PolyNovo Limited (PNV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for coming out on this miserable day. I originally can see that we might play that before the meeting because in the past couple of years, we've had Zoom meetings, and we also need to be waiting around and the operators saying, "do you want to let them in? Do you want to let them in?" "And I keep saying it, "Give it half a minute or another minute," and they end up 2 or 3 minutes late. So I was anticipating that might happen again. So while you're waiting at home, wondering whether we know you're here or not, you could have a little video which we put together with John Weeks. He's become a movie star. But what an advocate. He's not only had a fantastic journey, but he's written his own book, and he's a very big advocate for us, walking around the country, telling his story, but impregnating it with the role in which John Greenwood and the BTM played in his recovery. So that's the first, but there's hundreds of others now, not just from burns as he did. It doesn't tell the whole story, but he was driving along the car with a can full of petrol, and believe it or not, a spark from his mobile phone set it off and the next thing the whole thing blew up. So go figure. We've got a -- that's sort of an indication, by the way, we're going to try a few things different today, and that video was first to them. But I thought also that we're growing very quickly. This is still a start in many ways. And it's all right for Swami, who will speak later and myself to talk to you about what's happened to sales and so on and so forth. But it doesn't sometimes feel real if the company hasn't been around for very long. So I thought just as a one-off, we might, in addition to myself and Swami talking, we might actually get a couple of the staff up. So -- and there's 6 or 7, I could have got. And if it works, we'll do it next year. If it doesn't work, you'll go, what the hell was at all about? But -- and it's a little bit of a logistical nightmare because the first person I'm going to talk to is Marcus Wagstaff, Professor Marcus Wagstaff, from Royal Adelaide. He's currently in the U.S. He's been -- he's currently at the biggest plastic surgeons conference, which starts this weekend in Boston, 3,000 plastic surgeons, believe it not. Last week, he was in Canada for the conference there and the launch of BTM in Canada, you're all aware that we've now had it approved in Canada. But before either of those things he did, or sweeps for the U.S. And so I'm going to just give you -- you're going to hear it as I'm hearing it because we haven't had a briefing. I just thought he might want speak for a couple of minutes in his hotel in Boston. So we're going to get him on first and just want to give you a sense of what he's seeing, and you can hear it as I hear it, so it's unedited. We don't have a transcript of what he's going to say. And then I'm going to talk to Valerie Young, who's in the room who runs our Asia -- not Asia, our Australia, New Zealand sales and marketing, and I'm going to get her up for a couple of minutes and just chat about what you've been up to? And you'll also know from releases that have been made in the last week that she spent last week in Hong Kong. Went up there to scope the place, and she's had a couple of wins early on. And then a number of other surgeons come back and say because I'm really interested in this. So it just shows you in some ways how you're going to get an immediate impact. And the rest of the time, that probably happened in by Monday lunch and the rest, she just spent eating in hotels and restaurants around Hong Kong. So we might ask about that. And then thirdly, we've got sitting next to her in the front row, Ed Graubart, and he has one of his team out here as well from the U.S., but he runs our U.S. practice, and he's been here. We had a strategy session for the last few days. But again, you'll hear it as I'm hearing it. I've just got a couple of things so I'm going to ask him about how is it going in the U.S. How is the sales force going? What are he's seeing from the doctors, what his initial thinking is in terms of Canada because that will be sort of funnel through him as well? So the purpose of that is just so you get a subtle sense of how deep the team is. But we've got other people here from the team, Dave McQuillan is here, who previously was on the Board, but now runs R&D. Maybe he can come at the half year report if this works. But, so we've got a bit to juggle between me talking, Swami talking and these 3 little will just been yet, if you like. I'm not going to allow you to ask questions. Otherwise, I'm going to be here till Christmas. But I can probably answer questions for them, but I just want to give you a sense of the depth of the team and some of the things that are happening right -- literally right now, in Hong Kong, in the U.S. and in Canada, in particular. So hope you enjoy it. I'm taking the accolades for it now because if the video link to Boston doesn't work, it's going to be disaster. Anyway, so that's just a little bit of a bigger about what's going to happen later in this chat. So we've got a quorum, so I'll open the meeting formally. And welcome you all here today really, I think you now in case I forget at the end of it, but our shareholders and the supporters of the company really appreciate your support of us and hanging in there. I know there's quite a lot of people here that have been here for -- well, as long as I have any way for 5 or so years. And it's turning into a big success. I hope you're enjoying the ride. When I went to work this morning, I saw an article on my screen that was written by the Motley Fool group. The name of the company, by the way, Motley Fool, should give you a sense of how much reliance you should make on type of this company, by the way. But the article was about PolyNovo, which is what caught my eye. And it basically was an article that said, "Look, how do you invest at $30,000 in PolyNovo in 2012, 10 years ago, that $30,000 today would be worth $1.1 million. If it had been priced at the price that PolyNovo was 18 months ago, it would have been worth $2.3 million." And I love when I read it because it made me sound like Warren Buffett and -- or the company like Berkshire Hathaway. We're nothing like that, of course. But I think it's an interesting -- for those of you are on my e-mail database and have asked to be on it, I'll send it around to you after this meeting, but it's quite a tongue in cheek a little article. But emphasizes, I think, really where we are today, which is here I am standing here as Chairman of a start-up company, really a start-up company, worth $1.3 billion, a start-up worth $1.3 billion, believe it or not. And it's -- I think it's worth pinching ourselves to think that 4.5 years ago, we didn't have a profit. We didn't have any revenue. There was no product. And so all of that has been generated really in the last essentially 4 years, 4.5 years. And whether you can justify the price or not and see all the stuff on the social mags and so forth about whether it's real price or not, listen, every day, 3 million to 6 million shares are traded in this company at that sort of price. Big dogs. In other words, it's not coming out of moms or dads like a lot of you, they're not coming out of people who just buying $10,000 worth of shares or $50,000 worth of as share. That sort of trade day in, day out, a lot of it's from sophisticated customers and clients. And we know from our share register, that there's a huge number of fund managers, smart fund managers around the world and in Australia who are buying into the company. So it's sort of quite interesting when you feel a bit funny when you're the Chairman and you go on a start-up, and we've really only scratched the surface. And here, we already are at $1.3 billion. And when I say we've only just scratched the surface, one of the things you'll get, for example, when I talk to Valerie about Hong Kong is just how much there still is to do in terms of our geographies. That's just Hong Kong. Swami is going to talk about India, which is a fantastic story to tell near term. These are all pre-December. And he's also going to talk a little bit about China and Japan. We're lucky because Swami has come out of running those countries himself for J&J. So it's not like you're me sitting here thinking, how the hell would we get into China? We've got no idea. We better just go and find a distributor. He's got the experience of going direct. He's got the experience of living in these places, he's got experience of running these businesses with a lot of staff. And so I think we've only scratched the surface because we haven't fixed out even where half the places we can go to geographically. And places like Japan and China are massive in this sort of market. The second thing we haven't fixed up yet is -- fixed up. It's no problem. It's just how far we go with staff start. And so one of the things you'll get out of the discussion I'll have with Ed, I hope, in a moment, is that he's gone from, again, 4.5 years ago, no staff to now about 70, he'll tell us in a moment, but 54 of those are sales people on the road, and he's got a budget to expand that again this year. So we've got a lot of work to do just in the sales force not only in the U.S. Don't