13:51 We're, of course, very pleased with that. Bearing in mind, from mid March, operationally, things become difficult for all of us. And some of our distributors themselves had some quite severe lockdowns that they had to deal with. So and within the revenue tab there, still to June is primarily our d two w oxo biodegradable products, and those products are selling all around the world, North America, Central South America, Far East, Middle East. We have some very, very strong distributors in in in a number of regions, which for us is is is a a is a major opportunity because each one of those distributors in each region, themselves have their own, marketing selling plan that could, could sort of springboard with our d two w and d two p projects, going forward.

14:45 Gross margins are high at 45%. We we expect that to be maintained going forward. Beauty of the high margin is that, financially and operationally, we can, we can look at revenue growth going forward as multiples of where we are now, and we're quite comfortable within our current resources, be it financial and operational, to to deal with that. And within our within our gross profit, we we utilize four factories around the world. So our manufacturing is is is well spread and located in the regions where our customers are are. Moving further down, into the expenses, £2,000,000 for the first six months. So so operating at £4,000,000 per annum expense.

15:35 Part of that is the staff cost, which you'll see in the annual reports. Our staff, we're based in Northwest London, our head office. Within there, we have a large technical, and testing department, an r and d department. We have a large supply chain department, because we're moving goods from various places to different parts of the world. And then we have our sort of sales and marketing, and their primary aim is to manage our distributor network moving forward. You would have seen that we have actually increased our own operational sales resources over the last nine months or so, and we can see that started to take effect during half two of this year. Other costs within that is we use we use advisory, regulatory advisers, lobby advisers in our key markets around the world. At the moment, we're looking at Latin America, South America, and Middle East, where we use, advisers on the ground and specialists either in the the government lobbying, regulatory, or consumer, retail advice. So we use specialists where where where available.

16:48 And out of all of that, we're very pleased, to go back into profit for the first six months of the year, which fantastic. So within those costs, as Markus said earlier, we're operationally geared.

17:08 So Ian, we have just lost your audio momentarily. Ian, if I ask you just to turn your camera off and just come back in on your audio, that would be brilliant. Thank you. The phone icon is on the top above Q and A and chat. Michael, if I could just potentially just hand back to you in the meantime, and I'll reconnect to Ian, who I think actually is coming back now. Ian, you're with us? Yeah. Do want me to turn my video off? Yeah. I think if you could just to conserve your bandwidth. I think, obviously, there is a little bit of a dip, and then you can turn on with audio. So You know, did I finish off with the the turning the into profit for the first for the six months? We missed probably the last thirty seconds, sir. Okay. Just finishing off. So with our overheads of £2,000,000, we we actually are pleased to have got back into profit for half one of this year, notwithstanding all those costs and those investments that we make as a business.

18:09 So if I move on to the balance sheet for SYMPHONY, we're very comfortable with our balance sheet. And since since we announced these results with who are 9% owners of SYMPHONY, have actually exercised 5,000,000 warrants, 20 p warrants, and generating a million pound cash. So our net cash position of 300,000 has been bolstered by a million pound during this week. And in addition to that, we have an invoice finance facility, which hasn't been drawn down for a while. It's not not drawn down at the moment at 1,500,000. That links into our the resources that I was explaining in terms of we have enough cash flow, operational resources to to help this business grow within its current plans.

18:59 As a business, we are low asset based. The right of use assets is, is primarily our head office in Bordenwood. You will see our inventories and receivables increase, substantially. Inventories were increased on purpose to cover any COVID supply chain issues and trade receivables increased, whether that time we were allowing some of our distributors under credit insurance terms to take a bit longer longer to pay us. Other than that, we have no hardly any borrowings on the balance balance sheet. The borrowings there is purely a currency borrowing. Our business, we sell primarily in dollars, but we also sell in euros. So there's some borrowing there. And we've been trading other payables. It's primarily, our trade payables, which is, mainly for our factories and the raw materials that we supply from there.

