Well, good morning, everybody. I can't see you, but I hope you can see me. The purpose of this call this morning is really what I'll call a cup of tea with Swami. It's really just an introductory call to let you see that, number one, he exists and number two, that he can talk. I've purposely made it not a question and answer session. I just want it to be a succinct get to know the new CEO. He's still in Florida at the moment, but I expect him here mid-month. Don't forget that we only appointed him last Friday, so he's been on for two and a half minutes. I still thought it was worthwhile just pushing this a little bit and making sure that shareholders who had an interest could see who he is and even with some preliminary work just how he thinks about the business and how he fits with the business and some initial reactions as well. I've written sort of a stylized agenda, which you will all have seen, but I'll sort of work through that with Swami. I don't know that I want this to go for more than about 20 minutes. Just be clear, it's not. This is not in place of a more detailed presentation, but the guy's only been on a little bit. You know, we'll do some other things as the month goes on. I wanted to give you something that you might not have seen until, you know, maybe the AGM or something. Welcome, Swami. I think I'll start with the agenda and just say, well, who is Swami Raote? And first of all, how do you pronounce your surname? Thank you. Thank you, David. Good morning, everybody. You know, I'm very happy to be here. You got my name correct, and most of the world gets my name correct. Swami is perfect. That's how most of the world addresses me. If you were to choose to address me as Swami, that's perfectly fine. I really love it when people get my family name correct. It's actually simple, but it gets pronounced very differently in different parts of the world. I forgive people, but it's simple. I mean, let's take a go at it. It's. You know, you can cut it up in two parts. R-A-O, that's one, Rao. If you can say, wow, all you need to do is replace W with an R, and you get the first part right. So that's Rao. Then the second part is T-E, and a lot of people would pronounce it like Texas, you know, Te. It's not Te, it's the softer T-E, like terima kasih of Bahasa Indonesia. Thank you. It's Rao Te. It's a softer Rao Te. David, see if you can do that. Raote. Yeah. We're going to hit it off quite well. Thank you. All right. Instead of making this a frenetic session, just give us a bit of a pencil sketch about, you know, your career over the last 30 years, and then we'll move on to some things more substantive. Got it. You know, I mean, if I were to describe my career, I started off as a brand manager for Band-Aid out of India. Over 30 years, I was lucky to move across multiple countries, continents, jobs, assignments, and I retired as the global president for the Johnson & Johnson's Vision Care business out of Jacksonville, Florida. That's been my journey. A quick description, 20 years in Asia Pacific, different parts of Asia Pacific, Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, you know, handled China, Japan, India, et cetera. 10 years in U.S. out of Philadelphia, New York, Jacksonville in different global roles. Truly enjoyed a global career with Johnson & Johnson. It's been my university in healthcare for me. It's been a journey in leadership for me, and I'm grateful for everything that I've learned all along the way. What part of, you know, what you've learned, I mean, one of the things that I'm impressed with you by is that you're a CEO that's managed a whole P&L, if you like. Yeah. Not just sales and marketing, but R&D and new product development. Yeah. What? You know, just give us a sort of pencil sketch, I suppose, about, you know, what parts of your career do you think, you know, qualify you for this sort of role, given where you think PolyNovo is at the moment? Yeah. You know, I mean, if I were to think about my entire career, the first 10 years were in different functional roles. I was in sales, marketing, supply chain, HR, finance, IT. You get an appreciation of sitting around the table from multiple perspectives. I also did process excellence for Johnson & Johnson. How do you integrate all those roles to truly have an impact for the customer? Because that's where the rubber truly hits the road. Then the next 20 years were, you know, sitting at the head of the table, understanding different issues, but making sure that we coalesce the organization into one decision at a point of time, because that is the right decision, regardless of the multiple perspectives that you might have on the table. Over a period of time, I've learned to move this conversation from I and me and, what have you, to us and we. You know, what would be important for our customer at any point of time? Just that journey with, you know, sitting at different chairs and then moving to the head of the table, then working with governments and external partners and making sure that we do not create just an internal value, but value across the entire value chain. Yeah. Yeah. You retired early. I said, with tongue in cheek in the ASX release, that you're 58. And therefore, you know, judging your age to mine, that you've got the energy to go through with this. But what was it really that, you know, brought you out of retirement? You know, what did you see in PolyNovo that was the trigger, if you like? PolyNovo to me is a diamond