AFT Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

AFT Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

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Q4 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 20, 2026

Operator

I'd now like to welcome Hartley Atkinson, CEO, to begin the conference. Hartley, over to you.

Hartley Atkinson

Great. Thank you very much.

Look, welcome, everyone. What we'll do is go through the investor presentation, and I will go through it and mention the page numbers just so we can keep track.

Obviously, there is the disclaimer on page 2, please be aware of the details in that notice. Then flicking on to page 3, yeah, look, this is just quickly a summary of generally the business, what we're doing.

Just reaffirming our $300 million revenue target. We sort of can see good growth this last year, and that target is well and truly now in sight.

We managed to get to $254.7 million, up 22%, which is about a 17.6% 5-year CAGR. Operating profit was slightly ahead of guidance at $24.4 million.

Pleased also to have an increased dividend and to reaffirm that growth target. Now, other important parts looking at is on the top right, certainly expanding a global footprint is kind of a really key target that we're focusing on and takes quite a lot of work.

We are working hard on those different areas: Europe, North America, and also South Africa as well. Then going down onto the boxes below, the R&D pipeline is something we're also doing a huge amount of work on.

At the moment, we have a pipeline, which we'll look at in more detail, a number of patented products. We also do have some off-patented products.

Then to tie in some IP into that, we've also got a fridge-free project, which will be IP-related projects, instead of having to store them under refrigerated conditions, you won't have to store them in the fridge. That is actually quite significant and well recognized by various customers around the globe.

Then on the right, we are also commercializing some of the R&D presently, which is also important, starting to get the money flowing in from that to help also fund the ongoing R&D. We did do nine licensing agreements we closed during this financial year, and we do have a significant number that are currently under negotiation, and we have about seven R&D projects we're working on commercializing.

Basically, also importantly, in that bottom box, we do currently have sales has started in 87 countries around the globe. Flicking on to the next page, which is page number 4, look, we just wanted to put this sort of slide in because you can see that over the years, we've had growth literally every single year, year after year after year.

In fact, the current 17.6% 5-year CAGR is not much different from our overall 20-year 17% CAGR. If we can keep up that sort of growth, then the sales roughly double, as I'm sure you can work out, between every 4 and 5 years, sort of 4-point-something years.

That's an important thing. We are a business that's working on growing, and that's all part of it.

That's page number 4. Moving on to page number 5, investment in growth to drive this long-term value.

Look, we have been investing pretty heavily, actually. What we're pleased though, as well as investing heavily, we are able to report a record profit on top of that.

It's not just all about investing. We are getting operating leverage, which we can show you later on in the financial pages.

We have got, as we mentioned, operating profit of $24.4 million, EBITDA of $28.8 million. That's enabled us to report a record dividend, we're able to increase our dividend, which is also very pleasing.

Certainly, look, there's a fair amount of money being put into R&D, and we also got a profit forecast this year of between $28 to $32 million. Looking at that graph on the right, what you can see, obviously from the picture, is look, the profit has been relatively flat, going sort of up and down over the last 4 years despite a large increase in sales.

We, obviously, are keenly aware of that. The main driver behind that was there is a lot of investment in these new business hubs or affiliates or whatever you want to call them, and they're not really yet profitable.

We've got to the stage now that we've got the leverage that we see as the sales increase, the profit will increase along with it. That's really a kind of key part there.

Flicking on to the next slide, number 6, Australia. Look, pleasing, we had ongoing, strong momentum in our largest market.

I often say to people, "Hey, look, to be honest, we are an Australian company that happens to have its office in Takapuna." We are very focused on that market.

We have a lot of boots on the ground in Australia. Great to get revenue growth of 19% and also a similar increase in operating profit as well.

New product launches are helping, but we are also getting sustained growth from our existing products as well. Look, we do see this ongoing opportunities in the Australian market, and that's really what we focus on to keep on growing and taking advantage of what is our largest market.