19:55 I'll move on. So that's Michael, that's back to you again. It's the financial Okay. Good. Perfect. Thank you very much, Iain. And just to continue with the market. The market's a gray market, as I said in my earlier presentation material. Just on the antimicrobials, Bloomberg puts an estimate of around $44,000,000,000 That's where this market's going to be inside the next few years. So we've got plenty of room to go for the market. But looking at the bottom left, or to the side I should say, just on polyphene itself in relation to our biodegradable, this should be interesting. We're looking at a market of 349,000,000 tons, which is a really, really big global market.

20:42 And at the moment, we supply the equivalent to treat 200,000 tons. That is a very, very big number of material that we already treat. Huge. And that is touching more than 90 to a 100 different countries with various different distributors that we've got. So we're already touching 200,000 tons. But remember that we only use 1% generally of our d two w, the logo. The green logo that you see on the right, that's the symbol you will find on most of that 200,000 tons of plastic. It's a symbol that's understood globally as a symbol to make a piece of plastic biodegradable.

21:34 It's a symbol that is supported by an eco label, the London Stock Exchange Green Economy Mark and Listing. It's a symbol that indicates twenty five years of research and development and a number of academic papers that proves the biodegradability of the technology. Two pictures within this slide is one is a face mask that you're beginning to see littered. We can make that biodegradable and we just started that process. But we definitely make it antimicrobial. And we started to sell the antimicrobial face mask and we'll be scaling that up in the weeks and months ahead. The gloves, we're showing an examination glove there, in fact a nitrile glove. There are nitriles, there's vinyls, there's household gloves. We're in all those areas.

22:32 Upgrading those gloves with d d p antimicrobial technology. And today, we can actually put on there with the coronavirus claim. Pretty powerful statement.

22:48 Moving on to the next slide. This is the international symbol for our technology. If you look at your plastics, if you don't find it on there, you should be asking why they're not using this technology. It's scientifically proven and it represents roughly around 85% of our current sales revenue. And here, moving the slide. This shows you the extent of the antimicrobial range. And a very, very quick read on this shows antimicrobial, bird repellents, anti insects, flame retardants, rodent repellents, ethylene absorbers, it goes on. But we're not going to focus on all of that in today's presentation.

23:34 There's a lot of projects following that. But instead, what we're to focus on is this. Our DDP meaning designed to protect. Our additives which go into ordinary plastics and rubber will make it antimicrobial, can make it flame retardant, it can make it insecticidal, rodent propellant, corrosion inhibitors, and odor of moisture. All very nice, but what I have to say is we're actually achieving commercial sales in gloves, as we just touched on. Water pipes using this technology and I touch on it in a moment. Anti insects which is very, really important for some of the areas that we may supply so far as thrips or mosquitoes or areas like that.

24:23 Odor absorbers. And we got a whole range of protector products that are being made that we're not selling directly, but we sell our technology into protector. Protector is a range of products from toothbrushes with D2P inside, to cling film, to hair nets, to shoe covers, to most of those single use PPE type medical products. There's a whole range of them out there going into the market. And some of these technologies may require further certification and regulatory clearance, but we do have enough clearances and certification to move forward very strongly on ourselves and that's what we're focused on here today.

25:15 Just an illustration for the ones that are curious about the bread. This is an FDA clearance. In other words, for this particular technology that we got the announcement for, it's applicable in the markets that follow the US FDA food contact Regulations. This is a ten year project. It's taken an awful long time. It's taken us time to develop the formulations and it took a long time to demonstrate to the FDA that it was food safe. Not too difficult, you would think, when you consider that when you do migration studies nothing comes out. It stays embedded in the plastic. And so if you look at this graph, the blue graph indicates in this particular study in a really, really good bread manufacturing factory, thirteen point four weeks of life with a product that's got 50% preservatives, and a product that's got D2P technology inside.

