Venture Life Group plc

2020 was an exceptional year for the VentureLife Group, not least of which it was against the backdrop of the global pandemic. Our revenues increased 49% to £30.1 million. Our adjusted EBITDA over 100% to £6.1 million. Our profit after tax over 160% to £2.4 million. And we finished the year with cash of over £42 million in our business as a combination of the cash we've generated and the equity raise that we undertook in the autumn. 2020 was also a pivotal year for the Venture Life Group, in particular operating in the pandemic that arrived at the start of the year. It was a testament to our business, to our employees and in particular how flexible and adaptive they can be because they kept the business open for the whole of the year and even in Italy where our manufacturing and development facility is where the pandemic hit first early on in 2020. It was a time when we invested in that business in particular. We invested £1.2 million in that plant to increase our capacity from 33 million units of product a year to 55 million units of product a year. And we did that because we expect strong growth out of our business, both on an organic basis, but also from acquisitions that we expect to make with the money that we raised in the autumn. We launched the Dysin Plus hand gel range. That was in response to the pandemic and enabled hospitals and pharmacies to continue to serve and admit patients in that very difficult time. And again, a big thanks to all our employees across the group who kept us going during the pandemic. We acquired the PharmaSource business in the Netherlands, a great business that had been established for a number of years. It gave us access to the retail distribution in the Netherlands and also a great portfolio of products and a great team that now work for us in the Netherlands. And we finished the year with our biggest ever equity raise, where we raised over £34 million net of expenses to spend on further earnings enhancing acquisitions as we go forward. A good example of how we look to deploy the capital we raised in the autumn is to look at our earnings enhancing acquisitions from the past. And one of these that I'd like to look at is dental. We acquired this brand in 2018. It's a dual phase mouthwash for removing plaque. And 2020 was a very strong year for dental with revenues growing 80%. This is a brand that we acquired in 2018 and two years later is showing significant growth in the product. This has come from increasing distribution and in 2020 we saw 800 of Boots stores start to list the product, which is the first time it's been listed in Boots since we owned the product. And we also developed some great Uline extensions, the Dental Mermaid and the Dental Unicorn to start to attract customers from outside the existing core product range into the brand and to grow our base. So again, this is a good example of a product that we've acquired and after a couple of years it's showing very strong growth and very good growth within our business. Looking forward into 2021, we have a very exciting year ahead. The first job, of course, is to consolidate on the business that we grew in 2020 and to make sure that continues into the future. But we expect further organic growth from our business. And of course, with the newly scaled up operating capacity that we have from 2020, we're looking to deploy the capital we've raised for some great earnings enhancing acquisitions, which we can then put through our facility in Italy and generate greater revenues and greater profitability and increase that operating leverage that we have on the business. So it's going to be an exciting time ahead and we look forward to telling you more about it in the future.