think of this as just a U.S. company. It just so happens to be an accident of history that we've grown so quickly in the U.S. But if I showed you the current results that are in the U.K., for example, where we've also expanded our staff and in Germany and elsewhere, you'll see that we're really expanding quite quickly. The third area where we still haven't finished off is what we're doing with R&D. And there's a lot of work going into this. I think I mentioned last year that for a $1 billion company, if I took you to our front door, and I said, look, I'm about to open the front door to the R&D lab of PolyNovo, how many people do you expect to see in there? And the reality is that there's no right answer. If I said there was 20 and there you go, yes, that sounds good. Or if I said that it was 40, yes, that sounds good, working on things like, as you know, hernia, breast implants and the like and some other things. The reality is that 1.5 years ago, if you open that door, there's one person. Now there's 7. And hopefully, I have sort of dreamed myself, and I agree with this internally, but I dreamed myself that we should have 20 people. And so one of the things that we've done for that -- I'll come back to this, but we've taken Dave McQuillan off the Board. Put Dave McQuillan in charge of R&D. He's here today. We won't get to speak to him until he sort of polishes up his presentation skills. He thinks he's got a year to do that. So that's the second thing that we've really got to do. And I think the other one is just the channels. So there's sort of 4 areas where we have really not scratched surface. And the fourth one is channels to market. And so in the main, everywhere we go around the world, we're selling to hospitals. But we should be selling to private plastic surgery clinics, we should be selling to podiatrists in the U.S. where they have the ability to operate and so forth. There's a lot of channels that will need our product. And one of the things what we're trying to do is blitz the field, if you like, in burns and in hospitals. And I think we're already #1 in Australia, but we could be #1 in India very quickly. And there's a couple of other markets where we're really very strong. And we're taking market share. So I think we clearly just really have scratched the surface. And so when you see the share price, don't forget, I put up a graph in the recent ASX release where people who are shareholders got very excited when we had our first month where we sold $1 million a month. And that was like, I don't know, 3 years ago, let's say. 6 months later, we had our first month that did $2 million a month. Another 6 or 7 months later, $3 million a month, then $4 million a month. And then the other day, we announced that we had our first month of $5 million a month. In fact, it was $5.4 million. We didn't -- I'm not sure if you said that. But anyway, so when will the $6 million a month come. And if you're skeptical about where we go and just have a little bit of graph because there's only one way and it's gone up. And it's not going up for many more reasons if you think about it, the way we think about it, anyway, then we've got, in a sense, a cookie-cutter approach. We've got a product the surgeons love, you just got to put it in front of them. And then you get to get the hospital to agree to it, and you're off to the races. And so far, the staff might be hiding things from me, but I haven't had or heard it from any surgeon, not 1 surgeon in the U.S. that "I'm going back to Integra" or "s*** that didn't work, it's not for me." When they see it, they love it. And that's one reason why the international pension funds are in our register because they don't just go in the market and buy, they'll go and do their own due diligence. And their due diligence requires them to go and say, bring up fine, we don't give them the names necessary, go and find a surgeon in the U.S., bring him up and say what they say. And you know what they say, they say, this is changing the way in which surgery is done. That's all they do. Go buy some shares, and put them in the bottom drawer and hold under the reins, and enjoy the ride, that's what I say. So the best is yet to come. And it's a fantastic thing, obviously, to be a shareholder. You probably feel the same. I've never been involved -- well, I am a shareholder, but I've never been involved in a company where the shareholders themselves are so enthusiastic about the company, not because you bought at $30,000 in 2012 and now you got $1 million. Although one of the things that most surprised me about our shareholders, the number of shareholders have said to me, this is the biggest single holding I've got in my portfolio. It's only there for a reason and that's because the share price keeps going up. But I think that's a really satisfying thing. But when you -- when I speak to shareholders and when I look at the social blogs, a number of people who have blown away with the fact that this product at very worst, at worst, just makes you look more beautiful and at very best, save your life, save your life in a way that previous products weren't able to do if you've got 75% burns to your body, 90% burns to your body and so forth. So it's really that's satisfying. How many investments you have where you invest your money, you've got a great return and you're saving lives? And we've only just scratched the servers, so there's a lot to be thankful for in this company, and I thank you for being shareholders. But I also thank our staff and in particular, the enthusiasm of our staff because as you can see, I think when you see it the way I see it, it's -- this is infectious. And every time I go to work, and I hear of some surgeon that's taken this in another direction, more on this later because that's where we're growing. The surgeons have gone faster than us. So I think that's -- it's really quite satisfying as an investor, as a Chairman, and I speak on behalf of the whole Board and the senior management team, by the way, but this is a real honor to be a director of this company. in terms of what it's doing to social good. And again, just recognizing that we haven't even scratched the surface. So I think we thank you as shareholders, this is my election space, by the way. I'm standing for election that, but we thank you, our shareholders, for supporting us and hanging in there with us. As a prickly point, I don't take [indiscernible] for people lecturing me on how the fact that we should be going faster. I can't go any faster. I've worn out my Iron Ridge. In forward eye view, it has gone from nothing to something substantial. And you can see -- you should be able to see that in the next 3 years, it's going to go even harder. And we're going as hard as we can, but you still got to find good people to put in the spots. So if Ed wants to go to 100 people or 150 people, he's still got to find them, we've got to train them, we've got to get them out there and so forth. But we're going as hard as we can. And this is nothing like any other pharma or a device company you've probably seen in the Australian market where 5 years, 7 years, 10 years later, they're still arguing about whether they should be doing a trial on pigs or dogs or mice. We're way past that. And we've got some good stuff coming through the pipeline. I didn't really intend to talk that long. So it's gone off on a tangent. But let me introduce you, first of all, before we start -- and by the way, I should have just said another procedural thing for anybody who isn't here today or wants to revisit my jokes and irreverence, then it is being recorded, and we'll put that up on the ASX in the day or 2. Are we reporting a video as well? Yes, so fantastic. So I wore red jacket in anticipation. So I've got all that right as well. But let me introduce the directors first. On my right, I've got Christine Emmanuel; and next to her, I've got Bruce Rathie; and next to him, I've got Andrew Lumsden; and then Robyn Elliott and then Leon Hoare. Leon's also standing for election today. That's why he's got to tie on. And he may got to say something about himself in due course. And over on the left-hand table, I've got our CEO, Swami Raote, and -- our CFO and Company Secretary, Jan Gielen, who you've all seen before. I don't think -- we did have a sort of a cup of tea with Swami online, but none of you would have seen before in the flash. So here he is, and you'll get to hear him in a moment. Also on attendance are, Ash Butler from EY. Thank you, Ashley, and his partner in crime, [ Rica Modi ]. Thank you, Rica. And from our auditors sitting right next to Ashley is [indiscernible], who have kindly at no cost given us this room to use. And no cost in the food either. I don't -- is it like? If it, it's coming out of this partnership salary. Let me just say that the Notice of Meeting was spoken on to the more formal parts to now. The Notice of Meeting was dispatched to shareholders in compliance with the company's constitution and is also available on our ASX announcement website. I'll take the Notice of Meeting as being read. Today's meeting is being held online with Computershare meeting platform. This allows shareholders, proxies and guests to attend the meeting virtually. I don't -- are we going to know how many people are online? Last year it was like 300. It's amazing, but...