26:22 It compares with the same 50% preservatives, but with no D2P technology. We were able to help increase the shelf life as a result of keeping the plastic cleaner, less contamination, by 71.8%. Impressive. But in another study that we did at a factory that was far more contaminated with fungi spoils and other contaminations, using the same 50% preservatives we show that the treated in mauve was two point four weeks versus one point seven weeks in a piece of plastic that didn't have the technology.

27:10 And so what we're looking to do, what we're looking to achieve in some of our markets is to allow the bread manufacturers to consider reducing their preservative levels that they would put in bread by 50%. Use d to p and the shelf life would be more or less similar to bread

27:34 with 100% preservatives. Good you might say. They say 50% preservatives. It's worth the payoff certainly. But the most important thing is to communicate that your bread that you buy, the consumer buys, would have less preservatives inside. It's a more natural product. And we've done studies without preservatives. We've done studies with half preservatives. We've done studies with full preservatives. We've done studies from The UK to United States to The Middle East and beyond. This has been a really, really huge project of ours. And this FDA breakthrough gave us the ability to now move up into proper commercial trials to make sure that in the field it was going to behave as we've been seeing through the thousands of different evaluation samples over the years.

28:32 Expect more news, not in the very long term, but certainly, I think in the months ahead of us. And moving to the next. This is a pipe. This is a project we were doing in Pakistan and continue to do in Pakistan. Putting our technology in this plastic pipe will keep the pipe clean. It stops the biofilms building up in that pipe. It's important because the buildup of those biofilms, the bacteria, the fungi, the algae can contaminate the water.

29:12 And it makes the pipe and the pipe producer, it gives them a more desirable product. And the on cost is, as far as the pipe's concerned, or as far as the building's concerned, or as far as the infrastructure's concerned, much more desirable, safer to use. A snapshot of some of the product areas that we're in is many. And now with the latest announcement that we made on our successful test on the coronavirus, ninety nine percent in one hour, We can apply it and are looking to apply it and have started to apply it to a lot of the applications that you see here in the screen today.

30:02 And on the green algae, Aranova. What is the deal? The deal is that subject to this contract being completed, and we expect it to be completed very, very soon, which is why we announced it. We've reached a modified agreement. We've dropped our investment from 500,000. Why?

30:25 It's because we're a capital light business model to a €100,000. We were investing for one reason. We wanted to have some exclusive rights to be able to sell this very very desirable product in some of the territories like Europe that really want renewables. But this is renewables made from waste. Green algae is a pollutant on the beaches. But it would be collected, it would also be grown in raceway tanks. For every one ton of this product that's made, you capture one ton of carbon. The story is very strong, but it's compatible with DGW because we can make it biodegradable.

31:12 Or it's compatible with d two p because it adds further security in relation to absorbing the odors that you might get. So, through our very very strong relationship with Indorama Corporation, the world's largest producer of PET. They use PET in Coca Cola bottles, for example, or Pepsi Co bottles. That's Indorama. They, for our introduction, put €1,000,000 subject to contract into this project. The thinking generally is they are manufacturers. If this phase works, and we all think it will work, then becomes the big scale up.

32:01 The thousands and thousands of tons of plastic or alternative plastics made with this waste product. That would compete extremely well with the products that BASF and some of the large multi million, multi billion dollar companies have invested into. But maybe from food. All these bio based products that you find, the compostable products that you see, they're made from food crop. Houses were made from waste. So we're in a really, really good space being involved in this project between ERANOVA and Indorama Corporation. And the outlook, positive, of course, and particularly in the course of the last few weeks when we're able to announce such spectacular results.

32:54 We're an operationally geared business. As you heard me say in the beginning, we don't employ hundreds of people. We don't need to employ hundreds of people. We have a global distribution network. Individual companies in different parts of the world that speak the language, invest their own money, buy our products in sufficient quantity that they can supply the market and give local credit. A distribution network that will use our branding, our guidance, and how they will sell it, and put it into the market.

