Alcidion Group Ltd

ASX:ALC

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Kate Quirke, MD, CEO & Executive Director]

Good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today, where we'll be giving an update on the achievements and the quarterly financial results for Q1 FY '22 which ended 30th of September as was lodged with the ASX today. So Alcidion closed out the first quarter of the new financial year in a strong position. Our business continues to build on the momentum of FY '21, seeing us add $2.7 million in new contracted revenue during that first quarter, including renewals, during what's traditionally the slowest quarter of the year for us, as many of our shareholders who have been following us for some time would be aware. Approximately $2.4 million of that $2.7 million is able to be recognized in FY '22. So that's -- that will continue to be recognized over the course of the year as we deliver on those contracts. New contracts signed during the quarter included several services-related contracts from both new and existing customers. So it was great to see continued engagement from our existing customer base, but also engagement with new customers in Victoria and New South Wales as well. Total contracted revenue able to be recognized in FY '22 at the end of the quarter, at the end of quarter 1 stands at $17.2 million, which is up 17% on the previous or prior corresponding period. And additionally, we've got a further $2.3 million of scheduled renewal revenue expected to be converted to contracted revenue over the course of the year. Our cash receipts increased to $6.6 million, which was up 2.3% in the same period last year. And the company had an operating cash outflow of $3.4 million, which was expected and in line with what we anticipated because it reflected the full -- a full quarter's impact of new hires that have been made predominantly in the second half and in the final quarter of FY '21. Many of you will know that we have been hiring a number of new roles to support our growth. And that was coupled with the payment of FY '21 staff bonuses in August, when they usually fall. They were accrued for in the FY '21 results, but you see the cash impact in the first quarter. And off the back of a very good year last year, obviously, we paid out full staff bonuses. And there was a large -- also a large net GST/VAT payment that was paid out in the first quarter of $1.3 million. And that is actually driven by the fact that we had strong FY '21 cash receipts. So the receipts come in, in the Q4 -- sorry, Q4 '21 and then we pay out the VAT in the quarter that follows. As you -- maybe you'll be aware, Alcidion experiences a level of seasonality in the cash flows, with Q3 and Q4 historically being the strongest of our cash collection months -- or quarters. However, it should be noted that one of the major drivers of cash flow is obviously contract wins, and they can occur at any point during the year. But this first quarter has followed the typical seasonality that we see. At the end of the quarter, we maintained a strong cash position with $21.5 million as of the 30th of September. The pipeline pleasingly continues to develop with several sizable opportunities now entering the contract negotiation phase, and that's providing us with heightened optimism about the broader opportunity for Alcidion, particularly, again, in the U.K. market. We're certainly increasingly seeing the potential to cross-sell and upsell our products to existing customers as well as interest from new customers. The U.K. in particular has become increasingly focused on deploying technology to support the NHS as they head into winter, and they need to address the mounting backlog of patients as the -- from previous COVID situation where the waiting lists are increasing, but also as we're seeing some COVID numbers begin to climb again, which was somewhat anticipated as winter comes into the U.K. And so we're seeing investment from the NHS in technology to assist with that. In Australia, we're similarly seeing a focus on using technology to improve patient flow but also continued interest in virtual care or hospital in the home, a trend we believe we'll continue to see long past the COVID hospitalizations can start to fall. At the end of Q1, the contracted revenue able to be recognized in FY '22 was $17.2 million. That's at the end of -- sort of the 30th of September, and that's represented a 17% increase on the same period last year. The contracted revenue, remember, only includes revenue, recurring and nonrecurring, from current signed contracts. It doesn't include any revenue from contracts that will renew during the next 3 quarters of the year or any new contracts yet to be signed during the next 9 months of this year. And that $17.2 million is actually split $12.2 million of recurring revenue and $5 million of nonrecurring revenue. So a little bit about the operational highlights subsequent to the end of the quarter, and you will see a couple of announcements around these. Alcidion signed 3 strategically significant contracts for us. Two of those were in the U.K. and related to ExtraMed. And one was in Australia, which was for Miya Precision virtual care, and you've heard me talk about that in the past, had a combined total contract value of $3.1 million, of which $900,000 will be recognized in the current year as revenue, the rest to be moved out to forward recurring revenue. The first of those was a new 3-year contract, so a brand-new customer, valued around $630,000 with Queens Hospital Burton in the U.K., and that was for ExtraMed's inpatient flow manager. This is the first new contract win we've had following the acquisition of ExtraMed in April 2021 for the ExtraMed software. And the Queens Hospital Burton is actually part of the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust. That's actually one of the largest NHS trusts in the U.K., and it came about as