Welcome back, everyone, to Vox Markets. My name is Paul Hood. I'm delighted again to be able to speak to CEO Jerry Randall of Venture Life Group, a leading consumer healthcare products firm. So welcome, Jerry. Thanks, Paul. Good to see you again. Yeah, well, big congrats on the, this morning's, inline, full-year trading update, with sales rising 5% like-for-like to GBP 51 million, EBITDA margins increasing, 2% to just over 22%, and net debt also falling. So maybe we can we can sort of start there. What's been sort of driving that impressive top and bottom line performance? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Paul. Well, it's the Venture Life brands that are really driving that, and particularly Balance Activ, Lift, and Earol. And I think what you're seeing in the numbers, and we'll talk more about it obviously at the full year, is a strong growth in Amazon. You know, that's really grown well this year, and we're seeing impacts there on Balance Activ, on Lift. We've launched Earol on Amazon this year, because obviously we acquired it last year. So it's growing very well, and also the impact of our new product development. You know, we've launched quite a lot of things in the Balance Activ range. Thrush cream, one of those products, doing really well. That's gone first into Superdrug, is now going to other stores, and that's really exceeding our, you know, rate of sale expectations. So it's all of those things coming together and those sort of initiatives and marketing initiatives that we've been working on with those brands. Good. And so it's been mainly sort of volume, has it, rather than, say, price? Yes, we've put a few small price increases into the market towards the back end of 2023, and you'll see those annualize in 2024. You know, we did one on Lift. We had some on the Earol brand, but they didn't have a big impact. There were some small amounts, but as I say, because it was towards the back end of the year, they didn't have a big impact. It was all around volume growth. Good. And then I guess with the extra sales and the extra volume, that's given you some operational efficiencies as well, hasn't it? But and also, I guess you've got also that mix effect with your own brands versus third party. Can you just talk through that, how that's sort of like really boosted the bottom line as well? Yes, of course. Yeah. I mean, we've seen a, you know, sort of 2% 2-point lift in the EBITDA margin. So, what we've seen in the second half, obviously there was a big increase in EBITDA in H2 compared to H1. And a large part of that was a large part of H2 was around the higher margin Venture Life brands, particularly internationally. And I know, as we've discussed before, we have a weighting in the second half of the year, particularly to those Venture Life brands internationally, and they've come through. They're stronger margin products on the brands and big volumes in that half, and that's really contributed to both gross margin and stronger EBITDA margin, plus the overall volume lift, which is giving an EBITDA leverage benefit. Brilliant. And, and that sort of trend going forward for, for 2024, in terms of, you know, increased volumes for your own third-party brands and sort of like, you know, the mix effect and the margin accretion, would you expect that to sort of continue into, into the new year? Yeah. And what we'd expect for 2024 is an increasing reset of that mix, more biased towards the Venture Life brands. You know, customer brands had another strong year in 2024, and all parts of the business grew, but you'd expect to see that mix effect change back a little bit more towards the Venture Life brands in 2024 than we saw in 2023. Great. And can you just talk through any sort of like? Are there any new products, sort of like, for people to... You've obviously been successful with the new recent line launches. They've done very well. In fact, I haven't yet tried it, but I'm going to. There's the cherry, the Iced Cherry Dentyl, which I have seen in some of the shops. So, Yeah, yeah ... I might give that a shot. But, what, anything else sort of coming down the track? Yeah, sure. So, we've been investing a lot in our women's health area because we started with the Balance Activ range, obviously, that we acquired from BBI in 2021, and that was the gel and ovules targeted towards bacterial vaginosis. But, we're broadening out that range completely. I I mean, you and I'm sure a number of the investors, shareholders will recognize that the women's health, women's intimate health area is really expanding. You go into, you know, high street stores like Boots, Holland & Barrett, Superdrug, all of those, you'll see a really high level of prominence there around women's health and women's intimate health. So we've launched some new cleansers in there, and we've launched a thrush cream. That's a really interesting product