33:28 The COVID nineteen position in relation to plastics generally strengthens plastics, but it strengthens plastics strengthen anyway because there are no good, viable, proven, low cost alternatives. And the governments that we're talking to today, they're essentially broke. They are trying to get their economies back from being out of business for so many months. They wanna get them back safely as well, but they don't have the monies to put it, to invest into alternative high cost products from paper or even bioplastics. They can afford to continue with low cost ordinary plastics, particularly if they could be made biodegradable or they could be made with antiviral or antimicrobial technologies like ours.

34:23 So in relation to D2W, we do have improving legislative changes

34:33 going on throughout the world. And so far as d two p is concerned, and d two p and d two w, we're beginning to combine them because the world wants both. You'll hear more about that in the weeks and months ahead of how the two fit together. But essentially, for the many applications I showed you earlier in this presentation, coronavirus antimicrobial properties are very, very desirable. But so is biodegradation to stop us seeing all this blown into the environment in our oceans. The FDA project that I referred to earlier, very, very positive, getting really good results, have seen very good results. We believe that we will have a really good outcome on that as the weeks and months move forward.

35:27 And, of course, you've seen a whole host of different colors to our DDP range. Each one of those colors represents further r and d that's going on mainly with commercially led end customers that require certain products, projects to be taken to the market. And as we said, our activity level is certainly so far as antimicrobial is concerned, that's the D2PAM range. We've got more than a 100 within our pipeline.

36:04 The appendix, they're very short. We have a board, three by three, three execs, three none. The classification and LSE marks that was awarded late last year. And remember what I said, it's 1% that's mixed in with the old polymer when you extrude it, when you melt it to a liquid. You mix it in like putting a spoonful of sugar in your tea. It will make that plastic, through a process of oxidation, turn into no more than CO2, H2O, and biomass harmless. We convert that plastic into biodegradable materials that organically recycle back to nature.

36:52 But if you want to recycle it, it doesn't stop it. And this slide here just talks about more or less what I've just said. It's proven, it's proven in so many different ways, and it doesn't stop people following the reduce, reuse, recycle, and remove. And the interesting thing is remove. That's what this technology will do. And for those that don't really understand the difference between what you might get in the post, a compostable and biodegradable, this should help you. The biodegradable one on the left is our technology. It meets the standard.

37:39 A standard that's designed to deal with plastic waste in the open environment. The one on the right is what you might get from the co op or in the post. It's tested to biodegrade only if you can pick it up. It doesn't deal with the litter issue. And if you find a suitable industrial compost, and that industrial compost needs heat, it needs microbes, it needs dampness, it needs moisture, It costs also up to three times more than what we have to offer to the market. So it's no wonder that countries like Saudi Arabia and other countries around the world that can't afford the luxury of a compostable product, not because it doesn't work. They don't have composting facilities.

38:32 And interestingly, if you go to a composter, nor do they want this piece of plastic in there because it is problematic. It is expensive. And the other part is by the standard that it follows, it's gotta give out 90% of its c o two in a hundred and eighty days. They actually encourage, and this is what they're encouraging in Europe, hopefully not in The UK, we hope they're going to listen to us, and we press that. That only pushes up CO2 emissions, is something we need to avoid. WHO requires the use of plastic. Some of the green algae projects that we can make when this project goes live.

39:22 Mulching films from the green algae projects. And that is it. And thank you. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Ian. And apologies for losing in through the bandwidth issue. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments to review investor questions submitted today and ahead of looking at those that were presubmitted, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with the copy of the slides and the published Q and A, can be accessed via your Investor Meet company dashboard. I'd also like to remind you that your feedback is important to the company. And immediately after the presentation has ended, you'll be redirected for the opportunity to provide feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations, and we would be most grateful if you could take the time to do so.

