hVIVO plc (HVO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the hVIVO plc Interim Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, we'd just like to submit the following poll. And as usual, if you could give that your kind attention. I'm sure the company would be most grateful. I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from hVIVO plc. Mo, Stephen. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Thank you for that introduction, and good evening, everyone, for joining us for our first half '24 update. Thank you for taking the time out and listening to this presentation. I hope it's useful and beneficial for you guys. And we here to report an amazing first half performance by everyone at hVIVO and I want to start off thanking every team member of the hVIVO and Venn Life Sciences team who has contributed amazingly into delivering the results as well as the operational changes that we have executed in the first 6 months of 2024. We go to the regulatory disclaimer. As I'm sure most of you probably are aware, I'm Yamin Mo Khan, CEO of hVIVO, sitting right next to me is Stephen Pinkerton, our CFO. And going straight into the company background, for those of you who are new to hVIVO, we are the leader -- global leader in conducting human challenge trials and consist of 2 subsidiaries. hVIVO being one with the [ headquarters ] in Canary Wharf in London and with a focus in conducting human challenge trials, second subsidiary is Venn Life Sciences who provide early drug relevant consulting services. Our mission, the company mission really is to deliver today's health care by empowering tomorrow's innovation. And what we mean by that is that using the fairly new concept of human challenge trials, we want to expedite and speed up the delivery of vaccines and antivirals to the patient much faster. And one of the examples where this has come true is in the Pfizer RSV vaccine that's currently available for patients. And the human challenge trial play crucial role in expediting the development of that product and getting to patients at a much faster rate than it would have done without this. We use FluCamp as a brand to recruit our healthy volunteers, to participate in clinical trials and we thank our volunteers for being so [indiscernible] in taking part in trials to the benefits of others. And we've also recently launched -- or will be launching very soon, hLAB as a not only as a lab that does the virology and immunology testing for human challenge trial, but also as a stand-alone business in delivering virology and immunology services for stand-alone clinical trials that are not linked to human challenge trials. Financially speaking, we've had a record number on a number of financial parameters. So with regards to revenue, that's sitting just under GBP 36 million for the first half of this year. That's a 31% year-on-year increase. Not only that, we've delivered that revenue at the 24.5% EBITDA margin, net EBITDA of GBP 8.7 million. That's a GBP 68 million year-on-year increase. So for both the key financial parameters, it's been an amazing achievement for the company. We have a cash at the end of June of GBP 37.1 million, and Stephen will give you an update of where we stand on that in a more recent timeframe. And at GBP 71 million in the weighted order book. So the demand for our services remains strong, and EPS also has grown at 0.81p. But that's only one part of the story because in addition to delivering these really amazing financial numbers, we've also transformed the company this year by moving to a new state-of-the-art human talent facility, which is the largest of its kind in the world in Canary Wharf, and that is now fully operational. So the whole build-out and the move is complete, and we are now running clinical trials in that facility. We've also been able to expand the outpatient facility at Plumbers Row, and that's actually completing this week. So we're ready to deliver our largest field trial to date at this new facility. So it's a really great timing that we've got a facility that's ready to be utilized. And now we have a contract so we can actually -- where we can utilize this facility. Our main focus as a core business will always be human challenge trials, and that will remain so. So we are looking to not only continue to build on what we have on especially on the flu and RSV challenges, but we're looking to build on some new challenge models. And here on the bottom left-hand side, you can see some of the key highlights for this year where we've signed some new contracts and also looking to develop some new challenge agents. But one of the new initiative we as a company have undertaken recently is developing new revenue stream, and some of these I'm going to go through later on in this slide. And on top of that, our second subsidiary Venn Life Sciences has also had a great 6 months of the year and not only have successfully grow the revenue, but they've been able to sell some of the new services we've added in ATMP and QA consultancy services recently. So that's kind of an overview of the first half of the year. Stephen will now go through some of the financial parameters in a little bit more detail.