Alcidion Group Limited (ALC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Rebecca, it's time. You may start the meeting.

Thank you, Mel, and good afternoon, everyone. My name is Rebecca Wilson, the Chair of the Board and of today's meeting. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Annual General Meeting of Alcidion Group Limited. I'd like to start by acknowledging and paying respect to the traditional custodians of the land wherever those participating at meeting are located. I am on the land of the [indiscernible]. To ensure that shareholders and their representatives can attend the meeting safely, this meeting is being held virtually. Shareholders will be able to participate, ask questions and cast direct votes at the appropriate time whilst the meeting is in progress. As the time is now 2:00 and the company has complied with the relevant requirements for convening this meeting, and we have received confirmation that a quorum is present. I formally declare the meeting open. I am joined through this webcast today by my fellow directors, Malcolm Pradhan, Nick Dignam, Simon Chamberlain, Victoria Weekes, Danny Sharp; and our Managing Director and CEO, Kate Quirke. Also, in attendance is our CFO, Matt Gepp; and Company Secretary, Melanie Leydin. In addition, we have the representatives of the company's external auditors, William Buck, in attendance at this meeting. The notice of meeting has been given in accordance with the company's constitution, and copies are available for you on the company's website, the share registry's online broking side or on the ASX market announcements platform. I will take the notice of meeting and explanatory statement as read. Further, we would like to advise shareholders, we will be withdrawing resolution 7, approval of the 10% placement facility, from today's meeting. The company currently has a market cap of over $300 million. And as such, we are ineligible entity under ASX Listing Rule 7.1A to apply for this additional 10% facility. The format of today's meeting will be a brief Chair address from myself; a presentation by our CEO, Kate Quirke, which also includes an update from our U.K. Managing Director, Lynette Ousby. We'll then consider our performance business on today's agenda. Following the presentation by Kate, we will provide an overview of the Q&A and voting procedure for today's meeting. You will then have an opportunity to ask questions on the company's business operations. Following this Q&A session, we will move into the formal business for today's meeting. And on the conclusion of the formal business, there will be a further Q&A session held giving all shareholders the opportunity to ask questions in relation to the formal business. There will be an opportunity to submit written questions as well as questions verbally if you wish to do so. As previously noted, this is a virtual meeting, and shareholders will be able to ask questions and cast direct votes at the appropriate time whilst the meeting is in progress. Questions received during the meeting which are of similar nature will be grouped and answered at the appropriate time. If you have any questions, which you feel were not addressed at today's meeting, we invite shareholders to contact the company by phone or e-mail. So I'm now very pleased to be providing you with my address following a year of great achievements for Alcidion. Two years ago, the Board agreed on a 3-year growth plan that would move us from a digital health aspirant to a global organization at the frontier of unlocking and managing data to benefit clinicians and improve health care outcomes. We are seeing a significant step change where technology is transforming health care by streamlining the hospital workflow, optimizing legacy systems, reducing human error and responding to patient desire for out-of-hospital care. This step change has in part been driven by the various things that keeps us a part today with smart and efficient health care systems, equipping hospitals with greater resilience and an ability to cope with surges in demand like we've seen with COVID with reduced impact on patient care. Our flagship product, Miya Precision, is powerful at its utility to provide these solutions, and it was pleasing to see growing demand over the last 12 months, most significantly with our milestone deal with South Tees Hospital in the U.K., and our selection as preferred provider with the Australian Department of Defense. We are trusted by some of the world's leading health care organizations in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom with our share of customers increasing in each of these markets. The impact of our growth strategy was compelling with record revenue, positive operating cash flow and growing momentum in new contracts. This, combined with retention of existing customers, provides a strong foundation for continued growth in the years to come. Given the focus on digital health solutions to address the myriad of challenges within hospitals, our active M&A program sought to continuously assess and identify potential acquisition targets. This has been a highly disciplined process where acquisitions could enable us to expand our team, our product capability, our market presence and align with our current product suite. Our acquisition of U.K. patient flow software business, ExtraMed, achieved all of these things, building on our current flow products and expanding our U.K. footprint with new customers and staff. Aligned with our growth strategy, we have a Board adopted a forward thinking and continuous approach to evaluating the skills and experience of the directors to support Alcidion's next phase of growth. As part of this program, Alcidion Co-Founder and former CEO, Ray Blight, retired from the Board in June; and Nick Dignam concludes his 5-year Board tenure today. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Ray for his exceptional contribution to the success of Alcidion both as a company Executive and then Non-Executive Director; and Nick for his guidance and leadership, particularly in his capacity as Chair of the Audit Risk Committee and his guidance on our acquisition program. The rotation of these Directors allowed us to attract and appoint 2 highly regarded Non-Executive Directors, Victoria Weekes and Daniel Sharp to steer our company to the next level. Welcome to you both. Finally, the support of our shareholders has enabled us to implement our growth strategy through our successful capital raising early this year. Whilst we are pleased to see our business self-generating cash flow, additional funding is enabling us to fast track our growth. This continued investment will enable us to achieve greater economies of scale and capitalize on the opportunities ahead of us. Ultimately, our success is measured through the positive influence our technology has on patient care. We started our company with this purpose, and it informs our work at every level within Alcidion. Today, we have more than 150 staff, and I'd like to thank all of them for our success is the sum of what they do each day. I'd also like to thank Kate and her senior leadership team, my fellow directors and you, our shareholders. Thank you. I'll now pass over to our CEO, Kate Quirke, who will present on the company's operations. Over to you, Kate.

