Vitasora Health Limited (VHL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Respiri Limited. Due to COVID-19, we are holding a virtual AGM again this year. My name is Nicholas Smedley. I'm Executive Chairman of Respiri and will be in charge of the meeting today. I would like to begin by introducing my fellow directors that are present today. Marjan Mikel, CEO and Managing Director; Thomas Duthy, Non-Executive Director. Also present our Company Secretary, Alistair Beard. Peter Renda from our share registry, Computershare, is in attendance also. Billy Chan from our auditors, RSM, is also in attendance. Billy is here today to answer any questions that you may have in relation to the audit. Please note that today's meeting will be recorded. Respiri has delivered a number of significant milestones during the FY '21 year. However, parts of wheezo's rollout in Australia continue to face headwinds from the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. I must acknowledge upfront that the Board and management are disappointed with the current sales volume to date, along with the recent share price performance. However, with Australia and the rest of the world now appearing to be on a clearer path to normality, the Board is encouraged by the current opportunities before Respiri in Australia and in a significantly larger American and European markets. Marjan will speak in further detail on the current developments and expected 2022 milestones. It is important to acknowledge the significant milestones at Marjan and the management team has delivered during the 2021 financial year. These include: sales agreement with Cipla secured in July 2020 with 5,541 wheezos sold through this channel in the financial year; appointment of Entech as manufacturing partner for wheezo; recapitalization of the [indiscernible] with the $12.5 million capital raise; reduction in wheezo COGS by a further 30% with the introduction of wheezo Version 3.0, this has been further improved with the recent introduction of wheezo 4.0; significant pharmacy footprint delivered with key banner groups such as Pharmacy Platform, Amcal and TerryWhite; specialist lead remote patient monitoring program, RAMP developed following successful completion of the Patient Experiential Program; and U.S. FDA clearance achieved for wheezo. So last year, we've seen the company deliver key operational milestones, improving the overall value proposition to patients. Recent months have shown that this has resulted in a significant improvement in patient engagement. These positive trends have helped accelerate ongoing discussions for wheezo adoption by RPM or remote patient monitoring and reimbursement providers in Europe and the United States. This is just 1 of the many reasons I am optimistic about the performance of Respiri in 2022. On behalf of the Board, I'd like to thank our shareholders, customers and partners for their ongoing support and also commend our team for their efforts this year, especially against the backdrop of COVID-19. Later in the meeting, our CEO, Marjan Mikel, will provide you more insight to our operational performance and current prospects for 2022 and beyond. It is now just past 2 p.m., the nominated time for the meeting, and I have been informed that a quorum is present. I note that the meeting has been validly constituted, and I am pleased to declare the meeting open. The Notice of Meeting contains details of how to vote. These details are also shown on the screen now. Voting during the meeting is via the LUMI app. The voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. In order to provide you with enough time to vote, I will shortly open voting for all resolutions. At that time, if you are eligible to vote at this meeting, a new polling icon will appear. Selecting this icon will bring a list of the resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your 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 do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until voting closes. I now declare voting open on all items of business. The polling icon will soon appear. Please submit your votes at any time. I have instructed Computershare to keep the voting open until the conclusion of our CEO and Managing Director, Marjan Mikel's presentation, after which polls will close. Following the meeting, the votes will be compiled by Computershare and released to the ASX this evening. Each Respiri shareholder present in the virtual meeting or by proxy has 1 vote for each Respiri share they hold. I have been advised by our share registry that all proxies received have been checked, and I declare them valid for voting at this meeting. I will disclose proxy votes on the screen along with the corresponding resolutions put to shareholders in the Notice of Meeting issued on October 14 and had included with the online meeting documents available through your Computershare investor portal