Flicking on to page number 7, New Zealand. Look, we're actually very pleased.

We've got double-digit growth, up 11% in sales revenue. Operating profit was 7%.

New Zealand market, we read a lot about it in the papers, to be honest, and try and ignore it about negative things, but we're pleased. We ignored that and just sort of really knuckled down and got on with things and able to grow revenue by 11%.

Pretty important part of our business, and we're carrying on to get good results there, and certainly want to keep on growing our New Zealand business. That was page number 7.

Moving on to page number 8 for Asia. Look, pleasing.

Revenue was up 41%, which is reasonable growth, to $15.6 million. Operating profit was better, up 111%.

I don't want to dwell on it—we did have a few things we talked about last year with particular disruptions. As you can see, very much in line with what we said last year, that's well and truly resolved, and you can see the upward lift, and we'll certainly work on carrying that on.

There is basically growth across Asia, but also some new launches into some new parts of Asia being Thailand and Taiwan. That will sort of help as we can start to establish those markets, which will still take time.

Certainly, obviously, the largest market is China, and that will take time, but getting good growing results with our cross-border e-commerce and getting some slow but steady progress internally within China. Then going on to page number 9, this is our global map of our business.

You can see the red dots and the circles where we have our offices: New Zealand, Sydney in Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, then up in Hong Kong. Hong Kong effectively is the headquarters of our Asia business, and we have a manager up there who coordinates all the Asia business.

Then in South Africa, in Cape Town, we have our office there. Quite a lot of work has gone into that.

We acquired a number of about 14 product licenses from an existing player in South Africa, and that's taken a good kind of three three or four months, going into the back end of last year, to integrate that. A lot of work went into that.

We've also got a COO who's very experienced, who's helping us run that. There's a stock control person, there's a part-time finance person, and then we had one rep person, but we've had to increase that to two rep people now for the South African market, which we see going forward has some great potential.

Then going across to North America, we have a small kind of office in Detroit. Originally, that was to help kind of run our American licensees, but that is starting to morph where we're more involved in our Combogesic tablet launch now where we're basically running the whole thing in conjunction with one American partner called Lexo.

Then also with our OTC products. More work is slowly building into the US office.

Then in Canada, in Toronto, that's our Canadian office. We have a number of launches underway at the moment and over this financial year.

A lot of work is going into Canada. Then across to Europe as well, we have ongoing work in the UK as well with launches across this year in the UK.

Then also we have a little sort of satellite office in Ireland. That's really just to coordinate our EU business.

We do have a fair chunk of business in the EU, and it's starting to grow kind of nicely. That's certainly something that's important.

Countries in yellow is where we are selling. Countries in blue is where we have agreements.

White is where we're either not going to or it's still in progress. The key one probably is Japan.

We've done a lot of work on that and would hope to get a firm agreement there. We do have an option agreement, but we're keen to get a firm agreement and then to Japan to turn blue, maybe even yellow quite quickly.

Turning the page to page number 10, you can see last year we sort of had that dip, but this year is more respectable with $28.5 million overall including licensing income, but overall sales were $25.5 million. Potentially that actually could have been larger.

We had a number of shipments delayed right at the close of the year due to various geopolitical things, but look, always going to be some unders and overs, but overall we saw that as a pleasing, a solid result. Really we're very focused this number.

We're wanting to significantly increase this over the next few years. Really growth is what it's all about for the international division.

We've added a few places. Egypt is actually certainly quite a reasonable market.

A lot of people live in Egypt, so that's been added. Taiwan, as I mentioned before, is part of Asia.

Licensing income was up a wee bit. Do see licensing income sort of consistent around that number.

Potentially though, some of the larger R&D projects come into line that can increase quite significantly over time. That's that page, page number 10.

Flicking on to page number 11, look, just a bit of kind of rough detail here about what's happening. The UK, there's work with Combogesic.

