Biome Australia Limited (BIO.AX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] Biome Australia company presentation for July 2025. Thank you for all those who attended. Being that we have a short amount of time this morning, I'm going to jump in and get underway. The webinar will be recorded as well, and we'll be able to host it on the company's website or investor platform from tomorrow. So to begin, I want to start off with something a little bit different this time. So firstly, being that we're now in FY '26, it was an incredible year for Biome in FY '25. I thought it was an appropriate time to sort of stop and thank a few of the people who have really been able to make it possible to get to this point. Most importantly, our incredible staff, our scientists, our practitioners, our marketing teams, our sales and education staff, both Australia and abroad who are absolutely world-class and industry-leading, and I get a lot of the accolade sitting in my chair, but really, it's the day and day out work that they're doing to bring the best products in market to patients around the world. So thank you to our team. I also wanted to acknowledge those on this call watching. So our investment community who have helped support us to get to this point as well. So some of you have been backing us for a long time. Others more recently joining the story and joining Biome Australia, but everyone plays their role in our success and bringing our novel -- incredibly powerful novel health solutions through to patients. And I hope you can all feel the impact of the brand, of the business and of the products. So to start off on that note, our mission is to prevent disease, improve health outcomes, quality of life but making our products accessible. I think making our products accessible is an interesting way that Biome has defined practitioner only, which is the way our route to market. So a bit of a background. There may be some new people to Biome. So I will give a 5-minute overview of the company, a general strategy and our products. So Biome Australia was founded in 2018 off the back of a research and development company that myself and others founded prior to Biome back in 2013. We've done a lot of research and discovery in the world of the microbiome and got involved in probiotics via an initial clinical trial in 2016, looking at children with pediatric allergic asthma. This clinical trial is a large study, certainly in the world of natural medicine and probiotics. We looked at 440 children with pediatric allergic asthma, 220 taking a placebo. 220 taking our Biome Breathe Probiotic, which is a specialty strain of bacteria called Lactobacillus salivarius LS01. Over a 6-month study, we were really blown away by the outcome of the trial, seeing the patients or the children in the study had 64% less asthma events -- less asthma attacks in this clinical trial. Back in 2016, this is pretty breakthrough research. It still is today. And when we surveyed commercially, that global probiotic market, it was absolutely flooded with gut health generic general products and also companies that didn't have the sophistication to be [Technical Difficulty] in the world of doctors, pharmacists and other health and medical professionals. So Biome saw an incredible opportunity to be the first global mover in the world of targeted probiotics or live biotherapeutics. We launched our brand, which you can see on the screen here, Activated Probiotics at the end of 2019, and then started the exciting commercial journey. We started off with 9 targeted probiotic products. We now have 18, and I'll give a quick overview of a few of my favorites and the exciting ones that started everything for Biome. So left to right, Biome Lift, this is 1 of the world's leading gut-brain or mental health probiotics, incredibly important product for a lot of people dealing with various mental health concerns, from depressed mood, anger, stress, anxiety and even all the way through the sub-threshold depression, a clinical trial we completed in Australia with La Trobe University, and still getting new and many -- a number of new publications off the back of that clinical trial. Biome Osteo, in orange, the world's first osteoporosis prevention of bone mineral density supporting probiotic. This 1 was studied in 2019, I believe it was published, and the top line clinical results for Biome Osteo was a 78% reduction in the rate of bone loss in postmenopausal females, an incredible clinical outcome using a probiotic only, and the probiotic study on this case was published in the Lancet Rheumatology, 1 of the world's leading medical journals. Biome Daily, this is our answer to the global mass market trend of gut health probiotics. It's 1 of the best products on the market, and it's 1 of our best products, usually topping our monthly sales charts. Biome Daily is an entry-level product for us price point wise, that has clinically proven probiotic strains to prevent winter illness. So colds and flus during this time of year, improved general digestive function, constipation, bloating, diarrhea. So it's a really one all fix all product for Biome. Biome Baby, our first product for the start of life, the first 1,000 days. This product has become an incredibly important cult success within the maternal child health network, namely because of its delivery method, it can be mixed with breast milk formula, or mix with food. But importantly, it's got