or voting portal. These figures will be as the closing time for receipt of proxies, which was 2:00 p.m. Saturday the 13th November 2021. Where a valid proxy vote has been given to the Chairman without voting instructions, please note that in all cases, I intend to vote in favor of the resolution. I am informed that the Notice of Meeting was sent to all registered shareholders and within the notice period required. I now table the Notice of Meeting, and unless there are any objections, I will be thus convening this meeting as read. All resolutions to be put to members today were contained in the Notice of Meeting, so I will not read out each proposed resolution in full. The poll will run from now until the end of the meeting. I now declare voting all items of business. I can confirm that there will be an opportunity to ask questions of the Board as they relate to the formal items of business of this meeting. If you wish to ask a question, please do so by typing the question into the chat function in Zoom. There are 2 ways you can do this either in writing or verbally. If you submit your question in writing, we ask that, when typing the question: shareholders include their names so the Board can properly address the shareholder; all questions in the first instance are directed to myself as Chairman; questions should be submitted to the participant called AGM questions. If you wish to put your question to the Board verbally, then please type "I have a question" in the same Zoom chat text box or even send a raise hand from the list of emojis available. When it is your turn to speak, you will be unmuted in the Zoom and introduced by Respiri's Company Secretary. You will then be able to speak to the virtual meeting. Again, don't forget that written questions or requests to ask the verbal questions must be submitted to the participation from the Zoom called AGM questions, and this is done via the Zoom chat function. Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will address all questions other than those relating to the financial statements after all of the items of business and proxy positions have been presented. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now progress to the formal business of the meeting. The first item of notified business is to receive and consider the Financial Report, the Directors' Report and the Auditor's Report for the year ended 30 June 2021. There is no formal resolution required for this item, but I invite questions and comments on this particular item now. RSM is present at the meeting and is available to deal with any questions relevant to the conduct of the audit, the preparation and context of the auditor's report, the accounting policies adopted by the company in relation to the preparation of the financial statements or the independence of the auditor in relation to the conduct of the audit. Given there are no questions, I'll continue on to item 2. The next item being Item 2, the Remuneration Report. The proxies received for this resolution are now displayed on the screen. As advised, voting on all resolutions will be via a poll. Are there any questions on this resolution? Questions will be answered on this and all remaining items of business at the end of the formal proceedings and before the CEO's presentation. As also mentioned at the start, the poll is already open. If you haven't already voted on these resolutions, please do so now or before the poll closes at the end of this meeting. Next on the agenda is item 3. The agenda item covers Resolution 2 and involves the reselection of Director, Marjan Mikel. The proxies received for this -- for these 3 resolutions are displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on these resolutions? Don't forget to submit them via the Zoom chat function on the meeting participant called AGM questions. They will be answered at the end of the formal part of the presentation. I now come to item 4, Resolution #3, being the approval of 10% placement capacity. The proxies received for this special resolution are now displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this resolution? We will now respond to all questions submitted during the formal part of the presentation covering agenda items 2, 3 and 4. Just a reminder that the results of the meeting will be released to the ASX later today, and that voting remains open until the conclusion of our CEO's presentation at which time the poll will close. We have now completed the matters contained in the Notice of Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, and I declare the formal part of the meeting closed. Thank you for your attendance. Our CEO and Managing Director, Marjan Mikel, will now give an update on the business, and we will take general questions following that update after his presentation. Questions should again be submitted via the Zoom chat function to the participant called AGM questions?

