Animalcare Group plc

And thank you very much for joining us, Chris and myself. You hopefully will have seen the announcements this morning and the various other communications around this. I'm here to talk you through a really short presentation. I think most people on the call know us pretty well. And then we're more than happy to answer questions. It's probably easier doing it this way to answer them at the end. And so if you could just raise your hand, as in press the raise hand button, clearly waving to... waving to your computer screen is not going to help. But if you could just raise your hand and then we'll come to questions at the end, hopefully in the order that you've raised your hand, which should make sense. And so I'm going to kick off and. You know, the first message is we've had a very strong first half. Hopefully all of you have got a copy of the presentation. We're not going to share slides. We thought that would just overcomplicate this quick presentation. But if you've got a copy of the slides, you can see we've had a very strong first half. And what's also important is that we continue to make great progress against our strategic pillars. And so I'm going to hand over to Chris in a minute to talk a little bit more about the specific financials for the first half. But just in summary, where have we got to? Firstly, the growth portfolio. We can really see the impact of the work that we've been doing over the last couple of years now, taking out products that were really not driving good quality, sustainable revenue and really focus on those top 40 products to drive improvement gross margins across the portfolio, and really to put the business in a better and more efficient shape. The innovative pipeline, we've been really excited about the launch of Daxacox. And as you have seen, we launched Daxacox just at the end of the first half. And so we're starting to see the results of that launch. We're still in that launch phase in many of our countries, but what we have initiated is is an investment in expanding the Daxacox franchise, building on the success that we've had to date, and also looking at some of our non-prescription products in the dental arena and really starting to invest in a significant number of pipeline projects. More to come, but we've moved that agenda on a lot in the first half of the year. Business development, we've been really active here. We are really clear what our criteria are. And what we're really pleased about is the continued reduction in our net debt, which is increasing our scope for M&A and pipeline deals. And actually, the performance in the first half has given us even more confidence about our ability to fund some really exciting things that we're looking at. Chris is going to talk much more about, you know, strong finances. And we've seen increased demand for companion animals products. We've seen better EBITDA margins and cash conversion and clearly net debt reduction has continued. Leadership has been, I think, one of the really important drivers for the performance in the first half. I was really pleased with how the team managed the disruption last year. But seeing them take off in the first half with such enthusiasm and such commitment to launching Dax Cox, really building capabilities and strengthening the leadership qualities of the team. And so that, I think, has been a real underpin to the success that we've seen in the first half. So on that note, I'm going to hand over to Chris to talk through the half one financial highlights. Chris, over to you.