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. So it is without words, and small words, saying it's a record H1 revenue for us. We've never delivered GBP 35.6 million before, and it is a strong performance. It is all coming -- that growth is all coming through from human challenge trials in the period year-on-year. Part of the reason for the huge growth is that we have contracted with a couple of clients to deliver studies within a certain time frame. They will -- they have requested to receive data from their trials in Q4 2024. And so to make sure that we deliver these studies on time, we pulled forward some of that revenue into H1. And that's part of the reason why we've had such a record performance in 2024. And it is also with these clients because they've asked us to accelerate and deliver within a certain timeframe that we have extracted an acceleration fee, which we have used to fund our facilities. Our new facilities in Canary Wharf. So some of the dynamics behind that and the details is that we did deliver a record of volunteers for in H1, it was 56% up on H1 2023. And so -- and it is delivered across 6 different studies, across 5 different viruses. And that's important in the sense that it allows us to deliver quite more quickly, a lot more efficiently to get volunteers onto the study, because we have 5 chances of getting a volunteer on to a study in a short period of time. Now it's worth noting that Venn accounts for 11% of our total revenue. Its growth rate was 1% in GP terms -- in GBP terms and just under 5% under the euro currency and their local currency. It has had a good year. It's off the back of a -- back of a 30% increase in last year. So last year, they grew 30% in the same period. And this year, they've grown somewhat less. But what's very interesting about this business, it is very sticky. So the clients that they have won, they have retained and they've continued to doing that work. So they maintain their revenues. We're still very optimistic in this business, and we expect long-term growth from this business at least 10% on average. So as I explained, this H1 weighted because we've accelerated the study work and delivered in H1, but also because we had a small cancellation as we announced in April, in Q4 2024. So that's why we are H1 weighted. It is all worth noting that we did sell a -- and contract a field study that has been delivered in a H4 2024. So that has softened the blow to some extent. And then don't forget, if a client does cancel, we retain a cancellation fee, which would be recognized in Q4 2024. So just to remind everybody, we are maintaining our GBP 62 million full year revenue guidance. So with the increase in volume of work, yes, revenue grew up grew 31%. Costs grew 20% and the difference is obviously flowing straight through to the margin and so margin jumped up to 24.5%. So it's greater volume of work across all the facilities. It allows us to better utilize our recruitment efforts and our clinical operations. And so we're sweating our [ actions ] much better and getting great utilization from the team. An interesting statistic as I just mentioned that we -- our volunteers grew 56% from year-to-year, but the advertising spend did not increase. It was flat. So -- and despite the increase in volunteers, the advertising spend to attract those volunteers onto studies, it was flat compared to H1 2023, so a very strong performance in recruitment. It's worth noting that, obviously, we are a growing business. We are [ fixing ] refreshing some of our models. And so the cost doesn't -- the margin doesn't include some one-off costs. But we are in a [ growing ] business and so we will always have an element of one-off costs in our margin, but a very good result for this year. So this remains for me to point out that our EBITDA margin is expected to be at the upper end of the market expectations. And for that means at the moment the market, when we did the presentation, it was between 22% and 24%. And at the midpoint would be 23%. And if we're looking at the upper end, you're looking between 23% and 24% is where we expect to land for the full year. Cash has grown from GBP 31 million to GBP 37 million, and it's a strong cash position. We're quite happy with it. We did have an increase in working capital. It's probably worth just going to the next slide, I think -- and this just shows you the cash generated in the period. So at the beginning of the year, we had GBP 37 million. At the end of the period, we had GBP 37.1 million. You can see the GBP 7.6 million is the cash generated from operations. We did have a negative net working capital movements in the period. And this is because we accelerated our revenues and our study performance in H1, particularly these clients are big pharma. They pay us 60 days -- no they have 60-day payment terms. And so we received all that cash in July. And so it as mainly timing. What you've got to understand is that these payment terms are quite significant. The milestone payments that were triggered were very significant. They are at least GBP 1 million or just over GBP 1 million when we hit these targets. And so the delay, this is just a delay. It's just a point of timing. And the other point is that we did sign a contract in mid-June and the booking fee for that contract was received in early July. So the -- if you look at trade receivables, that was a key driver between the net working capital movement, it grew from GBP 9 million to GBP 14 million at the end of June. At the end of July, it's back down to GBP 9 million. So there's no really concern there at all. Purchase of PPE is the investment and the costs of spending and developing Canary Wharf building up the new facilities. It's a net figure. So I appreciate that it's after CAT A contributions from our landlord. So we have spent more than what we suggested out there. But we're also just to comment is that our clients have paid for over 90% of that spend in total. So the spend of this of the facility -- of the Canary Wharf facility will happen in 2023 and 2024. We've got about a further GBP 1.5 million spend for the rest of the year, which includes the funds from