I'll have it looked at. Sorry, Dave.

Yes. Again, so CFO not up to it. A couple of minutes behind what's really going on, on the pace. So all attendees, hopefully, you can watch the webcast. And hopefully, I'm coming across quite well. It's going to be a trial when I get Val and Ed up here to talk because I've got to share this space, and we only got 1 microphone, but we'll see how we go there. And you've all got the ability with you here on in to submit votes and ask questions and so forth. In terms of how to ask a question. Online attendees can submit questions at any time. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will not address them until a relevant time in the meeting. Please also note that your questions may be moderated by Jan, especially if he sees multiple questions under one topic, so this doesn't drag on into the evening, and he will amalgamate some of them together. And if for some reason, we run out of time, and we can't get to them all or we think that they're so pathetic, we're not going to even answer them, then we'll -- you'll get an e-mail from me or you'll get a phone call from me or Jan. To ask a verbal question, okay, put your hand up and we'll take it from there. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll. You'll understand if you got people of online and off-line, we've got to do it by way of a poll because we don't know whether people have changed their vote out of the room and so forth. So if you're eligible to vote, once voting opens, press the vote icon on your screen, if you're on the screen, and all voting -- all resolution will be activated with voting options. To cast a vote, simply select one of the options. There is no need to hit a submit or enter button as the vote is automatically recorded. You will receive a vote confirmation notification on your screen. I now declare the voting open. So if you are on the screening, you haven't already voted, then you can start and do it in any time. I'm looking for Angela Liapis from Computershare. She's the returning officer and I'll point here accordingly. The results of the poll, you don't need to just hang around after it. if you want or you can, sometimes it takes 5 minutes, sometimes it takes 20, but the results will be compiled and released to the ASX after the conclusion of the meeting. You can change your vote up until the time I declare voting closed. And essentially, what will happen is we'll finish the meeting. I'll tell you that the voting is going to stay out for another 2 minutes, and then I'll close it. And in the meantime, Angela will collect any votes that are in the room. So -- and I should have said, if you've already voted and you don't particularly want to change your vote like me, for example, then you don't need to do anything. Okay. So Item 1 on the Notice of Meeting is to receive and consider the annual financial statements of the 12 months ended 30 June '22 for the company and its controlled entities together with the reports of directors and the auditors. Are there any questions in respect to the financial report of the company auditors or of the comp of the auditors actually has never been asked one yet, but he's just once that data happened. Jan, do you have any questions?

No questions, David.

No questions. Is there any questions in the room? No? If there's no questions or further discussion on this matter, I'll consider the financial report and director's and auditor's reports received and adopted. So before we move to the formal resolutions, I would now like to make some observations about the year just passed, how I'm thinking about the year ahead. And then I'm going to invite Swami to make a presentation to get a bit more granular than what I'm about to do. As I said before, before we go into questions for him and me, I'll go through and introduce you to some of our management team, and then I'll return and go to questions. I'm doing that because, there may be some further clarification and granular sort of understanding business comes out of their presentations, and so it'll make it a bit better. We did have ahead of the U.K. here, but he had to go back for a family matter. But I think I'm anticipating that this gives okay that we might have Dave McQuillan talking about R&D at the half year, maybe the head of the U.K., maybe some from manufacturing, but let's see if we can make this a bit more inclusive and give you a better understanding of the business. So it's a trial run, but let's see how we go. Just in terms of my address, I'll just make some brief editorial comments I've already wax lyrical about things. But we're already way past the end of the financial year. But as we saw, we had strong sales growth of 47% up. And don't forget that the first half of the year was really COVID restricted whether you're in Australia, there's a long period where New South Wales completely shut, for example but also in the U.S. But in the second half of the year, it started to really pick up and we started to kick some goals. I think it's also important to understand that even last year, the U.S. is already significantly profitable. And given that we're growing quite strongly again this year, we're expecting an even bigger profit out of the U.S. And the relevance of that for me is that the U.S. -- I wish I wasn't saying this because it's just putting so much power in the hands of Ed, but how important it is. But we need him to -- we need that profit out of the U.S. because it's partly just working capital for us to grow not only in the U.S. but the rest of the world at the same time. But be pretty clear that when we sell a little bit of PolyNovo, which I happen to have ordered a lot of it along here today, just in case nobody had ever seen it, so this is what would happen if you're laying on the operating theater -- if I got this right, the surgeons rips open, you see, and he pulls out what we call [ 10 x 20 ], and he prepares this to put it on your wound. And as you can see, you have to need pretty strong surgeon. And this is our product in 10 x 20. Normally, we're selling 10 x 10, which is roughly that size. That's a product we'd be selling for USD 900, USD 950. And our margin is extremely high. So the way the U.S. is growing, as you saw, we just had our first $5 million month more, and we're going to spin off a lot of profit out of the U.S. and then ultimately out of the U.K. and Australia and so forth. But the U.S. is very profitable even after we hit them with -- even after Jan hits them with a hefty sort of overhead charge that pays for his sorry a** and Swami and a few other people, but that's it. I'm going to leave that here because any of you who want to feel it and touch it because you can see it's very manageable. And why am I telling you of all these? Anyways, that's it. That's t. But -- so the U.S. is very profitable. I think the more important thing, and we have seen some of this already in our announcement is that we've been growing quite strong. So for me, an early indicator, the leading indicator of how much you're going to get in sales is what you're doing with your sales force. The surgeons, a lot of them have heard about it. If they haven't heard about it, just need to present it to them, show them the evidence, sometimes somebody like Dave will go into the operating theater with them and show them how to use it. It's pretty simple, though, says, he. But in the U.S. this year, last year, I should say, we went from 36 to 56 sales staff, 54. In the U.K., went from 3 to 6. We discovered after our last CEO left that we didn't have anybody in London, believe it or not. So we put somebody on north and south of the 10s and off we go. So -- and in ANZ, 5 to 8. And so I often say to Ed just by way of example, but until recently, we only had 2 or 3 people in California. I said, well, if we can have 6 or 8 in Australia, you're going to be able to have 8 in California alone, doing $1 million worth of sales. Well, unfortunately, he warned me not to say that today because he's now got 9 or so in California. But -- so we're growing those sales teams. And that's the leading indicator for me about what you're going to get in terms of sales. The other thing I was going to say was that the last time I looked at the complete list of salespeople in the U.S., there was about 5 that hadn't had sold anything because you put them on, you come in and bring them in for training, you send them out in the field with somebody else for a month. So it takes you some months to get them into their own sales area. And then it takes several more months for them to start to get some sales up. So when I saw 5 people, that just gives you an indication -- before you even put any more people on, gives you an indication about the sales pipeline that's going to come out of those people start to get active in their particular areas. Now again, I just spent a bit of time with him and he tells me that there are no sales and they haven't been any sales. So that is going to put on another 10 to 20 people in the next 6 or so months. So that sales team expansion in all these jurisdictions is really very, very good. And as you can see, we did put out an ASX announcement that our sales were up 73% same time last year. So post-COVID, and it's not completely out of the system yet, but post-COVID, and our hospital business really up 71% and 73%, Somebody on one of the social media blogs said, "Oh yes, but that's in Aussie dollars." The Aussie dollar is in fact sure. The U.S. grew 61% in U.S. dollars, so whichever way you want to have it, we've grown, and I don't want to sort of make excuses for a first ever $5 million month. And you'll also see that we had received FDA clearance on our new product, which is MTX. And we noticed -- a lot of this stuff, by the way, you'll know I've said it before is being surgeon-led. We're paying catch-up with the surgeons. And that's what I find -- one of the things I might find most interesting when you look at this business is we're going along this track, and we're deal with burns. The next thing it's wounds. Next thing is diabetic foot also. Next thing is oncology burns. Next thing it's amputations. And it seems to me that there's hardly a month or 2 months goes by, where some surgeons in the world hasn't found another use for it. And so we're playing a bit of catch-up because in some cases, let's say, diabetic foot, a lot of surgeons are now using for that. But we need to sort of go back on an understanding that some of the surgeons will need the data in order to go and do some testing so that we can sell it to the whole surgeon base. But it takes a life of its own. And I'll give you one little example and I think Marcus is on the line waiting for me to talk to him. But Marc, there was a conference a month ago now in Munich on a Friday night, and it was a pediatric conference. It was in German, but they asked a surgeon in Brisbane Hospital to talk about the history of BTM. And they asked Marcus to open it in English from Royal Adelaide just to talk about what he uses it for and so on and so forth. So as soon as that was over, the 2 Australians dropped off and no doubt been home and had a red wine. Anyway, Marcus, I'm laying in bed -- sorry to make this personal. I'm laying in bed on a Saturday morning, and at 8:00 the phone rings and it's Marcus Wagstaff, and I said, "Hey, what do you want? And he said he had this conference in Munich last night. And he said, "Well, what I heard was that after I dropped -- after we dropped off the line, there was a surgeon who got up and said he had a patient with a baby and under the scan, they saw that the baby's spinal cord was not covered." In other words, it was going to be born with spina bifida. So she made the decision to go into the womb, in utero and put our BTM on the baby's back. 1.5 months later -- big general about this, we can't tell you exactly the details because the surgeon wants to publish these. She'll be done soon. Puts it on the baby's back, 1.5 months later or so, the baby is born. The spinal cord is completely covered. We know how the foam works inside and outside the body. She just takes the laminate off the top, job done. So Marcus have blown away as an experienced surgeon using this product. I then picked up the phone because I used to be on the Board of Monash IVF for all the doctors. So I picked up the phone to talk to the doctor, who is the busiest doctor at Monash IVF. He does about 700 women a year just to put in context. And so I told, "Oh s***." He then gave me the stats on spina bifida in babies, which is like 4% or something in IVF babies. He said, "Hold on, I'll ring you back." So you rang the Professor of obstetrics at Monash University. He said, what you don't know is Monash University is about to start a clinical trial using stem cells for spina bifida. So he rang him up, and he told him, and he then rang me back and he said the surgeon said, "oh s***, we don't need to do our trial anymore." So I rang Marcus. This is all by 8:30, just to give you a sense of how these things work. And I ring Marcus and told him, they're going to do this study, but now they've thought, no, we don't do it. Marcus said, "don't do that, keep on doing the study, but we'll impregnate stem cells into the BTM." So I'll just give you a sense of not only how things work, but how -- where -- look, we've got a team of people working on putting our product inside the body for breast implants and for hernia. And here's somebody just says, "I'll just do it myself." And some rather novel things about that I won't bore you with at the moment, but David, in particular, will understand this is because one of things we are working on and we know how the foam works, but how does the laminate work? And how do you -- you don't want to laminate to necessarily stay in the body. So anyway, my point is that we've got an amazing amount of things happening in terms of surgeon-led nuances to how this is applied. And my second last point down the bottom there is that Dave McQuillan has not left the building, it's a sort of reference to [ Elvis ]. Elvis has left the building. But Dave was on the Board. He's an Aussie -- actually, just wave out, Dave. So you've got -- you've done your hair. It looks good. And he's an Aussie who is living in Pennsylvania. He's been in this space for a long time, and he was on the Board and he's decided to come back, as a scientist, of course, he's unemployable. So we gave him the job. And he is, of course, running our R&D, and he's now got 7 people, David, or 9 or...