Thanks, Jenny. Good morning, everyone. And so you'll obviously you'll have a copy of the deck as well as the press release, which has got all the numbers and the details. So we'll just focus on the on the highlights on slide four to start with. So, as Jenny said, really pleased with the first half performance delivered double digit revenue growth. I'll get some color on that on the next slide, but even more so at the profit level. And also, as Jenny noted, together with a further strengthening of the balance sheet, which, as we've talked about before, really key from the point of view of investment capacity. Just to kind of lead... I think one of the kind of real things that we're really pleased about in particular is the movement around our growth margin improvement. That's really reflecting the work that we've done in particular around optimising the portfolio. And in that regard, we're seeing the momentum on our margin accretion continuing to the second half of the year. And that's why we're indicating that we're expecting to beat previous estimates on profits. So underlying EBITDA and EPS are the two key measures. So kind of really pleased to kind of state at this stage that we're confident that the profitability will be ahead of where we expected to be. I'll give a little bit more shape of colour on the shape of FY21 later in particular. the first half, second half dynamics. If we just look at underlying EBITDA, up 28% to 8.5 million. So key things, drivers of that. So talked about the increase in margin, about 2.6% up on this time last year. Driven by really strong demand in the higher margin companion animal portfolio. That's about 20, 29 percent up. And as I said, you know, really seeing the benefits now of the focus we've had on optimising the portfolio towards the higher margin brands. We'll see that when we come on to top 40. Clearly, we're seeing the leverage benefit from the strong sales growth. We've seen a real marked improvement in our EBITDA margin, which was close to 22. So the gross margin has flowed down to EBITDA margin. We on overheads, we continue to invest in optimizing the existing platform and in areas driving future growth. So you may have noticed that we've had a 1.5 million increase in SG&A costs. This time last year, we had a million reduction year on year. So some of that is kind of a kind of a bounce back from COVID savings. But also, as I talked about, increased investment and just to actually to remind everyone that roughly about two thirds of our cost base is people. And in particular, it's people investment that we we continue to focus on to drive growth. It's not on the slide, but on profit, you'll have seen that the leverage benefit and the margin benefits flowing down to EPS, which was up 36% at the half year. On cash conversion, as expected, due to the normalization of the stock profile, just if you recall in 2020 at this stage, we saw a 2.3 million increase in stock. Some of that was COVID impact. But also some of that was strategic stock build prior to manufacturing transfers. So we said we'd expect to improve cash conversion for the first half, which you had, which was close to under 80%. Absolutely maintain the focus on cash generation to provide capacity to invest. And we remain confident that we'll achieve the full year target of 90 to 100% cash conversion. On debt, driven again largely by the strong cash conversion, we further reduced net debt by 3.5 million to 10.1 million with our net debt to EBITDA leverage ratio now below the one times target at 0.7. You may have seen in the press release that that momentum on debt reduction and cash generation is continued. And at the end of August, we were around 7.5 million net debt And subject to any major investments between now and the end of the year, I'd expect that the year end position will be broadly similar to that. On dividend, we've held the dividend at 2p. Cash cost of 1.2 million is actually in the debt figure of 10.1. So the net debt figure at the half year includes the dividend cash cost. If we move to slide five, so this will give some more detail on revenue. And we said earlier that particularly reflects the very strong performance in companion animals. We've aligned the slide to the new regional model. So you'll see on the right hand side, we've introduced the south and north region splits. And as you can see that What we'll come on to is that the production animal part of the business is largely in the south region now. So if we start on the product categories in the centre, then we'll read across on to the revenue by country. So key driver of the first half growth was companion animals. That's up 29%. That now accounts for around 70% of overall sales. I think that's been the highest percentage of our overall sales since the merger. And that 29% compares to the 11% reduction we saw at this time last year. If we view country performance against the backdrop, We saw growth in our companion animal portfolio across all territories. If we look to the north region, we saw a very strong increase and recovery in the UK, which was at this stage 33% down last year due to the more severe impact of COVID on the customer base in that market. Looking to the south region, we delivered above market double digit growth in the south region. You can see Spain and Italy in particular performing really well. What's really pleasing in particular in those two countries and in the region is that a large part of that growth was delivered by the existing portfolio. And again, this kind of all points towards the kind of work we've been doing around having that really kind of strong maintainable base to build from. If we unpick some of that growth in Spain and Italy, Again, no doubt we're seeing the positive effects of the focus on the higher margin brands where we can grow. Additionally, what's really clear is that the market has grown strongly in that region in the first half. So definitely some of the benefits of growth are seeing in our numbers. And in particular for Spain, and we've said this in the announcement, but be really clear that there's There's phasing benefits. So either phasing carried over from the end of 2020, and we saw that very clearly in our Q1 performance, or phasing between H1 and H2. So we've seen some benefit on the revenue line, in particular for Spain, in terms of phasing. Production animals at headline level, that's declined by 12%. We highlighted in our 2020 finals that in Belgium we exited a portfolio of several antibiotics and other lower margin products that were under a legacy distribution contract. So you can see that in the Benelux figure where the sales are down 35%. So this leaves, as I said earlier, the PA focus largely in the south region and international partners. And if we kind of ignore the Benelux piece in terms of that legacy contract, the areas where we've got light for light growth, they actually grew by 10%. So you can see that. We're still delivering growth in the production animal portfolio where we've decided to continue. And that remains an important part of our business. As you can see, the South region, it's really important part of the portfolio. Just strategically, we've talked before, Germany and Italy, small growing players in large markets. Strategically, likely through M&A or partnerships, our objective remains to accelerate the scale up of these operations over the next three years. And I think we've also talked before about we're really kind of keen to kind of explore opportunities to add something in France as well. I'll just touch on network partners. So this is where on an annualized basis, the majority of our equine revenue currently lies. And again, as we noted in the 2020 finals, equine revenue is expected to decline this year due to the customer stock build that we saw in 2020 in advance of the manufacturing transfer of the particular product, which we completed early this year. And the manufacturing transfer was principally the principal objective of improving the margin on that, which we'll start to see during the second half. At the half-year stage, that decline in the equine portfolio was offset by growth elsewhere, and so the net effect is a growth of 3% in network partners. Before we move on to the kind of net debt slide, I just wanted to finish off on the P&L and give a bit more colour on the outlook for 2021. So we stated very clearly we expect to exceed the profit guidance at EBITDA and EPS level. That's really around the stronger gross margins that we've seen in the first half. It will tail off a little bit in the second half. But as we noted, we're really seeing the benefits of the portfolio focus. On revenue, we remain confident we will turn to growth. and expect the full year to be at least in line with the revenue expectations. So we're maintaining the guidance that full year revenue will be weighted towards the first half, largely as a result of the phasing that I talked about earlier. And again, we particularly saw that phasing when we look at the very strong Q1 trading, which we've highlighted before. On the market, we believe that it is starting to return to what we're considering normal levels. So we say on slide five, we've kind of seen a resurgent kind of companion animal demand driving growth. We believe that there has been some kind of acceleration in the first half from some of the kind of post COVID dynamics from 2020. So slide six, just on the balance sheet, As I commented earlier, and we've commented in all recent presentations, the financial strength underpins our ability to invest in strengthening the platform. So that's really about creating that scalable platform and also in future growth opportunities. And I continue to be really pleased to reflect on this side, the kind of continuing trajectory of debt and leverage reduction. uh largely as i said about the cash conversion and we've talked about kind of where we were at half year and also 7.6 million on that slide is is the end of august um we're now conscious we are below the target leverage range um and that all that really means is we've got more firepower to increase investment over the next years whether that's in m a or increasing the pipeline capex Just on pipeline, I think we mentioned a few months ago that we are expecting to accelerate pipeline investment. We've been directionally kind of saying investment historically was about two to three percent of sales, which is below the benchmark. And we're looking at more than doubling that into next year. So I'll hand back over to Jenny.