a clinical trial. So this product -- even this product, our entry-level baby product is a clinically proven product showing that significantly reduces infant colic or crying time in babies. As I am very well aware with the 5-month hold at home, it's a very important topic for new parents. Biome Lax, so the name speaks for itself is a clinically proven probiotic to support constipation or improve stool movements. It's a simple concept. It's a very effective product, and it's 1 that's much loved by Australians, certainly through community pharmacy locally and abroad. We have a dermatology section. We have Biome Eczema and Biome Acne, 2 very successful products in the big skin category in Australian pharmacy. Certainly, Priceline Pharmacy in Australia really love these products, both clinically proven the Biome Eczema product has been shown in adults and children to reduce Eczema symptoms by 50% plus and improved quality of life by 50%. And Biome Acne, reduces acne lesions and acne spots by 39%, 2 incredibly clinically proven products in our skin category. Biome Cholesterol, 1 of the favorites among our investment community. This has been developed off the back of the mass trend towards statin medications, the #1, 2 and 3 drugs on the Australian PBS. Biome Cholesterol has 5 clinical trials on our finished product unlike anything else in the market. This shows it significantly reduces cholesterol either used as a stand-alone or alongside statin medications. So really interesting 1 when we start to explain our strategy of co-selling or adjunct selling alongside pharmaceutical medications. I won't go into them all, but I'll mention 1 last product, our Biome Her. Biome Her is our best-selling condition specific or targeted probiotic. This 1 has 2 different delivery methods, either orally, which is used for the prevention of a number of female health conditions, including bacterial vaginosis and thrush, but also can be used acutely intravaginally for those with more severe flare ups. Very successfully used and for a massive patient population that really do struggle with these issues on an ongoing way. So that is the Activated Probiotics products. We launched in 2019 into the Australian market. And from there on, it's just been a very exciting journey and 1 that we've had to move very quickly to keep up with ourselves internally. So we started off with 100 pharmacies in Blooms The Chemist in New South Wales. From there, we've grown from 100 to 6,000 distribution points in the Australian market. And at the same time, grown from 0 to $18.4 million revenue in FY '25, just closed. So Biome's commercial success, you'll all be aware of, but it's what we do with our products and research, which I think really sets us apart. It's not an FMCG company. We're a serious health company with serious products that are supporting patients, doctors, pharmacists and natural medicine professionals to really improve patient health outcomes locally and abroad. So how do we do that? Biome's Activated Probiotics is self-designated as practitioner only rather than selling our products through sales, deals or promotions, their professional products that we detail doctors, pharmacists and naturopaths. We gained their active recommendation, which is very powerful. If you think about the success of a lot of the Instagram businesses over the last few years, it is really driven by those key opinion-leading influencers. But how much more powerful is it when those key opinion-leading influencers are health qualified and are recommending these products in Australian health locations, whether that be a doctor's clinic or a pharmacy. So as practitioner only, we positioned our products in the pharmacy behind the counter, similar to a panel osteo or a Claritin, antihistamine. And then those products come with that active recommendation of that additional trust and credibility of being a professional product. So we've talked about the Activated Probiotics range, our practitioner, sales, but also, I'd love to get on to quarter 4 now and discuss some of the successes we've had. So it was a breakthrough quarter for Biome if we hadn't already been having them before. So we had a record month of over $2 million in sales for June, another record quarter with over $5 million in sales. And then as we all know, we've just mentioned, we closed the financial year FY '25 with $18.4 million in sales. We've now had 6 quarters of positive EBITDA. So the business is now expecting to report net profit for FY '25. And as the accounts team finalize the FY '25 accounts with the auditors, we'll look forward to our next presentation to be sharing that net profit number. Our retail scan sales are probably 1 of the most interesting, important, exciting things about Biome Australia and our Activated Probiotic products. We range anywhere from 50% to 80% depending on the pharmacy chain of our recurring 12 months or past 12 months sell-through or consumer scan sales. That is anywhere from 7x to 10x the category average for the big people, the big players in the industry being the big vitamin companies. So over 5 years, we're still growing 7x to 10x what the other brands are doing in the industry. We do this by maintaining and at the same time, maintaining our gross margin above 60%. We've grown our gross margin from IPO in the low 50s into the low 60s. We've done this by always maintaining our premium price never offering deals on discounts as