Expanding the product range is an important thing. Look, we had thought we could break even towards the end of last year.

We didn't, but we see we can break even this financial year in the UK. South Africa, as I've mentioned, we've got those 14 new products and the existing staff.

Last year we didn't make a profit in South Africa, so that was a drag. This year we would expect to make positive earnings in the South African market this year.

Canada, we've got some launches as I mentioned. Big contract field force is helping us as well.

We don't think we'll make money in Canada this year. Maybe we will, but we're not planning on it at this stage.

That will be a drag. You can see the first two were loss-making, and so was Canada.

At least we're turning two of those around. It's just a time thing and the volume of products, and that's something that we're quite used to, having gone to different markets over the years.

Page 11, going to page number 12. United States, this is, as the largest pharma market in the world.

It's tricky in terms of there's a lot of detail and a lot of local key points that are not necessarily the same as everywhere else in the world. We've been doing a lot of work on the United States.

Very difficult to put any sort of firm forecast on a market like the US. To be honest with you, it's kind of variable, really.

We're used to this sort of thing where we go in there almost with a blank sheet of paper, but we fill in all the bits, and then we start to roll them out, and that's literally what we're doing. That's the US.

The big thing there is the Combogesic rapid launch is only really occurring now, it was delayed and didn't feature in last year. That's a big project where stock is on the water landing and will be released into the market in July, and most of the launch activities will be in September, which will correspond with Pain Week, which is a big thing in the US, it's a good time to launch in September.

Europe, as I mentioned, last year we did have to take over our product acquisition from a defunct bankrupt German company, and those products we're just working on getting them out to various partners. That has gone a little bit slower than we planned, mainly because regulators have an axe on ones, even ones that are very predictable, have an axe of going slow, and they have, to be honest.

Some of that's gone maybe 6 or 8 months slower than we'd anticipated, but they are rolling out this year, whereas they should have been rolled out at the end of the last financial year. Hong Kong, we've got a lot of work on Hong Kong, a big pipeline of products, a lot of registrations now in place, and we're starting to work on growing that.

Singapore is a work in progress. We've expanded business into private hospital market, which is actually going well.

Government, we work a lot with the Singaporean health authorities. That's gone very well, we have got a pipeline of products, and Singapore is a very solid market for us at the moment.

That's page number 12. Going on to page number 13.

This is some of our existing R&D that's starting to come to market. Our intravenous iron product is actually still R&D, but we did do a licensing agreement into China with kind of the fourth largest pharma company in China.

The specific reason for that was that you really as an outsider you can't really run the whole development program for China without a Chinese partner. That was a deliberate step to get Grand Life Sciences involved.

That's underway presently. Maxigesic oral, Maxigesic IV, talked a lot about those in the past, but look, they are still underway, and we're doing pediatric studies at the moment, which will help to expand certainly the IV indication, which is actually quite important.

There's that. Hospital injectables, we mentioned we started that project, SinoJet.

Look, we've got the first dossier filings have started. There's about five of them to be filed or had been filed or will be filed this financial year, and we have got some licensing agreements starting with that: Cysatracurium, Mykall, Kiwi C, Capsaicin are all underway, and we're having agreements with those.

Pascomir, have an orphan indication. Some licensing happened last year and it's also underway now, and the dossier is filed in a number of key jurisdictions.

Registration for that, we would hope, is not too far away. Amongst all this, too, though, we have also got some quite significant projects, specific local projects.

A couple of them as examples, we will be planning to file this year, and they're significant greater than $50 million Australian kind of markets, and we see those as really helping our Australian business once they finally get registered in Australia. Then flicking on to page number 14.

Here is our current R&D pipeline. Probably this is about it in terms of adding things, cuz we really got quite a lot to digest.

Certainly, we see as a very valuable part of our business. Have mentioned to people, we've done a lot of work on valuation things, and we do see as a valuation in excess of $1 billion US dollars.