the amalgamation of Derby and Burton as trusts. The ExtraMed inpatient flow software does as the name suggests and is a patient flow management software that enables the frontline staff and those working to deliver patient care to make informed decisions about -- based on the real-time visibility of patient flow through an organization, right from coming into ED, through ED, through the hospital and then out the other side. And the signing of this agreement comes about as a result of the really positive results that Royal Derby has documented from their deployment, Royal Derby being the sister trust. And the staff have documented increasing reduced length of -- well, reduced length of stay, increasing enhanced care for patients and freeing up more beds for treating patients. And sorry, the second contract that we signed, which was related to that for inpatient flow management, was a 3-year contract extension valued at a similar amount, $640,000 with Derby Teaching Hospitals, a sister trust, which was to extend the use of their software for another 3 years. That's a sister hospital, I said, to Burton, and they're the ones that have documented their success. The really pleasing thing for us is that Burton and Derby are also users of our Patientrack solution. So we're bringing together those solutions to provide an enhanced, connected and integrated solution for the hospitals in both Derby and Burton. The final contract win was here in Australia, following a competitive tender process which we successfully won. Many of you will know that Sydney Local Health District, very particularly, RPA, the virtual care hospital within that district, had been using Miya Precision to support the treatment of COVID-related patients in virtual care. That was very specifically a piece of work that was funded for -- directly for COVID. We always knew that they needed to go through a competitive tender process in terms of what they wanted to do longer term. So they went to market. A number of solutions responded to that, and Alcidion was successful. And we now have won a 3-year contract for around $1.8 million to support Sydney Local Health District or more importantly, rpavirtual and using our platform for all their virtual care requirements. This is an important reference for us. This contract will demonstrate the use of Miya Precision in supporting that virtual care environment or as a model of care across that local health district, and we'll be capturing information from integrated devices that patients wear at home. And any integrated device -- one of the beauties of the platform is that we are independent of the supplier of the integrated device so we can take it from many, many different suppliers and bring that into a central platform. And we're combining that with the data that we can capture from patients via our Miya Care app. So this is a patient-related app. It's the first deployment of Miya Care. And we're very excited by the potential that this addition of patient-entered information will actually bring to the quality of the data that is used for managing patients and for the clinical care providers. The thing about Miya Precision is -- and this opportunity is it will enable innovative and scalable models of care to be ultimately introduced for a broad range of patient cohorts with chronic conditions, both in the home and in hospital settings. And very particularly, RPA went to market to ensure that they could support diverticulitis as the next cohort they're going to look at. But there are many patients who -- what we often refer to as frequent fliers to hospital. They spend a lot of time going back and forth. Being able to treat them more successfully at home is what this innovative program is focused on doing. During the quarter, the company appointed Ms. Victoria Weekes and Mr. Daniel Sharp to the Alcidion Board as Independent Nonexecutive Directors. And I'm already very much enjoying working with them and appreciate the value they're bringing. The appointment of both Ms. Weekes and Mr. Sharp demonstrates the company's ability to attract high-caliber directors to our Board. And it really positions Alcidion, I think, really strongly to continue to deliver on our growth strategy, following the achievement of obviously a number of strategic milestones in 2021. Our growth strategy continues to focus on capturing new market share by way of organic growth and ultimately moving to adjacent markets. And with that, I'm also talking about not just in-hospital care, but obviously, into out-of-hospital care and things like the Australian Defence Force. As we announced in April, Alcidion was selected as part of a consortium as the preferred provider for a major health IT project across the Australian Defence Force. That has a total contract value of around $21 million initially over 5.5 years. As we indicated in April, it is still subject to final contract -- the contract finalization and the government approvals process. We still expect it to be finalized before the end of this calendar year, with the project commencing promptly after those contracts are signed. In all, we are very optimistic about the opportunities for Alcidion for this financial year. There's a healthy sales pipeline. We've got several sizable opportunities underway. Again, it is important to note that COVID-19 continues to pose a challenge for health care providers worldwide, primarily around the time it takes to not only implement the new technology but actually get the approvals for new contracts through the process when you see a lot of the executive and the frontline work is focused on the immediate response to COVID. But we're still very optimistic in how we're seeing engagement across all our customers. So that brings me to the end of Alcidion's updates on the achievements and where we're at, at the end of the first quarter and 30th of September. And happy to hand back to Amy now for the questions.

