Are we good to go? Yeah, good morning, everybody. I'm absolutely delighted to be back in face-to-face meetings. Trying to do 40 presentations to a blank screen is soul destroying. Really, I'm thrilled, and thank you very much for turning up today. Really pleased to present another very strong set of results. As usual, I'll just run through some really high-level highlights. Paul will then run through the numbers in detail, and then we'll take questions at the end. If this wants to work. It doesn't. Technology someday, we can't change the slides. Just. That's not working either. That was crashed. We can use the old-fashioned method of turning the pages. Fair enough. Key highlights of the year. Sort of geographically, we've just opened our first operation within Asia and South Korea. I'll tell you a little bit more about that later on. Made two significant acquisitions. It's great that the world is opening up again. I think we've said in the past that acquiring businesses is quite difficult when you can't actually do the touch and feel test. You've got to visit facilities, you've got to look around facilities, you've got to meet the management. To be able to make two sort of significant platform-type businesses is a great achievement for us in the year, and delighted, particularly with the latter one that we announced last week, Med-Pharmex. Again, I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail later on. In terms of technology, we're making great progress on the new IT systems. Manufacturing, those of you know us very well would know a few years ago, we had a number of supply issues. They're all behind us now. Manufacturing is running extremely well, and back orders are at the lowest level than they have been for five years. You know, supplies have been extremely robust, which is very, very pleasing. In terms of ESG, Paul and his team have put together our first standalone report, and I hope you really do find the time to read the great progress that we've made across the group from that report that was published today. From a financial perspective, strong revenue growth, particularly in the U.S., which has been an absolute stellar performance. In terms of the cash generation, given the investment that we made in the business, also very strong and, you know, we're pleased to report a proposed increase in dividend of 10.8%. As I said, I'll cover all these things in a little bit more detail later on, but I'll now pass you on to Paul, who will run through the numbers in detail. Cheers. Thanks, Ian. Morning, everyone. As Ian said, great to have delivered another set of strong financial results of the business performing resiliently in another period of macroeconomic uncertainty. On a constant currency basis, revenue was up strongly by 13.8%, delivering a 13.1% increase in gross profit. Our underlying operating profit of GBP 174.3 million represents a 9.4% increase on the prior year with our underlying operating margin reducing by 110 basis points to 25.6%. Underlying EPS increased strongly to 14%, reflecting the growth in the business and benefiting from lower net finance costs, which positively impacted by realized foreign exchange gains in the year. If we move on to segmental revenue performance, pleased to report that organic growth was the main driver despite acquisitions in the year being material. The acquisition elements capture the additional base business coming into the group up until the first anniversary of their acquisition. This includes growth and synergies delivered by Dechra since acquisition. In E.U., we have Tri-Solfen for the ANZ market, +1 month contribution from Osurnia. While in North American acquisitions, we also have the one-month balance from Osurnia, plus the contribution from the seven main, minor product acquisitions we announced during the year. Moving on to E.U. Pharma. Revenue in this segment grew by 8.2% to exceed GBP 400 million for the first time. The existing business grew by 6.4%, with growth delivered across all product segments and all countries. The acquisition of Tri-Solfen for the ANZ market and July sales of Osurnia contributed GBP 6.7 million to revenue, and underlying EBIT growth increased by 6.9%, of which 3.8% related to our existing business, with the acquisition balance mostly coming from Tri-Solfen. Consolidated underlying EBIT margin decreased to 32.3%. We previously signposted our cost base normalizing following COVID-19. Although our margin decreased in the year, this is still higher than pre-pandemic levels for the E.U. business. Revenue in the North America segment, as Ian said, grew strongly by 23.8% to GBP 275.1 million, with our existing business growing by 21.3%, reflecting continuing strong demand for our cat products in the US, Canada, and Mexico. July sales of Osurnia, along with the product acquisitions made around the end of the calendar year, added GBP 5.7 million. The strong increase in revenue was delivered despite increased competition to three of our branded generics. To date, we've managed to retain market share, albeit at a lower price point. This increased competition, combined with the post-pandemic normalization of our cost base, resulted in a 270 basis point reduction in consolidated operating margin to 31.9%. Moving on to R&D. Our investment was consistent year-on-year at GBP 32.4 million. This represents 4.8% of consolidated revenue, and was lower than expected due to the impact of COVID-19, and specifically our ability to recruit and perform clinical study work. Of the