Thanks, Chris. And just a quick reminder, if you do have a question, press your raise hand and we'll come to you and hopefully we're able to answer it. So I was just going to say a few words about the portfolio and about the pipeline. We've said all along that we needed to tidy up our portfolio and really focus on a smaller number of higher selling, higher margin products. And we're starting to see that come through now because, you know, we've got 15 percent growth in the top 40 products worldwide. There's a little bit of flavour in the markets. The markets, each of the countries is very clear on what's really driving good quality and sustainable revenue. And so this has been a really important driver of our improved results. We also are seeing that the impact of selling the right products and really bringing that focus in has been 2.6%. increase in gross margin. And that is really driven by that work that we did in 1920. And so we're really pleased with that. We're still around the 200 brands, gradually reducing that down. I think we've said in previous presentations, our objective is around the 150. There's no great science behind that, but it feels the right number to aim for, to really challenge ourselves. And as we move into the budgeting process now, it will be one of the things that the countries will be reviewing, looking at those tail products to further drive that increase in So moving to more higher selling, high margin products. And so our portfolio progress is really on track. And I think that will continue to deliver in years to come. Moving on to slide eight and just giving a little bit of a feel for our pipeline and where we're investing. It's kind of two different sorts of investment that we're making. We're investing in prescription medicines and that's predominantly Daxacox. And so now that we're launched, and we're really driving the Daxacox business. At the moment, we have a single indication in Europe, and so a lot of our investment is to look at different uses of Daxacox to deliver different opportunities in different species, in horses, in different forms, and also expanding the market. Clearly, we have our license in Europe at the moment. We're looking at Opportunities in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, US and really taking this product globally. And we're also building the Daxacox franchise. So a lot of our investment is going into Daxacox, which will deliver new launches, new indications, new lifecycle opportunities over the next five to 10 years. And so this is a really important franchise for us. And on the non-prescription medicines, which clearly have a really important channel through the vet channel, we're looking at STEM, which is the animal health arm that we did the deal on a year ago with Kane Biotech for products that initially are in the dental market. So we're in the fourth quarter this year starting to launch this range of products. So toothpaste, water additives, wipes, et cetera, et cetera. Those, we believe, will be a bit of a slower growth because this market in dental, you really do need a portfolio of products. And whilst we already have Orizyme, which is a great kind of anchor product for us, we need to launch all of the different formulations and uses because pet owner preference and vet preference is different. And so that will build a bit more slowly, but we're investing in making sure we get those to the market. We're also looking, I think you're aware, we launched Procanicare, which is a product that is active in the gut flora. And we're developing through a number of projects and future gut health products based and supporting Procanicare. as well as diarrhoea or anti-diarrhoea products and as part of the stem portfolio we're looking at some products that are using the biofilm technology which is what we really access through the stem deal using that biofilm technology and other indications and i think we indicated last time that ear infections were a good area that we were exploring and we've initiated some studies and some investment in ears So we're moving along on the pipeline. We are also very clear that we want to continue to develop that pipeline. And as you saw in the summary slide, business development is hugely active for us. There's lots of opportunities out there, but we're very, very clear that we want to find the right opportunities. We've got very... Clear criteria is anything we need to bring into the organisation needs to be sustainable and really good quality revenue enhancing. So we have a number of projects on the go and it's just a very active area at the moment. And now I think one of the things that we recognise is the confidence from the first half. And the sort of investor sentiment and as Chris described it, you know, we've got a bit we've got a bit more firepower than we would have had a year ago. And so we started to look at some even more interesting and exciting opportunities. And those are, you know, to build the pipeline, to create geographic expansion. So we're looking at products, companies and geographies. So just coming to the final slide summary, you know, really strong half one driven by companion animal demand predominantly. EBITDA and EPS benefit from the revenue leverage and a lot of the work that's gone on in the last couple of years. The net debt, you know, reducing net debt, I know, is a really important, important aspect of our financial strength. And it also creates that opportunity for the business development and the investment that we want to do. The work on the pipeline and, sorry, the portfolio has really started to show benefit in terms of margin and actually additional growth, that 15% growth from the top 40. We've got a balanced pipeline that we want to grow and we have the capacity to grow, and we fully intend to grow that through business development. And actually, I made the point earlier, one of the really, really important reasons why we've had such a strong first half is actually we've got a leadership team and an employee group who are really committed to the future of this organisation, which is a fantastic place to be. Yeah, the favourable trading conditions, I think, you know, our peer companies, you know, there's a lot in the press about the animal health market and we expect that to continue. So we see we will have favourable trading conditions into the second half. And we're confident that the underlying EBITDA and basic EPS will be ahead of the current market expectations for the full year. So that's all we wanted to say formally. And now we're more than happy to take questions. I think Anand from HSBC, I think you were probably the winner with your hand up first. So if you want to unmute and ask your question.