we're always having our products sold or recommended based on health solutions or outcomes never on product and price. Finally, our international markets. Everyone has been very interested to see how scalable this business is. And I was really pleased to report a couple of weeks ago that international markets have grown 69%, but more importantly, it's what we've been doing in international markets to set us up for FY '26 and beyond, which I will be pleased to share with you all in a moment. So the background of what Biome is doing over the next 2 years? We released our Vision 27 to the ASX and our investment community back in September last year. The Vision 27 has a number of key components. But 1 most people will be very familiar with is the revenue guidance. So we've set to market that we'll hit a minimum of $75 million in cumulative sales over the 3 years, FY '25 to FY '27. And I'm pleased to report this is well on track with achieving $18.4 million in FY '25. We expect to grow the distribution and develop the business significantly, going from 5,000 to 8,000 distribution points over the 3 years. I'm pleased to say we've already passed 6,000 about 6 months ago, and we'll give an update on our distribution growth in our end of year financial accounts. Our international markets expected some growth. I'll pause on this for a moment because I'll pick it back up in a moment, but supply chain is a key component as well. I know we did have a question around inventory come through, which I'm going to get to towards the end of the presentation. But a key component of Vision 27 is onshoring our supply chain, our finishing manufacturing, which will significantly improve our working capital -- reduce our working capital requirements, I should say. And improve our stock turn every quarter, every half, every year. IP development is something that we haven't spoken about in a little while, but we have successfully developed our own new Biome strain, Lactobacillus plantarum BMB18. The initial clinical results on this strain are incredibly strong. And I'll be pleased to give an announcement sooner than later on the clinical development pipeline of this product, which will be done in a very affordable way, but a meaningful way to support product development over the coming years. A new brand and product range we mentioned we will be launching as part of the Vision 27. Our activated therapeutics, which I can share, we have some products here in front of me today. These launch into the market just over the last few weeks. So crossing over between June and July, so FY '25 and FY '26, these first 4 flagship products, which have been developed by our NPD team over the last 3 years. I proudly got out to market, which has expanded Biome's reach beyond simply probiotics or the world's best probiotics into other therapeutic areas of high-growth opportunities that are going to support patients beyond the gut microbiome, perimenopausal symptoms, reflux symptoms and gut repair, not to mention also addressing the massive GLP-1 market as well with a product that will really be able to support patients with some of the side effects or symptoms of being on a GLP-1 medication. Following on from this is the international model. So I thought it was important to give everyone a bit of a background or explain on how Biome is scaling and how we expect to continue to scale this incredible business. So we did a test market launch into the U.K. and Ireland about 2.5 to 3 years ago. What we wanted to do is learn from the mistakes or the lessons from those that have come before us in the big vitamin companies expansion predominantly into the U.S.A. and China. Biome decided to follow a slightly different model in initially going to markets with more sophisticated health care rebate structures. Countries with more sophisticated health rebate structures, but also educated consumers that understand probiotics are much more useful than just general gut health and upset tummies. So as we started our journey, we first approached the professional medical markets, and once winning over health professionals, our strategy has been to then slowly but surely expand into health retail channels, be that pharmacies and health food stores. So we launched into the U.K. and Irish health retail channel about 12 months ago and are pleased to share results -- some results on that in a moment. More recently, New Zealand and Canada have been targets for Biome with the same model initially starting out with winning over health professionals, those key opinion leaders, gaining their recommendation, derisking that new market before going into health retail. We see this model as much more scalable being that we're not having massive outlays of working capital to grow these markets. We're able to support these markets with remote sales and education teams reporting back to the Melbourne head office, and it was supported with shared services from that office in Melbourne, which allows us to plug and play into new markets very quickly and very affordably to be able to unlock new sales channels. International market success was a big part of Q4 as well. I myself spent much of the quarter overseas supporting our international teams. I believe we have 13 staff now outside Australia, or consultants, contractors working directly in full-time on Biome. And we had a number of major wins in our international markets, which many of which were closed literally