Thanks, Rebecca. I'll just get the screen share going. That is working for everybody. Thanks very much. Rebecca and I -- may I also extend my welcome to you all and equally acknowledge the traditional owners on the land on which we are meeting. To me, that's the [indiscernible] people great calling nation. And I pay my respect to them past and present. As Rebecca has outlined, for FY '21 was a year of growth and scale for Alcidion. We expanded our team, our products and our customer reach. We experienced success in Australia and New Zealand and significantly increased our presence and position in the United Kingdom. The pandemic has no doubt changed the way we do everything in our lives, and health care, to be honest, has been perhaps more impacted than much. And we've seen, as a result, a significant uptake in technology to support that. Much of it has been very innovative and in response to the changing situation we've experienced during the pandemic. The emergence of telehealth and virtual care has created great opportunities for those of us who were in the technology sector. More importantly, we began to deliver on a more patient-oriented approach to delivery of health care. Locally, in Australia and New Zealand, we've been really pleased to work with customers that have enabled us to extend the capabilities of Miya Precision to support virtual care. And we've had that along with our sophisticated assisted support that provides enhanced monitoring and alerting of patients outside the hospital with them being treated as that they were in hospitals so that we can alert to any changes in patient status. We've worked during the year and in the prior year with Sydney Local Health District and their RPA virtual hospital TAM as well as within the hospital to complete the initial 12-month rollout of our platform to support virtual care and COVID patient remote monitoring. And we were pleased to see this translate into a 3-year contract in the last quarter, which extended it to a wider range of patient cohorts, and we're moving forward to continue to work with them on that. We also saw the contract for Murrumbidgee Local Health District extended as we continue to provide mobile access to electronic medical record data and advanced clinical decision support through the use of our Miya Precision platform and our mobile platform, Miya Memory. We also signed a contract for an initial pilot with an option to extend to a further 5 district health Boards for our medication management solution that we resell from Better. And this involved an initial pilot using patient track as the access portal. And I'm pleased to report this is now live and has been running for a couple of weeks. So that's hot off the press. We look forward to reports coming from the pilot in the first half of next calendar year. And this is actually the first implementation of better medication management in the Southern Hemisphere. We ourselves, Alcidion, have 2 implementations already in the U.K. with Dartford and South Tees, but this is the first in this part of the world. As I mentioned earlier, we have seen an acceleration in the evolution of new models of care as a result of the pandemic, and they were always coming. Obviously, they have definitely been accelerated. We now know and have an increasing body of evidence that remote patient monitoring or hospital in the home can deliver benefits for the management of chronic and patients in the post-acute phase. And it took over in some ways to see the capability of this rolled out scale. And I think there's still quite a lot of scale to come. But the outcomes for patients, the better quality of life, reduced exposure to further potential infections, reduction in adverse events and ultimately happy and more engaged patients. And for health care providers, there are also greater efficiencies and safer environment for their staff. So I think we're seeing this is a really embedded model of care that will continue -- we and Alcidion continue to see further opportunities for this into the future. As Becky alluded to, many of you know that FY '21 for us as the year in which we continued to invest in our business so that we could scale and be able to support the growth that we anticipated and have now begun to deliver. We are a people business in so far that people develop software and that's one of our most significant investment is in the people that work for us. And that said, a 23% increase in FY '21 in terms of numbers of people. That will continue to increase in FY '22. And we've invested in additional people across the business, sales, marketing, product, corporate services. We continue to provide our staff with the best employment experience in what is a purpose-driven organization. You will have read, many of you, I'm sure, about increasing difficulty in attracting people and employing people or churn of people. So we've continued to roll out initiatives to measure and respond to the needs of our staff with very positive responses coming through to our triweekly engagement survey. We've been able, during this time, to continue to attract high-caliber people with Matt Gepp joining us during the -- towards the end of FY '21 as CFO. And we also grew the U.K. team as we looking to meet the increasing opportunity that is presenting there. We appointed Lynette Ousby during the year as Managing Director of the U.K. business at the end of 2020 calendar year from her initial role of GM of sales in that territory. The U.K. represented 44% of our revenue in FY '21, up 22% from FY '20. So the U.K. continues to represent a really significant growth opportunity for us. And we thought you could hear more directly about this market. We asked Lynette to record a short presentation and update to the market. So you don't only always hear about the business from me. Now with all respect to timing, it is actually 3:00 a.m. in the U.K. So we thought it was a bit unfair to ask you to do it directly. So we have actually recorded a presentation for her, which we will show you now.