Yeah, hi guys. Hopefully you can hear me. Yep. I'm new to animal care, so I'm sorry if these are really basic questions. But the first is, could you talk a little bit about the rollout plan for Daxacox? Do you go via distributors? how do you educate vets on the product? How do you ramp up manufacturing? And then you sort of talked about Canada, US. When do you actually look to go beyond Europe and how do you get boots on the ground there, if you know what I mean? That's sort of question one. And then question two was, The focus on higher margin, higher growth products. Can you talk a bit about the therapeutic areas and the drugs that you're focusing on and why those are the right areas to focus on in your view? Thanks very much.

Thanks, and definitely not silly questions. That's encouraging. Yeah, yeah, no, no, that's fine. Rollout plan for Daxcook. So we have now launched in all European markets where we're active or with a partner. So we partner with Virbac. And so those launches have gone well. They're out there. And so we distribute in almost all countries via a wholesaler. So the vet is purchasing, but they purchase via the wholesaler. So the wholesaler kind of drives that channel. And so the only country that doesn't do that where we sell direct is in Germany. And that's a legacy. That's the way that market works. But everywhere else, the vet is prescribing it and it's sent by the wholesaler. The way that we are generating the demand is in the seven countries where we are active, we have sales teams. And as you post COVID, most of those sales teams are out making face to face calls. And so we're calling on customers regularly and the feedback from those customers has been really positive. We're also running webinars, educational sessions, online presence. So all the sort of standard marketing piece. We've got a group of key opinion leaders around Europe who are hugely supportive. they're starting to talk. We've had four publications in veterinary journals and there's some more to come, more publications looking at the data, sharing the data with a professional audience. So the distribution and channels are the sort of standard veterinary channels that we're using. Manufacturing, we use a third-party manufacturer and And so that that manufacturer is supplying European demand at the moment. And as we grow and expand, I'm sure we'll be looking for a secondary backup site. And particularly if we move as we move into the US. A little bit about that expansion. The. The places like Canada, Australia, New Zealand have an element of a mutual recognition of a European file. So we're currently working with the regulators there to use the European file. We're fairly clear that the US will, because of the way that the FDA works, will probably require a new file and potentially some data and research. So we're very actively pursuing the additional files where we can use the European regulatory filing. And we're talking to some companies and some people in the US about expanding into the US, but recognizing that's going to be a bit slower because we probably will need to do some additional studies. So really early days on the US, but really active on the rest of the geographic expansion. And as we announced, I think earlier this year, We have done a partnership with Virbac who are selling it in those countries that we don't have feet on the ground in Europe. So that is active and they're out there and they're launched.

