Symphony Environmental Technologies plc (SYM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Symphony Environmental Technologies plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish our responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from Symphony Environmental, Michael, Ian. Good morning.

And good morning to you. Thank you. Good morning to everybody. The traditional executive summary, I'm pleased to present, the first half results demonstrate of course, a material turnaround in financial performance followed improvements of d2w our core market. Q2 was successfully an implement -- let's try again. Q2 successfully implemented a cost reduction program, which has started to increase our operating margins. Our interim results for 6 months to the 30th of June 2024, our operating losses reduced 50% to GBP 0.4 million. We had a significant fall in operating losses in Q2 to just GBP 50,000. And these results demonstrate strengthening results of mainly all our d2w markets. The successful equity raise of GBP 1.3 million should also be noted in March 2024. And the convertible loan, the extension to 31 December, 2025. Currently, we're operating on at least the same level as Q2 2024. We have very important, positive legislation and regulations changing in key markets, which is helping to increase d2w our biodegradable demand. Our d2p bread technology becomes commercial in one more country, making 3 countries where we have our d2p technology. d2p bread technology undergoing 2 semi-commercial pre-evaluation trials in the U.S.A., which is where we have the FDA approval. So for those that don't know, Symphony Environmental Technologies, and our main core business, is in the development of additives and masterbatch technologies that you put into ordinary plastics, which will do something to their properties. Now the important part is to really understand where we are globally. And essentially, the global issues we address very, very briefly in this slide. We're dealing with the plastic pollution issue globally. Food preservation as a result of plastic usage, crop growing, which is a result of plastic usage, water pipe protection, protecting the water as a requirement is to use plastic pipes and human safety. These are core areas where our business is focused to try and generate improvements. So our technology is scalable and it's also immediate. It's scalable because it's non disruptive, is an upgrade to an existing product. So, you don't have any material changes in cost, no changes to equipment or product quality. And of course, for those that are focused on recycling, it's recyclable, and it can be made in recycled. And it limits the amount of CO2 emissions and also limited life cycle impact. In fact, in both those areas there are no material increases to CO2 emissions or life cycle impact. We are still one of the lowest in terms of LCA of any product in existence that we know of. So that's the overview. Essentially, at a glance, we spent since 2015, GBP 67 million in the development of this business. And we have been awarded, as many of you will know, one of the first in fact to get the LSE Green Mark. This is a high-margin business, 46%-ish in terms of gross profit. And the important part is it's capital-light meaning really that we're operationally geared. And we have a global network of distributors. So in other words, these people aren't on our payroll. It's similar to a franchising type model. We've invested something in the order of 8% of our overall revenues into research and development since 2015, just under GBP 5 million, GBP 4.9 million to be precise. And of course, one of our very important strengths is our Blue Chip global partners. That includes Grupo Bimbo, one of the very first to use our d2w biodegradable technology for now, something like 16 years, which has been quite a long period of time. And Indorama Corporation, a very strong collaboration with that group and Rivulis. So 75 distributors that we have -- in fact 76 distributors that we have covering nearly 100 countries. So from there, what do we really have in terms of business opportunity. And that is a very, very strong pipeline. It's been developing over many, many years. We engage with public and private sectors internationally. So the result of that in terms of commercial activity, we have a lot of multiple customer trials ongoing at this moment. And I know we continually keep saying this but there's trials, some of them have become commercial, some, semi commercial. So that pipeline is developing well. Ian, over to you.