9.

9 people. All of them scientists and so forth, but we're really going to expand that, and we've got a list of people that we want, but they're not just polymer scientists, but to deal with packaging and design and so on and so forth. So hopefully, by the end of this time next year, you'll have 20 people, and we'll have some more products in the market in the same way as we've got MTX coming. And by the way, the MTX product, which is -- we just had approved by the FDA. It was also a surgeon-led because you'll know that on our product, you can't see it unless you really feel it. But on one, it's a very thin laminate. And we noticed that there's quite a number of surgeons who felt that they didn't need the laminate. They didn't need to have the body protected for such a long period of time because the wound was a certain type or small or whatever. And so they're taking the laminate off before they put it on. So we designed a new product, MTX for those sorts of people who might be plastics surgeons who want to use the fillers or whatever it happens to be. So a lot of this is surgeons, but these are the sorts of things. These are the trials and tribulations that David is going to have over the next year, where we've got surgeons coming throwing ideas, even having used them. And so he's going to have to filter what we do and don't do. And then the ones that he thinks are worthwhile, then we're going to have to take them to the next stage and ultimately into trials and so forth. And so I've already talked a little bit right down the bottom there about new indications. In the year ahead, we've got sales team expansion. If you don't do anything else, just keep putting more sales on the road because they're paying for themselves. But now we've got the added opportunities that are in Hong Kong. More on that later with Val; India, more on that later with Swami; and Canada, a little bit of that now in a moment with Marcus, who's in Boston. We've got new markets. We've got new channels of distribution. And so as I said before on channels, we're really hospital, hospital, hospital. And sooner or later, we, once we blitz that, and we're #1 like we are in Australia, we need to move into other channels and other surgeons and so forth. That might need lead us into new alliances. So we might do a deal with somebody who is a distributor for us in a certain application that we're no longer in, or we're not in or it might even buy somebody if it made a lot of sense. So we're completely open to all of that. That's probably all you need to hear from me for the moment. I may sort of take some other things later. But we've got a new leader, and he's sitting right here. And he comes with some special characteristics. And so I think I'd like to -- I would like to invite Swami up to say a few words. And once he said a few words, I'm going to come back and talk to Marcus Wagstaff in Boston. Thank you.