fit-out to deliver the new field study. The dividend, not worth commenting on that and the GBP 0.8 million is an interest earned on business. And the other couple of comments on the GBP 37 million beginning of the year, the GBP 37 million was GBP 21 million company-owned cash and GBP 16 million cash received in advance of client -- delivering on client studies. At the end of June 2024, that GBP 37 million was broken down into GBP 30 million client-owned money and GBP 7 million cash received in advance from client studies. So this last, just to highlight the new facility. I think one thing, if you haven't had a chance to visit, a number of you have quite a few client visit -- client days and investor days to have a look at the unit. It is a fantastic unit. We were given a blank sheet of paper to design what we wanted and people who did, did all the delivery and the hard work of designing the study were people that operate our existing facilities. They had knew exactly what they needed and what they want to deliver these studies. So it's a great space. It's been very well designed out and it will only enhance the quality of and delivery and our clients have loved it so far. But just to remind the financial aspects is that it is being 90% funded by the clients. As I've mentioned to you, we've accelerated, and we've got some hard delivery timelines on client studies. The revenue -- the funding from the clients, unlike the landlord, is being recognized through the P&L. So it's additional revenue coming through. These were acceleration -- accelerating fees that are being recognized in line with the delivery of those studies so being recognized across 2023 and 2024. So we've increased our space by 31% from that design we are expecting really good clinical and laboratory operational efficiencies. We expect to see more of this coming through in 2025. So -- but we are seeing signs of it now. The new facility unlocks new revenue streams. I suppose the most important thing here is that we're going to have CL-3 designated we're going to be able to do CL-3 designated pathogens in our unit. We are already able to do in the quarantine, we are too able to do COVID, and the lab is being currently -- we are waiting for HSE approval for the new laboratory that will be able to do CL-3. And Mo will talk to more about the benefits of this shortly in this presentation. So -- and the other point to highlight is that this new facility does increase our revenue cap previously under the old facilities in QMB and in Whitechapel Hotel, we were limited to -- closer to about GBP 60 million. And with this new facility, we can grow -- get organic revenues up to GBP 90 million. And I'll hand over back to Mo to take us through some of that.

Thank you, Stephen. So as I'm sure you all agree, financially, I mean, we've achieved significant revenue growth at market beating EBITDA margins. And on top of that, you can see the high percentage of the EBITDA is being converted to cash. So from a financial point of view, this is a very well-run business. And the sustainable growth that we had promised on a number of occasions, we're actually seeing [indiscernible]. But one of the things we're looking at really is, where do we go from here? So what future growth do we have lined up? So there's different revenue streams now, we are looking to execute. So -- and then we'll go to each one in the preceding slides. But really, we're looking at remaining a core human challenge trial service provider. That's really the key for us in building that. Adding ancillary services in the -- under hLAB for virology/immunology lab serves by a special provision. And then using our outpatient clinic and FluCamp to recruit patients either for third parties or for our own field Phase II, Phase III trial and on top of that, of course, continuing to develop the drug development services that our Venn Life Sciences subsidiary is an expert at. So taking these one by one. So first of all, is building on our portfolio of challenge agents. So you know majority of our challenge agent work comes from RSV and Flu B. We're looking to expand both the RSV portfolio of challenge agents we have as well as flu. On top of that, we're seeing now we have a CL-3 capability. We now have the potential to run challenge trials in CL-3 pathogen, for example, COVID or Dengue. On top of that, we now have the scope in our expanded laboratory in Canary Wharf to be up to run bacterial challenge trials and basically cater for the bacterial laboratory assays in the same facility. As the market continues to grow in the vaccine front, we are looking for the market to go into the next generation of vaccine, which include mucosal vaccines or inhaled or tablet-type oral vaccines as well as bivalent or multivalent vaccines, which basically means that 1 drug that works on multiple viral pathogens. And then on top of that, we're looking to potentially build a model for transmission studies where you study the percentage of infection rates that have been transmitted from the person who is infected to a noninfected patient population. And that's something we're building for the long term future and seeing what we can do. And the new facility is built with these studies in mind. So we are future-proofing to a certain extent the new facility and how we can diversify the challenge agent portfolio we have as well as the type of studies we are going to learn. hLAB is something we are really keen to develop. So historically, hLAB has run all the lab assays for the challenge trials, but now we have the capacity to run stand-alone trials for hLAB. So these are lab work that we are running for clinical trials that are run by third