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. And once again, thank you very much for joining us today. And although everything hasn't gone to plan in what has been another very, very difficult year, I'm really excited the progress that we're making as an organization in the internationalization of our business and the broadening of our product portfolios to address a greater area of respiratory medicine to supplement wheezo. So it's been a hard year, but we've made some significant progress, and I want to share that with you today. We're in the business of -- for 1 reason. We exist for patients. Our goal is to make sure that we improve the lives of patients with asthma and help them live better lives as a result. Wheezo provides them with the tool that they don't have at the moment, a tool that allows them to objectively understand how well their conditions are being controlled and importantly, share that information with their physicians, other health care professionals and their carer group. We know from the feedback that we've got from patients who have purchased wheezo that they find it a very, very useful tool. And in doing so, provide them with a better level of control and better health outcomes, which I'll go into in a little more detail as we go through this particular presentation. As I said this and Nick alluded to, there's quite a number of achievements that we've achieved in the last 12 to 18 months. We've mentioned the FDA approval in March. Importantly, the Patient Experiential Program was completed. Outcomes are very, very encouraging, and I'll share those with you in this presentation. However, work needed to be done to improve patient engagement with the device, which we've addressed with the special specialist lead Remote Patient Monitoring Program RAMP. What we found with that particular program is that there was a dramatic improvement in patient engagement with wheezo. Patient outcomes are very, very positive. The trends are early, and a lot more needs to be done, but the initial results of the outcomes is very positive. Importantly, it also provides us with a model that we can use globally and locally as a new wheezo channel, and the data will be available for us to interrogate in quarter 1, 2022, when we get about 6 months' worth of data from each of the patients. Nick alluded to the fact that no one's satisfied with the sales results that we've got through Pharmacy at the moment. And that hasn't been helped by what has been, as I said, a very, very difficult year with border closures, lockdowns and whatever else. And as a result, we have amended plans to get a better understanding of what we need to do to improve the sales performance in Pharmacy. I'll go through a little bit more of that in the presentation. Wheezo 4.0 has been developed and our COGS target will be achieved in 2022. So we're very pleased about that. And we will have a product that's going to be manufactured at a COGS rate that is world class. Importantly, the wheezo app is continually being upgraded and now includes the Asthma Control Questionnaire, the ACT, which we believe is a world first. And it is a clinically proven questionnaire that provides additional information to the patient and their HCPs or health care professionals to better understand how well their asthma is being controlled. You may have noted that we won the Good Design Gold Award for product design in the medical and scientific device area. We've just also developed a new wearable product, Sorfe, which is Persian for cough. And it's been developed to monitor nocturnal asthma and exercise-induced asthma. These 2 areas are not very well serviced at all at the moment. And the KOLs that we've been talking to are very excited at the prospect of being able to get a greater understanding of what's happening with patients with asthma when they're sleeping. And importantly, for athletes, what's happening with their asthma as are they playing their sport. Importantly, the device will also be able to delineate between wheeze, so from asthma, and also upper airway vocal cord dysfunction. So we've proven that to be the case, and it's an exciting time as we move forward for this. And it will provide us with an additional product that will supplement or complement I should say, wheezo. It will not replace wheezo. Wheezo will still be the daytime version of the product that we have at the moment. This is for a completely different set of patients. We're well on the way and well advanced in launching our international presence. And it's important to note that unlike Australia, the international market launch will be physician-led, and it will be in reimbursed markets. That's really important to understand. I'm really excited about the progress that we're making in the U.S. We're in discussions with 6 potential telehealth/RPM/chronic care partners. We've already secured 2 nonbinding term sheets, and are in the process of negotiating final distribution agreements with those 2 people -- groups, sorry. Really exciting wheezo premarketing will commence to U.S. institutions, hospitals and doctors next month. That is well ahead of schedule, and it's an exciting time for us as we gear up for the launch in the U.S. Importantly, we're in discussions with a -- for a clinical partnership with a major pediatric hospital. We're in the process now of finalizing what that might look like. So it's a very exciting time for us in the U.S. We were originally hoping to be in the U.S. in quarter 3 next calendar year. We're well ahead of schedule with the work that we've done. So it's a pretty exciting time over there. The U.K. I've mentioned in the 4C, the Birmingham University study, which is basically a study to try and correlate wheeze with lung function. So that will be -- we're finalizing those details now, although the protocol has already been finalized, and that study will kick off next quarter. Very exciting, a major third-party funded asthma medical device study has also been secured in children. And reimbursement opportunity may result as a result of the outcomes of this particular study. So importantly, we are not paying for this study. It is being funded by a third party. I'll give you a little more detail about that when the final contracts are -- Ts are crossed and Is are dotted. But that's an exciting time. It will