40:14 Michael, Ian, I know that we've got a number of questions that have come through during this meeting. But of course, there were a number of questions that were presubmitted. There were five in total. Perhaps if I could read those out and if you could give a response, that would be great. So the first question we have is, in your interims, you mentioned that customer trials were progressing well with regards to 2P bread packaging in The U. S. And that results of which were expected over the coming six months. However, the July update, you commented in regards to the bread trials that the results of which were expected over the coming months. The results seem to be taking longer than expected. Is there a reason for this? Yes, there is a reason. It's taken ten years to get to where we are today. And that's been not under our control. We have to rely on factory availability.

41:05 We are working in a live situation. And at the moment, working in life situations with all the COVID restrictions means that the best laid plans can't be followed strictly at a time. But it is progressing, as I said, and progressing in a really, really good way. Perfect. Thank you very much. Next question. What testing is going on to determine whether D2P kills COVID-nineteen specifically rather than bovine coronavirus? And when do you expect to update investors on the outcome of this testing? Well, we've already updated investors in the market on where we are. And so by killing the coronavirus using the particular strains that we've been using, that is what caused COVID nineteen. If you can kill the actual, virus, the bacterias that lead to the disease, you've effectively done it. So it's the same as washing your hands and using disinfectant.

42:04 You're killing everything, and that's effectively what we've done by putting our technology permanently into the plastic or into the rubber item. It keeps it clean, so you're not going to get COVID-nineteen as a result of the technology that we're using. Thank you. D2P for bread packaging got FDA approval in February 2020. I think that the formulation was 1% D2P added to both Masterbatch provides protection. Do you expect this to be an overall cost decrease to the user company given the one advantage is elimination of some of the preservatives? If not, what's the percentage adder? Interesting question. Various different bread companies have got different desires and it changes from one part of the world to the other. Some are looking to reduce their preservatives to save money on the preservatives.

43:01 And I don't know the numbers on that, but there's certainly more preservatives used than the 1% that we put in. Others are looking to reduce the amount of waste that they get. A lot of products wasted, and using this technology by keeping the packaging cleaner, the amount of waste and cost associated with that waste goes down by quite a lot. And then finally, because we can talk for ages on this one, there's a very, very desirable marketing message that they can give about the quality of their product using the technology. Sure. Thank you very much indeed. I realized that one of the questions was about whether this recording would be available for those who can't attend. Of course, the answer was yes. And the other one, I believe, might require you to make a forward looking statement. So I think I will just leave that for you to review post the event.

43:50 Could I now just draw your attention to the Q and A box, Michael and Ian? Obviously, that's on the right hand side of your screen. If you go right to the top, obviously, you've had quite considerable number of questions populated into that box. We've got about tenfifteen minutes because I know you want investors to provide you with feedback. But perhaps you could read out the question because, obviously, no one can see anyone else's question and give your response where it's appropriate. And just to remind investors, if your question is unanswered during the live event, there will be the opportunity for it to be reviewed afterwards, and we will publish those responses should that be appropriate. So if I could hand back to you, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So one question was by Michael B.

44:40 Why was a Munich camp test announced in advance? And should it have had a separate announcement as it should get equal or more attention to the Eurofins test result? Well, the requirements are on something like this that you announce as early as possible. And on the UniCam, the results came through to us over the weekend in Portuguese. We needed to understand that. And we did over the weekend and announced it by separate announcement on the Monday morning. Similar scenario with the Eurofins report. Just going down, how does a packaging converter adopt, apply your technology? Well, as you saw from the videos, it's so easy.

45:33 They just buy from one of, from us, or our distributor, wherever they may be. They may be in China, Australia, New Zealand, United States, anywhere in the world. They just ask for d two w or d two p and they get it the next day. In fact, the same day in some of these cases. They put 1% in with their ordinary extrusion process. However, if you are Tesco's co op or some other retailer and you like what we have to say, you instruct your manufacturers to put in, as I said earlier, a teaspoon of sugar into a cup of tea. You use the 1% in their normal formulations. Nothing changes. It's a non disruptive technology, easy for it to happen. That was from Jake D.

