Venture Life Group plc

Good morning and welcome to the Venture Life Group PRC Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just click Q&A, scroll to the bottom, type your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. Have the company review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Gerry Randall, CEO. Good morning.

Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our interim results presentation. Pleasure to speak to you again. We've been on the road for a few days meeting our institutional shareholders, so it's good to have an opportunity to speak to those of you in the retail space. A brief introduction is myself, Gerry Randall. founded VentureLife Business in 2010, CEO, and I've got with me this morning Danny Wells, CFO, who's been with us since late 2021. I'm going to introduce and talk through the first few slides, just an overview of where we are in the business, and then Danny's going to give a bit more detail on the financials, and then we'll spend some more time looking at the products, the marketing, and how we're progressing on the commercials. So let me start with slide two of the overview. So in overview, revenues for the first half of this year were up 24% compared to the comparable period last year. Now that does include an effect from the acquisition we made at the back end of 2022 of the ear roll. Business, so like for like, just up over 10% for the year, for the first half, excuse me. Gross profit, we had an increase in gross profit as those revenues came through. The gross profit margin did reduce in percentage terms slightly, and there's good reasons for that. And it was in line with what we're expecting to happen. And Danny will talk you through that later in the slides. adjusted EBITDA growing and percentage growing as well. And that's important because it shows the operational leverage of our business. Moving to the bottom left, the revenue mix, 55% for venture life brands, 45% for our customer brands. And that will move up towards 60% by the end of the year and into 2024 will go above that 60% mark in favour of the venture life brands as those high margin brands continue to grow and develop within the business. Operating profit grew to 3.3 million. But most notably, I would say the bottom right-hand corner, the cash generation was very strong. And Danny's going to talk through this in the later slide. That's a feature of the business now. It's a feature of having acquired some very cash generative businesses over the last two or three years, but also of good, tight and strict control around our debtor book and control of cash inflows book. That cash generation and free cash flow is a big feature of our business now. You'll see it this year. We're focusing on organic growth of our business. We're not intending to do any M&A this year, but you'll see that cash flow driving our net leverage down. It's gone down in the first half. It will continue to go down in the second half. And then also into next year, we expect to see significant free cash flow driving our net leverage down lower and lower, and that will obviously contribute to a lower interest charge in future years but also that switch from a value from debt into equity which will happen regardless of operational and trading changes. Just on the next slide, we've touched on most of these highlights. We've talked about our revenue performance. There's been good momentum in key brands, Balance Active, Lyft, and Aerol are driving the growth this year. Balance Active and Lyft particularly strong. But that said, the customer brands business has been very strong this year. That's where we develop and manufacture products for customers to sell under their own brands. And that grew 20% this year, but 1.2 million of that growth came from newly developed products, products we developed in 2022 for existing customers that were then launched during the first half of this year and we made deliveries. So that's an ongoing theme in our business, that capability to develop and manufacture and innovate in particular. And you'll see that coming through in our brands portfolio later in the presentation. cash generation strong, increased free cash flow. And as I said, the net debt going down, which is a key feature of our business at the moment. I'm now going to pass you over to Danny, who's going to take you through.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks, Joe. What we'll do, we took some feedback from our recent InvestorMeets presentation where we were too detailed on our financial slides. So we've tried to trim that down for everyone this time around. I hope that's appreciated. So we'll cover revenue firstly in one slide as opposed to six this time. And I'll talk from top left and we'll go around the charts. So firstly, top left, as Jerry's already said, revenue growth for the first half year on year was around 24.5%. 20% growth came from the customer brands. That's on the top left-hand side of that chart. uh driving from 8.8 to 10.6 million and within that growth that we've seen in the first half in the customer brands there you'll have seen a lot of that's been driven by new products that have been developed out of the facility our r d capability at that site so 1.2 million of that growth in the first half came from products we developed last year and have commercialized and are now selling through our customers existing customers in this year which is really pleasing and we'll see an annualization of that impact in the second half On the VLG brands, a 27% growth year on year, but of course, that includes the full annualized impact of the newest acquisition to HL Healthcare, which wasn't there in the first half of last year. So on a pro forma basis, the VLG brands were up around 3.5% year on year. Overall, if I take to the right-hand side of the slide in the middle chart at the top here, I just want to break down those VLG brands in a bit more detail for everyone. There's two key divisions within our BLG brands. There's our UK and EU retail business at the left-hand side of the top middle chart, and then there's the international business. I'll talk to the UK, EU part of that BLG brands business to begin with. First thing to say, that UK EU comprises mainly UK revenues. Over 90% of those revenues come through our retailers in the UK and pharmacy channels and online. We do also have a little bit of revenue through Ireland, the Netherlands retail, Germany on Amazon and USA on Amazon. That's also part of that EU UK picture. It's all managed by the same team and that's why we categorize that together. As you can see in the first half, 21% growth year on year. But again, it's got the full year annualization impact of the acquisition we made, which was not there last year. So on a like for like basis, that business was up 4% year on year. But moving into the second half of the year, you will have seen in our statements on Monday morning that there are 17 new listings. have been secured in the uk some of that is existing products into existing customers but also new products we've developed and we'll see a stronger second half from that part of the business reflecting the impact of that and jerry will talk to that more in a few slides time in the international business you can see that it's up 40 year on year two percent like for like the same reasons i've already broadcast uh but again in the statement on monday you'll have seen that our order book is uh strong particularly on the vlg brands I think if you go back a year ago and we would have talked about our order book being strong, that was very much being driven by our customer brands business, which is a lower margin part of the business. As those of you who follow the business closely will know. But in the VLG Brands business, that's much higher quality of revenue in terms of margin delivery. So that order book growth of 35% that we have this year compared to the same point last year, that includes 2.5 times growth of the VLG Brands international business, which is really important because it means that the revenues flowing through that part of the business and international will be significantly stronger in the second half and higher margin as well, which will have a positive impact on the overall blended margin. Quick snapshot on the right hand side of the page here, just the two pie charts. Just a headline here is that balance active lift and ear roll in the categories of women's health, energy and ear, nose and throat. These are the core parts of the VLG Brands business