be outcomes-based and it'll trial for about 12 to 18 months. It will kick off, first patient in, in May 2022. We're also obviously in discussions with potential partners and we're finalizing those agreements as I speak. Europe. Again, Europe, if you recall, we had hoped to launch in the European marketplace in 2023. We are now in discussions with a potential partner. And they are -- have a strong presence in 4 markets, with a total population of about 150 million people. Two of those markets are reimbursed, and there's a huge opportunity to be had by bringing Europe forward in our rollout plans. Just thought I'd remind us about what it is that we do. We really do provide a world first to patients. It's an integrated ecosystem to support asthma management. Basically, we provide a tool and a back end that allows patients to objectively measure what is happening with them and their control of asthma and share that information to -- with their partner -- health care professionals and carer teams. Nothing like this exists today, and it is a big opportunity for us to take advantage. I just thought I'd share that with you again. We are embarking upon upgrading all of our apps and back ends to make sure that we have the latest and greatest when it comes to providing patients and their caring physicians with real-time data from the real world. Our algorithm. Now the findings of the Patient Experiential Program or the PEP, and the clinical findings from our study are quite striking. We know that the algorithm detects wheeze as at least as well as an experienced respiratory physician. So that we know to be the case, and that's really important, particularly given that we are trying to extend care beyond the clinic. So doctors need to be comfortable that what it is that we're providing them with is accurate. Importantly, from the real-world PEP program, we found a statistically significant difference in symptoms with those patients who had wheeze rates of greater than 3%. So this is really important to note that when people were measured and had a wheeze rate of more than 3%, their other symptoms were statistically worse than wheeze rates under 3%. Now that's a first. We've never had data like this before, and it's a very powerful tool for us, particularly when we were talking to our potential partners in the U.S., so really went down well. I did mention that the engagement rates in the PEP program weren't as up to wherever it is we'd like them to be. And this is where the Remote Asthma Management Program RAMP was developed, physician-led and led to a significant improvement in patient engagement. The patients now, in September, are using the wheezo more than once every single day, which is a number -- a wonderful result. And we know that this level of engagement also then provides the patients with a better understanding of their condition. And the outcomes, as I said previously, for all the patients at this moment are trending very, very positively. So we're really pleased with that. As I said, this is a model that we hope to be able to replicate in other parts of the world, particularly in the U.S. where reimbursement is had for this sort of work and also in Europe. It also provides us with another channel for those wheezo sales here in Australia, which is important to note. And that will be physician-led, and it also provides us with a program that we can offer to corporate Australia and wellness programs for their staff that have asthma. I thought I'd take the opportunity just to remind us about how large the opportunity is in the U.S. There, 1 in 13 people in the U.S. had asthma. There are over 1.5 million ED visits because of asthma every single year. The cost per inpatient medical event is over USD 8,000. COPD, the other respiratory area that we also have approval for in the U.S., 1 in 20 patients are living with COPD. There's almost 900,000 ED visits because of it. And each patient costs -- each inpatient at medical event is almost $28,000. Now that basically means that respiratory disease places a significant burden on the U.S. health care system, much as it does everywhere else in the world. Huge opportunity for us. The number of patients with asthma in the U.S. is bigger than the total population of Australia. That's how big that opportunity is. And unfortunately, respiratory illness continues to be very poorly managed. We've -- I've spoken about this many times. In-clinic spirometry is almost impossible for all patients. And in the community setting, in an ambulatory setting, that's just not going to work. Health care literacy amongst patients and carriers continues to contribute to poor outcomes. They don't know enough about their condition. They don't engage with their conditions. Adherence to medications is pretty hopeless to be quite honest. But now with RPM and RTM solutions, so that's Remote Patient Monitoring and Remote Therapeutic Monitoring, allows physicians and health care networks to reduce the inequity of access whilst delivering ongoing medical care for patients. So it's going to be easier for patients to be able to actually get a tool like wheezo in their hand to better manage their condition in the real world where problems occur. Patients don't typically have an asthma attack when they're sitting in front of their doctor. This is the opportunity for wheezo. This is the opportunity for Respiri. And we do report on a whole heap of other things in the app, as I've discussed many times previously, pollen count, air quality, pollution, medication usage, other symptomology. So all this basically provides the patient and their caring physician with a longitudinal snapshot of what that patient looks like on a good day and what it may look like on a bad day and be able to have that patient better forecast if they're going to have any problems with their condition moving forward. So effective management requires a partnership between patient, provider and we do that as -- we catalyze that with our wheezo device. As I said, we are FDA-approved medical device Class II. I'll just remind us again, we basically record breathing for about 30 seconds. And that recording is then Bluetooth-ed to the home. And in the app is the algorithm that analyzes the 4 breath sounds and wheeze of this instance. So the feedback that we've had from our potential American partners