We had the hospital injectables, the SinoJet projects we talked about just before. Then we have the fridge-free project we're doing with our partner in the UK, Starlight.

There's about five products in phase 1, then another nine products in phase 2, and they cover a market of in excess of US $6 billion. The first two or three projects are presently underway, and we're looking to start another one as well to add that in.

Got a migraine project, which is part of SinoJet, and we're aiming to file that next year. Pascomir port-wine stains, this is actually advancing.

It's in phase 2 at the moment, clinical studies in Spain and in Texas in the United States as well, this is underway and actually a very nice project. One of the probably biggest parts of our portfolio in terms of valuation is the iron injectable.

It's a new chemical entity. We finished the first phase 3 study, which is actually very positive, showed a number of advantages over the existing market leader.

Basically, it's so well tolerated you can give it as one dose to everyone, which is not the case with other iron injections. That is pretty significant.

That's really what ties the key proposition for it, the fact that it doesn't impact a number of parameters which are a concern otherwise with injectable iron products where they actually are relatively toxic. Our product didn't have a lot of those features like affecting plasma phosphate levels and things like that, and also being able to give it once.

One of the other results, for example, was with the existing market leader product, it had about a 29% incidence of administration side effects, whereas ours had a 2% incidence of administration side effects. We've got a big job, though.

We've got our final study where what we're doing is we're just looking across different ethnicities so that we can register it globally. Sort of easy to say, but actually quite tricky to execute.

We've had quite a lot of meetings in Tokyo, for example, with the PMDA to tie the Japanese in. We've got a clinical study that we're planning to start in September, about 1,366 patients, and it would have study sites in New Zealand, in India, in China, in Japan, in the United States, and in Europe.

That's a big project. Then the antibiotic eye drop as well, which we are going to FDA soon to open our IND.

By opening IND meaning then we run our human clinical studies. That's quite always a very important endpoint, opening the IND.

Strawberry birthmarks for babies with basically strawberry birthmarks on them, a topical treatment, done a lot of progress on that and also working on getting our IND submission started next year. Keloid scars as well, that's still early phase.

Burning mouth is early phase. We just licensed, actually, which hasn't been announced anywhere yet, but we just licensed a novel injectable formulation from Massey Ventures, who we've got partnerships with another couple of projects.

Really keen to extend our partnership with Massey. They're great people to work with.

Basically, it is a decent-sized market with an estimate of between $3 and $3.7 billion category by 2032 to 2034. This is a really exciting project, albeit at an early stage.

Then NasoSurf is still continuing at the moment, and that's probably the last one. That's our R&D pipeline.

Then I will hand over to our current CFO, Malcolm Tubby.

Malcolm Tubby

Thank you, Hartley. Slide 15, the P&L.

Revenue's up 22% to just over $250 million. Gross profit increases around about the same, a little bit less, 21%.

A little bit of a drop in the margin, there was a bit of currency in there, primarily the euro, in the last year, and the other bits, product mix. Operating expenses are reducing as we get our leverage going, down to 33.8 from 35.6, and that does include the R&D spend that we expense.

That gives us record operating profit of $24.4, up from $17.6 last year. Taxation now we're fully imputed now, the dividend gets full imputation.

That leaves us net profit after tax of $14 million. If we move on to the balance sheet, we can see we've been increasing our working capital as you'd expect, in line with the revenue growth.

Inventory, we have pushed that forward up to about 5 months at the minute. That includes the products we've purchased for South Africa, plus with the uncertainty at the minute, we thought it would be more prudent to move those levels up, plus we're building stock for the new launches.

We're happy to stay at 5 months for now. We'll see.

When everything settles down, we can start pulling it back down as we're able to. Debtors grew as well, in line with revenue.

Part of that revenue growth coming from international, and typically we see longer debtor days, normally about 60 days for those international customers, primarily because they're buying bigger amounts of stock each time. It's not weekly orders we're supplying like it is for Australia and New Zealand.