these days. They comprise around 65% of the overall revenue from that division. And they're all in growth, growing strongly, as you've seen. Balance Active was up 24% year-on-year. Lyft was up 16% year-on-year. And Aerol, our latest acquisition, was also in growth 6%. So if we just go down to the bottom left-hand of this page, and we've broken down those brand revenues in a bit more detail. And I'll just start at the bottom of that chart. Balance Active, you can see in the dark green bars, are the H1 2023 revenues. And you can see Balance Active is in growth. That's 24% up year on year. That includes some growth within the UK, high single digit, but also more driven by international growth through our partner, Bayer Consumer Care. uh bear launched in brazil at the beginning of 2023 that is a key market for them it's driven significant revenue growth from that customer in the first half and we're very pleased with how that's going and of course um with the bear agreements we've got a co-exclusive arrangement where we can go into those markets on the back of bear and launch our own brand under the balance active trademark as well so more opportunities being unlocked as a result of that launch by bear Lyft was also up 16% growth in the first half. Lyft has grown significantly over the last couple of years following the launch of that brand. And in this half, the growth has really been driven by online. And what's important to note about that online growth driving those revenues is that the shape of the P&L is quite different on online sales when it's direct to consumer as opposed to B2B sales. In a typical B2B sale, you might sell it £3.50 per unit. And you generate, say, £2 profits as your cash margin. So the percentage margin is good. But on a D2C sale, you're selling direct to the customer at the retail price. And so the price could be £8 for the same product. But then there's the commission comes off, the fulfilment fees, the advertising through that channel as well. So the pound note margin is actually the same. a setting through B2B. But in percentage terms, it's dilutive in the P&L. But we want to be in the online space because that grows volume. It brings new customers into the brand. It creates new loyalty. So it's where we want to be. And that dilutive impact, we understand that. But as the business grows and we push more through our online sales as a result of our digital transformation that we're talking about, we will see some dilution from that. But it means more volume and new customers coming into the business as well in those markets. Just touched the middle of that slide, Ultradex and dental, this is the oral care range. Pleasing, first of all, to see that Ultradex was up 16% in the first half, continuing its post-pandemic recovery after a fairly stable last couple of years. And Still number one in the halitosis category there as well. But dental has had a much weaker first half. And really that's dental performance. The key drive of that is the performance of our customer in China. Last year in the first half, we had 300,000 revenues for the Chinese market. We've had nothing repeat on that in the first half of this year. So that's a significant downward impact against the 1 million of revenue going through that business in the first half. There is also some small decline in the UK. And we'll talk later on in these slides around the other listing opportunities and movements going around the dental business. But we see that the brand is still strong and has opportunity in the wider APAC region. And we're exploring that. But the direct impact in the first half you see has been driven by that Chinese performance, as I say. Last thing on this slide, I've already talked to the Erol performance. Erol was up 6% in the first half. Key customer in the Erol business is Boots. And there's quite a lumpy ordering pattern with Boots. So we can actually see in the EPOS data that the growth is better than as reported in our net revenue. due to that timing factor, we do expect some stronger growth coming through on that brand in the second half. And there is an element of seasonality around the Erol Swim product as well around the holiday season. Last thing, Pomme Tea and Gel Clare at the top of that chart. This is the oncology support range. These are very profitable products in the business, higher margin relative to much of the rest of the portfolio. As you can see, Pomme Tea's had a very soft first half. But we've got the full order book visibility for this year, and that business will see a significant improvement in the second half of the year at higher margins, which will benefit the overall gross margin. And JL Clare as well, we had some new agreements at the end of last year. Much of the benefit of those agreements will come through in the second half of this year as well. Just touching base a bit in a bit more detail on the margin here, I won't go into too much detail on the driving factors of the supply chain environments over the last two years, COVID challenges, the Ukraine-Russia crisis, all of these things have made operating the business more difficult than it was a few years ago. So I just want to talk about how has that impacted our business in the first half of this year and And I'll focus on the input costs to begin with at the top right hand side. So you will have all seen that last year we built our inventory balance up significantly relative to previous years. And that was to protect supply, to be able to secure raw materials and packaging as early as possible and to not put our order book at risk of being unable to deliver that. So in doing that, we did have to pay some premiums for some of those raw materials during the year to secure them. And really what we've seen in the first half of this year is that that inflated COGS or premium price washed through P&L in the first half of this year so we've got a inventory as of today at half year which is now at more plateau level of pricing it's not plateaued to where it was two or three years ago but it's not as high as it was this time last year so this is one of the key factors of our input costs increasing proportionally with revenue in the first half but we see that to be a temporary impact with the majority of that unwound from the balance sheet in the first half of this year There is also some customer price increase lag effect as well. So on the back of buying those materials at higher prices, we had some orders that had already been placed by our customers late last year. And we've got price increases going into those customers that come effective in early in the second half of this year. So there's a lag impact between us incurring slightly higher COGS and being able to pass on those price increases to our customers. So again, this is another factor behind a visibility of improved second half gross margins. And then finally on this, there's a fair value adjustment, which should be highlighted. This is a technical accounting adjustment. When you buy a business, as some of you will know, you have to fair value the inventory you acquire with that business. So it comes through the P&L at a higher value than its normal COGS. So that has an impact of 0.7% against the total gross margin of the group in the first half, which will not repeat because that inventory has fully unwound value. from the balance sheet. So looking to the full years, you will have noticed that in Calvin Dish's notes on Monday, they've tweaked our gross margin downwards to 40% for the full year. It was around 42% before that. But the key driver of that is not actually to do with the input cost point I've been talking about because we anticipated that first half margin decline year on year and that we don't publish half year numbers in the market, but that was in line with our plan. But the real driver of the decline on the full year is actually to just do the continued strong growth of those customer brands business, which is at a lower margin. And that continued growth is just driving down the overall dilution of the business on a full year basis. But our visibility over that revenue is strong. I'll move on to cash and debt. This is the last official finance slide. I think in the last few years, it's fair to say that if you go back before 2022, cash generation in the business needed improving, needed some more focus, and really that turned a corner in 2022. We generated 1.8 million of cash from ops in the first half of 2022, and that's grown significantly to 4.8 million on an underlying basis