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

Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to the Annual General Meeting of the members of Biome Australia Limited. For those of you who do not know me, my name is Geoff Sam. I am the Chair of Biome Australia Limited and will be chairing today's meeting. Before we commence with the formal business of this meeting, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to my fellow directors, Mr. Blair Norfolk and Ms. Dominique Fisher. And online is also Mr. Sam Claringbold, our auditor. There are no apologies. All voting today will be done by a poll. Each shareholder will be able to vote online during the meeting for the purposes of voting by poll today. On a poll, each shareholder, whether voting online or by proxy, is entitled to one vote for every share held by that member. If the proxy is the Chair of the meeting at which the resolution is voted on, the proxy must vote on a poll and must vote as directed. If the proxy is not the Chair of the meeting, the proxy need not vote on the poll. But if the proxy does so, the proxy must vote as directed. I appoint the Company Secretary to act as a returning officer to conduct the poll and to report to me the results of the poll. We will announce the poll results and advise ASX as soon as the results are determined. Please note, the online poll will commence after the first resolution is read and will be closed after the formal part of the meeting is closed. I have satisfied myself that in accordance with [Audio Gap] and I, therefore, declare this meeting open. I declare the proxies received are valid in accordance with the constitution. The company has received proxies to vote in place of members represented by a total of 55,361,178 voting shares in the company. Please note that any proxies appointing the Chair to vote at their discretion have been voted in the affirmative by the Chair for all resolutions. You will all have received a notice of meeting detailing the business to be dealt with today. I would now, with your concurrence, move that the Notice of Meeting be taken as read. I refer you to the first item of business of the meeting and table the financial statements for the year ended 30 June 2025 and the reports of the directors and auditors thereon for consideration by members. Members should note that the financial statements and reports are not tabled for approval but simply discussion. Members should note that a representative from our auditors, MVA Bennett Assurance Proprietary Limited, is in attendance on the call to answer any questions directed at them. Are there any questions on the accounts or the reports of the directors and auditors? I refer you to Resolution 1 of the Notice of Meeting and propose by nonbinding resolution that for the purposes of Section 250R(2) of the Corporations Act and for all other purposes, approval is given for the adoption of the remuneration report as contained in the company's annual financial report for the financial year ended 30 June 2025. Are there any questions on the resolution? I now formally put the resolution to shareholders and ask you to complete the poll online. Have all persons who intend to vote now voted? As I have a personal interest in the next resolution, I will pass over the Chair to Dom.

Thank you, Geoff. We'll now move to the next item, Resolution 2. I refer to Resolution 2 of the Notice of Meeting and propose by ordinary resolution that for the purposes of Clause 18.7 of the constitution, Listing Rule 14.4 and for all other purposes, Mr. Geoffrey Sam OAM, who was appointed as a Director in accordance with Article 18.7 of the constitution on the 21st of November 2024, retires and being eligible for re-election, is re-elected as a Director of the company. Are there any questions on the resolution? Thank you. I now formally put the resolution to shareholders and ask you complete the poll online. Of all persons who intend to vote now done so? Thank you. I'll now hand back the Chair to Geoff.

Thank you, Dom. We'll move to the next resolution. Resolution 3, I refer you to Resolution 3 of the Notice of Meeting and propose by ordinary resolution that for the purposes of Listing Rule 7.4 and for all other purposes, shareholders ratify the prior issue by the company to the advisers of an aggregate of 244,442 fully paid ordinary shares at an issue price of $0.45 per share and otherwise on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory statement accompanying this notice of meeting as consideration for advisory services delivered to the company. Are there any questions on the resolution? I now formally put the resolution to shareholders and ask you to complete the poll online. Have all persons who intend to vote now voted? Thank you. As I have a personal interest in the next resolution, I will again pass over the Chair to Dom.

Thank you, Geoff. We'll now move to the next item, Resolution 4. I refer you to Resolution 4 of the Notice of Meeting and propose by ordinary resolution that for the purposes of Listing Rule 10.14 and all other purposes, approval is given for the issue and allotment to Geoffrey Sam OAM and/or his nominee of 2 million shares under the loan funded share plan on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory statement accompanying this notice of meeting. Are there any questions in relation to this resolution? Thank you. I now formally put the resolution to shareholders and ask that you complete the poll online. Have all persons who intend to vote voted? Thank you. I'll now hand back the chair to Geoff.