Hello. I'm Lynette Ousby, and I'm the U.K. Managing Director for Alcidion. During this presentation, I'll be talking you through a reflection on 2021 and what I see is the market opportunity for Alcidion here in the U.K. The first half, looking back at 2021, it certainly was a year of achievements mixing both growth into white space or into new sites but also increasing our share of qualitative number of existing customers, which are called out there. But just to point out some of the notable deals for us here in the U.K., East Lancashire Hospital NHS Trust is a brand-new client for Alcidion, taking both our Patientrack and Smartpage solutions. The reason this was significant for our team in the U.K. is that this is the first time those products were procured alongside a third implementation. So very much East Lancashire positioned as the purchase of Patientrack and Smartpage, alongside their EPR strategy with Cerner, which start to position Alcidion as the real partner of choice or a complementary solution to an EPR, not just an alternative to an EPR. So switching our position in around an alternative to an EPR with significant deals to call out South Tees Hospital which was our second Miya Precision sale in the U.K. following Dartford. So whilst this is significant based on the size of that opportunity and the disruption against an original EPR strategy to potentially take a [indiscernible] it also gives the second reference site for Miya Precision here in the U.K. alongside Dartford, 2 reference sites are extremely important in the U.K. market because it gives us more credibility around your solution, but is also often insisted on in official procurements. So those 2 deals now be Miya Precision and as an entrant that was perceived entrant to the U.K. market, securing that second deal was like the holy grail of procurement that for us in the U.K. So putting on Dartford and South Tees, again, again, alongside the procurement to gain credibility in the market with an emerging technology, you have to be seen to be able to deliver on that technology in a timely manner. You're probably aware that a monolith can take -- a monolithic EPR case studies will tell you that between 2 or 5 years to get clinical convergence as we position Miya in a modular way, which means that they get clinical impact much earlier on. We turn our attention to Dartford, Miya Flow and Miya Observations for the normal Patientrack have both gone live in the last 12 months here. Not only is that important again for the procurement, we saw the best of what Miya can achieve in the U.K. market extremely quickly. Dartford reported impacts on their operation in a matter of days, not weeks, and from the point of go-live to Miya Flow in particular, being live. And now we have the U.K. reference site for Miya Precision, where Dartford is actually doing the demonstration, Miya Flow is for Miya Flow and also talk about their experience, not just with the software but also what it's like dealing with an implementation of Alcidion where our people play a very important part in that safety. And, also again, we're going to procure one of the monolithic EPRs and expected not to have any new software on site within the first 2 years. But since our deal with Miya Precision, by the time you hear this presentation, there will be live with Miya Observations. So again, real swift implementation in terms of how the market perceives of delivering on the commitments that we made within that contract and also getting our second reference site. So beyond the organic growth and the significance around that, this is a significant milestone for Alcidion in the U.K. to have the 2 sites live. So what that has enabled us to do is look -- is absolutely look forward with that credibility behind us to understand what the market needs us to be doing and how do we move successfully within our market here in the U.K. So very recently, we're following a budget and our new Health Secretary announced alongside our Chancellor that 2.1 billion investment into NHS Fife system. Now sort of skeptical we see this money coming into the market all of the time. At this time, it really was different. During COVID here in the U.K., health care technology definitely had its online banking moment where a shift was made, that to fully understand in terms of the NHS, fully understanding the value that technology can play in a care setting. So we've started to see all already that what this 2.1 billion is going to go into a very recent -- as recently as last week, the Digital Aspirant plus program was launched. You may have heard me talk about this on previous presentations, it was affectionately known as project -- but it is now known as the Digital Aspirant plus program. And what this is intended to do is to bring a disruptor into the EPR space here in the U.K. And by disrupter, it means a different approach. So not the monolith, all the significant change programs [indiscernible] or systems that lock