in the first half of this year. But more importantly, the free cash flow generation of that. We've done 2.6 million free cash flow in the first half of 2023. And if you think in the full 12 months of last year, free cash flow generation was 2.9 million. So we've nearly done the full 12 months of last year in the first six months of this year. And with the highly cash generative acquisitions we've acquired, 4PL billing models, which create a very fluid revenue cycle in the UK, that's really supported that ability to increase that cash conversion percentage in tandem, as Jerry said earlier, building up our finance team resource, ensuring that we're doing proactive credit control checks on our customers, getting on things early and having more focus on credit control in our business is really having a positive impact over time. And the last point is around all of this is that with the continued growth in that free cash flow improvement coming through, we would expect to be able to pay off a significant amount from our debt facility over the next 12 to 18 months, and it's upwards of six to 8 million. And what that will do is it will create an immediate debt to equity shift for shareholders, which will create an increase in value for shareholders. So we think that's important to note, we've got good visibility over paying down that debt and our ability to do so. Last slide from me before I hand back to Gerry, and this is not a pure financial slide, but we thought it was useful to show a case study of how our business operates with the buy and build model and how we use our vertically integrated structure to grow brands that we acquire and develop new products. BBI Healthcare, big acquisition back in 2021, paid 35 million for it. Immediately earnings enhancing, highly cash generative, but it created loads of opportunity. We acquired key new partners, had a new manufacturing facility, and with it, we got great brands that we knew that we could extend those product portfolios. And since acquisition, we've developed five new products from that portfolio across Balance, Active and Lyft. And with those newly developed products, we've got 15 new listings in the first half of this year. And as you've seen, balance active and lift revenues grew by 24% and 16% respectively in the first half. So the bottom right hand chart there just shows that in the middle of 2021, the business did 10.3 million in revenue the year that we acquired BBI. grew to 11.9 million the following year, and we're well on track to over 13.5 million this year from those brands, and that's built into Cavendish's guidance. So we think that's a great example of what we're able to do using our R&D capability, utilising our revenue synergies and relationships in the UK that we have, but we see a whole load more opportunity through continuing that digital transformation and internationalising those brands further.

financial run through so again as Danny mentioned earlier we've been taking feedback from earlier presentations and what people want to see so we've given a bigger focus in this presentation on particularly on the brands on the commercial sides and on the customer brands and just showing you what we're doing in those areas so we're going to take you through those slides now. First half of 2023 has seen a focus on organic growth, and that's coming from four key areas. Obviously, distribution gains, which we'll talk about, international growth for our international business, in-market growth from our customers, online expansion. We're seeing a bigger proportion of our sales as highlighted in the R&S coming from the online space, and the new products developed and launched both in the first half and continuing to be launched in the second half. As we've mentioned, we're not looking to do M&A this year. The environment of very low share price and also high interest rates means it's not conducive to making acquisitions, either to raising capital or to increasing leverage. And as you've seen already, we're looking to significantly reduce our leverage with our cash generation. So overall, we've had growth in the portfolio. It's second half weighted. Danny's talked about that. Particularly in the second half, you're going to see a much stronger weighting of the higher margin venture life brands where the order book This time, compared to the same time last year, is significantly more than two times ahead of where it was at the same time last year. Good growth in women's health and energy and oncology support. And importantly, the net points of distribution are growing in the UK and retail. Now, I'm going to show you in a subsequent slide the increase in listings. But what we've seen already from our work to the first half is an increase in listings of distribution points in the UK that's given us an annualised 1.3 million of additional revenue, which you'll see the full effect next year. But we'll see about 600,000 of that in the second half contributing to growth. The new product development program is going really well. We've increased the portfolio. I'm going to talk you through a number of those products and what they're doing and where they're going. And we've bolstered our international team. That's quite important to our growth internationally. And we're looking at a new channel development, which I'll talk about later in the presentation. So first of all, let's just go and look at those UK and EU distribution gains. And what we're showing here is the net effect of distribution wins and also against the losses that we have. And these retailers will often have range reviews, normally a couple of times a year, and that will involve changing the range that's on the shelf. It could involve changing a product with a low rate of sale. It could involve moving the shelf space around. So you're always going to see changes in listings, which we use as an opportunity to put more products or alternative products into that space. So that 1.3 million of annualised revenue is the net effect of these additional listings that we've already had secured. So we're continuing to work on new listings. The team is doing a fantastic job. And you can see those that were impacted in the first half, particularly in Sainsbury's, the wider women's health range within Boots, some of our women's health programs. new product development. I'll talk through what those are. The launch in Amazon Averol and some of our other women's health products and in the pharmacy chain as well. You'll see across those different distributors some of the new products that we're launching. As Danny's already mentioned, dental is a brand that's not performing as well as we'd hope. That's a combined effect of difficulties in China, which I'll talk about later. But also competition from other of the bigger brands in the dental space. Dental's in a much more competitive landscape. It's only got 1.3% of the UK mouthwash market. And so we're looking to sort of stratify the more premium product offering into the grocery retailers in the high street and then the the lower if you like the lower grade of dental product going into the discounter so you can differentiate and not have a read across but very happy very pleased with this net gain in distribution and our team continuing to improve this and continuing to get new listings as we go forward Next slide, I'm going to give you a snapshot of where our distribution is in the UK. And as Danny said, this is mainly UK and Ireland. And in the blue, you see where we have current distribution and in the green is where there's opportunity for further distribution. Now, I must add at this point that these are not weighted by value or sales. So I'll give you an example. The high street vertical is Boots and Superdrug. And obviously they have flagship stores. So Boots have 120 flagship stores in their 2,300 store estate. So they all have obviously much higher revenues, much higher throughput than the smaller, say, express stores. So the stats here are not weighted by value. That's pure number of stores. So probably if you look in terms of the high street, we're probably by weighted distribution more than about half of the distribution points. But all of our key five brands that we sell in the UK and that we market in the UK are all very well present in the high street, but more opportunity there. Similarly in grocery. In the discounters, this is a channel where we're seeing more and more people shop. And that's really just, as you would expect, down to the cost of living pressures. We're