has been extremely positive. And as I said, so positive, in fact, that premarketing is going to commence in December. Just reminding us all that there is a very, very generous reimbursement program in the U.S. for RPM and RTM CPT codes. So a physician providing wheezo to a patient will make around about $1,350 per patient per annum. And we would charge that patient through our partners a product-as-a-service fee and that will be between USD 30 and USD 40 per month. So the opportunity is quite big. And the average value of a patient in the U.S. is about 3x what they are here in Australia. So there is a huge opportunity to be had. And as I said, the discussions we've had to date with our partners in the U.S. have been extremely positive and it's extremely well received. So this is basically the value proposition that we go to partners in the U.S. with. We have an integrated model so we can use -- we can provide them with either our end-to-end solution, which includes the wheezo app and also the portal, or we can integrate into third-party partner solutions. And in fact, the 2 providers that we've got as potential partners with the nonbinding agreements fall in both of those categories. One wants to use the end-to-end solution and the other has their own platform that they'd like wheezo integrated into and we're actively working on that right now. The technical approach we have, we sit there and there's a discovery phase. So we work out what exactly the customer needs; how their platforms work, and what their business model is. Because although they sort of work the same way, they have a different approach to the way that they deliver RPM solutions to their doctors. And needless to say that we then look to implement working very closely with their team. In fact, the team's currently working with 1 of these organizations as I speak. And we will be supporting them during the deployment and also on an ongoing basis. Now the benefits of partnering with wheezo, of course, is we have in-house capabilities. And it's really important to understand that one of the decisions we made early in the piece was to in-house mission-critical competencies, and this is 1 of them. We're not going to rely on our third parties to do this sort of stuff for us. We need to take control of this and make sure that it's perfect. We have the MedTech Respiratory Domain knowledge. And importantly, we already are developing systems that will integrate into our partner systems. So Respiri's integrated solutions deliver value to all key stakeholders. For health care professionals, as I said, it's a completely new source of revenue for them because it's a device for asthma and COPD. And today, as far as we know, there is very, very little available to physicians to claim those CPT codes, particularly in children and the elderly. They can get better quality of care because they no longer need to rely on patients' recall and self-assessment, which we know is hopeless. And the better information is there for better decisions to be made about how their patients are being provided -- managed sorry. With the Remote Patient Monitoring and Remote Therapeutic Monitoring providers, our partners, we know that we have the best-in-class FDA medical device -- approved medical device. We can integrate into their systems, if need be. And importantly, as I said previously, it opens up a completely new cohort of patients delivering a new revenue stream. So we're not competing with stuff that they already have, which they're very, very excited about. With patients, of course, having a better understanding of what their triggers are and how well they're being controlled provides them with a better level of health and compliance outcomes; reduced hospital admissions; and ultimately reduced health care costs and financial burdens. And as I said, December, active wheezo premarketing to U.S. customers commences. So we're really excited about that, particularly given that it's so far ahead of schedule. So a lot has been achieved. The team we have here at Respiri, I couldn't wish for a better team. They are committed to what it is we do. And as I said, they all have mission-critical competencies that we want in-house as an organization. But leading forward, I just want to make a couple of comments on why 2022 excites me so much. Our international launch will be physician led, as I said, rather than pharmacy. And the feedback we've had from physicians from the international markets has been very, very positive. As mentioned, the U.S. launch is ahead of schedule. We're going to be doing a U.K. soft launch in quarter 1, 2022, and we're developing reimbursement strategies for that marketplace, in conjunction with the 2 clinical studies that we will be undertaking in 2022, the key linchpins in our strategy for that particular market. We're in advanced discussions with the EU partner and again, developing reimbursement strategies for 2 of the markets spaces they operate in. The wearable device will open up a completely new therapeutic opportunity for us in the areas of nocturnal asthma monitoring, but also exercise-induced asthma. Now as I said, we have a couple of local key opinion leaders here in Australia out of Melbourne University, who are very excited about pursuing this. Australia, I'm not going to hide from the fact that we're not satisfied with the level of sales that we've achieved through the pharmacy channel. But what we're doing is developing RAMP, the Remote Asthma Program -- Monitoring Program, sorry, to provide us with a new channel to market. Pharmacy targeting strategy is to continue to focus on finding out those pharmacies who are more actively engaged in professional -- delivering professional services to their customers, which will mean fewer pharmacies that we will be friends with. And we're going for a depth of penetration rather than the breadth of penetration. So it's much more cost effective working with those pharmacies who have a charter to deliver professional services, which not all pharmacies do, and be focused on helping them deliver to their customers. So 2022 is an exciting time for all this. I'm really looking forward to the challenges and the progress that we will make next year. And I want to thank all of you for your support in 2021 and hope that you will continue to support us in 2022. Thank you.