46:21 So, on other questions. Well, it's an interesting one. Could you give us some guidance on when sales could reach if a large percentage of the projects are successful? If we knew the timing, we would be compelled to advise the market. What we do know is we've got an awful lot of projects going on. Some of these started a long time ago. Quite a few of them are reaching the end. As to size, as to timing, very difficult, but we don't think very long. Read the guidance on that, which our brokers will be giving out separately to what we have to present. When can we expect the outcome of bread?

47:09 We've already answered that. In PPE, a high gross margin is PPE a high gross margin business? We're trying to stay away from the commodity style business. PPE is not a higher margin business. If you're in face masks, just about everybody's doing face masks at the moment. Though we wanna keep to a high margin business, we are a high margin business. You'll see our gross profits are in the region of 45, 50%. We're looking to try and maintain that by selling into high value markets. Though supplying the finished product is is not really what we're looking to do. We're looking to put our technology in somebody else's product, which means that we could do what we do really, really well and cover huge volumes of product by doing that.

47:56 So the quick answer to the question is, generally PPE is not a high gross margin unless you are a manufacturer where at the moment, certainly for the next one or two years, I think they'll all do very, very well. We're not a manufacturer. We work with the manufacturers. So the more additives we can supply for us and for them, the better. What is the difference in financial metrics between D2W and D2P? Very roughly, I think antimicrobial has got a much, much higher value to the consumer than D2W, which is there to protect the environment. In reality, because it's more expensive technology, it sells probably between three, four, even five times more in value than DGW.

48:54 So we converted the same amount of 200,000 tons of plastic with D2P technology. Our sales could increase anything between three and five times. And we would expect to be selling those volumes, what we think is in the foreseeable future. But we'll wait and see, and guidance will be coming out to the market as and when we have better clarity on where we're going. But the market's big, as I said. Extremely big for D2W, and really, really big for antimicrobials. What else do we have here? How does SYMPHONY products differ from other antimicrobials such as Stereotouch?

49:40 Similar to D2W, there are others in the antimicrobial market. Stereotouch is quite a small company. Mainly they're on the silvers, we touch silvers, but we've got many different actives that we actually use. And a particular actives that we use that we can't openly declare. It's got a much broader, wider spectrum than what many of the others might be using. The big name that most people may know is Microban. It was around everywhere years ago. Their main technology was Trekla san, which ended up in toothpaste. It then became considered toxic, was banned.

50:25 Microban, in fact, vanished from a lot of The UK markets. But they're still around, they're still large, but mainly they're in silvers. We're not just in silver, we're in a lot of other actives that we use. So it's all to do with the brand, the investment that you put in, perfecting the formulations, Stereotouch have their own way of doing it, we have our way of doing it. We link ourselves into our existing relationships. We've got very, very strong relationships globally with some of the world's largest corporates, but many, many small companies combined, which we can do now, we combine D2W with D2P, gives us something that nobody's got by combining the two technologies, antimicrobial as well as biodegradability.

51:15 And you should remember, that's not all we do. We are involved in many, many other designed to protect formulations. So it says Sky News, Henry L. Has said Sky News have a high profile sector called Ocean Rescue. Has SYM approached Sky to see whether it's part of the solution to the ocean waste? Yes, interestingly, we did. Two years ago, we had various different communications with them. I'm not so sure they're interested in the cure. They're more interested in telling people how bad it is and that you should go out there and pick it up. We have communicated, maybe not at the right level. But we are so inundated globally with governments and actual organizations that want it. There's limited time that we got available to keep pressing organizations like Sky.