Thank you, Dom. We'll now move to Resolution 5. I refer you to Resolution 5 of the Notice of Meeting and propose by special resolution that for the purposes of ASX Listing Rule 7.1A and for all other purposes, Approval is given for the issue of equity securities totaling up to 10% of the issued capital of the company at the time of issue, calculated in accordance with the formula prescribed in ASX Listing Rule 7.1A.2 and otherwise on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory statement accompanying this notice of meeting. Are there any questions on the resolution? I now formally put the resolution to shareholders and ask you to complete the poll online. Have all persons who intend to vote now voted? Ladies and gentlemen, as there is no other business that can properly be brought before this meeting, I formally declare the meeting closed and welcome a short company update by our Founder and Managing Director, Blair Vega Norfolk.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Dom. Could we please end the poll, and I will commence a short update. Firstly, thank you all for attending. It's -- we've got a record attendance. So it's really nice to see some very familiar names and some new names also out there watching this electronic general meeting. But following the close of the meeting, a bit of an update from myself. I think most of you will share the exciting feeling of what FY '25 was for Biome. $18.4 million in sales and our position in the market as one of the flagship and leading brands within the pharmacy and practitioner space, our activated probiotics becoming a household name and really taking a significant portion of the market and market share within our market, within our channels. So Biome completed $18.4 million, up 41% versus FY '24. We had a maiden year of net profit, which is very exciting for the team and allowed us a position now to not have to have needed to raise money in the last 4 or 5 years since IPO. And while we have that placement capacity there for strategic opportunities, I hope everyone's really pleased that we've been able to run the business as we said we would, get to profitability and continue to now scale and grow upward. We've maintained and grown our gross margin over the last few years, by reaching 61% and maintaining that also through the first quarter FY '26. We closed the year Q4 FY '25 with $5 million in sales, a record quarter and really pleasing the first quarter of FY '26, a record quarter, again, reaching almost $6 million in sales revenue at a run rate of almost $24 million. So a really great start to FY '26. Within the trade as well, I'm really pleased to share that we are growing about 8x the industry growth rate. So while our growth of around 40% is very strong, it's really, really meaningful when it comes to that retail positioning. So when we're having our annual meetings with our key pharmacy groups, whether that be TerryWhite, Priceline, Blooms or more recently now Go Vita and even MECCA, the beauty retailer, we're in a position where we're outgrowing everyone else by 7x or 8x. And that's very material when it comes to future ranging additional shelf space and Biome's position in gaining more and more rapid market share in the trade. A metric that we look at as our business performance above top line sales and top line results is that sell-through number. So we're really pleased that pharmacy sell-through for FY '25 was around 50%, and we continue to track our individual store sales, which are all trending upward and majority of our growth is coming from that same-store sales growth, so that fundamental underlying business. We now have more than 6,000 distribution points and over 3,000 of those are community pharmacies. So we have access to more than half of the pharmacies in Australia with the other half of the pharmacies very interested in having our products. So at the right time, we are gradually increasing our distribution and optimizing that distribution. Within Q1, we had almost $1 million in positive cash flow. We're able to pay down some of our line of credit, which we used for rolling inventory and really pleased that cash receipts also reached $7.14 million, 84% up year-on-year on Q1 FY '25. Activated Probiotics is now the #2 probiotic brand in pharmacy, no mean fit in five years against brands that have been in the market for 20 or 30 years and we're hot on the heels of the market leader growing, as I said, 7x or 8x their growth rate. So the writing on the wall, the Activated Probiotics as it becomes a household name is taking rapid market share and is and will be the #1 probiotic brand in Australia in the near future. Biome launched our Activated Therapeutics range at the crossover at the close of FY '25 and the open of FY '26. Activated Therapeutics is a new marquee brand for Biome to be able to move beyond the world of just probiotics into gut health adjacent products. The first few products under Activated Therapeutics have been very well received by the trade. Priceline, TerryWhite, Blooms The Chemist and much of our community pharmacy as well as our practitioner market took all ranges, all four products in the new range and have been supporting Biome with the new range, and we look forward to reporting on that throughout the financial year. Finally, international expansion. We grew 69% in FY '25. And I'm pleased to say after spending much of the start of this financial year between Europe and North America, we're making significant progress in sell-through, in core ranging, in distribution and also building out those sales teams as well that are going to support us through the next five years. So I very much look forward to our half year and our full year accounts where we will start to discuss a bit more in detail around those international markets. But very pleased to say in my most recent trip to Canada, within our first 12 months, we are rapidly taking market share, and I'm very pleased that, that is ahead of expectations for our first 12 months trading. Also recently, we announced the MECCA and Go Vita partnerships. This was an interesting one that I got a lot of feedback on because we are a health brand. What are we doing in MECCA? First one on MECCA, I would say they are the #1 retailer in Australia. They're a brilliant organization, and MECCA has made a move into health care. So MECCA has a health care Apothecary within their new flagship stores, a class within the probiotic market and within the professional supplement market. So our products are rolling out into some of the flagship MECCA network, and we see this as a fantastic opportunity for partnership and for scale and also access to a whole new customer demographic within health skin. Go Vita ranging in their new national DCs. So this is a new opportunity for Biome to push in a more meaningful way into the health food market, the sophisticated end of the health food market that has health professionals in stores. And in partnership with Go Vita' senior management, we're working on a plan to also be one of their top-performing brands as well as some of the market leaders have almost left the channel in the recent years due to private equity, M&A and other transactions. So I suppose in summary, New Zealand, we launched the close of FY '25 and FY '26 into Green Cross pharmacy chain and also the wholesaler Propharma, which is owned by EBOS Group, which also owns Symbion, one of our marquee wholesalers in Australia. In the Irish market, we launched with a new partnership with Uniphar, the largest pharmacy wholesaler in Ireland and are working on a rollout program within Irish pharmacy as well. So the international market, I'm very pleased that there's significant opportunity in New Zealand, in Europe, between U.K. and Ireland and in Canada. And as we continually develop that Canadian market, the opportunities will open up south of the Canadian border. There will be further updates on our clinical development program. I can't talk about today, but in the near term, we'll be able to give some updates on our clinical development program. Vision 27, I'm pleased to say on record that we are on track and putting out a 3-year plan 1.5 year ago when we were at $13 million revenue was bold, and we're confident that we're on track to meet the Vision 27 targets, certainly at the run rate of $24 million of Q1. So we will obviously give updates on that at each half and full year reporting and be able to get into more detail on that and answer some questions. So what's ahead for Biome? We're going through the period now of Christmas. So we're doubling down on training, team development and strategy. We're really looking forward to closing FY '26 with another strongest year-to-date, further quarters of positive EBITDA of net profit and making careful investments to make sure these international moves are proving scale as we welcome more and more investors on to the stock and more and more institutions that are coming on board as well as shareholders in Biome. So for today, that's all, but I look forward to catching up with you all in the near term at our next webinar or in person. But thank you very much for your support.