total spend, GBP 3.3 million related to Akston, which remains on track for launch in 2026. Following the recent acquisition of Piedmont, we expect R&D investment to represent 7%-8% of revenue in each of the next three years. Moving on to gross margin. We saw a 40 basis point reduction to 56.5% on a consolidated basis. Usually for Dechra, strong cat performance provides a positive mix effect. However, the strong North American performance, which is structurally lower gross margin business than our E.U. business, combined with increased generic competition in that territory, accounts for the dilution. The product acquisition gross margin is higher than our existing margin, but is relatively low in value, so as you can see, has little impact on our consolidated gross margin in the year. SG&A costs increased to GBP 178.6 million in the year, due largely to the previously signposted normalization of our cost base following COVID-19. You can also see the full year impact of our investment in our people costs following the review of compensation across the group in January 2021. Despite inflationary pressures on the cost base, our cost to sales ratio has returned to pre-pandemic levels. Currency markets continue to be volatile. I've included some sensitivities that show the impact exchange rate variations have on our numbers, as well as the impacts that current exchange rates would have had they applied for the year. We've seen large dollar swings post-year-end, which if they remain, will have a positive impact on our reported results for the current financial year. If these rates had applied throughout the period, our EPS would have been 8.3% higher than the numbers we've reported today. On cash flow, we enjoyed good cash generation during the year on the back of the strong trading performance. Working capital increased by GBP 27.8 million, mainly due to the growth of the group, with a further investment in inventory made to maintain service levels during this continuing period of heightened growth and uncertainty. This resulted in net cash generated from operations after non-underlying items of GBP 163.3 million, representing cash conversion of 93.7%. Looking at net debt. We increased net debt by GBP 8 million- GBP 208.2 million as at of June 30th. Notable movements include CapEx of GBP 78.4 million, of which GBP 20.3 million related to tangible assets, with the balance mostly relating to the product acquisitions we made during the year. The pro forma leverage quoted of 1x includes full year EBITDA for acquisitions and is on a pre-IFRS 16 basis. As a reminder, our leverage covenant is 3x on the revolving credit facility and 3.5x on the U.S. private placement note. Subsequent to the year end, as you're all aware, the group acquired Piedmont Animal Health for GBP 175 million, Med-Pharmex for GBP 222 million, and also raised GBP 184 million through the issue of new ordinary shares. Just to wrap up on the financials. On tax, the group underlying effective tax rate increased slightly to 22.5%. I expect it to remain at this level for the current financial year in 2023. Our reported effective tax rate was 25% in the period. Non-underlying items mostly relate to amortization of acquired intangibles and the associated tax credit. We also have GBP 13.5 million finance charge, largely driven by FX losses on U.S. dollar-denominated contingent consideration liabilities. On dividends, we retained dividend cover on underlying diluted EPS at 2.7 x. As Ian said, our final dividend increased to 32.89 pence, resulting in our full year dividend increasing 10.8% to 44.89 pence. I'll hand you back to Ian to provide some more detail on the rest of the year's highlights. Rather than sort of cover every line in detail, I think first of all we'll probably give some guidance on what we think is happening in the marketplace. Many of you follow our peers, and you'll have seen various varying results of market growth rates being displayed. There is no question that the veterinary market had a boom during COVID. Universally, I think all commentators are now saying that that has slowed down. That's clearly the case. We're talking now also about sort of animal shelters now being repopulated as dogs and cats are abandoned. From Dechra's perspective, I think you've got to bear in mind that people that would put a dog back in a dog home, they're not the people that would be prime customers for us in the first place. They wouldn't actually treat the dogs and take them to the vet. In terms of the increased pet ownership, I mean, that's gonna be an advantage to Dechra for the long term because, of course, a lot of our medicines are used in later stage life of dogs particularly, things like Zycortal and Vetoryl. You know, there will be a structural benefit to us. We shouldn't get too down about the boom being over, because we're still in a growing market. The veterinary market is still robust. The number of dogs is still increasing in most of the major dog-owning populations of the world. Cats are also on the increase. People are spending more on the dogs and cats. We are still in a robust market, but we are expecting it to return to sort of more normalized levels of growth and that would probably something along mid-single digits, 4%-5% in the U.S. and 2%-3% within Europe is our best estimate of what the market's going to perform in. As you're all aware, that we've always said that one of Dechra's ambitions, which we achieve every year, is to outperform the markets in which we operate. Looking