in data. It's very much to look into the future to unlock data from the existing applications, look at electronic patient record in a more modular fashion and look for innovation by having multiple suppliers and construct an EPR to bring the different offering to the market. And that's where the Digital Aspirant plus money is going towards to actually say, well, actually, apart from what we already know about EPRs, what else is out there. And that is exactly where we position Miya Precision. So when we look at the core pillars of the digital strategy, open stability, modular ecosystems that is at the core of what Miya Precision will offer. The acquisition of ExtraMed plays very much to that modular strategy. So it also played a significant part in how we were perceived by the NHSX so the people essentially approved the funding that we are seeing as somebody who's really invested in the U.K. market are not just enjoying our organic growth but also signaling to the market that we're in an acquisition phase as well. And that also has an extra level of credibility as we are with emerging technologies, such as Miya. The ExtraMed deal presented us a significant opportunity also to work with Hitachi and Salford on the digital command and control center. And again, this wasn't just about the software, how did we work with providers such as Hitachi and Salford to gain credibility in the market with rollout and delivering on what we say we would. I'm delighted to announce that our go-live happens this week as scheduled and as planned . So the next phase is to look at how do we build on the command center for Salford but also for all the trust now in the [ Northern Carolinas ] with our partner Salford. So looking forward, we are absolutely positioning ourselves to be one of the leaders in global health care technology here in the U.K., in particular. So very, very clear strategy. We upsell Miya Precision, all their modules for existing customers very much play into our module approach. We will win new Miya Precision clients where we are a disruptive alternative to an EPR. We'll continue to win on procurement frameworks, which are very, very important for us to be on -- because that shortens the procurement and cycle time in terms of when a deal start to when a deal is closed, and we saw that with sales team on the framework that will start to end in 8 months, which is very swift in the U.K. market for a value of that size. Strategic acquisitions. As I've talked about earlier in terms of how we're perceived and investing in this market and that we are a modular approach and that we look to have trailblazing software in some regards and that we are in this market for a long time, not a short time. And you can see that with the time line in terms of delivering on what we say we will deliver. The perception of NHSX, probably we are the ones to watch. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I might just finish my slide, but my slide would be very similar to what Lynette have put out. But in terms of where -- in terms of the year ahead, as the year -- half, sorry, FY '21 was a year of growth, and we do take that momentum into FY '22. We continue to focus on organic growth through our selling to the existing customers and bringing new customers on board, particularly with the focus on Miya Precision. The success of Alcidion line in our relationships with our customers in the trust that we build with them as we deliver on our promises, and I think that's a consistent message we hear from our customers across all our existing relationships having live in-play positive reference sites in all our territories is critical to future sales. And we will continue to forge strong relationships with our customers alongside that. We concluded the acquisition of ExtraMed in FY '20, as others have talked to, have embedded down successfully the earlier acquisitions of MKM Health, Patientrack and Smartpage. We have a track record and successful identification and integration of strategic acquisitions. So we will continue to look at opportunities to acquire technologies and companies and products that are aligned with what we do and give us -- present additional capability and market share in appropriate strategic markets. But we do that with a very clear eye on the value that it brings to the business overall. Finally, in 2022, we will start to look again at appropriate geographical expansion. We'll do this in a measured and strategic manner, focusing on those territories with the least barriers to entry and mainly because we slowed that down a little during COVID, which makes sense. But it was also made a lot of sense in terms of the opportunities in the U.K. and ANZ are very significant, and we did not want to lose our focus on our positioning in those markets. I'd like to freeze by adding my thanks to the senior leadership team of Alcidion and all the staff, to the Board and all the shareholders for their ongoing support. Thank you.

