Genetic Signatures Limited (GSS.AX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I'm Allie Rossiter. I'm the CFO -- CEO. And with me is my CFO, Karl Pechmann. Whilst today, we're going to share our results, and they're not the numbers that I wish we could be sharing, they are numbers going in the right direction, and I'm really, really proud of that. I've been sat here now in the Chair for the past 11 months, and we've gone through some significant changes as an organization. We've changed the direction in which we're going. We've changed the focus in the products that we sell. We've changed some of the people and some of the roles to focus on the areas that we believe we need to focus on right now. And we're going to go through that over the next few slides, you can really understand where we're going to be and how I believe we are fit for the future. Here is our disclaimer, which you'll be pleased to know I will not read through. Just for those of you who don't know who we are, we are a molecular diagnostic company specializing high-throughput syndromic PCR testing for detecting infectious disease. Infectious disease is one of the biggest killers in the world. It's absolutely essential that we can diagnose earlier rather than later and nip that disease in the blood and stop it from spreading. The global burden for antimicrobial resistance is bigger than it's ever been. So with now having these syndromic tests in market that can help diagnose sooner, that can help the workflow in the laboratory and that can make sure that patients get the right treatment at the right time and not antibiotics, if antibiotics are not necessary is absolutely key. We develop and commercialize our high-throughput PCR test powered by our proprietary 3base technology that streamlines DNA analysis for faster, more accurate results. We operate here in Australia. Our head office is here, where we do all of our research, development and manufacturing. We have sales and field support teams in Australia, Europe and the United States. And we also work with channel partners across Europe and in Canada. I spoke about some highlights that I'm proud of. So I want to start with the first one. Our revenue grew, I would say, significantly at 63%, albeit off a small base, but that growth I'm very, very proud of. Our gross market -- gross margin lifted to 55%, and our underlying losses reduced. All in all, 3 great points to share. Our statutory loss of $20.1 million, including the $7 million impairment expense, which was declared in the half year. And our cash reserves are currently healthy, and we have no debt. Throughout the year, we've been working on a 3-way partnership with Tecan, Repado and ourselves to deliver a new automated solution to the market. That development partnership was announced last month and is now fully underway. As I spoke of a moment ago, we've been working on our strategic refocus, and I believe we are now fit for the future. I will cover that in a few slides from now. And the moment you've all been waiting for, the first U.S. commercial contract was signed. We do have another signed in July, but this one was signed back in the last financial year, which does mark a major milestone in the market that we've all been waiting for to go live. I will now pass on to Karl, our Chief Financial Officer, to share with you the financial results.

Thank you, Allie. Yes, as Allie had mentioned, the revenue result was $15.9 million for the year, which was an increase of 63%. The second half revenue for the year was -- had increased by 19.4% compared to the last year. And when you also compare to FY '23, which did not have the impact of the respiratory influenza B issue, our revenue had also increased 13.9% compared to that second half of FY '23. The main reason for that was elevated off-season testing volumes in Australia for respiratory conditions, and that led to that overall performance during the year. And in addition, we also had improved results from the EMEA region, which supported overall growth. On to the next slide, please. As Allie had mentioned, gross margin has grown on to 55%, and primary reason for that is an increase in revenue during the period. Employee expenses have increased by 6%, but it's mainly driven by increase on costs and salary adjustments during the period and not necessarily due to overall headcount increase. We have, though, recalibrated our staffing levels to redirect those towards ongoing development and commercialization efforts that we're looking to do within the organization. Depreciation and amortization expense had increased to $2.4 million for the year compared to $2 million from the year prior. Main reason for that is an accounting impact of our lease on our head office where we had signed a lease halfway through FY '24. So it's really just an allocation between other expenses and amortization expenses. During the year, we booked $5.4 million of other income comprised of R&D tax incentives recognized for expenditure during the financial year as well as interest income on our term deposits that we have placed with financial institutions. Impacting the underlying result, I'm heading towards the statutory result is the $7 million of impairment expenses that Allie had mentioned, and we did undertake restructure expenses of $378,000 for the year. Next slide, please. And just to run through our capital management and just to really highlight a change of accounting for the year. So in this presentation, I'm showing cash and term deposits with an amount of $30.9 million at the end of June, and that compares to the prior year of $36.3 million. We've had -- as part of our end-of-year accounting adjustments, we do need to look at how we classify our term deposits. And so -- because we're looking to manage our cash as best as possible, we have cash placed in term deposits with an expiry of or term of greater than 3 months. And under the accounting rules, we are required to classify that as a financial asset as opposed to cash. But when you include both of those together, it is a healthy cash balance of $30.9 million. Our net operating cash outflows for the period is $12.3 million, and that is inclusive of a $5 million R&D rebate that we received during the year. Included in that $12.3 million were additional investments that we made in inventory. And so we undertook a $2.7 million investment in additional inventory to be able to ensure that we had adequate inventory levels for our Australian customers to get through the winter respiratory season, but also to support expected future revenue growth in the U.S. as well. Throughout the year or the start of the year, we did receive cash proceeds of $8.2 million from the retail component of our last capital raise that had occurred shortly before the end of last financial year, but it was completed within July 2024. Over to you, Allie.