in the rough. You know, throughout my career I've launched multiple products and procedures and what have you, and truly changed outcomes for consumers and patients. Invariably nine times out of ten, we have added to the cost and complexity in doing that. For the first time, I see a technology which is breathtakingly simple in its design and its ability for the body to heal itself. I see a much reduced complexity in terms of how you apply it to the patients. I see a much lower cost. When I look at the entire manufacturing and the value chain, it's robust. When I look at the competition, supply chain is gonna be a challenge for the category. I think this is truly robust technology which can really impact millions of patients. That, to me, I think that's number one why I would join. The number two would be how unified the board was in trying to take this company global. I mean, I could get that sense and aspiration and ambition from almost every board member that I spoke to, and that's exciting. What was your impression of the margins in this and the financial sort of metrics, if you like? You know, the financials are good. What I truly keep thinking about is how do you scale it so dramatically so that you can impact patients? Today, when I look at this entire category, it is restricted to 1.7 million patients because of how this category has evolved over the last 30 years. When I look at the job to be done, surgical procedures, it has the potential to impact 10 million patients. Where we are to where we should be is something which keeps me awake and which keeps me excited. Yeah. Can you just expand on that in terms of how you would see channels to market? I mean, at the moment, as you know, we started as a burns company, and now we're sort of a wound company, and it's morphed into, you know, diabetic foot ulcers and so forth. We're largely still selling to hospitals. Your knee-jerk reaction just in terms of how you see the applications of the existing product, let alone new products. Yeah. You know, I mean, earlier I used to think that we're too restrictive with burns, but the more I talk to customers across the world, having that root in burns and trauma is the most important thing because, you know, that's the most serious part of the business. Having that equity in reconstruction space is very critical to allow this business to over a period of time to come down into multiple soft tissue reconstruction solution space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A humongous potential. I mean, I'm excited by where it can go, but we have to be choiceful about how do we get there? Yeah. Okay, so I might come back to that. I jotted down a couple of points that I thought a lot of people on the call would wanna hear your early reaction to. A couple of things I should have emphasized to everybody is that even though we appointed Swami last Friday, he'd spent just a week before that, two weeks in Australia. He spent Friday with the sales team in the U.S., in California, and before that, he'd met quite a few people around the world, senior people in the world that are, you know, in our team as well. He has had time to get some early impressions, but I emphasize they are early impressions. But I think everybody would be interested just in your knee-jerk reaction. The first one on my list is just how you see the U.S. and the U.S. potential, just stand alone, forget about the rest of the world for the moment. I think there's tremendous opportunity in the US. We are just about starting in the US, but the good thing is we have an amazing team, and I could see the energy at the sales convention, and we were training our people, and the way they were getting excited. The good thing is they came from multiple competitive sources. They were from Integra and ACell and different companies. When we trained them on our technology, they were so excited in terms of its ability to truly bring the cost burden down, to reduce the complexity for the physicians as well as for the patients. Now the question is how do we transmit all those values that we bring to the entire system? But I'm Yeah. Again, I think I made the right choice and, you know, it just keeps. Yeah. Reinforcing. All the people keep reinforcing that choice. I should know the answer to this question, but I do know that you've had some discussions with some surgeons here. Have you had any discussions with any KOLs in the U.S.? You know, what do you take out of both of those discussions? Yeah. There are some KOLs who have fallen in love with this technology. It all starts off with a disbelief and suspicion that this cannot work because it is against the grain of everything that they were taught. Once they start using it, then they start flexing their muscle and they start using it in different areas. There are some amazing case studies which many of the surgeons taught us, and I just wish we could transfer those case studies to many more surgeons across U.S. I'm truly looking at the potential of us converting this into a soft tissue platform where everyone comes in, contributes their experience about using the PolyNovo technology and the NovoSorb technology, and then educating the rest of the world. Peer-to-peer education is going to be the most crucial element for us to drive penetration of this technology. Yeah. So, you know, with respect to the rest of the world, whether that be England, where we already are, or Western Europe, just give us your sort of perspectives