parties. So there could be Phase I, Phase II or Phase III trials. We doubled our lab space where we tripled the capacity. And the way we've done that is, historically our lab space was very inefficient. The way we had lots of corridors between the labs with lot of [ dead ] space. So now we completely revamped up of course the new facility which is fit for purpose. So we tripled the capacity, not only that, we also have a CL-3 lab. We have a new LIMS system, which I'll mention later on. But all of this helps in selling our lab services to our clients, and we will be launching a hLAB dedicated website later this month. Under the banner of hLAB, we will also be expanding our biobank services where we're looking to offer biospecimen to our clients using either retrospective samples we have or the prospective samples we are going to collect. And we are already an approved vendor at the [ Scientist.com ] website, and we have received the relevant tissue biobank approvals and ethics on the approvals that we need to be able to act as a biobank service provider. In addition to that, we're using our FluCamp brand, not only to recruit healthy volunteers into human challenge trials, but also this year we're launching a 3-tiered service -- or third parties so we can recruit volunteers and patients to third parties. So, for example, if a global CRO is looking for patients to recruit at their sites, we can help them provide either in essential, or advance or a premium service for them. So this basically means that we can either just identify the patient and book them into their facility, or we can identify the patient, where we can consent them, we can do all the physical examination and all the lab screening and give them a patient that we know fits their requirements. So this level, different tiering would mean that we can give different level of service to meet the clients' need and we have already signed a contract in this. Of course, these will be, especially in the beginning, small amount, but we look to develop long-term relationships with our customers and provide repeat business on an ongoing basis. The clinical site services, I mean, we will always aim to get field studies, the Phase II, Phase III studies and with the expansion of our facility at Plumbers Row, we are able to do this. In fact, we can only run the recently signed field trial that requires us to recruit 1,000 healthy volunteers in Phase II influenza vaccine trial that after the fact that we have expanded the facility, we doubled the capacity. And by the way, we can only do that because we have moved the offices from Plumbers Row to Canary Wharf. So the move to Canary Wharf has already been a huge success. So we -- on the back of this movement, we've been able to sign a large field study, which we couldn't have done otherwise. We've been able to sign an Omicron characterization study because now we have the CL-3 capability, and we've been able to sign 3 stand-alone lab contracts. So the -- if there was any kind of reason to justify the move, I think we have already done that and long may it continue. Venn Life Sciences has also had a really good year in 2023. The first half, they had a 30% growth. On top of that, they now had a 5% additional growth in revenue. And the pleasing thing about Venn Life Sciences and this is what pleasing me the most in a way that when we launched new initiatives and new services then you start to see the returns. I'm pleased to say that the new ATMP service and the QA consulting services, now we have signed contracts in both of those service lines. And in addition, we opened a very small office in Leiden in the middle of the Biotech Park in North Netherlands, and that has already kind of resulted in a number of contracts through the local networking events that we have participated. So it's really good to see that Venn Life Sciences continued to develop their own stand-alone services as well as take active part in executing the human challenge trials hVIVO runs. One of our key goals has been to continue to improve efficiencies. So we achieved this by having all our staff -- the majority of staff under one roof in Canary Wharf and that's going to have its own outcome on that. But in addition, we're looking to automate whatever we can. So the Lab -- Laboratory Information Management System or LIMS is something we're looking to implement to improve our lab delivery. So the first phase will be delivered towards the end of this month and now will continue as proceeding stages is going into 2025. The Volunteer Management System is up and it's live and is working. We are already looking to add new capabilities to it. So, for example, volunteers can self-book. They can change their bookings. We're looking to introduce web chatting into this as well as manage the outpatient field trials all within this one system. So we want to get to a state, to be honest with you, where we are able to give clients anonymized access to a portal where they can internally look at the database that we hold. So when they're applying to clinical trials, they can look at the database and they know how many patients we have on our database that will fulfill their eligibility requirements. And that's about the goal which we're hoping to achieve in 2025. The final part of this automation is the eSource. So this is basically taking our paper-based medical records and converting them into an electronic record. So at -- from January onwards, we will be introducing the first phase of this, which will include the electronic consenting of individuals. So when a volunteer comes in, they'll be handed an iPad, and they will give consent on the iPad and that will create