52:13 But if they were really independent, if they really did care about the oceans, they would have certainly looked at the study that came out of Europe, where we had six academic published papers published that demonstrated this technology really does work in the oceans. But they're obviously more interested in selling news than the disaster of plastics than looking for the cure. And Michael B said, can you confirm if D2P and D2W work together? My answer was yes, and you'll get to see more news on that as time goes on. Just taking these questions at random, there seem to be quite a few here. Can you clarify what patents or other IP protection you have?

53:01 There are some products that we are applying the patents for at the moment, but generally, we don't look to patent because we don't really want to give our formulations away. Particularly in some of the markets where we're active. And we are active in India, we are active in China, and it's not the best places in the world to defend your patents. But in any event, we look to encourage legislators to pass legislation to support this type of technology. If you have a patent, it makes it too difficult to do. So we say there are many others in this area that are doing these different products. Please go ahead and encourage people to use it. It's just that we do it better than most. We think we're cheaper than most. We got more technical support than most, and we certainly got more academic papers than most. And we've got various echo labels and other accreditations that support us.

54:01 Interesting, we don't have any questions on the numbers, so I think I'm taking most of these, which I'm sure Ian's delighted about. E and N, are we going to see shorter than one hour test results? Probably not. We are exploring it. We do get shorter results on antibacterial testing. It's really, really good on on on bacteria, killing E coli and killing other forms of harmful bacteria. We got some really, really impressive results. And I think with all the worries about keeping your hands clean and keeping everything clean, we're getting a lot people interested in that antibacterial performance as well as antiviral.

54:48 It's just that antiviral is the most urgent situation because we need UK needs, countries need to get their economies back moving again. So we're having conversations in relation to using the technology in the transport systems of various different parts of the world, Getting people moving again safely. Where would you use it? In the handrails, supermarket trolley handrail, if you're on a bus, you're sitting on a plastic seat. We can protect all of that either by putting a coated film over it or tape over it that's got the technology or in new product areas is unlimited. E and N, Sky News repeated test card trans transmission that declares that coronavirus can live on steel and plastic services for up to seventy two hours.

55:41 Have we briefed Sky News? No. We haven't briefed Sky News on the coronavirus. Since we announced that, Our marketing team and our global teams have gone ballistic with activity and we haven't yet moved on to the front foot with communicating with Sky News. But if any of you would like to communicate with any of the news channels, we'd be delighted to participate in any media coverage. We are getting certain coverage I think next week. Not from Sky, but from one of the other world broadcasters. Mainly this time on biodegradability. You'll see information coming out during next week. Alex H says, what size of revenue uplift do you believe is achievable across the business on a year on year basis?

56:31 As I said earlier, follow the guidance of our brokers. They have put out guidance into the market. As we get more clarity, we'll update the market, but we actually expect and have prepared our business to move forward very, very strongly. And by strongly, we're looking to make transformational moves as we move forward. We've got the technologies that the world needs today. That's the important thing to understand. We've got a business a business strategy whereby we don't interrupt anything. We're saying to people, supplier, don't need to change the product, just get them to put 1% of one of our additives into that product, and you've either made it biodegradable or antimicrobial with the antiviral properties if that is what you want. So we add value with non disruptive drop in technologies to words that we often use.

57:36 It can be done overnight, should be done overnight. And for those that are watching, should be communicating this message because the more people that use it, you're not just helping the investment case, you're generally helping people's well-being and you're actually helping the environment to do that much better from the blight of plastic pollution. That's brilliant. Thank you, Michael. I think you have exhaustively gone through the Q and A. And if for whatever reason we have missed any, obviously, we'll be able to review that post the meeting. I wondered if perhaps I think you've finished on a high. I probably don't need to ask you to wrap up. I think you've ended that particularly well. So what I propose to do, if it's okay with you, Michael, is I'm going to redirect investors to provide you feedback. Obviously, this is a medium to have good a good to open And And I think moment, And So then on behalf of the management team of SYMPHONY ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES PLC and Investor Meet Company, I'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation.

59:02 That now concludes the session.