already quite well present with Dental and Ultradex, but we'll be moving into that channel. And what you look to offer there is a differentiated product so that you don't have a read across. uh from the from the grocery multiples or from high street and i mentioned that earlier we're selling the dual action products for dental in the discounters and we're selling the more premium advanced protect product which is uh more florid in it in the grocery and high street so again giving consumers the choice of of which product to shop and buy we've seen good growth in the pharmacy channel particularly for lift lift has been a strong contributor in the first half but a lot more to go there. And then on our online channel, all of these products are available through Amazon. We have a dedicated team in-house who manage our Amazon business, and that's really, really going well and continuing to grow. But we are going to start to have our own presence in the direct-to-consumer space, and I'm very pleased to announce that yesterday we launched our first direct-to-consumer site brand orientated around the lift products and if you go to the lift glucose site that we have now you'll be able to buy the lift products particularly the newly developed energy boost products there so that's our first foray into this and we're not looking in any way to take customers or cannibalize customers from those other four channels but we're using this as a tool to bring new customers into the brand and grow that brand and those customers may ultimately go on to buy that product from any of those other four channels but we want to introduce them through our website first so depending on how that progresses and and the success of that we'll look to roll out a similar opportunity across our other brands I want to talk now a bit about the new product development. We have a fantastic team across the business, centered out of Italy, but across the business contributing, where we continually develop new products for our own brands and also for our customer brands. And we spend a lot of time and effort on that this year. And I'm really pleased to introduce some of the new brands that we have here. So we've launched this year the Lyft Active Energy Boost, Chewable, Now, we already sell lift glucose, high energy, fast acting glucose for type 1 diabetics. That's a product like the shots that's used if you have a hypoglycemic episode and you take those chewable tablets or the shots to introduce glucose rapidly. We've now launched this premium range, which includes additional benefits from vitamins and minerals. And this will help to reduce tiredness, fatigue as a general everyday energy. So you could use this if you're going to undertake a sporting activity or it could be general tiredness, fatigue, working late in the day, driving. whatever, just to help boost it. And what you're getting here is not a shot of caffeine to boost your alertness, but actually glucose to power your brain. And the brain requires a lot of glucose each day to work. So they've just launched, as you saw earlier, in a number of retailers and online, and now on our new DTC sites, premium price products. These will attract much higher margins, our Our regular lift fast acting glucose shots are in the 40 to 45% gross margin range. These will be 70% gross margin plus as a premium product. So increasing the overall margin of the brand going into the stores now. We're also launching Baby Erol. So this product is targeted specifically at children from six months and upwards. One in three children under five suffer problems with buildup of wax in their ears. So we've launched this product. It's tested and safety tested for the use in six years and up using our olive oil formulation that we have. And that's now launching in stores and will be targeted online. particularly towards that younger age group. It allows us, for example, to be triple-sighted within Boots. So not only will we have the regular ear oil product in the ear, nose and throat section, but we'll have this baby ear oil product in the child's, excuse me, mother and baby section, but also the child's section of the store. So we're very excited about the launch of that, both online and within the retail channel. Eero is a brand that to date we haven't had in too many stores. We bought the business, it was just in boots and now our team is expanding that into other retailers. Also very pleased to talk about our new products in the women's health range. So, as you know, we sell the balance active bacterial vaginosis gel and bacterial vaginosis pessary. We also have a moisture gel and a soothing cream. But we've launched these four new products this year. And these products are a combination of internal development and utilising external products. suppliers to come into the range. So the two purple products are for intimate cleansing. So the Balance Active Intimate Daily Foam Wash and the Balance Active Intimate Daily Wipes. These are to help promote that good pH balance in the vagina, which is what the Balance Active Bacterial Vaginosis Gel and pessaries do anyway. So these products are now launched. We developed the foam wash internally. The wipes are acquired from an external supplier. then on the left we've launched the balance active thrush screen now often as some of you may have heard us talk about before bacterial vaginosis is often misdiagnosed as thrush so we have a symptom checker on our site for balance active and we've had around a million ladies have gone through that symptom checker over the years that it's been up and running And typically a third will come out identifying that they have bacterial vaginosis and will direct them to a store through a click-through where they can buy that product. But about a third are indicating that they've probably got thrush. And at the moment, or to date rather, we didn't have thrush. product in this area. So now we've launched this Balance Active Thrush Cream, a product we've developed. And as it says there, it will help the body fight the cause, relieve the symptoms, and also prevent the reoccurrence of thrush if that's a regular condition that a lady suffers from. Now, interestingly here, this product is not a drug product, so it can be used on a regular basis for prevention, as opposed to the well-recognized products in the space, canister, which is a drug product and can only be used for a limited time. So very excited about this product, allowing us to direct a number of those ladies into that category. And this is launching in retailers and online. The final product here is Herflora, the yellow product in the middle. And this is a probiotic food supplement. It's a complete multivitamin and mirror walls package. It's got over 4 billion live cultures within it. But it's for supporting immunity, promoting the balance of vaginal flora and keeping tiredness at bay and contributing to normal fertility. and material tissue growth. So really pleased about this. Again, this is a product we're not manufacturing ourselves. We're sourcing from an external developer, external manufacturer, but that's now launching through stores. And again, we'll contribute to our range. And we're looking to build out this range across the retailers. And we're very excited to say that super drug are going to be launching in their flagship stores a top shelf presentation of all of our women's health products which will be happening later this year so really happy and pleased with the new product development a great team effort not only from our development team our scale up and industrialization team initially but our marketing team and sales team here in the UK so go into store look for these and you'll see them baby arrows launching stores next week on the second of and you'll see a number of these other products coming through. And just a bit of insight into where we go next. So as I said, we want to spend more of our resources this year and into next year developing new products. And in those five categories in which we're operating, You can see here the areas in green are areas where we're already active. We already have products on the market in yellow, some of those newly launching products. But in blue are some of the areas that we're targeting for next year, and particularly within women's health, a big area for us. We're looking to launch products in the cystitis area, launching menopause range, and also postpartum, so post childbirth. Again, you'll see more developments on those coming through next year. But all