a patient record in the patient database. So then we will be able to collect all the data electronically. This will improve quality of the work we run, it will increase the speed of how we run the work, and it will reduce the cost base because it means single point of data entry. The market overview. So I think most of you are aware, especially our loyal holders who have been attending this presentation before, we create our own market when it comes to human challenge trial and we'll continue to do that. And so one of the key reasons why our scientists are fully enrolled in the sales process. But with the new revenue stream we've added, you can see here on the slide that the market value of those is huge. So in this case, we're not looking to create a new market. We're looking to penetrate an existing market. So we have many vendors that we will be competing against on all of these new revenue streams. But I'm keen and I'm impressed by the team that they can deliver this because we have already started to convert opportunities into contract and they are now actively delivering this. With regard to infectious diseases, we've listed below some of the different nonprofit and government agencies that have invested in infectious diseases quite significantly. And this basically means for us that there is a great interest in infectious diseases, in vaccine development, in antiviral development, and we will of course tap into this and help our clients develop their vaccine, antivirals much faster to take then to the next stage. But equally importantly, if the vaccine or antiviral does not work, we're able to show lack of fixing at a very early stage without the customer spending GBP 100 million plus of a phase III state before they realize the drug doesn't work. The order books as at the end of June of this year. The order book -- the weighted order books at GBP 71 billion, which is a really good number, considering we're going after a GBP 62 million revenue target. As you might imagine, this is dominated by challenge trial, but we look to expand that darker green smaller segment of the pie chart. In addition to the order book, we have around GBP 40 million of opportunities in the pipeline that we are looking to close into the short and mid-term. And the reason why we're sharing this because I think people are expecting us to sign contracts on a regular basis. That's not the type of business we are. We've seen before there are no signatures and suddenly there are 3 to 4 signatures in a very short time frame. So this GBP 40 million we're looking to sign in the short to medium-term, mostly consists of current clients, new clients, new challenge agents as well as all existing challenge agents, and we are effectively negotiating proposals and contracts with this client and there are hurdles for these clients to get to signature, and that's what we're working through. So I'm very pleased to say that the number of proposals that we are submitting to our clients for challenge trials remains strong. So the market demand remains really, really good. And it's just timing of these signatures, which we will pull-through. But you have to remember now that we are not a one-trick pony. We will now also grow the non-challenge revenue scheme, which will supplement the challenge trial pipeline we have here. So as you know, our goal is to get to GBP 100 million in revenue by 2028. And this slide shows you the different revenue streams that we need to grow by -- from GBP 62 million in base that we expect to get by the end of this year. So as an example, we look to add around GBP 16 million of revenue by 2028 in challenge trials. So GBP 3 million revenue for Venn and over GBP 1 million for field studies. And then you can see the rest -- the amount we need to increase this way. We are very confident that we can achieve this. The final piece to this jigsaw puzzle really is to conduct M&A activities. And being the global leader and having a huge market share in the human challenge trial basically means that there's no competitor or no service provider out there that fits 100% in the human challenge trial bucket. So we actually a little bit more smarter in how we identify and pursue M&A targets. So what we're looking to do is leverage what we already do and have a bolt-on acquisition, and this could be a Phase I unit, a patient recruitment company, a clinical or nonclinical consulting company or a laboratory. But the key goal, and I hope you are patient with us on this is, that we will wait to get the right target rather than rush and conduct M&A activity for the sake of it. That's not our goal. It's really important for us to be strategic about this and have a long-term view on making sure that whoever we go for, they fit really well into our current strategy and in our goal to deliver the GBP 100 million. So that basically concludes our presentation. I hope you found the presentation useful and beneficial. And we are very happy to answer any questions.

[Operator Instructions] But just while the company take a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already. I would just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can all be accessed via your investor dashboard. Mo and Stephen, we obviously received a number of presubmitted questions ahead of today's event. And as you can see there, we've also received a number of questions throughout your presentation this evening as well. So firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions and guys at this point, if I may just hand back to you just to read out those questions and give your responses where it's appropriate to do so. And then I'll pick up from you at the end.