at just a few highlights from the EU, double-digit sales growth in a number of territories, but growth in every single country in which we operate. Bearing in mind, markets such as Germany have been flat as a market for the last 12 months. You know, that's a strong position to, you know, to perform well in every single country. North America, we are now beginning to see a little bit more generic competition. We've now got first-entrant generic. We've now seen second-entrant generics in one or two of the bigger sectors in which we operate within the U.S. market. I think this will be a trend that we'll see coming into the future. What we are though, as a manufacturer of products, we do have margin to play with, and we took the decision that we would defend market share. So we've actually retained market shares, and the new entrants have picked up very little market because they are selling them as white label goods through the distributors. We're able to cut our margins, still make a healthy margin, and keep them out of the market. Of course, that has had an effect on the margin that you're seeing within the US. We feel that that's a sensible strategy to take going forward. We'll talk about Med-Pharmex in a second as well, because Med-Pharmex's products were also sold as white label through the distributors. Buying that business also means that we've got more leverage against the white label merchants. Education and technical support is something we talk about an awful lot. You know, this is our main sales mechanism. We put a huge amount of resource, and we've won numerous awards for our online content for educational program for vets, and it's an area that we continue to further invest in to develop our relationship with our customers, which is really about the novel products. It's on the novel products that we're able to sell the generics, on the strength of that relationship. Looking at it by species, companion animal products continue to be the main driver of growth. Market share gains continually within all our key therapeutic sectors. We've had a successful launch in the U.S. of a product called Zenalpha, which is a canine sedative. We're also about to launch that in the E.U. It's the first major product launch that we've had in a couple of years, and it's something completely novel. In terms of FAP, you know the various challenges. Most of our FAP sales are in Europe. Europe has seen African swine fever, and has also been suffering a little bit from avian influenza. You know, two areas of the market that, where most our sales are in, poultry and pigs. To have delivered the growth that we've delivered is very pleasing. Horses also continues to perform well, particularly in locomotion. Our older brands, Equipalazone, but also Osphos, perform very, very strongly. Nutrition, these are our branded specialist pet foods, therapeutic pet foods, also perform very well. This is really a testament to the strength of our relationship with the veterinary profession again. A lot of the competitor brands are now available through supermarkets and through internet pharmacies. To keep that veterinary relationship has been very important to us. Also some new ranges that we've brought, organic range that we've launched has been very successful. Very pleased with the performance there as well. Geographically, we are still underweight compared to all our peers in our international sales. The vast majority of our sales still remain in Western Europe and in North America. If you'll recall, about four or five years ago, we set up an independent group of two of our senior managers to say, like, "Can we start to make a difference internationally?" We're now getting really good penetration. Delighted to say that now in Australia, a business that we only bought about six years ago, we're now the second-biggest CAP supplier in Australia, which, given the competitors being big pharma, is a superb achievement. Brazil continues to go very well. As I said at the outset, we have now just established a subsidiary in South Korea, which is a very exciting venture for us. Once we get into that part of the world, we've only sold through a distributor previously. We'll learn a lot more about that part of the world and about neighboring countries, and I think it will give us a very strong base to deliver future growth. This came about because the distributor we had changed hands. It got bought, and we had a change of ownership clause that we could terminate the agreement. What we've done is we've gone and appointed all the best staff that worked for the distributor. We've got a ready-made team there that once we get our own products registered, because we have to re-register them under Dechra brand, within two or three months, we should have most of the range back on the market to start selling ourselves. As we have demonstrated in other countries where we'd previously sold through a distributor, like Poland, like Canada, when we have our own sales and marketing, we're able to do better because there's a greater focus and a better knowledge of our products. We do expect South Korea to be a successful market for us. In terms of the pipeline, I've already mentioned Zenalpha. It is a sedative that's used widely in dogs. What we've done is we've combined two drugs to increase the safety profile. It should really take a big market share from the market-leading products in this area. Very pleased with that. We've got an equine strangles vaccine that we've launched in Europe. This is the second