Thanks Michael. Just a clarification on the previous page, revenues of GBP 65 million since 2015 and our R&D was close to GBP 5 million for the last 5 to 6 years. So just on the first half results, we just announced this morning. As a business, just to remind you, we are a high-margin operational business. Our sales are international. For a diverse range of regions and there'll be a map later on that Michael will go through, and you'll see d2w being sold in 50-plus countries around the world. And our manufacturing is global as well. So we manufacture in 6 countries. So the capacity is large and immediate and it means also a CapEx-light business. So this is purely growth funding working capital and growth going forward with a high-margin business. So I think one of the questions we're going to come to is how sustainable is the company's position. We don't need much cash to grow this business going forward with those things in play. So just for the revenue for the first 6 months, d2w same as the first half of last year. But underlying with that, as Michael has mentioned, we've got growing -- we can see now growing markets in d2w strengthening into a number of regions. d2p, strong performance first half of the year, GBP 402,000, which is pretty close to the GBP 0.5 million for the whole year. So strengthening d2p. That's primarily in the anti-insecticides for the time being which is a [ rigorous ] sales selling primarily into the Middle East and parts of Europe. So total revenue is GBP 3.5 million, slightly lower than last year because of a reduction in our noncore market revenues. So the big number here is the gross profit strengthening, 37% in the whole of last year has gone to 46% for the first half of this year, proved due to the raw material manufacturing cost reductions and also managed efficiencies. And these initiatives are continuing into half 2, 2024. So we've got more to come on that basis. And then the distribution costs remaining low 3% to 4% the dizzying heights of COVID actually remain consistent around those levels. So our contribution after distribution costs of 42% for the business. If we go into the wider profit and loss account, admin expenses, a reduction in those expenses primarily due to using less and less professional consultancy costs. For the last few years, we used a lot of consultants, professional advisory firms for various parts of the world to help us through things like FDA clearances, market analysis in various parts of the world, legislative analysis and stuff. All that works done now, and it's work that we can carry on doing ourselves, so significant reduction now. And then the operating loss, well, looking at last year, GBP 2 million for the whole of last year operating loss to just under -- just over GBP 400,000 loss. And in Q2, the losses it was just GBP 50,000. So significant turnaround financially for the business. The other significant factor there is just the share of joint venture results. So we've got the Indian joint venture, which Michael will spend a bit more time on later on and a loss of about GBP 28, 000 which will probably continue for the second half of the year as well, resulting in a loss before tax of just over GBP 0.5 million and the earnings per share loss of 0.27p. Just looking at the balance sheet, inventories reduced again as part of the efficiencies with the business and also efficiencies in terms of cash flow. You can see our inventories reduced to below GBP 0.5 million. They were close to GBP 1 million June last year, and they were just GBP 600,000 end of the year. So a significant reduction now, which is, I think, well a good place to be in. And within the share capital share premium, you can see the result of the GBP 1.3 million subscription we undertook in March, we've got a 67% premium, strengthening the balance sheet and in convertible loans, you got the GBP 1.5 million in greater than 1 year. So they were in current borrowings last June and at the end of the audit has now been extended at the end of December. So that's made our net current asset position are much stronger. So Michael, back to you.

Okay. Thank you. So as you can imagine, the global market that we're focusing in is pretty large. We've come up with a figure here of GBP 712 billion. That's the sort of market that we're active in. And that market is still set to increase by something like 4% certainly all the way up to 2033. So 400 million tonnes is the sort of number that we're looking to focus our technology into -- or technologies with an S. So out of this 400 million tonnes, you have China, which is one of the largest markets producing 32% packaging accounting for 36% of which 85% ends up in landfill or litter. That's a pretty big number. And -- of course, it's said that it could take somewhere between 20 to 500 years for that to degrade. So 10% of all plastic pollution residing in the world is in the oceans. By 2050, plastic in our oceans would exceed the weight of all living and marine organisms. So pretty hard facts. So where are we? Key opportunities this global map shows that we've got Rivulis, one of the largest producers of irrigation pipes using our d2p technology, mainly an Israeli company, but with a global reach. We have key opportunities in U.S.A. and Canada, maybe in relation to our d2p bread technology, but there's a lot of other activity going on in the U.S. with our other products. But our U.S. and Canadian operations are mainly focused in the bread packaging technology where we had announced an exclusive contract with Grupo Bimbo in the development of their bread packaging to use d2p technology. In the Middle East, one of our strongest markets, the new manufacturing unit that we have there has settled quite well. And we have in those markets, a very, very positive regulatory enforcement and new laws coming in play. You can imagine that the Middle East aren't looking to ban oil-related products. So it's become a very interesting market for us to develop. But of course, Middle East enormous amount of construction, enormous amount of plastic and our plastic is very susceptible to fire hazards and once seen in the press quite a lot of issues with