Thank you. So many questions. So thank you for your interest. I hope I can get through as many of them as possible. So let's start. There was a press release from the Department of Health and Social Care, Office for Life Sciences and some MPs on 28th of August that the U.K. government will be investing GBP 400 million in a joint public-private venture in boosting clinical trials in the U.K.. Do you see hVIVO benefiting from any of this investment? So not directly, but indirectly, yes, because it's very timely in a manner because as we launched our hLAB, our patient recruitment services and our field studies, what we need and what we want is more clinical trials to be done in the U.K. So as part of this investment, the [ NHS ] will open, I think, 8 commercial units to run commercial trial much faster. So that will, I think, promote U.K. as a country to do more clinical trials. And when that happens, we hope to be part of that process. So, yes, this should help increase the profile of the U.K. I mean U.K. has not had a great time in conducting Phase II, Phase III trials in recent times. I think Spain is now the #1 go to country for clinical research in the U.K. I'm hoping this kind of investment and what we are doing, for example, in the Phase II vaccine trial, we can start bringing U.K. to the #1 destination at least in Europe for future clinical trials. This is a direct question. Are you planning on recruiting a new Chairman? No, we're not planning on recruiting a new Chairman. Cathal Friel is our non-Executive Chairman. He's not involved on a day-to-day basis, but he does give us advice and direction. And his experience, as you know, from -- even his [ open ] days, he had lots of M&A experience, and we want to tap into that and hopefully use that experience and expertise to help us conduct our own M&A activity. So we're not looking to recruit a new Chairman. Has Cathal's shares sale helped your ability to attract institutional investors? Not at all. I mean, you could argue. It actually promoted institutional investments because it was an institutional investor who was after a large block of share, which then Cathal offered to the institution and they purchased that. And then in addition to that, I'm sure, for those of you who follow us closely, there has been a [ Tier 1 ] recently with regards to institutional holdings. And right now, we have more institutional holders than we've ever had, well, at least since I joined the company. And so I don't see that has had any negative impact. I noticed Cathal completely cashed out recently, which caused some retail invest at banks. Can you comment on the timing of the given the very positive outlook of the business? I'm sure Cathal had its own personal reasons on that, but the timing was more driven by institutional demand. So when we have an institution who was already a sizable holder wanted to add additional holdership and then the timing was right. And that was the main reason that I know drove that decision. Cathal wasn't actually looking to sell, but we have somebody who wanted to buy, and he was willing to accommodate that requirement. How solid is the GBP 100 million target for 2028? There has been very few contracts signed this year. So don't get too worried about the very few contracts announced part of this conversation. Look at the order book, look at the advanced opportunities, a number we are looking to close in the short to mid term, that should give you some level of comfort. Now with regards to the GBP 100 million target, so we are currently on track right now. So the human challenge trial growth is on track. The new revenue streams are on track. The only part missing at the moment, I guess, is the M&A and that's what both Stephen and I are actively pursuing. I'll leave this one for Stephen, can you give shareholders an update on Imutex. Does hVIVO still own 49% of Conserve. Conserve Bio [ license ]have received funding from the U.K. and the U.S. government recently, so what happens if they make a breakthrough?

Okay. So a couple of things. Yes, we still own 49% of Imutex. The key thing here is that we are very much -- Mo and I are very much focused on driving our CRO services in terms of delivering on human challenge trials, lab work and all that. So we're not really in the biotech piece, but we do have a good relationship with [ Bio Conserve ] that have kept us informed. We're aware of this funding. We're aware of what they're doing with the Walter Reed Institute. So it's all good there, and we'll see how it progresses. We still renew our patents. Imutex owns a number of patents around the 2 assets, and those are still being renewed and held.

Thank you. And the next question is on addressable market, my favorite question. I'd like to know what the company thinks as future addressable market is? Look, to be very frank and honest, nobody knows what the human challenge trial market size is. And I'll give you a very good example. So we talked to a client in the morning, they had no intention of running a human challenge trial. Our scientists talked to them, gave them the arguments and the benefits of a human challenge trial. And by the evening, they agreed to do a human challenge trial. So you could argue, in the morning, the 0 market value size. And in the evening, suddenly you had either a GBP 5 million, GBP 7 million, GBP 10 million, worth of human challenge trial. So we know we are growing the market. We are creating our own market and considering the -- now this is the third year now. You've seen a sustainable growth in our revenue and a very, very healthy pipeline and order book. I think that in itself should be sufficient evidence that this market is here to stay. In fact, we think, continue to grow as we go forward. The question also goes on just to talk about the scale of the opportunity. So the scale of the opportunity in the human challenge trial things I explained. But in addition to that, by adding the new revenue streams, and those addressable market go into billion. So I think we now have the benefit of 1 revenue stream where we are creating our own market and 3 or 4 other revenues streams where we are looking to penetrate an existing market. So we have a different sales and marketing process addressing both of those needs. Is there a reason that Canary Wharf was selected as your new base? Do you want to take that?