equine vaccine that we now have, and we've got two more in development, so we feel that this could be a big area of focus. I think I've said to you many times, not many companies focus on horses. You know, this is a big area of focus to us, and that's because there's not many horses in the world. You know, we're developing a really important niche for us in the equine market. We have now sort of distilled it to 41 major projects that we have in development. Of course, the acquisition of Piedmont significantly changes the profile of our pipeline. We now have more novelty and more value in our pipeline than we've had at any time in our history. We did cover the Piedmont acquisition when we did the placing a few weeks ago, so not much more to add on that one. We've owned the business now for a few weeks. There's nothing that we've found that we weren't expecting. All the products we have in development are exactly where we thought they were. The next big product out of their pipeline, we expect probably in about 12 or 18 months, which is a new cat antibiotic, which is a product that's bang in line with our sort of therapeutic expertise. In terms of Med-Pharmex, this was a very unique opportunity. It was a business that was half owned by private equity, half by the original founder. I'd been in contact with private equity for a number of years, and I've met the senior partner a number of times over the years. They got it to a position where they felt it was the right time to sell this year. It brings to us several product registrations. It brings to us also manufacturing capabilities that we don't have within the U.S. But the products are all sold through the wholesalers as white label goods. What we're able to do, a little bit like those of you remember the Le Vet acquisition we made in Europe, we're able to disintermediate some of the supply routes of those products, put them in Dechra livery, Dechra branded, and sell them through our existing sales and marketing organization. There are clear synergistic benefits that can be delivered, you know, within the first 12 months. I think looking longer term, I think there's an awful lot that we can do with this factory to integrate it into the Dechra family, and to put a lot of the products that we currently outsource in the U.S. to third-party contract manufacturers. We will, over a period of time, be able to bring them in-house and capture more margin. Looking at what we call our strategic enablers, the four main building blocks, in terms of technology, in terms of the new ERP system, we're moving the whole of the organization onto a cloud-based Oracle platform. The first step there will be within manufacturing, and we've got a team of senior managers that are now dedicated to that for the next couple of years. We're also introducing a new document management system that will improve the regulation, the compliance across the group, and we've already instigated the first phase of that, again, within manufacturing. Salesforce CRM system, many of you will be aware of, is now live and operating in every country in which we operate. I touched on manufacturing at the beginning of the presentation. We've recently had an audit of our Skipton facility, which by value is the biggest producer for Dechra, and we got a clean bill of health, which is very, very pleasing. Very few observations, and the observations that we had were all minor things that were very easy to comply with remedying. In terms of people, Alison Platt has taken on the role of Chair for the organization, having Tony retired after five years within the job. Also, sadly, Julian Heslop has had to retire after nine years. A regulation which doesn't make much sense to me that says he's not independent anymore after nine years, but nonetheless, we have to comply. He's been a fantastic mentor for the finance team for many years. We found John Shipsey who's come in and he will take on, I think as of today, he becomes Audit Chair for the group. We've also brought in a chap called Patrick Meeus who is replacing Susan Longhofer, who'd been with us for 15 years as Chief Scientific Officer. Broad experience across the animal health industry, predominantly with big pharma. He's a great addition to our team. In terms of ESG, Paul leads the team. We have a lady called Karina, who worked in sales within Scandinavia for seven years. She's now Director of ESG, and she's brought a huge amount of enthusiasm to the group, and it truly is embedded within the organization. Paul will touch perhaps in the future about some of the science-based targets which have now been set. You know, we're delighted with the progress we've made. I request that you try and look at the standalone report we've put together, which is testament to all the hard work that Paul and his team have actually done. That just leaves me briefly with the outlook. Obviously delighted with the two acquisitions that benefit once we bed Med-Pharmex into the organization. That's further critical mass to own the key market of the US. We're still recognizing new opportunities. We're still outperforming the markets in which we operate. You know, we have every confidence and every right to be confident in our future prospects. I think on that, I will sit down and we'll take questions. Fire away, Max. Just three questions, mainly focused on the Med-Pharmex deal. We've heard less about that. Just firstly, on the Med-Pharmex business, just I wanted to understand a little bit more about the outlook for that business