because at the moment, if a woman is being treated for thrush, she's generally using a Canesten drug product. And again, as a drug product, you can only use that for a limited number of days. But our product is a medical device, and it can be used consistently and even on a sort of prophylactic basis, and we've launched that in Superdrug. It's going to other stores in quarter one this year, and it's gone really well. It's been really well received. In fact, what we're gonna also see going forward is, in Superdrug, we're gonna be having a full shelf presence of all of our products in the women's health range. We've launched a probiotic flora range under Balance Activ. We got some other products coming through there. So that's a real big push for us, and that's where you'll see more and more going on there. The new products under Lift, the Activ Energy boost range, which is moving on from just the glucose tabs into more additive ingredients to make a sort of sports and energy Lift bar. That's launched in a number of stores. That's going really well, really well received. You're saying about the cherry flavored Dentyl. That's great. I mean, it's interesting, Clove is the biggest selling flavor for Dentyl in the UK, no question about it, but the cherries got good appeal. But just going back to the Lift range, we've launched a number of new, flavours in those Lift chewable tablet range, and the Tropical Fruit is, you know, really, really popular, so I encourage you to try that one as well. Yeah, I will do. Yeah, thanks very much for the tip. In terms of the sort of supply chain, have you seen any benefits in that second half with inventories sort of like, you know, reducing because they've... the supply chains have been easing up, and how that sort of like fed through into your sort of cash generation and lower net debt position? Yeah, sure. I mean, what we've seen is definitely an easing of the pressures that are in the supply chain. So, I wouldn't say we see prices coming off yet, but what we're not seeing is that continued upward march of prices, you know. So we're seeing a few more providers coming back into the market. It's now getting back to more normal business, where you can talk to a number of different suppliers and negotiate a good price and good delivery terms. We haven't so far really been disrupted by the Red Sea issue. You know, we've got good inventory in place. We've got good lead times and everything. But what we have seen is inventory coming down in the second half, and we're now back to a much better level of inventory. You know, we're much closer to sort of 20% of last twelve months' revenues, whereas, you know, start of the year it's more like 25%. And that's had the benefit, obviously, on the leverage that you've seen, the improvement in leverage, and also that's continuing into this year. So I think I would say we don't expect to see prices coming down, but we do think we've seen the end of upward pressure generally. There's always one or two that might be going up, but generally we see that pressure abating a bit now. Good. And then I guess in terms of that sort of like, you know, the reduction in debt and the improvement in that net debt to EBITDA balance, are you gonna continue to see that sort of like track more... you know, continue to track positively? Yeah. We're really pleased with that, 'cause obviously back in or during 2023, we had to pay that second payment for Earol, Mm. -which we did. But we saw the net debt come down from 1.65 to 1.25. But also since the year end, so as we stand today, that's now come down to 1.1 times. Mm. And that's really because we had a big quarter four, lots of billing going out there. We've seen the cash realization from that in January. So yeah, we'll- you'll expect to see that continue to go down, 'cause the, the cash generation will again be, you know, stronger in 2024 than it was in 2023 in terms of absolute number. Brilliant. Okay, well, thanks very much, Jerry, for the update, and congrats on... I mean, I know I was looking at the broker numbers right up 12 months ago from, Cavendish, and, they had a target of roughly, I think it was about GBP 50.4 or GBP 50.7 in, in sales, and you're hitting GBP 51, so you couldn't get better. Given what we've had in between, a mini banking crisis, we've had a Middle Eastern war- Yes, yes ... and lots of other sort of supply chain problems. So big congrats to the Venture Life team, and look forward in touching base for the prelims in April. Yeah, no, great. Thanks, Paul. I mean, as I say, it's all down to the team that, you know, when you've got a brilliant team working around you, dedicated, hard-working, so, you know, congrats to them. They've delivered this and, you know, really, as a, as a company, we're very proud of that. But thanks for your time and support, Paul, and look forward to speaking to you, April. Thank you.