Can I ask, it's probably a slightly impertinent question and if it is, just tell me to bugger off, but So I cover DECRA. DECRA are big in sort of analgesia and anaesthetics. They would say that is one of their therapeutic specialties. Why partner with Virbac and not DECRA? And if it's something you don't want to answer, that's absolutely fine. I'm just curious.

I like the context that I could tell you to do that on a call, and I think that would be a first thing that this company tells an analyst of. off um look we we had to look at who had competing products who was um you know very hungry to do this and if you look at the countries where we don't have a where we don't have feet on the ground the the main one that we were focused on was france and when you look at ver back in france they're obviously backyard yeah yeah yeah so so to be honest france was the driver for that decision Does that make sense?

No, no, that does absolutely make sense. And then, sorry, I've just totally interrupted. The second question was around... Why focus on the areas you're focusing on?

Yeah, so when we did... This was a piece of work that we did during 19. We looked at... the products that we had in the portfolio, because actually at that point we had quite a mixed bag of products because of the way that the organisation had come together. And so we did a piece of analysis which really looked at the criteria which were, is it a really strong brand that has a differentiation in the market? So that, you know, an element of tick that box. The next one was, is it a good margin product? Because historically we had some margins that were pretty pretty poor so we and chris i think referred to the belgian production animal products that we exited the contract you know the revenue was great but the margin was was not um and so we looked at margin we also looked at markets that were growing and you know that's again a little bit around the decision around the antibiotics that was a declining market at 20 25 percent so we recognize that we shouldn't be investing our our resources in markets that were declining And so there was an element of sustainability. There was also an element of at that point that we did a lot of the work on the portfolio. We had a lot of distribution contracts that were rolling over in short periods of time. And so one of the points that we made was if we had a contract where the. originated company or the owner was going to at risk of taking that product back in two years we took the decision that that wasn't a good place for us to be investing our money so we had a sort of framework that we used to assess you know value margin sustainability and opportunity for for the future in terms of portfolio therapy area specific what we did was looked at products that were an area that we had expertise. So if I think historically in that portfolio of 320 whatever brands, some of them were, they were really interesting, but we didn't have any of the capabilities and we didn't have anything else that looked similar. And so those products we exited as well, assuming they weren't like phenomenal products. you know products with really good revenue and margin in which case we trained the organization to sell them but where there was something that you know maybe we had some products that you know were in more of a physiotherapy area and that wasn't where we were strong so we exited those so there was a range of criteria that we used okay brilliant and then um

Well, would you say then that you do have some areas for specialties or is it, you know, you applied this framework and what looked good across everything you kept and that's across the piece?

Yes, although actually having done that, we did fall into some categories and therapy areas that we were stronger. So pain, anaesthesia, analgesia, so that sort of surgery area. We were already strong in dental. And has been for a long time. It's a really strong brand and it's still one of our top sellers. So pain, surgery, dental were clear areas that we had some specialty. Again, because of the legacy, there were some countries that had a particular strength in Germany and in rabbit vaccines, for example, which we didn't disrupt. But on the whole, it's fallen into that sort of pain, surgery, dental type areas. Now, in terms of that driving our future opportunities, we're a little bit broader than, you know, we're not saying it absolutely has to fit in that area. What we've said about future product opportunities, the sorts of things we're looking for need to be growing markets, sustainable, and something that we have enough core skill to launch and develop successfully. So, It's a rather looser than a very strict, we will only do products that fit in these categories. Okay.

Yeah, sure. Got you, Bryn. Thanks very much.

All right. So, Max, I think you were the next with a question. I'm sure this one's going to Chris.