in terms of the growth and whether there was any pipeline with that. That's the first question. Yeah, there are two near-term pipeline products that have actually the dossiers have been submitted. Actually, we valued it without the pipeline, so the pipeline products will be additional benefit to the business as to when we get them to market. In terms of the portfolio at Max, it's an established portfolio. While we think we can get growth out of it, you know, we think our sales team will do a better job than the distributor sales team. Most of the upside is gonna come from the disintermediation, so the synergies of cutting out the distributor. Just in terms of the manufacturing from that, obviously, you bought Ampharmco a few years ago now. How are they gonna have separate type products? How do you see the two sitting side by side? I mean, Ampharmco predominantly produces one product and that facility will become dedicated to just tablet and capsule, the caplet production. Finally, just in terms of your comment on market growth, I mean, I assume that's for the overall market, including FAP. No, that was. Purely for companion animal. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Hi. Thanks. It's Andrew from Investec. Just two questions if I may, please. One on geography. You've entered South Korea sort of directly. Are there any other sort of markets around there that you think are particularly ripe for direct entry? And I'm just curious how difficult is it to reregister your products under the Dechra brand, but I guess there's lots of revenue synergy there as you start to enter these newer markets. It's very much a learning curve for us. We already have a number of established products through the distributor in South Korea. We don't know a lot about the neighboring countries, if truth be told. It's very much a learning curve. Japan is an interesting one. The reason for that is because up until recently, they've insisted that everything that goes into Japan has its own clinical study done in Japan. They are relaxing the regulations a little bit now, so we believe that we can probably get more products registered there. You know, that could be an interesting market for us in the future. Perfect. We're also dipping a toe in the water. We've got a couple of products in registration in China, but that's, it's a bit of a minefield, given the huge number of animal health manufacturers there are in China. It will be interesting to see, you know, what we learn from the two products we've got in registration. I think with the base there, Andrew, as well, we can start to bring some in-house regulatory staff to look at what is required in neighboring territories. Perfect. Thank you. The second question, just you mentioned second generic entrants in some products into the U.S. Has that theme played out, or do you think there's more to come on that, and how do you think that impacts the gross margin going forward? I'll let you answer the gross margin question, but I mean, it's gonna, you know, put pressure on the margin for sure. We're not in many huge product sectors within the U.S., so if you look at, it was Amoxiclav was the first entrant, and that was a very big market for us. It's quite a difficult product to get registered. So I don't think we'll see a plethora of other generics. But I do think that we've got two or three other products that I think will probably go genericized in the next sort of four or five years. But it's, you know, you've got to bear in mind, it's no different to Europe. The regulations to get generics registered in Europe, it's a lot more straightforward, so we already have, you know, multiple players in some of our sectors within Europe. It's not a market we're particularly frightened of. We know how to compete in that situation, but I think that we will see more genericization. Yeah. I think on the margin point, it's back to what we're trying to achieve, which is a service offering in the therapeutic areas in which we operate. The importance and significance of having novelty in the pipeline that really gets us air time with vets, gives us something different to talk about, and then to leverage that novelty through the generic range, which we've been, you know, incredibly successful with over the years. If you look at Putney, we actually looked at what we've done historically with that, and we've quadrupled sales of their products since we bought that business. We know that through leveraging our novel offering, we can drive the generic portfolio as well through the vet practices. You've also got to bear in mind that the vet doesn't particularly want to race to the bottom in terms of pricing. You know, the drug sales that he makes are not as price sensitive as you might think. Quite often, the tablets that they've got gives you a very small of the overall treatment cost. The vet will make a markup, and he makes a fair amount of his revenue from the sale of product. They're not as focused on the lowest buying price as you might think. All the added value services that we offer, the technical support, as Paul says, in our therapeutic areas, drives a lot of the demand because we sell our generics, to remind you, as branded products. We don't sell them under a generic name. Thanks. If I could just follow up then. I think you were originally aiming for sort of 50/50 generics, innovative products. Post all the deals, is that roughly where you're getting? No, in terms of value in the fullness of time, a lot more will be novel. Fine. Thanks. Very