Thank you, David. Good afternoon, everybody. First, I would like to thank everyone on Board, our executive team and across our company for welcoming me, providing me with generous insights, assistance and support during that first 90 days in the role. I've invested a lot of time with our teams in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. I've also had the pleasure of connecting with our patients. I met John in Adelaide before I said yes, surgeons, hospital systems and some of our major shareholders. I look forward to getting to know many more of you today and beyond. In my first 3 months, I have confirmed my initial observations about NovoSorb. Its simplicity, its elegance and robustness of design is breathtaking. It provides distinctively superior outcomes for burns, trauma management and chronic wounds. It's designed for manufacturability and democratizing access across the world. If you look at the majority of our competition, it's restricted to developed world. And that too, primarily in the U.S., 90% of the world is in U.S. -- 90% biologics are in U.S. This can go across the world. Potential to supplement flats and microsurgery reconstruction for complex cases, improving surgeon and operation theater productivity. I want to thank the previous leadership and our teams for their passion and commitment in expanding the impact of NovoSorb BTM during challenging times for the med tech industry. While the first half of fiscal '22 was constrained because of COVID, our teams picked up pace in second half to deliver global sales of $37.6 million, up 47% versus prior year. Total revenue for the group was $41.9 million, up 43% versus prior year. Including BARDA, the revenue of $3.8 million which was up by 4%. The U.S. delivered an impressive revenue growth of 55.1% or 49.5% in local currency. U.K., Ireland grew by 185%. Sales in Australia and New Zealand rebounded strongly in the second half with 63% growth, and our distributor sales increased by 30% in the second half. We continue to invest in building our capacity to drive revenue with personnel growing from 106 to 152, with majority of that expansion increasing head count with our U.S. sales team. That investment is paying off handsomely. In September, as you heard, we achieved our first ever $5 million sales month and a record first quarter in sales. The company recorded first quarter sales of AUD 12.5 million, up 73.3% versus same time last year. In September, we also announced receiving 510(k) clearance for NovoSorb MTX, another surgeon-led innovation for soft tissue regeneration and management of complex wounds. We expect clinicians to carry NovoSorb BTM and MTX together as a richer tool kit for patient care. I'll now share with all of you my first 90 days observations and teams to accelerate growth. Early this week, the senior leadership team of PolyNovo came together to agree on the next 5-year plan. We started our meeting by inviting Dr. John Greenwood from Royal Adelaide Hospital and Thilak Gunatilake from CSIRO. The original team behind the design and development of the NovoSorb technology to share their story. Their story of grit and wit in design, development and the sheer range of possibilities with NovoSorb inspired us to redouble our commitment to drive global expansion and impact. I'll talk about 4 themes. The first is geographic expansion. U.S. continues to be our #1 priority, and our U.S. team is a role model in responsible execution. Building a very profitable business model, making prudent choices as we task them to outperform market and accelerate growth. In Australia and New Zealand, we're already a leader in deep dermal, full thickness burns and are now expanding in a focused manner to trauma and other critical areas where NovoSorb BTM provides distinctive advantage. We continue to drive rapid adoption in U.K., Ireland and Germany, and we hope to be #1 or #2 player in both these markets over the next 18 months, if not sooner. As we speak, we are launching across Canada, Hong Kong and India. With these launches, we hope to secure insights across the spectrum of clinical needs in developed and emerging markets as well as the range of operation theater environment helping grow the versatility and robustness of the NovoSorb platform. As an added advantage, we are partnering with BARDA from U.S. to use 5 clinical trial centers in Canada, while keeping India as a backup option to accelerate enrollment of patients in our pivotal trial. Simultaneously, I'm leveraging previous experience, understanding and clinician and regulatory relationships to explore fast-tracking our entry into India, China and Japan. China and Japan are #2 and #3 global markets for medical technology, and they will be critical in our journey to become a global leader and standard of care in soft tissue reconstruction. Second is about indication expansion. David spoke about it, but we have started implementing the strategy of going beyond burns in our mature markets. In addition to full thickness, deep dermal burns, we are now looking at trauma and other complex reconstruction cases where we can have differentiated impact for our patients, surgeons and hospital systems. Our early work in the crowded and commoditized diabetic foot ulcers market presents an interesting opportunity to occupy a distinct niche in the limb salvage space where BTM has provided consistent and superior results compared with currently available options. We are investing in hiring senior clinical and health economics expertise. These hires will help build global and regional advisory networks, and these networks will aid smart patient selection, procedure mapping peer-to-peer education strategies and deployment to improve our penetration and impact. Third is about innovation. We are redesigning our innovation process to better capture the voice of clinicians, payers and regulator with a view to improve our decisions and speed to market. In addition to the polymer chemistry expertise, we are expanding our R&D teams with package engineering, biologic sciences and immunopathology through both direct hires as well as alliances with academic centers of excellence. Tapping into clinicians will provide proactive insights on how and where our technology will impact. At the same time, we aim to accelerate the rollout of advanced wound care portfolio, be more deliberate and thorough with surgical implants needing PMA approval and continue to support our partners with novel drug device combinations, which could have substantive impact on treatment of diseases like Type 1 diabetes. The fourth is around capacity expansion. As we expand globally, we continue to make significant investments in scaling our production facilities here in Melbourne, Australia. Our expanded manufacturing facility will go live in April 2023 and will double our current capacity. Simultaneously, we are designing a state-of-the-art process and manufacturing capability along with R&D labs for the newly leased adjacent facility at Port Melbourne, Victoria. We'll continue to invest in enabling capabilities in digital and information technology, CRM, website management, document management and clinical registries as we prepared to scale globally while remaining connected at all times. Lastly, it's about capital efficient and profitable growth. PolyNovo compared to its peers has a history of driving capital-efficient and profitable growth. We intend to be prudent and responsible in investing capital in areas providing maximum impact for our customers and patients and superior prospects for our shareholders. The current and increasing profitability of the U.S. business will be a key part of that. Let me close by stating that you can expect a laser focus on execution in service of customers and patients from me and our management team and a culture of accountability and trust within our company and all our partners and stakeholders. To conclude, PolyNovo is a multiyear growth story, and we are just about getting started. I'll now hand back over to Chair.

Thank you, Swami. And as I said, before I go into questions, I thought that we've introduced randomly 3 of our staff, and one of them is associated Professor Marcus Wagstaff, who I believe he's on the line, and here's our second test of whether we can do something innovative here. And there he is looking like it is really 11:00 at night at Boston. So wave to everybody, Marcus. You've got quite a red face. So you may have been into the Canadian Club and coke. I think.

Not yet.

That works. So I said to everybody here, and I'll say it again. Look, the purpose of this really is to just give you a bit of a feel for things that are happening like literally as we speak, on the ground and from some -- in this case, independent person because it's really a Rural Adelaide, but he is part time our Medical Director and we pay them a fortune to occasionally wander around the U.S. and speak to surgeons and attend conferences and dinners and so forth. But just before we start then, Marcus, just give us a pin-out sketch of what you've done since you left us, where you went to, who you spoke to and leave out Canada. I'll come back to that in a moment.

No problem. So I left Adelaide on the 17th of October and touch down on the same day in the U.S. given the timing. And really, our feet haven't touched the ground. We've been through Dallas, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and then at the Canada and now back to Boston. And in every place I've been meeting with surgeons, presenting our data, presenting our work and showing them what's possible and how far we've come. And I'm presenting to newer doctors as much as I am presenting to established physicians and also up been to trial sites for the BARDA trial and had a chat with investigators. It's been a real pleasure to meet up with these people, and I make connections with colleagues across the world. The feedback I'm getting is that they're using BTM. They're very satisfied, very happy with it. They're happy it's safe. They're happy that it's effective and that the outcomes are getting superior, and they're just sort of working out where it fits in their practices. And there's people in the U.S. who are innovating, again, beyond expectation. A lot of them are through their learning curve and they're very comfortable with it. And I find some of their indications very much mirroring our own. The other good thing I've seen is that the surgeons are energized. And I think that this sort of tour has helped that and so is the sales team. They're really excited about what they do. They can see its purpose and the difference it makes to patients, which is important to me. And yes, it's been a fantastic experience to do this. I think it's only been positive and a good reinforcement of everything that we stand for.

Brilliant. Thank you. I guess now before I go to Canada, you're in Boston at the moment, what's the conference on this weekend? And what are you planning to do apart from wander around aimlessly?