Well, we have a few questions that have come in, everybody. So I might start at the top questions submitted in writing. The first 1 is from [ Andrew Nash ] asking for some feedback or update on the doctor, medical professional engagement and the same with any key opinion leaders?

Yes. Look, the engagement with the key opinion leaders across the globe has been very, very positive. I mean one of the big differences, for instance, in the development of the wearable device was ensuring that we had input from key opinion leaders from Europe, U.K., U.S., Israel and here in Australia. So we are certainly a lot more active in that space now. The feedback that we've had from key opinion leaders here in Australia has been very positive. We're currently working in cahoots with a specialist in -- from Melbourne University to look at whether or not -- to study the impacts of thunderstorm-based asthma. And that key opinion leader has chosen wheezo as the device that she wants to use to measure and monitor how well patients are doing. So we're very much aware of the need to engage with physicians, particularly in the markets from abroad because they're reimbursement-led markets. So the only way we can penetrate those markets is by having key opinion leaders and doctors prescribe the product.

Thank you, Marjan. Now we have another 1 here from [ Henry Stevens ], who's asking how else are we planning to sell the product in Australia if the existing distribution channel through pharmacies does not work very well? I think Marjan, you touched on that at the end of your speech. But if you want to say anything.

Yes. I will. Henry, look, it's very difficult to say something hasn't worked. It hasn't worked as well as we thought it would -- we wanted it to. And as I said, I'm not going to harp on the fact that we've been locked countless down times in 2021. Borders have been closed. Foot traffic through pharmacy has been atrocious. Now they're completely infatuated with vaccination. So I guess it's -- it hasn't worked as well as we would have wanted it to. The 2 things that we are doing, I'll reinforce the Remote Asthma Monitoring Program, physician-led, will open up another channel for us here in Australia, both for specialist patients but also for the corporate area. And the other thing, as I said, is we are very much working on targeting those pharmacies that are much more engaged in delivering professional services to their customers. And there's a major program that we are working on at the moment that will involve another pharmaceutical company. I won't say too much more than that, but it's certainly in the area of patient identification through pharmacy using wheezo as the tool to do that. This particular pharmaceutical company has a vested interest in identifying patients or asthmatic patients who aren't controlled on current medications.

Thank you, Marjan. Now we have another question here from [ Jamie ] who says they're a long-term Respiri shareholder. Questioned delays of launches in the past and specifically, am I right in saying that we are now not entering the U.K. market this calendar year?