helpful. Thanks a lot. James from JP Morgan. Three questions, please. One was I'd heard from some competitors about headwinds in terms of particularly the US. There just not being enough vets, lots of vets retiring or leaving the industry for other reasons. Is that something you're really seeing? Doesn't really seem to tally with the U.S. performance. Is there a trend there or why are they seeing something different to you? Would be the first question. That's the first I've ever heard of that within the US. That's always been a problem in some European markets such as the U.K.. There's always been a veterinarian shortage and, you know, the big veterinary practice groups will probably be able to answer that question better, but I've not heard that comment be made at all. Why is Dechra less susceptible to any downturn? Because not many of our products are discretionary. So, if you've got a dog, you're supposed to worm it 4x a year. You maybe decide to do it twice a year now. Dechra's products treat sick animals, and what we've seen in, you know, the recessions, 2007, 2008, is that the last part of the household expenditure to be sacrificed is your dying dog. You know, nobody's recession-proof, but I think Dechra's portfolio makes us more recession-proof than our competitors that, you know, the Big Pharma that are selling flea tick worm, that sort of area. The second question would be just about the U.S. generic competition. I think you mentioned there's a few products that could have some competition on a sort of four-five-year view. Not asking what the products are or their individual sales, but overall, roughly what would those products combined account for as a proportion of U.S. revenues? Ooh, difficult question. Yeah. As a proportion of group revenues, James, outside of Vetoryl and Amoxiclav, the next largest product is 1%-2% of turnover, of group turnover. Again, back to Ian's point, a lot of the markets in which we operate are very, very small. You'll be familiar. We've talked about, you know, just economics of multiple generic entrants. You know, it's very unlikely we would see, you know, 5-10 generics enter some of the markets in which we operate in. We're very broad product range, probably looking at 1%-2% of group turnover. Thank you. The final question was just on margins. I think you did about 23% underlying operating margin in H2, and there's quite a few moving parts in terms of organically and then the two acquisitions. Where do you now think the margin is likely to shake out sort of medium term once all these things bed in? Yeah. I think if we put Piedmont to one side, 'cause clearly that's a big ramp-up in research and development spend. We should start to see margin accretion. Again, the cost base is normalized. The historic model has always been to sell more product through the existing infrastructure. We're not planning any significant step-up in, you know, field presence, for example. Yes, there'll be bits in territories like South Korea, we should start to see operating leverage come back through on the organic business. If that's organic, but then if we do then put in the impact of the acquisition, so in four years' time or something like that, where might Dechra's operating margin be versus now? Well, upwards of 25%, I think. Yeah. Thank you. Morning. It's Kane Slutsky from Numis. Guys, just on new product revenue, that sort of ratio you showed sort of halved. Is that just a timing issue in terms of the percentage of group total? Yes. That is Putney dropping out. Okay. The products that were launched as part of the Putney acquisition, we've now had on the market for more than five years. Okay. Those have dropped away. Got it. Got you. Just on your key risks, I just noticed you've kind of nicely put out all the risks and sort of whether those risks have changed in your thinking. I've noticed sort of three risks that have sort of increased, one of being competitor risk, which I think you've probably explained. You also sort of cite regulatory and people risk. Can you maybe just give us a bit of color on that, maybe more so the people side, you know, in terms of, I guess, well-documented issues in the market around labor? Maybe I'll just let you answer that first and then one last one. Well, in terms of people, it's exactly that. Mm-hmm. They, you know, these people are few and far between. Salaries are increasing quite a lot. There's inflationary pressures on the regulatory people, highly skilled, highly technical people. Okay. The regulatory side, is that just? That's the same. The regulatory people. That's it. It's not sort of you finding it tougher to get things approved, or are you? No, no. We've actually put more money into the regulatory side. Okay, fine. You know, we've invested really heavily in ramping up the whole of the regulatory capabilities across the group. That's whether that's from a factory perspective or from a product registration, regulatory people that do all the drug registrations. You know, these people are hugely important. Yeah. Okay. Okay. What we're seeing as well, Kane, is the FDA are back out on the road and increasing visits, whereas. Okay. They weren't able to do that during. Fine. during COVID. Okay. Perfect. Just finally on enhanced manufacturing, I mean, you've in the past mentioned a target of 50%. I would imagine some of that is sort of due to thinking ahead about things like Med-Pharmex, or. Yeah. How does Med-Pharmex change that at all? Or is that in that sort of 50% thinking, or