Well, I might actually one day learn something, you never know. It's plastic surgery, the meeting, which is the American National -- the American Society of Plastic Surgeons meeting, which is I think if it's not the biggest in the world, it's only one of the biggest plastic surgery meetings. It's huge. And PolyNovo has a presence here. They're in the exhibitor hall. What am I doing well? I'm talking to the sales team and I'm taking -- we're presenting to surgeons, again, similar to what we've been doing across the U.S., but at least this time, the surgeons are coming to us. And the trades now will be open. I'm open to give advice at the trade stands and the team have my numbers, so I'll be supporting them through the weekend. So yes, it should be a really strong weekend.

Brilliant. Thank you. And Canada, tell us something about what was actually, in Canada, where was it? What do we do? What reaction did you get? Did you talk to people who are already using it before it was registered?

Well, Canada is -- it was the Burn Association meeting, so specifically burns. And it's a really tight community in Canada. And so to present there and to meet over there and do the presentations in the evenings and also, we did a symposium -- lunchtime symposium on the Sunday, so you're talking to just about everybody, and that's the doctors as well as the nurses and allied health. And there's already surgeons using BTM through the special access scheme who are very happy. And if it works like this is a game changer, this has saved lives already, and they're already doing a lot of support for the product onwards. And of course, Canada is going to become some of the trial sites for the pivotal trial for BARDA. And again, some people haven't heard of it, and we're exposed to it and really want to try it and others have seen it and they're adopting into their practices already. So it really is hitting the ground running. And then again, positive.

Brilliant. Brilliant. So after Boston, back home, is that it?

Well, I'm going to go back to Dallas on Monday. Again, meet up with some more surgeons in Dallas on the way back because we're flying from Fort Worth, and then on Tuesday, fly home. Yes.

And do you feel that you've earned your money that we pay you or do you owe us something?

No. I think I've earned it. Thank you very much for asking. And the bill is in the post. But no, it's been really worthwhile. And I think it's -- again, I think it's how to refresh things and reenergize things and everybody here is really focused on what they do. And yes, again, all good.

That's great. Well, look, I'll let you go and talk to you broker about buying more shares. And I thank -- on behalf of everybody here, but especially the company, thanks for everything you're doing. It's fantastic, above and beyond. And I'll see you when you're back to Australia, I'll buy you lunch.

Absolutely. My pleasure, as always, thanks. I'll hold you to that, David. Thank you. Cheers.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Okay. Just to keep it moving along. I next want to invite up here, Valerie Young, who, as I said before, is in charge of our sales and marketing in ANZ where I'm now told we've got [indiscernible] coming to us if you gain and until this sort of picks up from [ away ]. So Val, we all know you've been up in Hong Kong. We just made an announcement that you've been up there. The only thing I know for sure is that you were in a very good restaurant. I know that because I saw the photos at the peak. So -- but tell us a little bit about when you went out, what you did, who you saw?

Yes. So I was in Hong Kong out in Hong Kong at the start of the month, and I was there for just over 2 weeks. And the purpose of the trip was really to meet the surgeons that I've been connecting with on Zoom, on e-mail over the last 4 months and really try to get more buy-in from them and hopefully get a case. We also have to look at things like local talent for further extensions on the track. So we did there that as well. What was, in a way, a nice surprise, but something I was hoping for was that we got a couple of cases there as well.

Right. And is that directly out of your sort of selling or...

Who else [indiscernible].

And I think you mentioned to me that you had approaches or feedback from quite a number of other surgeons.

Yes. So in fact, I'm going over again. I just -- in 2 weeks, exactly 2 weeks, we spend a bit more time there, hopefully, work on more the market potential other than in burns and trauma. So in Hong Kong, there are 4 plastic surgery locations in public hospitals, but there are 3 others that deliver a plastic and burn as well. So as you, as I am seeing deeper, I'm uncovering more on opportunities.

Great. And what do you sort of think the prospects are there in the next, before the end of our financial year, June '22?

What I'm hoping for is before the end of the financial year that we can put on either a sales team or engage a company to help us really go deeper into the city. And Hong Kong alone is not obviously very exciting, but Hong Kong is also with Macau where those both cities does not require the product to be registered in order to sell it. And once we get some local hospitals, especially the university associated hospitals, we can potentially use that experience to get into the Greater Bay area of China. And the Chinese [indiscernible] is actually looking into the Greater Bay area and population of 71 million people with 1,000-plus hospitals. Don't get too excited because all of them are going to be relevant. But, this is -- if we can generate some good data in Hong Kong and Macau, we will be able to get in China there as well.

Yes. I think the interesting thing will be whether the China door opens for treatment in Hong Kong once the COVID restrictions are out. I was talking to the Chairman of China Grand the other day who bought Sirtex. They've got a waiting list of 500 people at $500,000 a go for getting the Hong Kong to do it. So I'm optimistic that it might be a good window for us in Mainland China as we go through whatever Swami is going to do in China.

For sure.

Yes. And so the restaurant that you had the [indiscernible] was all right, you took your mother?

It was pretty good. I took my -- I took my whole family. Thank you, David. We're sending you the bill.

Could you give me credit card back? That's [indiscernible]. All right. Thank you very much. And finally, I'd like to invite Ed Graubart. For those of you who've been around for a few years, Ed actually did talk once before. You won't recognize him because he's lost a lot of weight since then. So he's looking not too bad. Ed, please come over here.

Do you offer a reelection?

Yes.

[Indiscernible] group over here. No tie. So our marketing team yes, looks like BTM, PolyNovo, our biggest advocate, and you're on video so don't you want to think about it. You might get the vote [indiscernible].

I probably can't see it in PolyNovo against the button. And somehow, I think this is going to be on my expense account. I don't know why.

It already was.

It already was. Thank you.

We had all our team wear that today [indiscernible] last April.

So a bit like Marcus, thanks for this. A bit like Marcus, let's divide up Canada and the U.S. Just give us a bit of a feel about, well, number one, what have you done with your sales team in the U.S. in this last year, not so [indiscernible] but give us a sort of feel for it. You've got nobody waiting to get sales. One of the things I'd like you to just reflect on because you and I talk about this a bit on our Board, we often debate it, how long would you put somebody on, does it take them to pay for themselves because it's an important question when you're looking at the capital, the optimal capital base of the company. If you've got to put people on and you don't see anything out of it for 2 years, well, then that's like a big investment. But if you put somebody on and it doesn't take that long. And I think I know what you're answer is going to be. But I -- and it's horses for courses, which area, what type of person. Give us your general answer, but also just give us an anecdote where it's really happened quite quickly and at the times where it's been slow but then turned into a big success like excess of the money.

Yes. So it is just that, right? It's -- you're putting somebody in a territory and what is the territory likely, what are the dynamics? Are there customers there? Do we have access and can we get stuff to going? On average, I'd say we're about 6 to 8 months until somebody is really fulfilling the obligation to pay for themselves. Some take longer, much fewer take longer because we're putting them in virgin territories with no access, and then you got others who are overperforming. So overall, 6% to 8% for the group to really be averaging together. We've had success in certain areas in Indiana where someone has come in and opened 7, 8 new accounts within their first 6 months, 7 months, 8 months because they've got the relationship came from a competitive company with no noncompete could go in. It could influence the hospitals, and the hospitals there weren't quite as strict as some others in other parts of the country. And we've had some others that took us 1.5 years to 2 years to get in. And being patient while that person is doing the right things to get in, that person did 40 to 50 cases just in the last few months. So at the end of the day, it's really sitting back and evaluating and making sure people are really delivering on what we're expecting to...