of those areas in blue are active exploration for us in new product development. A bit more detail now on some of the stories from H1 and H2. Initially in UK, any retail on our brands, but then also internationally. So if I look at the first half, Balance Active, Sainsbury's launched five new SKUs in this range. And we had new product listings agreed in Boots on Amazon for some of our NPD. And then following on to the second half, we're seeing the Herflora products being launched into Soothing Cream, Thrush and the Pessarie. And as I mentioned earlier, Superdrug launching the Balance Active Complete range across 10 of their flagship stores. Lyft, which has also seen very good growth this year. Sainsbury's are launching six of our new SKUs. So Asda and Morrison's positively reviewing those as well. So we hope to see some developments there. And in the second half, Tesco's launching some of our new products. Asda increasing distribution and Boots launching in the autumn. When we acquired Erol, as I say, the only retail it was really sold in in the UK was Boots. And it's now been launched on Amazon and is now launching in Tesco's and Baby Erol, as I mentioned earlier, launching in this second half. With dental and Ultradex, we're pleased with the progress of Ultradex. It seems to be having that sort of post-COVID bounce. Obviously, during COVID and lockdowns, people were going less to the office, less to work, less on dates, less out on evening occasions and weren't using the fresh breath product so much. But we're now seeing that start to come back and continuing our social media activity, which I'll show you a bit more of later. And dental are being aggressive as we can against the strong competition in the market. This is a much more competitive market than Ultradex. Ultradex is still maintaining the biggest market share here in the UK, but dental is quite small in the overall mouthwash market. we've been quite aggressive with promotions we've been doing a lot of off-shelf activity which is rather being on the main shelves down the aisle something at the end of the aisles and and uh doing some marketing there and that's you know starting to positively contribute to performance and we've seen that through july and august uh as we run through q3 at the moment We're also trialling some of that dual action product in some of the discounters and till point activation, which helps to attract your retailers. So again, just some of the activities we do, many more going on, but I just wanted to give you a bit more of an insight. internationally with our brands. We don't sell Lyft externally, internationally very much at the moment. And similarly, Denture and Ultradex have their external presence. So I focused here on GelClear and Pommity, which are two of our stronger international brands. We don't sell these direct in the UK at the moment. We have partners who do that. But Balance Active, both with our own brand, but also with our partner Bayer, continuing to expand, signing new distribution agreements, increasing the distribution with the moisture pessary and the wipes for the assisting partners. And Bayer, our partner for this product, who sell our products under the Canis Balance brand, under the whole Caniston portfolio, has a strong order book and has had good growth, as Danny's mentioned already, this year. Gell-Clair, we continue to progress that with registrations in Canada, but also in Brazil, where we're looking for our newly signed partner there last year to start to launch the product later this year or early into next year. And we've got a very good order book already for Gell-Clair for the second half of this year, and that will be driving some of our stronger revenues in the second half. Erol, we've got a partner in the Nordics who sell this product under the Vaxol brand, same product, but that's the brand, and they're doing very well. They've got strong growth already over 22, and the order book gives us high visibility for the rest of this year, but we continue to expand that range. And with Pommity, we're looking at improvements around labeling and improvements around production. We're supporting our existing partners to grow and develop this business and looking at ways to bring down the cost of goods and improve the overall profitability of that brand. So lots going on in those areas and very excited about that growth. We've also wanted to bring you a bit more information about our marketing activities within the UK and the EU, and particularly how we sit in terms of market share. I know some of our pre-submitted questions were asking about market share and how that's developing for our brand. So I'm going to start with Balance Active. So if you look overall in the top circle, the bacterial vaginosis market, which is where we were targeting to date, was actually in decline by value in the UK in the first six months. And that was, we think, through a shift from the higher price Canis Balance products, which, as we mentioned earlier, are sold by Bayer, into our product, which is lower priced here in the UK. And that's really a cost of living pressure. And what you'll see in our volume market share data underneath that is our market share has actually grown significantly. in that six month period. And that's because people have been shopping down to get a better price and a better value. We've also launched the multi-pack end of last year into this year, which has contributed. And overall, as you've seen, our balance active revenues are very strong, but even in the UK, they've grown quite nicely as well. Right hand side of the page, just highlighting some of the details around our marketing campaigns. And this presentation is up on our website ultimately. So you've got an opportunity to take that down and read in more detail. But did a really good study earlier in back in the last year into this year, surveying 5000 women about their attitudes to women's intimate health. And that's given us really good insight. for our marketing campaigns and supporting the growth of that brand. So really great job by the team there in how we're progressing that brand and, you know, really bringing that space more activity and more activation. Looking at Lyft, again, the same sort of metrics as we're looking at before. So the glucose market has grown. We think that's around, I think, a bit more pushing in the pharmacy channels for recommending the glucose products to diabetics, but also a bit more of a return to activity and going out more where you want these on the go glucose supplements if you're type 1 diabetic to protect you in a hyperglycemic attack. We've actually seen a growth in our market share. We're now 45% market share in this space, 6.6% growth. And as Danny's already mentioned, our revenue is growing strongly. Really pleased about the growth in this brand. Really good activity here. The new product development that we've launched, we're very excited about that and launching our own D2C site. So we'll continue to monitor that as we go through the coming weeks and months and update you about that at a later date. Moving on to ear roll on this next slide so ear roll as Danny mentioned has been a little bit quiet in the UK in the first six months of the year a bit lower than we'd expected but we do monitor the EPOS data and we're confident that this is down to ordering patterns within the retailers the EPOS is tracking positively it's growing and so we think this will just be a a timing effect but overall that market has grown we've maintained our position within that market and are very happy with the results as we've mentioned earlier baby era launching in boots new era packaging that's been refreshed and is now available and we were delighted to be awarded the most valuable product in this category in the pharmacy magazine awards over this year which is a testament again to the team the marketing and the work we've done refreshing the brand and refreshing the activities and significant distribution gains going forward, and that will continue internationally as we expand this brand. Moving on to dental now, and as I mentioned already, and as Danny's mentioned, dental's had a difficult time. Mouthwash market, flat. Just noticed that these blobs are slightly inverted, so you've got net revenue in the middle and market size below. We've suffered slightly in market positioning. And as I've mentioned, we've got strong competition from the leader in this space, which is Listerine, who have been quite aggressive in their marketing, their