The ERP project did produce a little bit of a glitch for us in debtors, there's a little bit of money we're still looking to collect from the debtors. Apart from that, we're very pleased with the ERP transition, which we did on the 1st of October through to NetSuite.

Equity down the bottom there up to over $100 million now, $109 million. Then if we go to slide 17, cash flow.

The outflow there from operating activities as we build up our working capital. The investing activities primarily are the intangibles, and then the net cash, which is the increase in the debt.

I should have mentioned on the balance sheet, we put a new facility in place with the BNZ of $50 million. That's a 3-year term that we did in December.

That's the cash flow, and I'll pass you back to Hartley for the outlook.

Hartley Atkinson

Thanks, Malcolm. This last slide being number 18, yeah, look, the summary is we're positioned to drive that future growth in both revenue and earnings.

We've talked a lot about investment, but we are also looking to increase our sales, revenue, and our earnings in parallel. Basically, we're focused this year in pushing towards our revenue goal of at least $300 million sales.

Backing this up is going to be ongoing expansion in our Australasian markets. We're working on that.

Then there is a strong program of new launches across the international business hubs. Really also as sort of mentioned before, it's those hubs starting to make a contribution or pay their way or however you want to word it, with UK and South Africa looking for that to make a positive contribution to earnings this year.

Canada and the US, don't want to say yet. We're not sure, to be frank, exactly, but that'll follow, even if it's not achieved this year, that'll follow.

Obviously, then that sort of really helps the overall profitability. Continued progress in R&D and regulatory milestones, this is very important.

A lot of work's going into R&D with that large clinical study, but that's not the only clinical study. We're kicking off the pediatric ones, as I mentioned, but then got a number of other very interesting and valuable R&D projects.

We really are wanting to make sure we realize the value and monetize the R&D pipeline. The good thing is we're able to do that without raising capital.

With a lot of investment, we're not running off to raise capital. We're funding all of this out of existing profits.

Then we've also got an active licensing program, so that continues as well to monetize our IP. It's important, too, because it helps to pay and offset that R&D spend.

Look, as I said, we're going to make significant investments this financial year, and we're aiming for that operating profit between $28 to $32 million. That's kind of hopefully a reasonable overview of both the results and looking forward as well.

Happy to try and answer any of your questions. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you, Hartley. As mentioned, we will now begin the Q&A session.

As a reminder, if you are listening by phone and would like to ask a question, please press * followed by 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. To withdraw your question, simply press *1 again.

When called upon, please use your handset or headset and ensure your line is unmuted. Again, that is *1 to raise your hand and join the queue.

Your first question is from the line of Ben Crozier of Forsyth Barr. Your line is open.

Ben Crozier

Morning, guys. Done on a very solid result.

First question from me just on Australian margins. I think you put a comment in there, and you see opportunities to improve the operating leverage in that Australian business over time.

I think EBIT margin around 20% the last couple years. Do you have a sort of target in mind?

It's not going to be immediate because, as you say, there's sort of exciting growth opportunities in there, but do we think margins can go to sort of 21%, 22% or up to 25%? Just any idea of how much operating leverage you can get out of this business as it grows?

Malcolm Tubby

Over time we do see we can get further improvements out of it. I guess the one proviso is if we see a really good opportunity there, we would take it.

If we see something going particularly strong as a new launch, we would put more money behind it. We see we can get more leverage going forward in particularly in Australia.

Ben Crozier

Yeah. Then maybe just on the revenue growth.

I think to get to $300 million you need another 20% revenue growth, which as you say is not too dissimilar to what you've done historically. Can you give a bit of a color on sort of what the portfolio did and sort of existing portfolio growth this year versus new product growth and sort of the contribution between the two of them?

Malcolm Tubby

Overall the underlying product still continued to grow. For Australasia, there's around about a total of about $6 million that came out of products we've launched of the $6 million growth from the products we've launched in the last 3 years.