Thank you, Kate, and congratulations on a great year. Our company secretary, Melanie, will now outline the questions and voting procedure for today's meeting. Over to you, Mel.

Thank you, Beck. As mentioned earlier, shareholders will be able to participate, ask questions and cast direct votes at the appropriate time whilst the meeting is in progress. Visitors and media are reminded that whilst we go through with this meeting, it is a shareholders' meeting, and you may not comment to ask questions. We may experience some time lag, and this may cause some delay in your text questions or comments coming to our attention. And we encourage you to launch them as early as you can. [Operator Instructions] Regarding voting on today's resolutions, all shareholders, proxy holders or through our corporate representatives and attorneys of shareholders who are entitled to vote will be able to do so by the webinar poll. It is important to note that if you have lodged a proxy poll and vote prior to the meeting, you do not need to vote unless you wish to change instruction. For those proxy holders, shareholders and authorized group of representatives who have not yet voted prior to the meeting, please cast your votes on each of the resolutions when the call is opened. For proxy holders, you will have a summary of proxy votes, which will detail the voting instructions, if any, for the items of business. By completing the voting via the webinar poll when instructed to vote in a particular manner, we were taking a vote in accordance with those instructions, The Chair has been appointed proxy on behalf of the shareholder, Rebecca Wilson, as Chair of the meeting intends to be voting day in favor of all of the resolutions. When the poll is declared open a poll window will appear in this frame. To vote simply select the direction in which you would like to cast your vote. The submit option will then show as being marked. To submit your vote, simply click on the submit button, and you will have the ability to change your vote up until the time the voting is closed. And voting on all resolutions is up until the time that the poll is closed.

Thank you, Mel. We'll now address shareholder questions which were submitted prior to today's meeting and any received in relation to the business operations.

Thanks, Beck. We have received some questions on operational matters. So the first one is, if you could please comment on the competitive environment for Alcidion's product generally and also digital health strategy.