claims. And we're doing similar things now. We're pushing back on promotions. We're looking at claims and you'll see improved claims coming out of this product and activating good activity here. And we're starting to see the results of that in July and August and September with improvements in that performance around dental. I'll touch on China at the moment because I know that's whilst we're talking about the UK here China is our main overseas market and Our new partner, Samarkand, that we signed to the back end of 2021, took a big order in the first half of 2022. And that sort of shows against our comparative this year, where they've taken nothing in the first half. But they suffered from the lockdowns that happened in China. They're widely known about. And obviously, they're starting to try and recover that market. But this is an area that's going to continue to be under review for us internationally about how we best access China. that market because when we have an active partner and they're working well, we know that dental sells very well. I'll move on to Ultradex now and run through similar stats here. Again, reminding you that it's net revenue in the middle, blob and market position underneath. So the halitosis market grew in the UK in this period. And that's predominantly because there's three mouthwash brands in this category, which is ourselves, CB12 and a product called the Fresh Breath Company. That product was acquired by Church and Dwight, big oral care player. about a year ago, and they've been very actively marketing and promoting that product. And we think the growth in this market value has simply been through the growth of that product. So you'll see in terms of net revenue, we're about in the same place, slightly ahead of last year. Our market share in percentage terms has gone down, but our market share in in value and what we're selling stay where it is. And that's because that brand has grown in the market space. They've been quite aggressive on discounting and we're countering that ourselves to maintain our position. And as you said, we are seeing growth in this product. So we're not disconcerted about that position. I'm going to go on and talk now about the customer brands. This is the brands where we develop and manufacture products for our customers. Many of these are longstanding customers, significant customers. Those of you investing in the public space in the UK will probably know Alliance Pharma. And in the middle of the pictures here, you know, we make Kellercote for Alliance Pharma. We're not the only manufacturer, but, you know, we make that for them. So that's a typical product for us. But I've given some examples here across the page. On the right hand side, we make a range of products called Talmarine for our partner Alpha Sigma. And on the left hand side, we made a range of products called Relife for the Menorini brand. So these are customers where we continue to develop, manufacture new products for them, long standing relationships. And we act as part of their development, innovation and manufacturing business. And we interact with these partners on a regular basis. Strong revenue growth this year. As I said earlier, part of that revenue growth has come from new product development, over 1.2 million. So over 10% of that, 20% coming from new product development. But it shows the value of these long-term relationships. And the team in Italy do a fantastic job servicing these customers and continuing to develop and offer new opportunities for them. And we continue to see strong growth in customer brands, and we expect that to continue going forward. A very successful company. profitable part of our business which also underpins the ability to develop and manufacture our own brands and and fully uh move towards increasing utilization of our manufacturing capabilities we have significant capacity in our plant at the moment we're running it over six around sixty percent i should say excuse me in italy and we're running at twenty percent or so capacity in sweden so lots there to uh to do further work for I'm going to now talk about what we call our channel development. And this is a slide that we've been working on this year. And we talk frequently about venture life brands on the left, and we have the characteristics of that channel, you know, where we totally own the product. We go through retailers or distributors. And in the UK, we use our marketing and our promotion. We've talked about the customer brands business where the customer will own the brand, but we do a lot of work with them. We're a service provider in effect. That generates slightly low margins for us, but still very profitable. And something we've been doing in recent years is starting to move into private label. And the categorization here is that you're selling generally to a retailer who has their own estate of stores. They have their own footprint and distribution and you offer them a product which is effectively exclusively there. So there's an example here in these photos on the right hand side where we've launched a product with boots under the number seven brand. And this is a product for Rosacea. There's no impact on sales in the first half, but good orders and delivery coming through the second half. And the model with private label is that they're able to buy the product from you at the retailer at a lower price than if we were selling them a venture life brand, because we're not going to be contributing to marketing. It allows them to offer a more competitive price to the customer. But in terms of realized brand, which is what Danny referred to earlier on the presentation, realized margin, excuse me. which Danny referred to earlier in the presentation. So what's the EBITDA margin flowing off of that product? It's very similar to the Venture Life brands in the UK where we have to promote the brand. So there's already some products here. We're working in private label. It's a small area of our business at the moment. But we're going to be expanding this area significantly. Opportunities to sell into many of the major retailers across UK and Europe, where we'll be offering a differentiated product into their portfolio to allow them to offer value to customers, allowing us to generate value margin off of our IP. Just a couple of slides to wrap up now. So it's really important to us, our sustainability drive. And as a business, we've been on this for a long time, but it's only been in the last couple of years we've talked more and more about it. Our project called Sustainable Life is two things. It's to drive increasing sustainability through our business. but also to drive the communication and publication of what we're doing. And sustainability is very important to us. We have manufacturing facilities. It's important that we drive towards a net zero position. And in 2023, our focus has been around our Italian development and manufacturing facility. And that's a facility where The majority of our products are manufactured and the majority of our people are located. So in 2023, we've been working towards achieving B Corp status. We've also been assessing our carbon footprint at that site and working off the back of that, we'll be working towards our net zero plan. And we've been undertaking lifecycle analysis for three of our key brands. And all of those initiatives are on target to be completed in 2023. We expect to receive B Corp approval. We'll have our carbon footprint. We'll have the ability to work on our net zero 2050 plan as well. And then the plan is using those models and processes we've developed in Italy during 2024. We're going to roll that out. across the rest of the group and achieve those same targets by the end of 2024. And I have to give credit to the team in Italy, the ESG team headed by Ennio, one of our people there, supported by Emma. They've done a fantastic job and they've supported around the locations as well with other members of our team supporting that. And they've done a brilliant job to bring us to this point. Furthermore, in the summer, we rewarded the Silver EcoVardis Sustainability Rating. So this is a rating that a lot of our retail customers ask us to go through, and it's an assessment of the sustainability of the business. And again, at the moment, that's done on our BioCosmos facility because that's where the majority of our products are done. And in 2021, we were given the Bronze Rating. rating and that put us in the top 50% of assessed companies and now we've been given the silver