Ben Crozier

Yeah. No, that's pretty encouraging underlying growth then.

Malcolm Tubby

Then

Ben Crozier

maybe just last one on this net debt or the working capital swing. How much of it was inventory purchased within that acquisition in South Africa versus the move to 5 months?

Just so we can get an idea of when you drop back to your previous inventory levels, how much could unwind?

Malcolm Tubby

It was just over $3 mil of product that we bought from the other party, and then we've done some extra ordering ourselves. Probably allow about 4 to 5 mil for South Africa in total.

Ben Crozier

Yeah. Then the rest of it you're just going to keep at this 5 months ordering while the uncertainty is still out there in the market, and then once that resolves and you have more confidence in supply chain, that's when you'd bring it down?

Is that the plan?

Malcolm Tubby

Then we'll bring it back down. It depends on what the product is, but that's an overall number.

Then you do have a little bit of build-up when you're launching in those new products into Australasia or in new markets like the UK and the US, you will buy more stock up for the launch. Typically you'll go to a good 6 months.

Look, and when you get into those big markets, that's going to be even harder to make sure that you have got the right inventory levels.

Ben Crozier

Yeah. No, that's clear.

That's all for me. Thanks, guys.

Malcolm Tubby

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Juri Tels?] of JS Alpha.

Please go ahead. ]:

Juri Tels

Hello, and good morning, everybody. I have two questions.

First one is on CapEx, please. You spent roughly $10 million last year.

Can you give us your estimate for this year, please?

Malcolm Tubby

The estimate for this year will be probably we've got it at around $10 mil on the basis that a fair amount of the R&D this year will need to be expensed. ]:

Juri Tels

Yes, okay. Roughly unchanged.

Second question is around Australia. I noticed that when you compare the first to the second half-year, growth softened significantly, I think from a 30% to 10%.

Can you elaborate a little bit more, is this due to basis effect or meteorization or what's behind that, please?

Malcolm Tubby

It was a particularly strong first half, as you say, 30%. There may have been a little bit of spillover potentially into the second half from that.

Overall, we see the 20% growth. It's a little bit tricky when you try and do the two halves, particularly for Australia, because the second half is the summer months, and you will sell more OTC in the second half typically.

]:

Juri Tels

Yeah. Please staying in Australia, when again I compare these two halves, you've added roughly $8 million revenues from half-year 1 to half-year 2, the EBIT remained flat.

Can you remind us if there's a bit of seasonality in the costs of Australia or was there simply a lack of operational leverage?

Malcolm Tubby

Historically, yeah, it's more profitable in the second half. ]:

Juri Tels

Okay. That's all right for now.

Thank you very much, guys.

Malcolm Tubby

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Adrian Allbon of Jarden. Please go ahead.

Oh,

Adrian Allbon

good morning, team. Maybe first one for Malcolm actually, just on your opening guidance, and given that the net debt did tick up quite a bit and you just put the new facility in place, are you expecting your net debt to move down on a '27 view?

Malcolm Tubby

Yeah. We are.

Adrian Allbon

Okay. All right.

No, that's cool. That's mostly a normalization of inventory and a lift-up in profit being the two drivers?

Malcolm Tubby

Yeah.

Adrian Allbon

That's good. Then maybe the next one is for Hartley.

Just in terms of the international segment and noting that's still sort of generating losses, what sort of level of revenues do you need to sort of break even there, because obviously as you sort of scale, you're constantly looking at introducing new markets?

Hartley Atkinson

The main driver of losses there is more the fact we're booking the R&D against it, to be honest. It's a matter of where you book the R&D against.

It's still washing its face reasonably well if you take that out. It is true like I said, if you look at the international divisions, the US, Canada, UK, South Africa were losing money, but then that's already swinging around this year.