I don't know. Let me just ask the first one. Obviously, you've made good progress with the gross margin, and that's been a key driver to the upgrade. You've obviously been focusing on DAX and COX and the rollout, and obviously that will have its own impact. gross margin characteristics as well. So I wondered where you can see that moving to in the sort of midterm in terms of gross margin. So that's the first question, which I guess, as you say, is Chris. Second one would be, again, on DAX or COX, just, you know, what color can you give us? on the launch and what are the metrics that you're using to assess the success of the rollout? How are you measuring that as it goes along? And then finally, you've made quite a significant comment about the reduction in the gearing now below your target. So how is your M&A opportunities or potentially investment opportunities evolving? What do you see there on the horizon? Thanks.

Okay, well, that's probably a Chris for one and three, and I'll pick up Daxicles, if that works. So, Chris, do you want to?

Yeah, I'll go on one story. So, I think we've been really clear around, I think there's gross margins and the EBITDA margin, Max. So, we're targeting... margin accretion into the mid-50s. So over the next kind of three to five years. And if we look at that and we look at what investments we want or need to make in our SG&A and in our business, we've always had the kind of goal that we would have EBITDA margins in excess of 20%. So I think mid-50s margin plus and north of 20% EBITDA margin are the kind of longer term targets. On the reduction in GERID, I think was a question of where we're going to focus our M&A opportunities. So strategically, We talked about geographies, so accelerating and scaling up operations where we've already got operations in countries. So we talked about Germany and Italy, and that could be businesses or that could be a product. We've also talked about accelerating investment in the pipeline. So, you know, 7% of sales is probably going to be kind of around the 5 million mark. something like that, and we're probably on a run rate of two and a half million, something like that, for this year. And then there's obviously the investments we've talked about on, I think it was the slide that Jenny presented around the pipeline. So, be the opportunities, it again is products and businesses, so we are looking at both And if you want direction of kind of where we expect to be, I think the view is that we're still in this kind of pop up and bring down kind of ethos. So we're absolutely happy to go to the top end of the range. We may go a little bit above for the right deal, as long as that is got a very clear path to bringing it down within the range. Does that answer the question?

I mean, maybe just to add, obviously you've highlighted with Virbac and the deal there that France is an area where you have one of the key EU five markets, European five markets that you're not present in. Is that one that you think is strategically important or is that one because of the importance of Vetoquinol and Virbac in that market that you would leave as a sort of a distributor-based market?

Yeah, that's a good question. So we've got one main distributor today. I think strategically it is important that we have a presence in France. I think from what we've seen, the expectation is that that may look and feel a little bit like the STEM deal. So probably a strategic investment in a small growing business business. where we can kind of, you know, start slowly versus, for example, saying, you know, either we'll buy a business outright or actually set up feet on the ground. Because I think, you know, revenue-wise, I think to make that work, it needs to be much bigger than the distribution revenues we've got today. So we've got some opportunities we'd kind of, we've been exploring that we'd really like to kind of execute on. My gut feeling is it would look and feel like a strategic investment. I think what we've learned is that the French market likes the French businesses. So we're just conscious that, you know, you need to kind of be mindful of the culture in that country. Great, thanks.

And Max. Max, your other question about Daxacots. Listen, we can talk about Daxacots all day because it feels like the thing we talk about a lot in the company. So a bit of colour on the launch. We're really pleased with it. It's been great for animal care, you know, as we sometimes kind of call ourselves little animal care and we're animal care and we're out there fighting with the big boys. So it's going well. It's on track. Interestingly, it's on track despite the fact that our big market like Spain has only been launched for a couple of weeks. So, you know, it's really exciting times. The reps are buzzing. We had a board meeting last week and our head of the north region, you know, on his way into the board meeting had a rep on the phone saying, God, I've just come out of a call and, you know, the vet's so excited, et cetera. So, you know, everything that all those qualitative measures are going really well. But, you know, it's early days and we know that we're fighting hard out there in the market because we get that feedback from the competitors who have sort of sat up and taken a really good look and kind of scratched their heads and thought, wow, where did that come from? And, you know, we know that we're making an impact because people are very interested in working with us, you know, global rollouts or, you know, other projects. And so, you know, it's making our mark, definitely. I think the other question you asked was about how we're measuring it. Clearly, you have that gap between sell in data and sell out. So sell out data is actually what goes out of the wholesaler into the into the vet. And that's always a bit delayed because we're relying on the wholesaler to give us that information. So currently, from hard measures, we're tracking sell in, sell out. We're also tracking activity, so making sure that our reps are out there and our activities are really competitive against some of those big players. And the other thing that we are doing is following up with customers and doing some formal customer follow-up about awareness of the product, usage of the product, and all of those things have KPIs behind them. As I said, you know, for some markets, we're only a couple of weeks into the launch, so we have a very formal review process and three-monthly review against the KPIs. But the dominant ones are those hard quantitative ones, sell-in, sell-out, And the more qualitative ones around feedback in terms of awareness and usage. And then the activity based ones, which is about how many calls the reps are making on the right customers at the right time and what that messaging is. So, you know, that's that's how we're measuring it. And that's what we'll be reporting on as we move forwards.