in June, the close of FY '25. So in Canada, there's 4 new distribution deals that have been done with key pharmacy and health food store chains. In Ireland, we signed a deal with Uniphar, Ireland's leading pharmaceutical wholesaler, including distribution into their corporate-owned pharmacy chains, which will be rolling out in the coming weeks. In New Zealand, we signed a flagship deal as well with the leading pharmaceutical wholesaler over there. And that's part of the EBOS Group, and we're looking forward to launching with them in the coming weeks as well. So big updates in -- opportunities within our international markets. And the team will be really pleased to share results at the end of the first half and towards the end of FY '26, where we say we'll make leaps and bounds ahead improving that scale of Biome outside Australia. So that growth model and scale model, I think I've spoken to, but that also stays at home in the Australian market. So as 1 of the most successful brands in Australia, Biome's Activated Probiotics on a daily rate is outperforming every other brand in the market. We're growing, as I said, 50% to 80%, depending on the pharmacy chain compared to an average growth rate of about 6.5% in the practitioner-only category and the [ biomed ] category only about 3%. So Biome is over-indexed in how it's exceeding within the market. As a result, we've been very pleased with the support we're getting from our large pharmacy and practitioner distribution partners with branding of all of our new products -- as soon as immediately. The Activated Therapeutics products, you can already be seen on some TerryWhite Chemmart and Priceline shelves as they've gone out over the last couple of weeks, and we'll be pleased again to report some updates on the new brands performance later on in the financial year. What's important to note is what we really track and what we're interested in is not our top line sales each quarter. I know the market are very interested to see our ongoing growth and development top line. But what I'm really pleased to report is same-store sales and the developing business, the underlying business is growing at the same rate as our top line, which really is incredibly exciting but testament to the business strategy and focusing on education, support, customer service and developing relationships with our pharmacy partners. So I'm going to end my screen share here because I think we're getting towards the end, and we'll open up to some questions. But the last point I'll leave everyone with -- we did announce towards the end of our 4C that we will be expecting another record quarter in sales and growth for Q1 FY '26. I believe we have crossed more than $2.5 million already for the first month of the quarter, and we will be giving updates throughout the rest of the coming weeks within Q1. However, for now, I will open up to questions. So for anyone that hasn't had a chance to send something through, please send it through in the Q&A box at the bottom. If that's not working for you, send an e-mail through to [email protected], and we'll try and pick that up. It's 9:20 now. So we should have at least 10 or 15 minutes. I'll do my best to get through as many questions as possible.

The first 1 is on our inventory. Can you address the inventory holding in Q4? Absolutely. Very pleased to do so. So I think a few people had already asked this question, so I want to address this and be very clear. While we do look at quarterly sales is a key focus and tracker of growth of the business. Inventory quarterly is not an important number from Biome's consideration. It's still a very lumpy metric at this stage of the business for a number of key reasons. Biome's lead time on its Activated Probiotic products coming from Europe is minimum 6 months, but on average, 8 months from ordering a purchase order -- sending a purchase order to receiving goods into our warehouse. As a result, the delivery of stock and the timing of payments is very lumpy, which means from 1 quarter to another, there may be very low inventory to very high. Most importantly, and as we have shared with the market several times over the last year, we're aiming for an average inventory holding of anywhere from $2.5 million to $3 million at cost. That is the number that we expect to be able to maintain at least through the next 2 years and not see a material increase in inventory holding regardless of the timing of when that inventory is delivered and when it hits a 4C. So I suppose the best way to explain that is then really is the timing of inventory and it comes in when it comes in, which is why we don't look at quarterly inventory, but it's also why we decided to move with NAB into a line of credit to support that. So for example, for last quarter, we loaded up inventory, we used a portion of our line of credit with NAB Health to be able to support that inventory holding. And as the sales come through and the growth comes through in Q1, we'll be then paying down that loan within the quarter as well. And so it doesn't affect our free cash. There was a question as well on why some of that inventory was loaded into working capital and some of it as an investment. We're very conscious of the way 4Cs work as an ASX requirement. It's about how many quarters of cash the company has. So Biome Australia is announcing net profit shortly. And with such a significant inventory landing in Q4, purely based on