Thank you, Karl. So the operational update. You will see here by this time line that it's really been a year of transition, a year of raising the bar, going back to basics and making sure that we can establish focus. We wanted to put the right people. We brought in some new people. We've moved around some existing people, but we put in the right people in the right places to focus on the right products to make a difference in the market. I believe we are now set up to be the professional diagnostics organization that we deserve to be. Throughout all the decisions we made, and we've had to make some really tough decisions throughout the year, we've had these 3 guiding principles in mind over time. The first one is around using resources wisely. The resources that we have today, you've just seen from the financials, they're not our money. They're your money. So every dollar we've spent, we spent it in what we believe is the wisest way, spending the money as if it was our own. We've done that with our money, with our people and with our materials. We've also brought in a laser focus. For every decision we made, focus was at the heart of what we had to do. How do we make this organization the company it should be? How do we have the products on market that are going to make the biggest difference to the patients? How are we going to make the products on the market to make the biggest difference to our top and our bottom line and the biggest difference to the customers in which we serve. And all the while leading the simplification, we're a small organization, so we should really make the best of being a small organization. We're not a giant. So let's be small, let's be nimble and let's keep things as simple as we can. And that has been at the heart of every decision. So the strategic focus was around, first of all, streamlining our teams. We didn't reduce our headcount, but what we did do is we moved our headcount around to make sure that we could align our talent for where we needed to grow in the future. We know that we have areas that we needed to strengthen. So we focus our expertise there by bringing in experts that we didn't currently have as part of our arsenal. And we positioned ourselves for the next generation of instruments and long-term commercial success. We know that the instruments we have today are kind of an older technology that they still do what they're meant to do, but we want to bring something. We want to be able to be more competitive, want more of an advantage. So that's why we've been working with Tecan and Repado’ to bring the next level. What does that look like? And so that's the work that's been -- we've spent a lot of time and a lot of effort bringing what we believe is the right product to market tomorrow. And talking of the new strategic direction for the solution, here we go. So these 3 companies, one of them being ourselves, Tecan, large Swiss organization, huge name in the diagnostic business, one part of the 3-way partnership, Repado, great software organization and the feedback we've got from the market, from our users, from our customers, from the key opinion leaders who we trust, is we want great software. So we've partnered with the company, we believe, are a fantastic software provider to bring that great software, that great intelligence to our systems moving forward. By taking this decision, it did mean an impairment, and we didn't take that decision lightly. But what it does mean from a positive is that we can bring this product to market much quicker than we could have done with the line we were following formally -- in former days, which was going down our own manufacturing and our own development. That was too slow. That also would be too expensive and that would also have such a high risk. So partnering with people who are trusted, companies who are trusted, companies who are on market today and have products that are well known and well respected, we believe, was the right way forward. So yes, one is speed. Two is development costs. Development costs will be much lower. And the third one is the enhanced automation, working with proven technologies. So it did result in an impairment cost, but we believe it's the most commercially viable path forward. And as I just spoke of earlier, we've done some real -- probably the most in-depth market research we've ever done as an organization to really hear from the customers, the customers from across the globe, what really will make a difference to them? Where do we need to be to be successful going forward? What does that look like in terms of menu, in terms of instrumentation, in terms of software, in terms of turnaround time, size? You name it, we talked about it, and we've got such valuable data that as an organization, we've shared that with everybody who's involved in this project. So the whole team are ready. They've got all the data to hand, and we're doing it not because we think it's right, because the market are telling us it's right. And every decision we've made is based on fact and data. So what's been happening in the past year in the countries in which we operate today? So our revenue did saw up to 66% growth to $14.4 million. Now I use the word so because the percentage is high, albeit the number is relatively small, but we have delivered a standout year-on-year growth. Karl just shared that in his slides. We had strong respiratory sales across all quarters, and we've partnered with some leading Australian pathology providers to really scale our testing capacity and meet the winter demand. There was a concern with our customers, can we meet the demand? We follow the flu and the COVID trends all the time to make sure that we're ready. We have enough stock. Karl spoke about that, making sure we have enough stock on hand, and we have enough instrumentation to be able to meet the demand that our customers require. So we work tirelessly with them to make sure that we could meet that. And I'm pleased to say, so far, we've met all those demands. From EMEA, so the revenue, another great percentage, again, a very small base, but revenue has gone up 40%. I know there's been question marks around EMEA before, but I'm very, very excited about this market. You will -- for those of you who have seen the annual report, you will see there's a case study in there from Blackpool. And you'll see the difference that by using our product has made to them, to the patients in which they serve, to the way their hospital operates, this is not just a laboratory test anymore. This is actually a hospital infection control test. And as the patients enter the hospital with any form of GI symptom, they're receiving our test as a screen, making sure they do not spread it amongst the wards. I spoke to a hospital over there just a few weeks ago, for the first time in their history, they've never had to close down a ward during the peak season -- the peak respiratory season. That's unheard of. They normally close around 5 wards during the winter. And if you're aware of the NHS, when people run on trolleys down the corridor, they can ill afford to do that. And using our test has helped stop them wards being closed. So the medical value is huge. And I think that goes there to show the 208% year-on-year growth for the enteric test that we provide to the U.K. and Europe, that's what that's bringing. So I'm very, very proud of that and the team are too. We have streamlined our EMEA operations. So what that means is we decided no longer to operate ourselves in Germany. We just operate as a team in the