rating which puts us in the top 25% of the companies they assess and that's really fantastic progress because this is a dynamic rating so as all the companies are rated every year or every other year the hurdle moves up, the bar moves up so if you stay still and don't improve your sustainability you will actually go backwards in the rating chart so going forwards is not only a testament of improvement but it's significant improvement of our sustainability so well done to the whole team around the business for because everybody has to contribute to this improvement and it's around packaging it's around heating use of power it's how we transport our products all those aspects come in to improving that so a real successful result for the team And really just, I want to wrap up with a few comments before we move to questions. And it's summarizing really those H1 highlights and what we think the outlook is. So as you said, good growth in customer and venture life brands. Gross margin still being weighed upon by legacy higher input prices. We all know about inflation. We've been building that into our inventory over the last 12 months, but we are seeing that plateau and we will see that improve. And we're starting to see more permanent price increases come through the business. We have got efficiencies in operating activities. We appointed Fabio Perego, our new general manager, managing our plants in Italy and Sweden. He's working really well with our team to help drive operating efficiencies through our expenditure, as are the rest of the group. The digital transformation progressing, that's going really well. And I'm really excited about the launch of our first D2C site because owning more and more of that online space is going to be important to us. fantastic operating cash conversion the business is shedding a lot of cash now and that's due to good operating procedures and tight management within the financial part of the business and the finance team has done a spectacular job in doing that and we've reduced our debt even having paid our full deferred consideration for this year amount of £3 million for HLH we've got a loan note to pay at the end of 24 but that's factored into all our cash expectations within the uh outlook in cavendish so going on to h2 and i know a number of uh shareholders commenters have commented that you know you guys have got to have a really big h2 etc but i think we've demonstrated through this that we've got high visibility about h2 the higher margin venture life brands are going to contribute a much bigger component and that's all down to timing the internationally the venture life brands is a lumpy business it's orders from our customers and it's always been waiting to the second half of the year if you look back over the last five six seven years you'll see that but the team's doing a fantastic job we've got great visibility in the order but the production scheduling is all in there so you're going to see a lot more from those higher margin brands significantly driving the margin in the second half As I mentioned earlier, we've got some customer price increases coming through and that visibility on the order book. So you're also going to see the impact of the new listings coming through in the UK, as I said, an annualised 1.3 million on what we've done already, of which we'll see some of that this year and that good operating cash conversion. And I know a number of the questions that have come in have been around the debt in the business and our focus on getting that down. And absolutely, absolutely. We were looking to acquire the HL healthcare era business in September of last year. We're all scarred by the mini budget that came out and we had to adapt and adopt a different strategy quickly to bring that in. But we did. It's working really well. It's cash generation is really strong. But we recognise that investors and shareholders want to see that coming down. So you'll see our net debt coming down this year. And again, I mentioned earlier, this swap from debt into equity is really important because as you pay down debt, more of the enterprise value of the business is ascribed to the equity. So even without any growth over the course of next year, you'd expect to see a 20% increment in the equity value of the business through that debt. So just to finish my sort of finishing comments, I just want to firstly congratulate the whole team in Venture Life because every business at the moment, and those of you who are in business will know this, it's hard work. You know, the situation's dynamic. Consumers are fickle. Interest rates are high. Supply chain's been difficult. and pressures and uncertainty about recession. So operating that environment and the team across the whole business has been spectacular in developing new products, in manufacturing, delivering to customers, increasing the online presence, dealing with our retailers, supporting them, growing the activity. So I have to congratulate them all from very bottom to the very top and even around the boardroom table, really fantastic work. We're a business sat on a free cash flow yield of 17% to 18% at the moment, which is incredibly cheap as the shares go. And we think we're now showing you how we're confident about the second half of this year and how we're going to deliver that. That H2 trajectory strong from the brands, the equity switch, brands going strongly and improving margins. So we've got some questions that have been submitted. I'm happy to run through those now. I'll read them out. I don't think we're going to get through all of them in our time. But if there's any more, please submit them. And any we don't answer now online, we're going to cover in writing and they'll be submitted later on. So I'm going to move to those questions and I'm taking them in no specific order. I'm just dealing with the ones that are coming. So thank you, everybody, for making the questions. I think we've answered some of these already. But one of the first questions was a lot of our offerings are within diabetes, women's health, mouthwash and other all existing highly competitive niches. How are you planning to take market share away? I think I've probably answered that on a number of slides. I think the dental sits in the most competitive of those spaces. But I would argue that a number of other products sit in less competitive spaces that are growing. Women's health is very interesting for us. So if you go to some of the high street retailers now, I would mention Holland and Barrett in particular. And super drug probably even boots as well. There's a big push into the area of menopause. You'll see big displays and big product offerings there. And that's an area we're looking to move into in the coming years because we see that as a good opportunity, but also broadening our very natural, very supportive women's health brand. And Charlie and the marketing team have done a fantastic job in how they conducted research to understand the sector more and get that out there. So I'm not going to push any more on that. I think I've answered those questions as we go through. There's a question here about how are you seeing Chinese demand in light of their slower economic rebound post-COVID? And I think, again, we've covered that in the presentation. The demand is slow. Our partner has had real difficulties there. And we're looking to consider how we service that whole APAC region. We have a number of international partners there, but we want to come with a partner and an organisation who can help support us in the APAC region. And we are talking to a number of contributors about that. The next question I've got is how important is reducing debt to the board? As I see, this is holding back the value of the business on the back of good performance. I think we've talked about the net deposition quite a lot. I do agree. I think debt does scare a lot of investors and the last year has been so. And we do talk to people who want to see us in a net cash position. um and i think that's you know quite important i think and i hope you can see we're a highly cash generated business business you know 108 cash conversion in the first half of the year we're not going to sustain 108 cash conversion but it's going to be over 90 or ongoing basis going forward and that's going to drive it down so we've listened to concerns we recognize the environment the board recognizes that as well and so we're looking to drive down that leverage There are a lot of M&A opportunities still coming