the vertical in flames and other buildings. So yes, we are active certainly on 1 or 2 great formulations in the Middle East on flame retardants and also antimicrobials. Our Latin American businesses, distributors down there, they're active with a lot of legislation that's currently ongoing. We've had new governments come into play in the last few weeks and months. So the legislation drive has picked up quite substantially from Mexico to Colombia to quite a lot of those countries. And of course, plastic pollution is on their list. Too difficult to ban plastic so it's become more an easier task to get people's attention to say don't ban it, just upgrade it using d2w. So there are a lot of interesting developments going on the political side as well as we continue to make progress on our bread technology. Our JV in India with the Indorama Corporation is also developing a situation that we've reported to the market for some time now. And the driver behind that is, of course, the regulations. And the regulations in India essentially are making plastic a key policy. And what they've done there is demanded that all plastics increase our thicknesses. And we were seeing perhaps in food packaging, an increase of up to 3x in terms of thickness, 3x increasing thickness means massive increase in cost. The exemptions are if your product happens to be biodegradable or compostable. Compostable is rather difficult because they don't have any composting systems. But biodegradability is such that it will biodegrade safely in the open environment, is the initiative and our team is working very, very hard to get certification in India. So of course, just a quick recap: our solution to the plastic pollution issue is a technology that came to the world in the 1970s. And this technology is an additive or a masterbatch, which essentially is a formulation, which will help substantially reduce the issue of persistent microplastics. Anyone using our technology does not create microplastics. That's scientifically proven. And what it does is it turns ordinary plastic at the end of its service life because the reuse part is very important into non plastic biodegradable compounds. It then comes bio-assimilated safely in the environment. So what you're seeing, if you look at the little schematics to the right, the long entangled chains, which through the process of oxidation are then becoming much, much shorter chains. And those chains then become susceptible to microbial activity. Now it may be difficult for some of you to see it, but the picture you're looking at is a piece of plastic film that was being processed at Queen Mary University. I think in terms of size, it's around about 1 micron. It's less than a human hair. And if you look at the top right hand of that picture, you're seeing the bacteria that's been scraped away from the grooves. What it's demonstrating is that these guys were consuming the compounds. We've actually started opening up that plastic into food. So it's a real life shot of biodegradation. So the work done by Queen Mary was very interesting and globally, extremely helpful in demonstrating to regulators that using this technology you can get biodegradation up to 90x faster than ordinary plastics. So we see where we are on the regulatory side. We have Saudi Arabia, one of the largest consumers of plastic adopting in, I think, 2017 a law that makes all plastic biodegradable using this type of technology. To be able to supply in Saudi Arabia, you need to have an approval and you need to have a quality mark. We have that. It took some years to get that. And in the United Arab Emirates, similar, Bahrain, similar and very recently, Yemen. But interestingly, in all these countries, we're finding that they're moving forward slowly but surely in the adoption of pushing more and more companies into using biodegradable plastics, which are in their eyes, ordinary plastics that have this sort of technology inside. So our opportunities, as I said, the Middle East. And now in this slide, we focus a little bit more in Saudi Arabia. Why is it sort of massive in terms of size at the moment. That's because it's in Phase 1. There's a 3-phase operation or 3 steps. Phase 1 should have moved to Phase 2 and Phase 3, 3 or 4 years ago. But they paused because of pressure from other parts of the world, saying that they should be doing their own studies, which they did. They've completed those studies only this year. And those studies revealed that the technology did exactly what they expected, it met all their standards. And their standards are based on international standards. Standards that will prove that the plastic in the own environment will biodegrade. So we're waiting for news now that they've done their own evaluations as to the enforcement of Phase 2 and Phase 3. This, in our view, will be significant because globally, it will have an impact. And certainly, as far as our Middle East sales, another impact. The UAE, Bahrain and Yemen, all active in terms of encouraging and forcing people to use biodegradable technologies. Similar sort of enforcement story, the factory in UAE is ESG and cost efficient in terms of its production in terms of its overall efficiency. And it's a preferred option from a lot of local users. They prefer to buy products locally and having that local production put in place in the last year or so has made our presence much, much more dynamic. Let me move across to one of our other active markets. And we have many and we've only listed some of the main ones here. We have Grupo Bimbo in Latin America. They are the largest bread manufacturing company in the world, which I understand with sales in excess of GBP 17 billion and still growing. They're a strong supporter of ESG, good compliance. Believe very strongly in recycling and they believe very, very strongly in biodegradable technologies. They have big operations now in India and are waiting for Symphony to get its approval which we hope won't be that much longer, so that they can start using technology in India as soon as possible. But in other areas, we have interesting movements in Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, where