[Indiscernible] You told me once before. The guy had no sense, I think, for...

For 18 months.

18 months. And then now, bang, 40, 50 days. Yes. It's a slight boom.

It is -- and that's -- you've got to really manage it. It's not just look at a number and say, "Hey, this person needs to go," and you got to have patience, and you have to understand what the market is. You have to understand what that person is going through, what are they doing and how can we help them? And some of it is just hospital, now tracking going through COVID, going through GPOs, whatever its situation is. Sometimes we'll put somebody in a market ahead trying to influence the GPO to approve us versus waiting for the GPO and then going in. So we look at each, the leadership team here is very experienced. I trust them explicitly. I know what they're doing, and I know how they're engaging. And so it is an active conversation across the country, how we go, not just now, to answer your other question, what are we doing in '23? We're doing the exact same thing. How can we get out ahead of them so that we can take advantage of them or influence them? What are we doing now? And how can we move that forward? So we're making, as you said, if you put out there, we're a profitable part of the organization. We need to be really thoughtful and responsible in where we're putting our people because I know that part goes away, it's going to be a different conversation with us.

100%. I saw a graph just recently of your growth in the U.S., and it's very significant. But -- and so significant and proves the point that we're taking market share. Now my point is -- my question is, when do we get to the stage where we're going to be approached by a competitor stuff who all know how successful we're being? When do we get to that stage where we're going to see some people coming to you and knocking on your door rather than going and trying to find it?

We're at -- we've been at that stage. And a number of the hires that we have in the field, a number of the leadership team came from competitive companies. And there are conversations that have been going on for 2-plus years for some of them, either waiting for them to get out of their noncompete or for them to move out of their area. So it's a very active and engaging part of our thing is really building that bench, building friendships, understanding. We go to trade shows. We have people come up saying you're hiring. And it starts a conversation. So it's always -- we just hired 2 sales directors recently. We filled the positions within a week because these are people that we knew and people we have been talking to for quite a while, who wanted to come on board, the opportunity presented itself. We made it happen, and they're fantastic.

Yes. So tell us something about the culture in the U.S. given you've got people around the country. How is the culture, especially amongst the sales team and what does the company generally do? The people excited about what we've got I mean is it been not the job...

It's -- right. They got to be excited about working with us, and I hope we're doing a good job there. But when you hire competitors, people come with a perceived notion of what's the product, too, right? They know what they came from and they thought it was great. I'm not -- every single one of them realizes what this product and what the potential is. And there's an excitement, as Marcus said, of the sales force of what this product can do and the outcomes. It's the same excitement I have. 33 years in this industry, I've had the opportunity to get my hands on some of the outstanding technology. It's the best product I've had in my bag. And I say that confidently as I stand here, both economically and clinically and what it does for patients. And a lot of the kids that we talk about and some of the places that we've done some of that special access, one of the videos we showed Dr. [indiscernible] patient. It's meaningful what we do. And it translates, I think, across the sales force.

Yes. So one final question, you heard Marcus talking then about Canada, and how it's a bit of a club up there, everybody knows each other and strength of that community and the fact that we've already had a number of sales made by people who have just taken the risk themselves, what's initial thoughts about Canada and how we get our strengths up there?

Yes. I wish I would have been there because this is something we've been really pushing for the last 2.5 years since the first case was done special access. Not allowed to go up there, all through COVID all done remotely. And the outcome was an 8-year-old boy with an 80% burn and right in doctor -- and the doctor's article write-up says BTM saved this patients life. And that just propels people to want to do something about it. They don't have a technology like this up there. They might have some competitive stuff. We have an opportunity to go in and educate how people can do it. We're going to transition some competitive business over. We have a chance to take something that they're doing now that's a standard of care and creating a new standard of care for them that is for a select group of patients for a public system like that. I'm -- going for 2.5 years to get into Canada. So I'm very excited about it.

Yes, yes. No, it's great. I heard, I don't know if this is true, but I heard a rumor that the guy that introduced Marcus on the platform when he talked was a doctor who said, referencing the comment he has made, who said, "I'm unbiased, I've got no bias at all, but this product saved my boy's life" and then introduced Marcus.

That's right.

Is that right?

That's exactly right..

[Indiscernible]

No, no, no. It basically says I can't be unbiased even though I'm not a -- it has nothing to do with the organization. He just called and asked a favor, would you do this and led and to have that type of relationship with someone. That's special. It's what we do. It's meaningful to us. So...

All right. And when you get back home, I know you've got somebody here with you, but yes, thank everybody on our behalf and...

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Tell me we'll take them to dinner if they can pay for their own fare down here.

[indiscernible]

[indiscernible]. Thanks, Ed. So I hope you found that useful. I did. You were hearing a lot of that, as I was hearing it. So I think that's pretty crazy. And we might, depending on what feedback we get, we'll do that again at the half year with another group of people. I think, maybe invite Ed out again. So all right, let me move on to that -- I'm sorry, I'm not going to move on to the [ Poly ] yet. Questions. Are there any questions? I'm going to take some later off -- Jan, off the but I'll just see what we've got off the floor first. Please, everybody. Anton Whitehead sitting in the front row, Head of Equity Capital Markets at Bell Potter graced us at an important time in the market when there's no work around to come down and talk to us.

My question relates to the sales force in the U.S. And what are expectations on a per head basis for a mature sales person? Is there a natural capacity that 1 sales person has?

I do want to -- and I'm going to let Ed handle that.

The answer is there's a natural -- there will be a natural capacity. A lot of this does happen once we build a surgeon's confidence with the product being in there. but there's a lot of after character, right? There's the nurses, there's the -- there's some other things. So what we're doing with our structure is we're being able to build a team within that structure that we can support the capacity. So we're not just relying on 1 person. We're relying on a group of people to support a group of hospitals that really has unlimited potential. We can span it as big as almost we want to get it within a team structure like that. So you keep the salesperson who has the relationships the most knowledge of the territory, and you start bringing in some people underneath that [indiscernible] can be handled in that capacity. Obviously, we've added a number of reps that can compare core split. We've got very frequently now where as we started to build some of the other pieces. And the idea is just -- to follow you line of question is to make sure they can handle what they have that drive patient outcomes, right? It's not just about selling something, it's making sure that what's on the other side matters, and that's what we're driving more [Indiscernible] we will drive for business within those accounts as we go. One person had success [ 2, 4, 8 ] within those accounts. So we have to pay attention all the way through the process of the deal with the patient. So [indiscernible], territory.

So I mean, I don't want to spend too long on it, Anton, but we're sort of rethinking our whole approach as we speak. In relation to what's been happening in the U.S. So the philosophy had -- previously was, okay, get somebody on like Val. She does $1 million. And when she gets to $1 million, we say, well, we made x number of dollars off that, [Indiscernible] her salary, the rest of its profit and then we put somebody else on. Hopefully, they build up to $1 million. And that's the way we've gone about it. In the U.S., as Ed just indicated, he's got a guy, for example, in California doing [Indiscernible]. But instead of dividing that into 3, he's adopted an approach where we put some slightly junior people underneath him who can follow -- do the follow-up, train the nurses, et cetera, and they get properly educated, he might then put them into Wyoming in or Idaho. So that's -- but internally here, we're sort of debating how that -- what's the best way. So thank you for your question. Thank you for coming out. Anybody else? Chris? I should have said, by the way, thank you for anybody who's come from Tasmania. I think when you see a flannel shirt. There is only one place in Australia you could have come from. And I noticed a few people in the audience from Adelaide as well, but Chris, how about Ken?