U.K. and Ireland and then any other work that we do across Europe will be through distribution partners at this moment in time. We've done that, as I said a few slides back, to ensure focus. We want absolute focus and to put our teams who are making the difference, actually generating these case studies, generating these examples to spread that success across other sites. And then for the U.S. As you can see in terms of the product here, we only currently have the parasite test in the U.S. What we have done over the year is changed our go-to-market strategy. We were formally focused mainly on laboratories because it is laboratories who buy our product, and it is laboratories who use our product. What we've realized is, we needed to spread our message further. We need patients to understand what a parasite is -- what a parasite infection looks like. We need a patient to go to the doctors to ask the doctor for a test. We need the doctor to understand what test he should be ordering. We need the laboratory to understand what test they should be running, and we need the payers to understand what they should be paying for. So we've changed our focus. We've started putting more patient-friendly information out there, and it's more of an awareness campaign to begin with. We will appear on a U.S. TV show coming up in the next -- I think it's in October, it will be aired in the New Year to raise awareness there and talk to your average person about what is it like to have a parasite and share some stories and go through the -- in many cases, the trauma that they've been through just to get a diagnosis and get treatment. In some cases, it can be years until these patients are dealt with appropriately. So we've got some good information to share there. We've changed some of our personnel in the U.S. So we've strengthened our team, and we've seen a difference there in our performance out in the U.S. Our sales pipeline is progressing. What we've done there, we're going back to basics. We're going back to actually look at every single opportunity and qualify the opportunity. Yes, we have a very healthy pipeline, but what does that really mean? How many of those opportunities are really solid? How many of those opportunities perhaps are not right now? What's currently at the top of the funnel, but can speed its way down to completion quicker? So there's a lot of work going on with the team there. I spoke about the contract secured that was secured halfway through the year. They've completed the validation and are due to go live any time now. And the brand profile raising is about -- there are other parasite tests on the market, but no other parasite test like ours. So yes, people can do a parasite test in the U.S., but they can't do the in-depth parasite testing that we can do. So it's making sure that the profile of what we have is at the forefront of everybody's minds. We brought the team together. I spoke earlier about being what I would class as a proper diagnostic organization. And what I mean by that is a company who has a purpose and a company that have a mission. And so together, we developed this. And 3base, we spoke in the very first slide about our 3base technology. We're very proud of our 3base technology, and we called it the power of 3. So at Genetic Signatures, we have the power of 3. And we come up with this every patient -- at Genetic Signatures, every patient is important. Our molecular diagnostic solutions empower health care professionals to make informed decisions, improve patient outcomes and build trust in every treatment journey. At Genetic Signatures, we harness the power of 3, to discover the unknown, to diagnose with precision and treat with confidence. We are collaborative, courageous, and we deliver excellence. We foster a culture of teamwork, innovation and quality where every challenge is met with both solutions. We have the power of 3. We are Genetic Signatures. We rolled that out to the organization, and we came together for the first time in our 24-year history together as one team, as one company. And I can say we left that meeting, everybody was jumping at the bit. Everybody was excited. Everybody was driven to deliver this mission out to our customers. And I've seen the difference already. That meeting was 2 months ago. The engagement score has already gone up. And we all know from a world-class engagement, your company profitability and sales and everything else increases, and we're seeing that already in the team. I'm really, really proud of that. We also revamped our values to be bold, be one and only. The feedback we've had from the organization on this has been phenomenal. They're simple, they're easy to remember. Everyone wears them around their neck on their lanyard every single day. So it's always at the forefront of your mind. At every town hall meeting, we share examples of how we've lived these values in order to make a difference and to achieve our goals. We share them at every leadership team meeting, and we hold each other accountable to them as well. When we're making perhaps a shy decision, hey, we've got to be bold. We've got to be curious and challenge assumptions, and it's making a real difference in how we operate. So with all that said and with all that we've been through in the past 11 months, certainly under my leadership, what does that look like? Well I've shared about the go-to-market strategy to drive the engagement, and I believe we will see an increase in our revenue in the coming year. I've shared with you what's been happening in EMEA, and you can read the example for yourself in our annual report, and we believe we will sign at least 4 major accounts. You may think 4 is a small number. But I think if anything, I'd say the learnings we took from the U.S. is, things take longer than we would like. And this is not Genetic Signatures, this is the diagnostics world or maybe the health care world, the world over. Things don't happen overnight, but to sign 4 major accounts will be a significant achievement in EMEA. In Australia, we plan to retain and grow our customer base while increasing revenue, and we're ready for any upcoming procurement opportunities. I've shared many times about the way procurement is in Australia is you win big, you lose big. People -- laboratories, hospitals go out to tender. And if you win the tender, you're signed up for the next 5 to 10 years. If you lose that tender, you're out for the next 5 to 10 years. So we're preparing ourselves for when those tenders come that we can put our best foot forward and try and win those opportunities. The next 2 points are around what we've got on market today and what we're bringing to market tomorrow. So our performance boost is our own products. Our own market products are great. They do what they're meant to do, but we always need to make sure that we're one step ahead. As I spoke earlier about some of our customers wanting to scale up ready for the flu season, what are we doing in the background to make that easier? How do we make our products optimal? And so we have a team of people here in Australia working on that, making our products optimal, making them even better than what we have today. And of course, the other portion of our team here is working on making our solutions for the future and making them the best products they can be in the time and the budget that we have. So we are a credible company out there and a credible competitor to those who are leading the market today. So with that, I thank you, and I open the floor for questions. Karl?