legislation has moved into a more aggressive phase. Peru Again, it's becoming more aggressive in terms of demand for biodegradable type plastics, Brazil and Argentina. A lot of work has been going on with our teams in those parts of the world to keep people focused on this is a credible option. It's a better option than banning, it's a better option than using alternative technologies that may not have the same ESG credentials. So in other markets that we have quite a lot of Blue Chip companies within our pipeline. We show here North America, but also in the Far East, we have strong partnerships in China, Vietnam, which is a very interesting market. Pakistan, where we're seeing new legislation that's been passed through in favor of our sort of technology. Huge amount of activity ongoing in Korea in many different sectors and of course, in Indonesia. As I said in an earlier slide, India, our main focus is with our joint venture there with Indorama Corporation. We hope to be providing updates very soon in relation to that. It's too difficult to define whether there'll be news this year or next year, but you can be sure our team -- or our mutual teams are working very hard to get our certification completed which will then allow the business to move forward very quickly on biodegradables. But on our antimicrobials and our insecticides, they're progressing well and we're optimistic on the outcome on that. So products included. We just put on this slide, just for those that aren't too focused on the products that we cover. There are, of course, refuse sacks, the bin liners, there are drinking straws. There are apparels, a huge amount of activity in agricultural films, food packaging. Supplement bottles, different types of bottles in fact, not just supplement bottles, stirrers and our technology do go into unique brands. So on our d2p technology, d2p, well, it means designed to protect and to protect against lots of different damage. For example, on food spoilage we have the FDA approval for antibacterial, antifungal technologies for bread packaging. We have other technologies that can control the rate of ethylene that you might get in terms of fruits. Fruits, as you know, from bananas to strawberries and onwards can decay quite quickly. So our technology will allow the packaging to control the ethylene transmission of those fruits. So we can retard- it which means we can produce less wastage as a result of fungi or rotting of the fruit. Our technologies will be found, and we're focused in hygiene areas, virus transmissions. In particular, we have projects in water tanks and water pipes on a global basis. A very, very interesting area. We have no competition that we've identified. And in terms of flame retardant products, I touched on it earlier, we do have a lot of activities going on. Our main activity where we've been really, really focused for the past few years is on flame retardants, developing particular formulations for unique markets. That's moving along quite well. and we hope to update the market further in very short order. We have corrosion, we call them VCIs technology. We can stop oxidation of metal parts, to making your plastic stop the corrosion of metal parts is one of our other technologies, some activity going on in that. One would expect some news coming out probably more like 2025 on breakthroughs on that sort of technology. And then, of course, our insecticide technologies. Our main business there is with Rivulis, but there are others similar in that industry that want to be able to make their plastic products, be it pipes, be it plastic sheeting with anti insect barriers inside. So moving along, our progress and our opportunities. We have strong partners, regulations in place and working to extend product types and geographics. The anti insect technologies, as I've said in the earlier slide, is mainly with Rivulis but we do have others. So we have I'm pleased to say good consistency of business and a lot of opportunities and business coming to maturity in that area. Our FDA-approved technology, we're unique. There is, as far as we know and as far as the FDA website is concerned, the only technology in the world that's got this approval. It's a great technology and Grupo Bimbo are the group that signed into exclusivity in certain markets. But we do have other trials going on with other bread companies in other parts of the world. And this brief update gave you some indication that it is moving, albeit slowly, we believe the pace will pick up. And then the 2 main technologies I touched on in the earlier slide. So in this summary, were the flame retardants and the ethylene controlled absorbers. India, I touched on earlier in the slide. The main issue here, a good slide to look at what's it all about? There is this Indian standard called IS-17899 our product through independent laboratories approved by the government is being certified to that standard. When completed, we can then apply for certification from the government like we did in Saudi Arabia, we had to have our product certified before it can go into market. We're well advanced into that phase of the business. That's why we have d2w currently being tested for compliance. Yes, it's a massive market. One would expect India to be a massive market. It changes the dial hugely in terms of top line profitability for both the JV and the core business. 500-plus prospective customers fueled by something in the order of 20-odd distributors. Each one of those distributors have products, masterbatches going into the Indian market. So supply distribution is, of course, an issue and the issue is resolved through the distribution setup that they have. And of course, India, moist, they consume a lot of bread, one would expect trials to be ongoing. We do have trials ongoing in India. We also got semi-commercial use after quite a long time of processing. But good thing is that the results consistently demonstrate that the technology inside plastic works. It does stop the inhibition of mold, delays it, which means you can either use less preservatives in the bread or you have less waste. So, Ian, would you like to go through the overview?