Just a quick one. Well it has been talked about before and Swami's mentioned it. And so once you saw product and everything like that, a quicker way to move forward would be to purchase other -- people who've got stake in the market like other companies or whatever. There's somebody who's drove that, somebody that you drop down and do that.

It's shared around. It's -- in the first instance, that's in Swami and my head, and we decide whether there's anything out there that looks attractive, and there's plenty of things. But we've got -- our first focus is let's keep building and go hard as we can and not distract the start. But everything is open, Chris. And thank you, by the way, despite how we address it, he's one of our biggest shareholders. I mean can you believe that? I mean I can't believe that Tasmania is saying we should take over the [Indiscernible] building the upper -- taking over castle. I mean it's -- Anyway Okay. Other questions?

Chairman, David. My name is [ Jill ].

Hi, [ Jill ].

We do know one another from -- I'm also member of the Australian Shareholders' Association.

Sorry about that.

What I'm asking when you can look into your crystal ball, so that as an investor and a passionate owner of PolyNovo, when I can actually take my stock of PolyNovo from my trading stock and put it into my bind hold stock? I've traded at 22x in the last 4 years and done very nicely. But it would be really nice to sort of say as it's actually what happened to me, my first investment was $0.38 and soon it go all the way to $4, and then earlier this year, we're under $1. I'm just wondering in your crystal ball, how much longer do you think I need to hang on so that I'm really comfortable with the product and what you're doing, but I can just sort of slip it across the mobile and I'm not worried about it anymore because I know that you'll be paying a little dividend and I won't have to keep watching it all the time?

Yes. So [ Jill, ] look, looking at your head I think you should have relaxed on this a lot longer ago. And I would have put it in the bottom drawer in my bedroom already, right? And again, as I have, you will see, of course, that even if I buy or sell 1 share, I've got to announce it and the only thing I've ever done is buy shares. And when it got down to your under $1, I was there front and center and bought a few million dollars worth and the rest is history. So for me, there's always going to be a question mark about what the value is. And because of that, it's been right territory for short sellers. Now short-selling is where you go and sell some stock that you don't owe. So you go to somebody else who's got stock and say, can I borrow it off you, and they go, "Why would I lend it to you. Well, I'll pay you 8%." You get the stock in yourself, but you've got to buy it back, you've got to repay the person you borrowed it off. So you'll see that since the stock went under a $1 and I started buying, the short sellers start to go. So 11.5% short. 11.5% of shares sold by people who didn't own them. They have to buy it back. And so when I started buying the short started to go, today, I don't know what it is, I haven't looked this morning, but let's say it's 7.25, so it's come off 4%. And that helped push the price up. It's not just because of I bought or somebody else bought, I actually find it quite funny, I look at a website a week ago, and there was something like 5 million shares traded in the day, and somebody showed me a comment on HotCopper that said, "It's probably Williams buying again." Well, if I only bought 20,000 shares, I'm getting the blame for everything, but it should be in your bottom drawer now. And so there will be a lot of volatility that comes from the shorters. Don't think about that $4. By the way, I've said it last year, look, the stock was trading at about $2.50, my recollection, you can go and have a look at this. And we had a meeting like this, and I announced that we're at 100% or something. Within 3 or 4 days, it went from $2.50 to $4 because we were 7.5% short. And then those 4 days, it not only went to $4, but the short sellers went to 2.5%. In other words, the reason went up was because they had to cover because I was scared it was going to keep going. So I covered and the rest is sort of history. And then when it got to $4, a whole lot of other shorters come in and they go, "Well, s***, that's too high. I'll sell some. So look, I said it before, I'm not worried about the shorts. People on the blogs that are worried about them. For me, they are my friends. They've got to buy it back. I'm buying shares at $1, knowing that there's 11.5% short. So when they have to come back in the market, the shares that I bought, they won't be there to buy. So it's a bit of a game, but it's a game that somebody like you who's worried about the trade is [indiscernible], but put them in your back door because as I said earlier, $1 million a month, $2 million a month, $3 million, $4 million, now we're at $5 million a month, there's only one way for this company, and we can have a healthy debate every day about what the value is, but it's going up. And in my opinion, for a good reason. So my best advice to you, put them in your bottom drawer, get a caravan and go to Cairns. We'll go and see, Chris, he'll take you on his power boat up the Launceston River. Anybody else in the room? Yes, at the back.

Thanks. Question, particularly now you're starting to go into China about protecting IP. Will you be always manufacturing here and sending product there. So is that a way of protecting your IP? Or is there anything else you have to do?

Look, it's a problem that everybody has going into China, and we don't yet have a solution. Not that I even agree with you, by the way, that the problem is there any longer. Of course, it's there, but it's a healthy debate. And when we get to the point where we need to go into China, there are some companies in China, for example, if we were to use a distributor, who would want it as a condition of the distribution agreement that they should be able to manufacture in China. And to do that, it's a problem because you need to hand over the formulas. So that sort of thing. But -- so we're not going to be in any hurry to do any of that you -- might not surprise you. But I do know Chinese companies that have done deals recently, and we've done them for China Grand and that advising them, where they haven't had that as a condition and happy to take the product off of the head company like us. I don't -- I wouldn't say -- I would never say never to where we might distribute. I mean the U.S. is growing so quickly that we might, in 2 years' time, say, notwithstanding, it's a very [Indiscernible] posted a lot of it to you today in Idaho or Wyoming head. We have an argument about whether we should already be there. And -- but get to the stage where we go, why don't we put up a plant somewhere in the U.S.? Or why not put up one in Ireland or some way? By the way, this is not like your Coca-Cola and wanting to put up a bottling plant, or [ vegan cheese ] and put up a cheese plant, give me $500 million, and I'll produce enough to supply California. This plant that we just put up probably all that cost us $10 million, yes. It's capital light, whichever way you look at it. So look, never say never, we might, I imagine in 2, 3 years' time, I imagine that it's for the Board that we might have another plant, but if I had to guess, it might be in Ireland first because of different tax reasons in Ireland and proximity to Europe, but it also might be in Wyoming. Anybody else in the room? Otherwise going to take some off the line, Jan. Sorry, one more. Father-in-law of one of my employees.

Hi, David. Good to see you again.

Thank you.

Is it possible that you could give us a 1-minute summary of Swami's background, and it looks very interesting character. I'd love to know his background.

We'll skip a little bit about being in jail, but Swami, why don't you give a bit of a background?

I'm a pharmacy graduate. I did my MDA, worked in the pharmaceutical industry. Started my life as an investment banker. Debt treasury, wholesale banking, retail banking for about 4 years. And for the last 30 years, I have been with health care industry with Johnson & Johnson. In different parts of the world, so U.S., India, Indonesia, so responsible for global operations, regional operations, did a little bit of supply chain. One of the bad moments, I also had to shut the company, have the, I was a janitor, I was -- I did everything. I enjoyed myself. Thank you for the question.