Yes. There's little doubt that we -- we made a commitment it would be quarter 4. It's moved back a quarter because of COVID. There's nothing we can do about that. I mean -- what I can say about all these things is anything that we're working on where we have direct control over what it is we're doing, we deliver. We've pulled the U.S. market launch forward 9 months. We're in the position of pulling the European launch forward by a similar amount. The U.K. will slip a little but that's because of the COVID restrictions that we've had and lining up all the ducks for the 2 clinical studies that we've put in place. We are in very active discussions with partners. So that will, we hope, be able to finalize some of that moving forward in the coming months. But I'd rather get it right than screw it up, to be quite honest with you. So I mean, at the end of the day, we've made significant progress, not full starts as I said, in the U.S. and Europe, well ahead of schedule. In the U.K., it's going to lag by a few months. So yes, that's the situation.

From the same shareholder, [ Jamie ], can you provide an update on the Respiri's eligibility for reimbursement in the U.S.A. market?

Absolutely. And the reason we're pretty popular with the RPM providers at the moment is because we do qualify. So there's a wonderful opportunity to qualify for the Remote Patient Monitoring, Remote Therapeutic Monitoring CPT codes in the U.S. Importantly, also is transitional care. So some of these partners of ours have large institutions/hospitals as partners -- as their customers, sorry. And it is in their interest to make sure that they keep patients out of their hospitals and keep them managed in lower cost areas, such as the home. So that's 1 of the reasons we're making such significant progress very, very quickly with our RPM partners.

Thank you, Marjan. Now we have a new question here from [ Andrew Nash ]. And Andrew is asking, could you explain and describe the skill set of the nonmarket-facing Respiri channel, please? Specifically, what have they done to lower the cost of the device and deal with the worldwide chip shortage?

I'll start -- so we're going to focus on manufacturing. We have an internal team here which specializes in developing new products and designing new product. The fact that we've had 4 versions of wheezo in just over 12 months is a phenomenal achievement. And basically, we've been able to secure, in a very difficult marketplace, the chips that we need to I guess, give us the stock that we need to manufacture wheezos moving forward. So the staff that we have here, particularly in the area of manufacturing and product design, are quite phenomenal. The fact that -- which is unheard of. I mean, the fact that we have a working prototype wearable after 4 months is a remarkable achievement. And as I said, these are the people who, I guess, provide us with the tools that we need to provide to patients. So they are very much in line with what it is we're doing. We've employed a new CTO now who's revamped what it is that we're doing internally from an IT perspective, but I'll give you more information about that at a later date. And then there's hanger onners like me who don't really do too much, but I get to reap the benefits of everyone else's work.

Thank you, Marjan. Moving along, we have a few more questions. [ Jamie ], again, I think we've addressed that one with regard to the plans for 2022. Marjan touched on that in the presentation. [ Henry Stevens ], he has asked what happened to the takeover offer that was made earlier in the year?

I think we all know what happened there. It didn't work. It didn't go to plan. And hindsight is a wonderful thing. But certainly, the response that we got was quite surprising to us. You can imagine that the due diligence that we went through with Adherium spanned 6 months. So it wasn't as though we pulled something out of our backsides and said, okay, here it is, we'll throw it over the fence, see what happens. Significant discussions were had about the merger of the 2 organizations. And when it came to the rubber hitting the road, it just didn't work out. So that's all I can say about that. And as I said, I wish -- hindsight's a wonderful thing.

Thank you, Marjan. Now I'll just leave it open for another minute. That looks -- that's the end of the questions we've -- that have been submitted so far. So unless there are any further questions, please again, submit through the chat function to AGM questions. No? I'd like to hand back to the Chairman on that note.

I just want to thank everyone again for their participation in today's AGM for Respiri as well as your continued support in what is a very exciting position for Respiri for 2022 and beyond, to be able to launch in U.S. and U.K. markets in the coming months. So thank you all once again, and I'll officially draw the formalities to a close.