across our desk. And there is a frustration on one part that we can't access those because the share price is far too low to raise equity. We don't want to increase our leverage. We want to reduce it. But the market is buoyant and there's lots of activity and opportunity there. So when we get to that point when we can access those, we're going to push on and do that. But we recognise the concerns at the moment to keep the balance sheet as strong as possible. The next question is, what is the company's regulatory strategy on meeting the new MDR director? Well, we got ahead of the game with this a long time ago and our team in Italy have been doing a fantastic job. And I have to say as well, in the Netherlands where some of our files are and also in So we got ahead of it very early on. We progressed it very well and we were all set to have completed all that work during 2024 because that was the original deadline for completing of the medical device regulation transfers of existing products. We've got 19 technical files to deal with. However, earlier in the year, they extended that deadline to 2028. So it means you can continue to sell on your medical device directive MDD certificate until 2028. And you don't have to rush to do that. So, you know, we're anticipating over a million euros of expenditure in this year to get all our medical device regulation done. But now we can extend that and move it further out over those four years, continue to sell the products under the medical device directive. And that's eased our cash flow on that. And again, that's going to be contributing over the next couple of years to driving down that net debt position. I've got another question which was around most of your offerings are in competitive spaces. I think I've already dealt with a very similar question, so I'm not going to mention that. The next question we have is two questions. Firstly, there appears to be a lull in international deals and is this due to Sharon leaving and what structure is now in place here? No, it's not international development. It's a classic business development activity where you have to put bread on the water. You have to do a lot of meetings. You have to talk to a lot of customers. And of course, those customers have to assess the products and move those forward. um i have to say you know sharon was a loss to the business uh to us but the team has stepped up really well um we have the uh the existing structure in place that was below sharon they're reporting into me directly now and those people have stepped up we've also bolstered that team we've put more business development people in place through a quarter two of this year and they're working really well i think you can see particularly in the uk where those listings And new distribution points have done really well. But also there's strong activity internationally. We've got new partners launching products in the second half. Great discussions ongoing. So, yeah, you know, Sharon leaving the business, of course, is a loss to us. But the team has stepped up well and are moving forward strongly. What can you do to improve your full share price performance? Which is a constant question we always get. Well, my job is to run the company. My job is to run the business with the board and with our team to deliver growth in revenues and profits, cash flow and opportunity. And I think the job of a CEO is always to give your team the space they need to deliver what they need to deliver. And I absolutely have to say our team has delivered. They've delivered growth in revenue, growth in EBITDA margin, growth in profit and cash generation at the bottom. And they've done that brilliantly in a very difficult time. Not at one single point since the start of 2020 has our production facility not been operating, not been delivering product, not been serving customers. So I think personally the business has performed brilliantly. particularly well in this period. Share price, I think you all have to recognize the share price is a function of business performance and stock market. And the stock market has had an absolutely dreadful time. I've been involved in companies on AIM either as an advisor initially or running them myself since AIM started in 1995, 96, whatever it was. And I think this is the worst point that market's been in for a long time. What you're seeing is significant numbers of companies coming off the market, difficulties in raising capital. The whole point of AIM was to be almost like a VC private equity opportunity for the listed market. Very difficult to raise money. Redemptions are extensive across the small cap market. As we talked to a number of our institutional shareholders, many of them still suffering redemptions. And that's because of two things, I think. I think people are moving into fixed interest products. I mean, if you can get a 6% risk-free return on your money, why wouldn't you go there when you're sat in an equity market where liquidity and redemptions is difficult? Nearly a billion pounds of cash going out of the UK equity markets every month, first half of this year, and it's exacerbating the position for small companies because that's where there's lower liquidity, and obviously high risk for investors so i think you have to recognize and i think people have their own view and i listen to shareholders have a number of shareholders talk to me directly on a regular basis and again i'm very happy to do that for any of you today you know the office number you can reach me there but we've performed very well in in difficult markets and difficult conditions of course we've had difficulties like any company dental's been a disappointment we're addressing that but other brands growing substantially and very effectively so I'm proud of my team, I'm proud of my business and I'm proud of the people who work in it because they do a spectacular job at what we do and I would defend that at all times. However, the market's not been kind to us and we have to recognize our job at the moment is to run the business, generate cash, deliver, delivery growth in results and fundamentally look after our customers and support our customers. And that's what we're doing. And I think the market will change. It will revert. I do thank you wholeheartedly for all of you shareholders who continue to support us. I understand it's very difficult. I invest in the market myself. My portfolio suffered like everybody else. But you have to look through fundamentally good management teams and fundamentally good businesses, well positioned with price competitiveness in markets where we have niches and we can grow and develop. And that's where we sit. So I'm not going to say any more on that point. I think I've probably said too much about it and gone on too long. But we don't have any more questions on the screen. I think we've answered all of those. Yes, indeed. and the team and Danny and myself here. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for your questions. Thanks for supporting us. We're enjoying that, although hard work, we're enjoying the business at the moment. The team's responding fantastically. They're working well. The feel, the culture and the activity in the business is fantastic. I must also add a final point, sorry. It was the 40th year this year of our Italian business by Cosmos Giannucca's business. Founded it 40 years ago we had a great celebration in september of that a spectacular um a performance a great result and uh you know congratulations and well done the whole company came together celebrated that had a great time of uh you know getting together and really growing developing the cultural business so uh so excited about that uh great milestone and um yeah uh looking forward to next year so i'll stop now thank you very much um and uh any questions afterwards please continue to submit we'll answer them

Absolutely. And just to reiterate, any questions that do come through, the team will be able to review and we'll publish responses where appropriate to do so on the InvestorMeet company platform. Gerry, Daniel, thanks indeed for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session? I should be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the team can better understand your views and expectations. It's going to take a few moments to complete. I'm sure it'd be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the team at VentureLife Group PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's presentation and good afternoon to you all.