Thank you, Allie. So I encourage everyone on the call today to lodge their questions through the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. To start off with today with questions, I'll ask the first one, which is with our EMEA region. So in relation to the Blackpool case study, so which pathogens are being tested for within the Blackpool Hospital in the U.K.?

Yes, they're testing. We have a different -- so in the U.S., we just have parasites, whereas in the U.K., we test for parasites, virus and bacteria. So they're actually testing all of them, testing the full panel. And it's for every patient. As we -- as I'm sure you're aware, the infections such as norovirus and E. coli, they spread like wildfire. So yes, they find it very, very, very useful in those instances.

Next question is around the new go-to-market strategy in the U.S. Could you add a bit more color or detail around what you had presented earlier on around the new go-to-market strategy?

Yes. So we're changing our focus from just laboratories to make sure that we target all the various decision-makers. You may recall, when I first came to the role, I brought in a tool -- a sales tool called Miller Heiman, which allows you to assess stakeholders and make sure that you can channel your messages to the various stakeholders. So we've taken that a step further. We've now seen that the stakeholders are more than the laboratories. And as I said earlier, we've got the patients, the clinicians, the laboratories and the payers/hospital administrators. And so we're pulling together targeted campaigns and targeted ways for us to be in front of those various parties with the right messaging. I'm sure a hospital administrator is not so interested in the scientific content, more interested in the difference it can make for the hospital, for example, whereas the laboratory potentially is more interested in the scientific content, ease of use, those kind of things. So we need to make sure that our messaging is appropriate so that everyone can follow and understand and then make what we believe is the right decision.

Next question we have is, again, on the U.S. So can you provide any more color on the status of the U.S. customer experience labs? How many of these are still active and advanced in contracting?

Yes. We've -- so one of the second site that we signed in July was a customer experience site. They had a great experience with us. I did visit them a few months ago, I think back in January or something. They were over the moon with how it went. And they even pointed out their analyzer to us and said they can't wait to start using it again. So they should be up and running imminently, too. Some of the others have gone a bit by the wayside. I think the targets that we had, in some cases, were not necessarily the right targets for us to progress. So we decided to leave them and walk away from them. And others are still progressing, but it's a slow process. And for some, they wanted more automation, which we put out in our last quarterly communication. And so we're working on solutions to help them or help address what they believe is a lack of automation and make it slicker for them. So Sarah, who now leads the U.S., she'll be out there in September and to the end of September, and she'll be going to meet some of these sites to talk through this new proposed solution to try and progress that sale further. I will also be out there, but in October, and I will be seeing a lot of the customers or prospective customers too to try and progress the sales.

Related question. So yes, can you expand on the changes in the U.S. leadership and how many are performing boots on the ground sales activities within the U.S.?