We see two of them making money, basically the UK and South Africa making money. The other ones we're not 100% sure about.

We've budgeted for a loss, but if things went very well with something, then we could turn that around. Look, it just takes a good 3 or 4 years really, to be honest, to flick it around to you get the scale.

We've done it before, same in Australia. That took a good 4 years or so, I think, to turn it around.

It is about 3 or 4 years, really.

Adrian Allbon

Okay. That's helpful.

Just on the R&D, in terms of what can you give us a sort of estimate of what you're sort of planning to spend on R&D in '27?

Hartley Atkinson

Clearly, you

Adrian Allbon

spent a bit of time in the presentation going through the width and the depth of the pipeline.

Hartley Atkinson

Basically 25

Malcolm Tubby

$25 mil. Cash, total cash.

Hartley Atkinson

Yeah, $25 cash. That's increased, we've gone from $15 mil to $18 mil to $25 mil, there is a bit of an increase as those projects are kind of bigger and some bigger studies, but that's also there's more value to be created out of it as well.

Adrian Allbon

Would you anticipate the split being sort of 50-50 or between expense and capitalized?

Malcolm Tubby

We think it's probably about 15 expense, 10 capital.

Adrian Allbon

Okay. Okay, 15 expense, 10 capital.

Thank you.

Malcolm Tubby

Yeah.

Adrian Allbon

Just I guess the other point, just in terms of as you sort of start the presentation, you've now got stronger line of sight on the 300. Just in terms of that bridge for us, how much of the sort of the $50 million is sort of the ANZ markets, in terms of how you're thinking about it?

In terms of growth?

Hartley Atkinson

I haven't got that number somewhere. It is mixed, though.

Adrian Allbon

It isn't

Hartley Atkinson

all in one place. There's quite a lot has to come from international as well.

South Africa, having that acquisition does sort of help as well, tick that off. You've got the exact number, haven't you, but roughly?

Malcolm Tubby

Yeah. It's where you'd expect, you'd set Australia and then good growth through rest of the world.

They're the two leaders, supported by New Zealand and Asia.

Adrian Allbon

Just in terms of, I guess, as we think about, and this might be the wrong terms, but in terms of your base business, which is sort of the home markets of Australia and New Zealand, are you able to sort of give us a sense of how much of the $50 million bridge is from those two versus rest of the world and international?

Malcolm Tubby

I can do it as percentages. It's probably easier.

Australia again round we had 20 good 19% this year, late teens next year. New Zealand should be able to hold on to around its 11% growth.

Then, another significant step-up for the rest of the world and a slightly smaller step-up for Asia in percentages,

Adrian Allbon

and

Malcolm Tubby

if you apply those, you'll get 50, yeah.

Adrian Allbon

Perfect. Okay.

Thank you, guys.

Malcolm Tubby

Thank you.

Operator

Before we continue on to the next question, a reminder if you would like to join the queue, to press *1. Your next question is from the line of Mark Topy?]

of Research as a Service. Please go ahead.

]:

Mark Topy

Good morning, Hartley. Just a couple of questions if I could.

Just to go back to Australia and what's happening in the pharma market over here, observation here is maybe Chemist Warehouse is kind of stalling in terms of its growth, and the independents are picking up more share, and even some of the supermarkets like Coles. I'm just wondering about the mix of products and whether you see perhaps more opportunity with some of the independent pharmacists who are fighting back and providing more service sort of a proposition as opposed to Chemist Warehouse?

Hartley Atkinson

Look, that's a good big picture point. What we're careful about is we do have a good number of boots on the ground.

We have 25 pharmacy reps in Australia, and I think it's about 10 or 11 merchandisers and then key account managers. Certainly we see it's really important to kind of cover everywhere, exactly as you've alluded to.

Also, some categories anyway do differ. Like, for instance, if it's vitamins and kind of skincare, Chemist Warehouse has always proportionately been bigger, but then other things like, say, pain category and things where people want to talk to their pharmacist or get some advice has been bigger with some of the independents or the groups, say, like TerryWhite.