timing, it would have suggested that the company would be running out of cash in the coming quarters, which is simply not true. So we want to make sure we could do our best to normalize that inventory holding and try to balance it out to support scale and growth. Next question. Are you planning on entering the U.S. market? I've had this a number of times in the last few weeks. It must be because of someone who's in the White House. Previously, this was off the cards what has led to the strategic change. So I'm not sure we said that there was a strategic change, but I'm happy to talk about the North American market. So as we previously shared, we're very excited about the Canadian market and the early results are incredibly strong. The Canadian market governed by Health Canada is 1 of the world's leading regulatory bodies on quality and efficacy and claims around certainly probiotics. The American market is the biggest market in the world for our category, but it's also the most generic and the biggest high-risk market we could ever go into from a sales and marketing perspective and a cost perspective. With Canada, we like to prove up that market, become a top brand there. And at the appropriate time, we'll absolutely will consider a test market launch into the U.S.A. What's really interesting about the U.S. market is our largest global competitor, Metagenics, has been very, very successful outside of the retail market in America in being able to infiltrate the massive market of integrated doctors in the U.S. We believe there's more than 80,000 integrated doctors who would be actively recommending products like this in their clinical practice. So at the right time and not immediately, Biome will consider a test market but we have more than enough opportunity in front of us to build a several hundred million turnover business without requiring the U.S.A. So no strategic change, but we're keeping an eye on the opportunities and where we can do a low-risk test market, we will consider at the appropriate time. Are you going to be involved in any more clinical trials this financial year? We haven't announced it, so I need to be a little bit careful, but yes, [Technical Difficulty] I did mention briefly BMB18, Biome's owned strain, will be starting a new clinical program. I'm pleased to share that, that will be on some entry-level gastrointestinal functions. So for example, constipation, bloating, diarrhea, some of those urinal bowel type symptoms. We want to start our research program there, so then we can use this strain as a high-volume opportunity to support our existing products but also develop new products. There will be further research on that strain in the future on more disease targets at really high-value targets. But first, we want to get that foundational research so we can use this strain across a number of our products. There is another clinical trial as well, which is turned to be announced. Biome not expecting to be a significant funder of the study, but it will be on another 1 of our products and open up a whole new health area for Biome, and we will provide an update that in the coming months. Your inventory wholesale value of $11 million looks very high. Can you comment on this level? I'm not sure if I'd already addressed that with the inventory comments at the beginning. But again, this is absolutely just based on timing. So we are expecting massive growth in FY '26. I think we've already been fairly clear that we expect to remain being a growth company for a long time ahead. However, we did have 7 new products launching in June and July. So 7 on 18 is a significant initial investment in new lines, getting out to pharmacy. But really, it's about the timing of inventory and supporting that 6- to 8-month lead time. What I will remind everyone of the Vision 27, I said I would come back to it, is our onshoring and finishing manufacturing. We believe we'll be able to cut that lead time of 6 to 8 months down to 2 to 3 months, significantly reduced working capital. So we don't expect it to keep increasing. We expect it to reduce. So if you get that average inventory holding at cost, down from $2.5 million to $3 million to potentially down to $2 million to $2.5 million in the coming years and just increased the stock turn of inventory throughout the year. Can you comment on same-store sales growth for FY '25? Honestly, we're going to have to complete our final analysis on this, and we will report an update on that in the FY '25 accounts. But what I can say from our key customers in Priceline Pharmacy and TerryWhite Chemmart, we're growing well above 50% in the MAT 12-month annual sales. I did get told by TerryWhite Chemmart just yesterday at their supplier event that we passed $4 million in scan sales now with them. That's retail price scan sales and the growth rate is still well above Biome's company growth rate. So we're looking to have another very strong year in same-store sales, but we'll do a detailed analysis on that in the FY '25 accounts. As Biome started the co-prescribing phase, EG Biome Cholesterol being sold alongside a statin. If not, why not and what are the hurdles and when will this start? Really good question. Important question. So I hadn't actually addressed this in great detail, but the blue sky opportunity of Biome is really to be able to activate pharmacy dispensaries. We already have a number of pharmacies that are selling more than 500 boxes of