Sure. A couple of good reasons. One, Canary Wharf is one stop from where we previously were in terms of QMB and Whitechapel Hotel. And second reason is that Canary Wharf is creating a health care, health science, life science environment. So they have a very strong program of driving life sciences into that area. Third reason is we wanted to get something to volunteer. They're coming in, they have to spend 10, 12, 15 days and if there's a COVID study, they're going to be 17 days in a room. And so to have a great view and it's a great facility. And it's a nice thing to come to London. The volunteer is not going to want to go out to somewhere in the middle of the country site on a single floor or a double floor. So it's not as attractive, whereas here the volunteers will travel as far and come into London, spend some time in London, enjoy the London and also participate in a trial. So it really is a beneficial move for the trial. The other, and the last and probably the most important reason from my perspective, it was financially advantageous for us to move. And we got sufficient and really good pricing on the deal. It was a great moment in time. Everything just slotted in the moment in terms of our lease. Leases were coming up for renewal on Whitechapel Hotel and QMB and Canary Wharf offered us a great deal. So we moved.

As simple as that. What is the average lead time between a customer making an order and the trial actually happening? If a customer asks for a trial now, could we still accommodate that this year or would it now be scheduled for next year? So, I mean, to be honest, the answer you would like is basically how long is a piece of string? We have clients that take 4, 5 years from the initial inquiry to them signing a trial, and we have other clients that take 2 or 3 months. So there's no kind of average because the variability between the minimum and maximum is so huge. So hopefully that answers your first question. Secondly, so we typically require at least 5 to 6 months from signing a contract to getting all the approvals from the different bodies to get the trial ready for quarantine. So there's always that kind of lag anyway. And we do our best to fit clients into the unit. But there are occasions where the clients may have to wait. So we really kind of communicated our vacancy rate in our unit proactive to a client, so they know exactly when they can fit into our schedule. And most clients really commit to that, and this is part of our contractual process and the nonrefundable fee we charge our clients because we book a slot of bed in a certain time frame for our clients to be able to run their trials. Do you hold any part of the data that gets generated while running challenge trials? The actual challenge trials, that data is owned by our client because they are paying and they're sponsoring that trials, which is the right thing to do. For some characterization studies that we run to find the right dose of the challenge agent to use in future challenge trials, we own that data, depending on who is sponsoring that. So this is two different ways of looking at that. Would you say there's a slowdown in the winning of new contracts this year and is this a concern? If so, how are you addressing it? So, I think, I agree to your point there's a slowdown in actual signatures, but not in demand. So the pipeline remains strong. The short to midterm opportunity we're looking to convert remains a really good number. So right now, that's not of concern. How we are addressing this? Well, to be honest, now that we are addressing this, but we are looking to supplement the additional revenue streams into our revenue forecast. So we're looking to say, okay, this is what the challenge trial will deliver, what will recruitment services, what will labs and consulting services also deliver on top of that. The targeted bolt-on acquisitions are prerequisite to achieving GBP 100 million in 2028. Yes, I think that's been fairly transparent. Has any potential targets been identified? I wouldn't go as far as being identified, but we are looking at a number of assets, potential targets, let's say. Do potential targets need to be revenue and profitable enhancing? Yes, that is the ultimate goal. The ideal scenario for us is to be able to take a company that's making good profit margins, put them into our infrastructure and enhance that margin because of the existing infrastructure we have at hVIVO. The field study using the FluCamp database looks very interesting. What sort of revenue do these studies generate? So I mean, that's -- again,-- they can go from tens of thousands to millions, depending on what phase the trial is, how many subjects or patients or volunteers we need to recruit, what services that we're offering. So there is a complete variability in those projects. Does the CL-3 capability give increased or potential risk in case of problems? How is this mitigated? So our team that we have is being fully trained in delivering CL-3 capabilities, there is kind of a number of levels of processes we have implemented internally to manage any potential risks. The facility in itself is basically built to kind of minimize risks. I mean just to give you an example, that CL-3 lab, which is basically 1 room divided into 3 compartments, costs us GBP 1 million. So that basically includes all the safety mechanisms in case of any issues. And this is how we mitigate on top of our own internal management risk processes that we have. And Stephen and I, both have been trained on health and safety, and we even have a certificate to prove that we attended that training. In addition, we get approval and certification from the health and safety executive of the U.K. to make sure that our facility is fit for purpose. Even the metropolitan police has a view and audited facility. Every client we work with more or less audits our processes as well set. So there's kind of a number of layers of systems and processes in place to be able to minimize that risk. Any dividends on the horizon?