Thanks very much for that. Look, the competitive environment, as I've always said, depends on what it is that our customer is looking for. Miya Precision is a platform, it has a number of capabilities and modules, as you've heard us talk about. So depending on whether the customer is looking from remote patient monitoring or an alternative to the EPR, our actual competitor will be different, and the group of competitors will be different. Telstra Health is interesting to watch. And in terms of their approach at the moment has been one of significant acquisitions over a number of years to create relatively large health care IT entity, I think it's difficult sometimes to understand what the final strategy is for all the acquisitions that they have taken on. But what I look at then is that, in some instances, they are a competitor. For example, they have a patient flow product that they have been in the market for a number of years. Perhaps has a different technology base [indiscernible]. But in other instances, where they are very focused on aged care or in centralized cancer registry, then we would not have a direct competitive situation with them. I'm very comfortable with how Miya Precision is positioned from a technology platform player and a comprehensive strategy in terms of how we position our product. In terms of the electronic medical record providers, obviously, Cerner and Epic are those big monolithic providers that Lynette referred to, that I think we have seen a lot of investment in them over the last 10 to 15 years. In some ways, that helps us because we have electronic data to use. But the indications are that perhaps their interest in them is waning over time and people are -- our customers looking for alternative technology options.

Thanks, Kate. Just a little bit of feedback here and then into your questions. So the feedback is given the U.K. market is clearly an important one for our company, the context provided by the presentation from our U.K. [indiscernible] was very useful. Thanks for the forethought in arranging it. And then moving on, Kate and the team, thanks for your presentation of being so candid. Lynette's presentation was very insightful. Thank you. And then the question is can Cerner or Epic offer what Alcidion can in terms of patient flow, observations and assessments, et cetera? And how do you define what makes Alcidion different i.e. your enduring competitive advantage?

Thanks very much for your comments. And I think it's always good to hear from other members of the leadership team and their perspective on the business. In terms of Cerner and Epic, certainly, our experience is that Miya Precision is very, very strong in the areas that you outlined. In Flow, we have a differentiator, in fact, can be demonstrated that we sit on top of Cerner in a number of instances where our product is being used for the flow component, and I think we'll continue to see that. Observations and assessments, again, we have, in the U.K., a number of instances where we have been chosen to provide the nursing assessment and observations component alongside a product like Cerner. So where what we offer there is a greater usability, greater mobility. The modular nature of what we do means that people can choose our mobile environment and the technology that we're providing to better support that type of technology and care. I think the true differentiator for us is we are building an electronic environment for clinicians with clinicians in mind. So we have come at this very much from what is going to make lives easier and simpler and safer for our clinicians in order to deliver care will actually be better outcomes for patients. And that is a documented and clear differentiator in what we do.

Thanks, Kate. There's no other operational questions. We do have another question, but it's for the formal matters. So Beck, I'll pass back to you now.

Thanks, Mel. Firstly, if you have a question on any of the items of business, please follow the question process, which was previously outlined by our Company Secretary. We will address your questions after the last resolution. Before opening the poll, I wish to remind shareholders that the poll will remain open for an additional minute after we have considered all resolutions. I now declare the poll open. I refer you to the first item of business as set out in the notice of meeting, which is to receive and consider the financial report of the company together with the director's report and the auditor's report for the financial year ended 30th of June 2021. These items are contained in the annual report, so I'll ask the paper taken as read. The annual report is available on the ASX platform or on the company's website. The Corporations Act requires the accounts and reports to be put before shareholders at the Annual General Meeting. However, except to set out in Resolution one to be considered later, there is no requirement for a vote of members to be taken on them. No written questions to the auditor were received by the cutoff date of 5 business days before this meeting. Questions may be directed through myself to the auditor in relation to the conduct of the audit, the order of report, the company's accounting policies or the independence of the auditor. As this matter does not require a vote, we will now move to the first resolution. I now refer you to resolution 1, which is to consider the adoption of the remuneration report forming part of the Directors' report for the financial year ended 30th of June 2021. The remuneration report is set out in the Directors' report in the company's 2021 annual report. The remuneration report sets out the company's remuneration arrangements for the directors and key management personnel of the company. The vote on this resolution is advisory only and does not bind the Directors or the company. The following percentages of proxies have been received for resolution 1, and full details of the results are outlined in the presentation on the screen now: in favor, 95.81%; against, 2.35%; and open, 1.84%. I move that shareholders consider, and [indiscernible] pass the ordinary resolution. I now refer you to resolution 2, which relates to the election of Ms. Victoria Weekes as a Director of the company. Ms. Weekes' profile has been provided on Page 7 of the Notice of Meeting. I now invite Ms. Weekes to comment on her election. Over to you, Victoria.