on that. In particular, let's do it in two parts. I mean, just in terms of put it, America aside, just thinking about the rest of the Western world, but just some, also some knee-jerk reactions, given you've lived in Indonesia, given you lived in India, China. Let's just some knee-jerk reactions, I think on, you know, can we make those markets and is it gonna be priced out of the market and so forth. Nobody's gonna hold you to this, but I just want people to hear what your early reflections are. You know, I see the need of this technology more in the emerging markets than in the developed markets. I mean, burns and trauma are much more commonplace in the Indias and Chinas of the world than they are in the developed market, right? I'm raring to go at some of those markets and how do we construct the right business models and education models for us to impact many more patients than today where this category is. Today, the category is largely in U.S. Almost 70% of it is in U.S., 15% to 20% in the Western Europe, and the rest of it is in Japan, Korea. It has the potential to travel the world, and that's where a lot of our creativity will come into play. Yeah, yeah. You spent a while living in Indonesia running the J&J business there. What do you think, just to take a country like Indonesia, which is relatively poor and emerging, do you think there's a place for it there? I mean, do you think your early reaction is that we can make the market in terms of price and so forth? Yeah. I mean, the way I think about some of the emerging markets is we can construct the rule book for the emerging markets. In case of developed markets, we have to get surgeons to unlearn what they were taught for the last three decades and learn new things. In case of emerging markets, we will teach them how to use this technology, and that's where the advantage would be. Yeah. Yeah. Emerging markets are digitally far more savvier than the developed markets. You know, I'm hoping that we're able to find a way to penetrate faster. Yeah. Just in terms of the platform technology, you've seen it, and you know that we've got R&D going on and new product development in various areas. One of the interesting things I find, I'm just interested in your perception, is that the surgeons are moving faster than us, and I'm not sure that that needs to change, by the way. I'm not sure if it even can change because they're at the coalface, and as you said, once they start using it, they start thinking, "Gee, maybe I could use this in another way." We're playing a little bit of catch-up. What do you see the prospects for, you know, using this as a platform technology, but broadening its application? We should, because, you know, if we can find a way to bring the innovative surgeons on board and get them to experiment to solve different surgical problems, and then get them to evangelize the prospects of this technology, that would be the best win for us. Because, yes, I mean, our in-service selling is critical, but a surgeon telling another surgeon or a bunch of surgeons how this can solve the problem is the best thing that it can happen to PolyNovo. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's good. One of the things that we've been doing is when we're only a few years old, of course, so everything's been generic growth. You're a man of the world, and you've seen a lot of different applications. How much opportunity do you think there is in the M&A market, for us, and why would it be an opportunity? Is it a You know, I mean, the way I look at M&A is I would not try and acquire another technology, and I'm just shooting off the hip right now. Yeah. If I can find a player which can bring access and relationships and capabilities to PolyNovo, then it will suddenly open up doors for PolyNovo to touch and impact many more patients than where we are today. Yeah. I will look at it as a solve for accelerating my adoption curve more than anything else. Yeah. Yeah. If you saw a firm, for example, that was distributing already profitably to the plastics market or the— Yeah. Diabetic foot, podiatry market, you know, had a existing sales force income, that would have superficially some attraction. That would be absolutely terrific, especially Plastics and Reconstruction market. Any business which is talking to Plastics and Reconstruction market would be an amazing business to partner, align with, because these people then tend to cascade and communicate the benefits of the technology to general surgeons, to podiatrists. Because their word matters to the rest of the community, the clinician community. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Just sort of tangentially off that, this issue that we grapple with from time to time at the board, not grapple with, but we consider is how much of this should be direct selling versus how much do we use distributors. One thing I'd just say to the people who are listening, 'cause it's quite interesting, 'cause, you know, when we took a distributor in Germany, we're selling a sort of a 10cm x 10cm, you know, piece like that in America for $900 or $950 or something like that. When you get a distributor, he wants to buy that off you for $450. I nearly fell off my chair when I was thinking, "Yeah, I'm gonna leave 400 or 450 on the table." It's very interesting because when you sell it for $950, our margin is 95% to 97%. When you actually give it to somebody, a distributor for $450, guess what? Your margin's still about 