And just a follow-up on the U.S. and Anne's question, I mean, you talked very much about needing to do clinical trials but waiting until you had potentially a partner for the U.S. before you would start those. I wondered how much those studies would cost and why, given your intentions to increase R&D and obviously the key U.S. market being highly attractive, why that wouldn't be a sensible way to accelerate your investment in R&D? Yeah.

Yeah. So in terms of how much it will cost at the moment, we need to go to the FDA and find out what they would need us to do, because that's a piece of work that just hasn't been progressed to date. So, you know, They may look at the file and say, you know, could you spend 50 quid on just turning it into an American file? But they may say, actually, we just want some clinical research on this program. And we just don't know the answer to that at the moment, Max. It's something that we're doing as we speak. So we're having those conversations and then we'll have a better feel for it. But, you know, if you think about how much we've spent, you know, getting a European file, which is about five million. it wouldn't be that much because we've already got a lot of the chemistry manufacturing and compliance data that would be suitable for an FDA file. So, you know, you're talking in that ballpark, but absolutely don't know until we've had those conversations with the US. The second bit of your question is an interesting one, and we debate this one a lot. Is Daxacox the right thing for us to use to get into the US and to... And actually, as a result, we've looked at all of the possibilities. So do you go in and set up your own sales teams? Do you go and use that as a leverage to get into having a US animal care group company? The challenge that we face is that when you talk to the big companies in the US who we'd be competing with, they have sales forces of 100 plus. They have full, you know, full companies sitting there. And and therefore, we're probably going to look for somebody to partner, but we're bearing in mind that however we do that partnership, we'd like to use that as a bit of a stepping stone into the US. But, you know, at the moment, the mass of going in there and competing with something like Dax Cops is probably prohibitive for us today.

Thank you.

Thanks, mate. I think we now have a question from Anders. So, Anders, do you want to ask? I don't know if anybody else can hear Anders, but I can't hear Anders.

Hello?

Hi, got you. Anders, I'm just slightly conscious that you may not have received the deck. I just want to check and apologize. We have it. You have it. That's great. That's all right then.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. No, just wondering, you say in the commentary that Q3 has started really well. And then Chris, you also comment that full year is likely to be age one weighted. So I guess we need to look for age two to be somewhere between 36 and 39 million in revenue, basically. Is that fair to assume? Because I guess you will have year and year growth also in the second half.

Yeah, so probably a bit lower than that. I think there's a couple of things we need to kind of remember. One is, so when we started the year, if you think about kind of where we are like-to-like, the portfolio of Belgian players, production animal antibiotics was about 5% of sales, overall sales. So Jenny said, you know, it was quite big on the top line, but didn't really contribute on the bottom. And then the FX headwinds are probably in the region of 2%. So, and we're directionally kind of, we talked about growing in line with market, probably about three to four. So on a like for like basis, we're saying, yeah, uh you know something like 10 but with the with with the kind of headwinds that we've just talked about so um i would i would say in terms of that range it would probably be at the lower end of that range rather than higher okay perfect okay thank you very much okay okay

I can't actually see any other also just echoing here. I can't actually see any other hands up. So just a final check whether anybody else has any burning questions. I think all of you know us well enough. Maybe Anna will get to know you a bit more to come back and ask questions anyway. But, you know, we're very happy to do that. But if anybody else has got any questions. If not, thank you all very much. And I'm sure we'll be chatting to many of you over the next few weeks and months. So I'll finish the call then. Thanks a lot, everyone.

Thanks very much.