can it go a bit higher? Well, the problem is we keep buying things where Yes. We don't make the products that we've bought. Yeah. So, uh. You go below now, and then you go back up. We're peddling very quickly. Yeah. If you look at things like Osurnia and Mirataz that we bought, you know, we've got a plan now to bring Mirataz into Skipton, but it's not a quick process. Yeah. I think we've got something like eight active projects to bring new products into the group. Tech transfers. Tech transfers. You can't really do them all at once because it takes a huge amount of resource. Okay. Perfect. Thanks. Thanks. Mike Mitchell from Panmure. I'll just sit up here. Just a follow-up on the generics question. I'm just wondering when you first started to see the impact of the generics competition and just wondering how much visibility you've had on the sort of price correction cycle. The Amoxiclav in the U.S. was launched in October, so we've had a pretty good proportion of the year with that competitor already in the market. Yeah. The other two were similar as well. Yeah. I don't know if you recall, it must be about four or five years ago now, I made commentary about white label goods through the wholesaler. It isn't something that's new. It's just there's a new product that competes with one of our bigger generics, which is why it's had a more of a material effect in this period. Understood. That was great. Thanks. Edward Thomason from Liberum Capital. Actually just continuation from that, the last question. I don't know what kind of detail can you give us about you in the US, you maintain market share, but what pricing points are you taking a discount to? Typically, when a generic enters the market, it's different to human health. They tend to come in aggressively priced, so this would be a 10%-15% reduction in price from our perspective to match the generic entrant. Is that true for the second generation as they come through? Yes. A second question, unrelated, on Tri-Solfen in the EU. Is there any update there? No. We've fought long and hard with the regulators, but the Germans are leading the way, insisting that the product has to be sterile. We've actually found a way to sterilize it relatively cheaply, but we've now got to obviously change the whole CMC section for the application. It's probably put us back about a year. Bizarrely, the U.K. have said it doesn't need to be sterile. We spoke to the FDA, and they said they don't need a sterile product either for the U.S. market. It's a complete and utter nonsense that you're applying something in a dirty farm environment that improves the sterility of the wound, and they're insisting that the product is sterile. It's nonsensical box ticking. We can actually prove that Tri-Solfen improves the bioburden in the wound on a piglet castration on a farm. Sadly, they're not listening to common sense. They're just working off an E.U. Regulation that says a product that's used internally has to be sterile. Okay. Thank you. Hi. Thanks. It's James Vane-Tempest from Jefferies. two questions, please. Firstly, just on inflation in the business, I think people costs, I think, were GBP 8 million last year on the bridge you showed. I know that was from January. I mean, inflationary pressures have got worse. Is it fair to assume that will be a higher number this year? And what measures have you got to potentially mitigate that? I guess price increases have been slightly lower, so that would be helpful to understand. That's my first question. Yeah. Our pay review across the group is January. Up until this point we've deferred from doing anything. We will pay higher than we've typically done in the past in terms of wages and salaries increases. We're also in the previous financial year become a living wage accredited employer or equivalent globally. We wait to see what the latest guidance from living wage will be. We got that accreditation; we want to keep it evidently. We'll yeah, we will be taking above historic rates of wage and salary pressure in January and the second half of the year. In terms of ability to pass it on, within the industry, annual price increases from all players have historically gone through and gone into the market at differing times of the year. In all of our major markets in the last 12 months we have done at least three price increases. Up until this point, as Ian said earlier, we have been able to pass those costs on to vets and end users, unfortunately, and we would plan to continue to do so. Our buying team have also done a brilliant job on most of the major APIs that we use in securing future prices. So, we haven't seen inflation hit a lot of our core materials as much as you might think. Components, you know, bottles and plastics and capsules, that sort of thing have gone up, but it's a very small percentage of the true cost of your product. We've done a great job. Yeah. We've got really good visibility for the next or the first three quarters of this financial year in terms of lead times. Clearly the orders we're placing now, we're watching very closely. Thank you. My second question is just on the nutrition business. I understand the nature of a chronic portfolio will be the last part of the household budget, you know, potentially to be cut. But are you seeing any signs of people willing to trade down pet food, you know, in terms of specialist sort of diet ranges, et cetera? You've got to bear in mind that our pet foods are not things you'd buy over the counter. They are things that treat specific