85%. It's very interesting when the absolute dollars is a problem for me. Just let's put that aside. When do you think it's appropriate, in your experience, to think about a distributor versus a direct? And how would you construct that relationship so that it didn't get away from you know that you can take it back. Yeah. I think I would start with the customer and the surgeon and the context. If a distributor can find a way to educate and sell it not just as a product, but as a solution for solving the problem, then I would go with the distributor. Yeah. I would not go with a distributor which is just a warehouse, because that would be bad use of the technology. It won't really work. I mean, we want to impact customers positively. We just don't want to sell. There are many distributors who just acquire technologies on the bench, but then they don't do anything to promote and really in-service it in the OR. That would be a travesty because that would actually set us back. Yeah. Do you think of any other countries that you've lived in where you would, just because of the nature of the industry and the society, use a distributor because it's too difficult to get to? In this country, for example, very few people go into Japan. Yeah. They just think it's off-limits, and China and so forth. What's your sort of attitude on country sort of opportunities? You know, Japan is actually a very good market because they care about aesthetics, they care about outcomes. If you win in Japan, if you win in South Korea, then you get a lot of traction in the rest of Asia-Pacific. China is again another huge market. Now, that's a market where we might have to start off with distributors. It's always a little tenuous relationship. I'll be very careful about China and Brazil in terms of how we engage with distributors and what are the clauses. In other markets, I'll be much more open to start off with distributors, as long as they're getting the right resources to support the surgeons. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Let me finish off, Swami, with just a more general question about your management approach and your management style to the extent you can articulate that. I mean, what sort of person are you in terms of the way in which you would run a company? Over a period of time, what I've learned is it all needs to start off with what is the value that we are bringing to our end customer. If we are not bringing differentiated value to the end customer, then honestly, we are not going to be having as much of an impact. Customer focus is very crucial, not only for me as a leader, but for the entire organization. We need to sing to the tunes of the customer. The second thing would be the entire, you know, what I would call as the value chain leading up to the customer, because it's not just the product, but how do we competitively differentiate ourselves with our suppliers, with our distributors, with our, you know, surgeons in terms of how they administer our product to the patients. All of that is going to be equally important. That's a crucial piece of business. The third thing is the community part of it. It sounds soft, but it really helps an organization to feel good about itself. I've been with the company only for two days, but Ed told me that he's going to Ukraine along with one of the surgeons to support the PolyNovo technology, which we are sending it from Australia. I thought that was a good thing. When he made that announcement in the conference, people felt good about it. In any small way, if we can contribute to the community and society, that's very good. If we do those three things well, the shareholder ultimately wins. I mean, time and again, I've seen that if you build a strong, solid business which is comparatively differentiated, and we constantly keep reinventing the rule book, the shareholder will always win. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. For those who are listening, when Swami was referring to Ed there, he's referring to Edward Graubart, who's our head of the Americas. No doubt was at the conference on Friday. Look, ladies and gentlemen, it's a little bit over 25 minutes now. As I said, I make no apology for the fact that this is not a question and answer session, but we got over 200 people on the line. I just really as an initial thing before he gets here mid-month, just wanted you to meet him at least and get a sense of. I hope you've got a sense, Ed, about how the board looked at Swami, 'cause you're hearing what we heard. As I said, he's already done a few weeks' DD, so he's gonna hit the ground running. I'm sure you'll hear a lot more from him, more formally along the lines of this. I mean, everybody knows that I'm quite good on comms and communication, so I just wanna keep that going. You know, when he gets here, we'll talk about what next in terms of communication to shareholders. There are a lot of things happening in the company, by the way, so expect some things to happen independently of what Swami is now coming to do. I won't say any more than that, but we're very happy with the way things are progressing. Look, thank you all for coming. I hope this has worked for you. I'm sure it's frustrating for those who've got plenty of questions to ask, but the guy, as he said, been here two days, and even though he's done a bit of DD, I hope he's given you a sense of how he's looking at the company. Thank you all for attending. Thank you. Thank you, all. Thank you.