Yes, sure. Just so for the overview then. Coming back to the results themselves, seeing significant financial improvement. Operating loss reduced by half to under GBP 0.5 million which actually is a greater factor when you compare half one against the whole of last year. And more significantly, the quarter 2 operating loss was just GBP 50,000. And we are maintaining at least that financial perspective from quarter 2 going into half 2 of this year. We're seeing legislative and regulation changes in some of our key markets, which is fueling d2w demand. And with the bread -- the FDA bread technology, one more country that's starting to use it now. And we've got some 2 trials going on in obviously the USA, which is a very, very large market. So really just summarizing our opportunity operationally geared, high-margin, reducing cost base, the significant reductions there in our marginal costs, our product costs and product efficiencies, which is obviously fantastic. The opportunities globally are significant. We're addressing major global concerns with a major global product, plastics. As you saw earlier on is a GBP 700 billion market in plastics. Nearly every organization. is using plastics, involved with plastics, and that's where we fit in. Our product is, as Michael said before, nondisruptive, it's scalable and immediate. We continue with product innovation. And the markets are large. So you saw from the map, literally the whole of the Americas we're working on. We're showing India. We've shown the Middle East. And of course, within that map, there's 50 countries that we're working currently with d2w. Any of those other countries, be it in Africa, be it in the Far East as well as they can offer some very good growth potential for our business. And we've got some strong strategic global partners. We've got us Bimbo, Indorama amongst others as well. So that's the overview. And that's the end of our slide presentation. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] Michael, Ian, as you can see there, we have received a number of questions from investors. And thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. But Ian, Michael, 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.

Very good. Thank you. Questions are good questions dealing with the first one from Gary D. How did the positive legislation changes in key markets that Saudi Arabia, Yemen impact growth forecast for d2w products? What new markets have been targeted over the next 12 months? So look, in 2 parts. Saudi Arabia and Yemen are massive markets. And if they do exactly what we would like them to do, and I can't comment on whether that will happen at all or not because we'll obviously update the market should anything dynamic happen. But these are markets that should they legislate as the legislation is showing, then ourselves, our profitability moves up by some serious numbers. So I think those markets, the news flow that we hope to be able to give as these things move forward, will be very, very positive, very good for the company. So we are driven by legislation. It's not a matter of going out there and trying to sell this technology to individual corporates. The biggest driver of this is legislation changes. And remember, 2017 is the date that I gave you in relation to Saudi Arabia, this has been going on for some time. But interestingly, with all the political troubles in Yemen, it's only this year that they've decided to start enforcing legislation that was passed some years ago. Enforcement means everything in terms of really increasing our sales, and that's why we put so much time into legislation driving. The second part of that question was what new markets have been targeted over the next 12 months? There are already a huge amount of markets that we're in, and we're just staying focused on those markets. We're not looking to expand those markets. If we deliver on any one of those markets, and we hope to deliver on several, it will make a substantial difference to the business itself. Moving on to another question here by Paul M. Why has the bread business taken so long to convert into profitable revenue, didn't they already do the trials? And when do you think material avenues will begin from this? And that's a very good question. And just to explain what's been going on, trials on bread have been done over 10 years and the results have been very consistent. But the issue there is that each bread unit, each bread facility have different contamination issues. They have different recipes. And what they need to do each one is to be able to do their own tests in their own environment in their own conditions. But as you may know, the conditions are never the same from one year to the other. So beginning of the year, you might have a cold condition, middle of the year you might have humid conditions in the hull. So what we've been seeing is a test over different times of the year for different companies and different units in different locations. And when you add that together with the diversity of different recipes, you end up with quite a lot of different results. I've got to say that every result that I've seen have been consistently good. There are the few odd ones which have not been good. And the reason behind that is the product wasn't manufactured as it should have been manufactured so you've got to do a retest. The retest then goes and shows an exceptional result and the customer then believes oh, it's too good, let's go and do it again. That's why we lose a lot, a lot of time. It's been painfully slow. But as you will see from our update, we are progressing on the d2p technology. And the d2p technology in relation to bread is a valuable technology. It's valuable to the bread manufacturer, it's hugely valuable to Symphony. It's a technology that's sold -- sells at a very, very high margin and in terms of value much greater than d2w. I hope that answers your question, Paul M. Just looking at some other questions.