Thanks, Rebecca. And it's my great pleasure to be considered today for election to the Alcidion Board. I'm passionate about patient centers, high-quality safe and integrated health care that can be delivered when frontline staff have access to the clinical information they need at the point of care and when providers have the insight and analytics on service delivery that Alcidion solutions can provide. I believe my experience from 10 years on the Board of one of Sydney's leading health districts and as immediate past Chair provide me with some relevant perspectives on how leading health care providers can benefit from Alcidion's offerings and the opportunities for innovation. I also bring over 25 years executive experience in the financial services sector, including audit and risk management expertise to help support Alcidion's ongoing success and growth aspirations. With over 10 years' experience serving on the Boards with a diverse range of organizations, including as audit Chair, I believe I've developed a deep understanding of good governance and strong strategic and commercial skills. I appreciate the vital importance of innovation in health care and strongly believe that Alcidion is well positioned to take advantage of this significant period of transformation in the sector. I'm committed to fulfill my role to the very best of my ability and with your support as shareholders, I look forward to working with my fellow directors and being part of Alcidion's exciting future. Thanks, Rebecca.

Fantastic. Thank you. The following percentages of proxies have been received for resolution 2, and full details of the results are outlined in the presentation on the screen now: in favor, 99.10%; against, 0.32%; and open, 0.58%. I move that shareholders consider, and if thought fit, pass the ordinary resolutions. Congratulations, and welcome to the Board Victoria. I now refer to resolution 3, which relates to the election of Mr. Daniel Sharp as Director of the company. Mr. Sharp's profile is being provided on Page 7 of the Notice of Meeting, and I now invite him to comment on his election. Over to you, Danny.

Thanks very much, Rebecca, and good afternoon, shareholders. I first became aware of Alcidion probably 3 or 4 years ago. Actually, Rebecca and I were presenting at a conference together. And as an investment banker in the health and life sciences sector for the last 20-odd years, well aware of the latency and immersion in investment by hospitals and the system and actually providing sufficient software and systems to take on the extra and additional pressure being put by the needs of patients and the needs of practitioners and nurses and staff. So I came to, first of all, buy shares straight away when I came across Alcidion and through that watched very closely and impressed by the tremendous advances of the company in both product capability and commercial execution over the last 3, 4 years, the [indiscernible] leadership and the rest of the management team. I for 20 years have been advising our Boards on our capital markets, capital management, M&A structuring and general commercial issues. I was delighted when the Board asked me to join as a Director a couple of months ago and thrilled that had the opportunity to for reelection today, and I look forward to giving the company much benefits with my experiences as I can.