We've committed to paying an annual dividend, and that should be sort of similar as we paid out this year. We paid out just under GBP 1.4 million. And we have the same sort of ilk going forward. We do want to hold on to our cash. We are quite serious about looking at M&A opportunities and growing this business. So we expect to use that cash for driving growth in this business.

Do you see hVIVO developing models for gastro pathogen, enteric pathogen such as C. diff, rotavirus, norovirus, salmonella? So it's a very important question. So the simple answer to your question is, yes. But what we will look to do is to look at client demand. So we're not looking to go and proactively invest in developing these models. What we're looking to do is partner with the client, who has an interest in these models and then basically take that forward. So, yes, so to your point, yes, but we're looking for a client to come forward who is looking to do a challenge trial in these. What else. Do you see, hVIVO setting up screening centers under FluCamp in other countries of the world such as South America, Africa or South Asia to add more diverse antibody profile? No. So we are obliged to recruit only healthy volunteers and patients that are registered to a U.K.-based GP, as part of the patient recruitment process. If we reach a certain stage -- I'm talking about challenge trials for now, if we reach a certain stage where we outgrow the number of volunteers available to us in the U.K., we may then look to, for example, go to U.S. and tap into a new pool of healthy volunteers and establish a challenge trial unit there. But when we come to field-based study, that's something -- that's quite different. So if we have success in field-based study to helping patients recruitment for the U.K., then that gives us the opportunity to offer the patient recruitment services to our clients in other countries. So that's where we look at to promote our FluCamp brand in different, let's say, European countries to start off with and help our clients recruit patients in those countries. Will hVIVO hLABs attend [ ESCMID ] next year? Yes, we attend ESCMID every year, in fact, and we have both our sales and also our scientific attendees attend because that's one of the main conferences for us to attend. I think I'll wrap up there. Got some other questions. Unfortunately, we can't go through them. So I really appreciate your interest and your time and your efforts in asking us these questions. Hopefully, we've answered quite a few. And of course, please follow up through our IR platform if you have any further questions.

Perfect. Mo and Stephen, that's great. If I may just jump back in here. Thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time in addressing all of those questions that came in for investors. And of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll give you those back immediately after the presentation and just for you to review and to then add any additional responses, of course, where it's appropriate to do so. And we'll publish all those responses out on the platform. But Mo, perhaps before really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, if I could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that would be great.

Thank you [indiscernible]. Absolutely, please provide for feedback and also answer the poll question. On a personal note, I joined hVIVO in February 2022 and I remember during my first IMC. I was a bit nervous and the very new to public markets. And I said, what you expect from me really is being transparent and honest and frank about what we do. At the same time, being conservative in what we're going to deliver. And each of the 6-month periods since then, I think we have, as a company, met those promises and those targets. And that's what our [indiscernible] is going forward. And Stephen probably shares the same details. So we are conservative maybe, but we're also realistic. We want to make sure that whatever guidance we give to the markets we keep to that. I want to leave the last word, as I thank you to the team at hVIVO delivering the financial promises is one thing, but also transforming the company into something that can really grow to something significant now laying those foundations in the first half of this year and now has been amazing. So great job guys and long it continue. And thank you for all you holders for your loyalty in hVIVO. And for those of you who are not holders, what's keeping you guys? Thank you very much.

Perfect. Mo, that's great. And thank you once again for updating investors this evening. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of hVIVO plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good evening to you all.