our monthly products a month, which, to put in terms -- in real terms, that's about 10x the sales volume of the market-leading vitamin companies in dollars and units. So those type of stores are stores that have been able to set new systems and processes in the medical -- in their drug dispensaries to be able to start to look at recommending products. We start to chip away on single products in a pharmacy once the pharmacy is a big supporter of Biome in the Activated Probiotics, and we chip away at a number of key topics, those being cholesterol, female urogenital conditions like BV and thrush. Antibiotic coadministration, which is the easiest 1 for pharmacists to get their head around, being never already been doing it for 2 decades and also mental health as well. So the Biome Lift product. So how are we doing with that? I believe we're doing pretty well. The reason being we're the only brand in the market that has access to this being the almost perfect safety profile of our products with consumers and alongside medications. And as we continue to grow and scale and build trust, we're using the business case from those stores that are doing really well to keep developing new pharmacies. We also have corporate programs that are working with our bigger customers, the larger pharmacy chains to work on these co-prescribing, I suppose, methodologies and strategies on a broader scale. For example, TerryWhite Chemmart and Priceline were in ongoing workshops and programs on how to scale this co-prescribing across all of their stores rather than focusing on it 1 by one. But I'm pleased to say there are a number of pharmacy doing very, very well with this, and statins is a key area as while being that they are the largest volume medication. So while it's hard for us to look at the data and say, this pharmacy selling 500 boxes a month, how many of those are co-prescribing? It really comes back to be able to look at scan sales data. And unfortunately, for Biome, the Medications Act does really control information on patients drugs. So we can't track very easily which medications we're doing well. But looking at the key products that are growing at a higher rate than our standard products, it's clear to us that products like Biome Cholesterol, Biome Lift, Biome Her are growing ahead of the other products, which is showing that it is working. Does Vision 27 revenue goals include any revenue from acquired businesses? Revenue goals are the bare minimum the business expects to achieve. And I think the Australian market was really the core of the development with that. We never wanted to put too much pressure on our international teams with their growth and development in new markets. And the fact that they're ahead of schedule, certainly in Canada and now New Zealand and Ireland, that's really going to take a bit of pressure off the Australian team. But no acquisitions are part of that. Biome is always open to looking at M&A. However, it's not our core focus. It is putting our heads down, growing our underlying business and delivering improved health outcomes to our patients. Time for a final question. I know it's early, but any feedback on Activated Therapeutics products launch and acceptance? So I touched on this briefly earlier to our new brand, Activated Therapeutics with the core products. The best thing I can say is in the first 2 weeks, we've completely sold out. So that probably gives you a little bit of insight on how well it's going. It is exceeding my personal expectations of how well it would go in its first quarter. But most importantly, it's got core ranging from all of our major and national pharmacy partners and ranging with all of our national practitioner distribution partners as well. So Biome was really pleased to host its first educational symposium, which is a large format education event in the quarter. Perfectly timed alongside the launch of Activated Therapeutics, which was something that lined up very, very well for Biome to launch the new brand and the new -- 7 new products between the 2 brands in June and July this year. So the Activated Probiotics Symposium is once in a 3-year event. We had hundreds of practitioners come and pay to attend. We had educational topics well beyond Biome's products. But as a result of that, it's really spearheaded the launch of the Activated Therapeutics products. And as we get through FY '26, we'll be able to give a further snapshot on how that range is growing. Anything else? Any takeover interest in Biome? That's very interesting. Well, I just mentioned M&A. I mean, obviously, I could never comment on this topic because I wouldn't be allowed to. But certainly, I think there's a huge amount of opportunity for myself and you all to grow the market cap and to deliver certainly through Vision 27 and beyond. We are a growth company. We expect to maintain our high growth for years to come and deliver incredible results. For me, I would really like to be able to continue on this journey. But of course, if the right offer comes at the right time, the board will take that seriously and we will share that with the market. But for now, thank you very much for your support. It's been an incredible FY '25, and I can't wait to share our end of year report. I'll be on the road as well, and there'll be another opportunity to get in front and ask some questions probably about this time next month. So thank you all. We'll speak to you soon. Bye-bye.