Thanks, Danny. The following percentages of proxies have been received for resolution 3 and full details of the results are outlined in the presentation: in favor, 99.14%; against, 0.28%; and open 0.58%. I move that shareholders consider, and if thought fit, pass the ordinary resolution. Congratulations to you also, Danny, and welcome to the Board. I now refer to resolution 4, which relates to the ratification of prior issue of 48 million shares to professional and sophisticated investors under the company's share statement announcement announced with the on the 15th of April 2021. The following percentages of proxies have been received for resolution 4, and full details of the results are outlined in the presentation on screen now: in favor, 98.77%; against, 0.57%; and open, 0.66%. I move that shareholders consider, and if thought fit, pass the ordinary resolution. I now refer you to resolution 5, which relates to the approval to increase the maximum aggregate remuneration available to Non-Executive Directors of the company from $400,000 to $500,000. The following percentages of proxies have been received for resolution 5, and full details of the results are outlined in the presentation on screen now: in favor, 88.37%; against, 9.68%; and open, 1.95%. I move that shareholders consider, and if thought fit, pass the ordinary resolution. I now refer to resolution 6, which relates to the approval to refresh the company's equity incentive plan. The following percentages of proxies have been received for resolution 6, and full details of the results are outlined in the presentation on screen now: in favor, 94.67%; against, 3.44%; and open, 1.89%. I move that shareholders consider and, if thought fit, pass the ordinary resolution. As advised earlier, resolution 7, as set out in the notice of meeting, in relation to the approval of 10% placement facility has been withdrawn from today's meeting. We will now go to shareholder questions. Please note, during this time, the poll will remain open to enable you to complete your voting. Melanie, have we received any questions on any of the resolutions? Or does any shareholder wish to speak to any of these resolutions.

Thanks, Becky. We did receive one just on the financial statements. First of all, happy shareholder of Alcidion for a number of years. Just something -- I'm curious is that the company is a technology-driven business, and there appears to be no accounting for research and development in the financial statements. Presumably, our company does invest in some R&D and, accordingly, some comments would be offered on the scope and extent of R&D activities.

Thanks, Melanie. I'll take that one. We have in the past, definitely planned an R&D tax credit. And we do analyze it year-on-year in terms of the percentage of what we're doing that may be considered true, R&D within the construct of the government's guidelines around R&D. And so I think we've assessed in the last couple of years a lot of what we've been doing is developing our -- the program of work that we have well-articulated. There has the reason will continue to be a component of research in what we do, and Malcolm actually leads a large part of that work within the contract. But the percentage weighting of that has not of recent years warranted the effort that's involved with making an appropriate claim for an R&D tax credit, but we will continue to analyze that year-on-year.

Thanks, Kate. Beck, there's no other written questions and there's no questions that have come through to the audio facility either.

Thanks, Mel. This concludes the Q&A session for the formal part of the meeting. We will now provide shareholders with an additional minute for poll voting to be completed.

Once we're doing this session here. There's just another question that's just popped in on that R&D, Kate. Just interested in how much the company spends on R&D, not so much of the tax credit.

I said -- I can give Matt a moment to actually give you that figure. I don't have it to hand. It depends what you qualify as R&D. So my previous question -- my previous response indicated that there is a definition around R&D versus development. Is your -- I'm assuming your question is more about how much do we actually spend on product development overall. So I just -- I don't have that at hand. I'm not sure if you do, Matt.

So yes, so about 1/3 of our staff are dedicated to product and product development. I guess that's the answer. I'm about 1/3 of them. But we don't split it in our P&L. Between research and development, we present our P&L by nature. So we just present our staff costs as a sum.

And just to just one more question that's come through, if that's okay. If you split the U.K. market into 3 segments, hospitals adopting a best-in-breed strategy, one's using EPR strategies and those still using paper-based systems. Which segments is Alcidion prioritizing?

Thank you. We are -- I mean, all 3 sectors are an opportunity for us, but we are prioritizing the paper-based systems and those looking at a best-of-breed EPR strategy.

Thanks, Kate. There's no other questions, and that's time for the call now then.

Fantastic. So I now declare the poll closed. The company has not received a notice of any other business and, as such, concludes the formal business of today's meeting. And I now declare the meeting closed. After the votes have been counted, the results of the poll will be released to the ASX later today. Thank you for your attendance, and we look forward to your continued support. Have a great afternoon.

Thank you all. I'll now close the webinar.