There's a question on the R&D tax credit. Just the reason that's not going into the first half purely because we account for R&D tax credit on cash received. We haven't received the R&D cash yet. Purely just in case there's any issues with revenue and customers on that. I think the other part of that question was balancing the investment. Much of our investment in R&D is what we're working on with our customers, with our distributors around the world. So a lot of the R&D is actually developed ourselves. We are using less third-party facilities in R&D at the moment. I think the main reason for that is because I think we feel we've developed, pretty much developed the core ranges now, and it's really the fine tuning. So there's not much risk in terms of overspending on R&D going forward. That's not really where we are at this moment in time. When you eventually receive significant orders, are you able to produce products in material volumes? The answer is yes. We've got 6 factories, 6 core factories that we use. And we pretty much can sort of turn them on, turn them off as we require. If one factory, in particular, may have a problem. We can just go to another factory around the world. More materials for our core products, we keep a large stock of the raw materials, our key materials. So we've got no risk in not having the material even though we've got the manufacturing space. I think what we talk about the pipeline. Well, the pipeline really is the map that Michael showed. We've been U.S.A. in terms of the bread, a lot of territories even, Latin America, which has got some strong regulatory moves in relation to biodegradable plastics. Middle East, Michael just went through in terms of the volumes there alone that could be significant and in a way, transformational. We haven't actually used the word transformational in these statements, but I think where we are, we have a number of these products, be it India, be it the U.S.A., be it Saudi, as and when we can't dictate where time is going to be on those, but they're all -- those particular areas are all significant if they do move in the right direction and start to sort of move with sort of the gradient that we hoped would be significant and transformational to Symphony.

I see a question from Jason M , and it's a good question. And I'm sure a lot of shareholders or people looking at the company continually ask this question. He says, I've been following the company for many years, and the story is very similar every quarter. What has stopped you increasing revenues many more times than you have? And this has been a really, really hard business and incredibly frustrating, particularly for me and my team. We're dealing with governments, legislators because essentially, people do not make a move without seeing whether it's compatible with the laws. If there are no laws as in this case, it makes it even more difficult. For those that follow the company since the early days, we've made a great start. We've got our product into Tescos. We've got products into Co-op. We've got products into Safeway. Many of the large units users pretty vast. And then the government put a statement out that basically said we don't have a policy that deals with plastic litter other than don't litter it, or let's go for composting. Against a composting scenario, you end up with a European norm that was focused on products that will fall apart in a compost. You can't have ordinary plastics that fall apart in the compost because you needed to have barrier properties, you needed to protect moist food. So our challenge was always to say compostable is one issue, biodegradability in the open environment is another. And we've spent a huge amount of time and shareholder money in trying to demonstrate by evidence that there are 2 technologies and composting doesn't biodegrade in the open environment, and biodegradable such as ours, based on international standards, will biodegrade in the open environment. So it's all been about hesitation. But we are at a point now where hesitations now moved into actions. And we're seeing governments saying, and organizations saying I can't bear my plastic. I can't move to a compostable product. It's 3x more expensive than an ordinary one. And we don't have composting facilities. What am I going to do? And what we're seeing as a result is increase in global demand. But we're also seeing more rules, more regulations pushing towards biodegradable plastics like we did in India. And India is a very, very big ticket item. Once that's clarified, I think the dynamics change. Then difficult, when one communicates quarter -- well we don't really commute quarterly, we communicate maybe twice a year on what's going on and we try to give the update on what's going on at that period of time. And at this period of time, and we're pretty advanced into this particular space, we are seeing governments making moves that are supporting our type of technology. And so our focus, as you've seen from the results, is to make the company more efficient, drive the cost down, which we've done. Driving product costs down, driving overhead costs down, ensuring that we're financially sustainable. And also at a point when top line looks set to grow and grow quite well. I hope that answers that question. Somebody else asked a question, how much longer does Grupo Bimbo have exclusivity for? Well, the exclusivity was only for the Americas i.e., North America and South America. And you may say that's a big market. Yes, it is. We have come to the end of that period. We do have quite -- we do have some flexibility, which is why we have other trials, commercial trials, semi-commercial trials ongoing in the United States. So it is opening up a bit on that front. More questions. Are we using our successful penetration in Vietnam expand into neighbor -- neighboring Laos and Cambodia? The Far East is not one of our biggest markets. A huge amount of activity going on in Korea. We've got activity going on in Vietnam, activity going on in China. We didn't cover all the different countries in our update. We just quoted some of the main ones. But we still think our fastest growing markets at the moment are Middle East and Latin America. But at the rate of change, the rate of pressure on plastic pollution you might well see changes from Africa, which is pretty poor on -- for expensive alternatives to plastic to the Caribbeans, if you like. So we're in the right space at the right time and we got an un-disrupted technology that's operationally geared. I think we are at that point where we are seeing all the right movements.