We're just very careful, to be honest, to work with everyone across the market. Like we've seen in some places, companies pull back on their sales force and then do more focusing on key account management and reduce the number of boots on the ground.

We've purposely not done that because we still want to make sure we engage closely with all of the market, including all of the independent pharmacies wherever they are, whether they're in Broken Hill or wherever, we still want to see them. ]:

Mark Topy

Sure. Certainly the supermarkets like Coles seem to be picking up share in that space as well, would that include Coles in your kind of thinking?

Hartley Atkinson

Look, we only expanded to supermarkets in Australia, from memory, about a couple of years ago. We've had quite long experience in the New Zealand market, certainly going forward and as it's been happening, we do want to make sure we also work with the supermarkets as well.

Australia is a little bit more limited in terms of product offering in some ways. New Zealand regulatory systems are a bit more lenient or flexible in a wider range of products are in supermarket.

No, look, supermarkets, you can't ignore it, and it's an important outlet for customers, we certainly work with them as well. ]:

Mark Topy

Very good. Then just secondly, just on the supply chain, I guess there's a lot of pressure on sort of costs and have you seen any sort of cost pressures from your supply chain, your ingredients coming from offshore?

Hartley Atkinson

Look, we've seen some, had some discussions with people as well. It's interesting.

We're seeing a lot less out of China, and I know when I'm go to China, spend 2 weeks there recently, I looked at them and said, 'Come on, what do you think?' They just looked at me and said, 'No, it's going to make no difference.'

Whereas some other jurisdictions, Europe I think there's been some increases, and certainly India and places they have. China is less so.

We have had a little bit of price stuff, but it's mainly been out of Europe and India, whereas China, to be honest, hasn't seemed to make any difference at all yet. ]:

Mark Topy

Right. Then just lastly, I suppose a more kind of generalized question, but with the growth and expansion, and you talked about South Africa and other regions, can you talk to how you see the management structure of the company sort of growing from this point in terms of accommodating and being able to manage some of these offshore businesses, including sort of the risks associated with some of these offshore businesses?

Hartley Atkinson

No, it's a good question. Look, we have chosen our areas pretty carefully that they're predominantly run on the old Anglo-Saxon/British kind of regulatory system, maybe with the exception of the United States, where it's much easier because the same regulatory dossier is handled in all those territories.

Effectively we're pretty much able to manage all the regulatory work from our head office in New Zealand. The only exception we made was South Africa.

We have a couple of people there, but they work closely with our head office team. Then we do have CEOs or managing directors in each of those territories.

We see that's pretty important. We've heard it from other people and others that have globalized their business.

It's actually quite important to hire a heavy hitter. You don't hire some young junior, because basically you really need people that know people.

Our problem in the market is we don't know everyone. Just the same in the US where our guy kind of knows everyone, including even people like Mark Cuban, who's a bit of a legend in the US, and same in Canada.

It's quite important to get that senior person. Then we're sort of slowly building our infrastructure and things like sales force and marketing into each of those offices.

UK, we've just hired a senior marketing manager there who can help us with Canada and that sort of time zone. Really it's still run from our head office, but we have certain bits of it there's more and more being taken over by the local people in terms of running the day-to-day sales things.

]:

Mark Topy

Great. That's kind of what I was getting at, how it's going to evolve over time.

No, great. Thanks for your time there, and congrats on the results.

Hartley Atkinson

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator

This does conclude our Q&A session, and I'd like to turn the call back over to Hartley and Malcolm for closing remarks.

Hartley Atkinson

Great. No, look, thank you very much, everyone, for your attention and interest, and just to reiterate that we're really pleased.

Our team's worked real hard and continues to work hard, and great that we could get record sales, record earnings, record investments, and a record dividend. Thank you very much for your support and interest.