diseases. We've got heart disease diets, we've got kidney disease diets, we've got struvite diets for cats, et cetera, et cetera. These are things that almost are prescribed or recommended by the vet. It's not that susceptible, I don't think, to pricing pressure. Thank you. Hi. Thank you. Just a longer term, a bigger picture question about the R&D and the pipeline for me. The acquisition currently that you did, the Piedmont changed the weight, the balance of the pipeline to more novel products. The first part of the question is, does this then imply a change in strategy that you want moving forward to have more weighting towards novel products? That's the first part. And then secondly, the R&D spend will decrease after three years, so up to more like historic levels. Given the novelty is quite important to vets, does this then imply that potentially the next novelty will be another acquisition? Again, as in like you'll buy the next pipeline rather than in-house. No, I think it's highly unlikely that we'll buy another Piedmont type business. It was just a very much a one-off opportunity that came about, again, through a long-term relationship. We were actually negotiating with them just to buy their nearest term product. As the conversations evolved over a year and a half, it just made sense to buy the whole organization. That's a very much a one-off. In terms of novelty. It's always our ambition to keep as much as the portfolio as novel as possible. Obviously stronger margins, better relationship with the vets. The reason why we've become as generic as we have is because almost everything we have bought was more generic in nature. We bought those companies for good reason, either they added new geographies or they added critical mass or they offered significant synergies. You know, they were the right acquisitions to make. When those acquisitions came to us, their pipelines were also generic because they were generic-based companies. It's just by default rather than by design. I have been talking for a few years now about the need to increase novelty in our pipeline, and we have done that with a number of really good candidates, including one you're familiar with, the Akston diabetes product. This just accelerates that process. No, I can't see us buying another Piedmont-type business, and we still have a team of people that are still looking to even now add new technology into our portfolio. Thank you. It's worth adding, Zoe, the majority of our existing pipeline is favored towards novelty. Yeah. Once we funded, the step up 7% or 8% to fund the eight Piedmont candidates, the remaining, you know, revert back to 5% or 6% of turnover, the majority of that spend will continue to be on novelty. All right. Just to follow up on the Tri-Solfen. You've obviously had discussions with the FDA about a route to market there. I just wondered what the sort of timelines were for Tri-Solfen in the U.S. Oh, it's still pretty long-term, I'm afraid. Okay, thanks. Okay, no more questions? Anyone? Thanks. Hi, guys. It's Anand from HSBC. Is there any issue around the availability of active ingredient? No, we haven't found that, no. Our main principal ingredients, we try and dual source wherever possible. But also we've put additional stocking of the APIs. Okay. Would services ever be interesting to you? 'Cause that seems to be more dynamic at the moment. What do you mean by diagnostics, that sort of thing? Yeah. There's some consultancy, right, which is showing that drug spend is lower year-on-year in the U.S., but services are still holding up quite nicely. Does that matter or is it too short term? No, no. Stick to what you know, I think is our principle. Yeah. The last one. On the generics, who's actually introducing them? It's two Indian companies. Yeah. One called Felix and one called Cronus. Is it possible to take a view around their balance sheets and what their sort of plans are? They're part of a huge one of them. I think it's Cronus is part of a huge Indian human pharma company. It's a very strong organization. What's very interesting is we have a relationship with them, and we're actually gonna license two of their next generics to stop them going white label. Okay. Fair enough. I think Andrew asked it, but just to confirm. Excuse me. If I'm launching a generic, presumably I'm just looking at very large markets. Yes. If we think about your drug portfolio, something like Vetoryl, I'll diagnose it maybe 4x a year max. Mm-hmm. So it's just- I think Vetoryl's a big enough market. I mean, it is an outlier. With Dechra, it's probably about, what, 8%, 9% of turnover. 9%. It is an outlier as a big product for us, and I'm sure that there will be people looking to genericize it. It's just an incredibly complicated drug. I think the basic principle of what you're saying is correct. Most of our products or a lot of our products won't be big enough to merit genericization. I mean, we've got products in Europe that have been off patent for years and nobody's ever copied them. Okay. Okay, thanks very much. Thank you. Any more questions, please? Okay. Look, I'd just like to reiterate, very pleased to see everybody and, thank you for your time. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. Pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. If you would like to ask a question over the telephone, please press star one. That'll be a no then. It appears we have no questions on the telephone at this time. I would now like to turn back to the webcast Q&A. Okay, thank you.