[Amy Miller]

Thank you, Kate. So we'll now move into the Q&A portion of the webinar. Our first question is referring to the ADF contract. You mentioned this is scheduled to be finalized before the end of the year. How confident are you of that occurring? And is there anything else you can tell us about the progress of that contract?

[Kate Quirke, MD, CEO & Executive Director]

Thanks, Amy. Look, as I mentioned just earlier and as we announced in April, we are part of that consortium that's been selected as the preferred provider for what's known as a health management solution for the ADF. And work continues to progress on this in line with our expectations. At this stage, we believe it's still on track for signing prior to calendar year-end. Due to the nature though of the agreement with the consortium, I'm really not in a position to provide any further detail beyond saying that it is on track.

[Amy Miller]

Thanks, Kate. How are you seeing your pipeline? And can you provide any further color around the types of deals entering the contract negotiation stage?

[Kate Quirke, MD, CEO & Executive Director]

Thanks for that. And I have mentioned a little bit about this during the presentation. The pipeline has continued to mature. And as is usually the case, we see new opportunities develop and maturing during the first half of the financial year and move into contract finalization towards Christmas and into the second half. This is normal for the cyclical nature of dealing with government health care entities and has been the case in the 20-plus years or so that I've been engaging with health care IT. It's a very similar pattern. We are seeing opportunities to further develop in the U.K. and Australia, and these opportunities will continue through their processes in the coming months. I'm pleased with the quality of the pipeline. And I'm really pleased in the growing interest that I'm seeing from the market in what we are bringing, understanding that we're bringing new and innovative technology to health care that's designed to treat -- to address some of the issues now, but also very much focused on the future and particularly the availability via cloud deployment. We are seeing increasing focus on new solutions required to be cloud-native and able to be deployed in the cloud. And so these are things that we're seeing the customers increasingly grow and growing their interest in. I think in particular, we're seeing increased investment in technology to help address the issue with the waiting list. And you're going to hear that, I think, across all health care sectors for some years to come. The backlog is significant. So any technology that can help with patient flow, increasing efficiency of care that's come about as a result of the backlog from the pandemic, funds are being directed into these areas, and Alcidion is very well placed in this respect to this. We have one of the best patient closed-loop solutions on the market. And I think we'll continue to see opportunities for that over the coming months.

[Amy Miller]

Great. Thanks, Kate. Have you looked at expanding into any other geographies such as Europe?

[Kate Quirke, MD, CEO & Executive Director]

Well, look, we continue to consider and move into new geographical regions. We did put that on hold during the pandemic, as I've said before. And to be honest, we really did decide that we had such a significant opportunity in our current markets so we're best to focus on that in the near term whilst there is a lot of impact from the pandemic worldwide. And I think as the world opens up in 2022, we'll start to look at these opportunities again and identify the high priority areas for us. But I would say FY '22 is very much focused on the opportunities that we have in our existing markets.

[Amy Miller]

Thank you. It was announced yesterday that the NHS will receive an extra GBP 5.9 billion with about 30% allocated to spending on improving IT and digital technology. Do you see this helping accelerate some of the conversations you are having?

[Kate Quirke, MD, CEO & Executive Director]

Look, I certainly expect it to, and I was happy to see that announcement. For those of you who are not aware yet, the U.K. budget is handed down on Wednesday their time. But as we often see now, some of these announcements are made ahead of the budget being officially released. And of particular interest to us was a very significant capital investment into the NHS, of which $2.1 billion is being targeted at digital initiatives. And very much, we see this will boost the funds that was -- has already been announced to ease the winter pressures, as they call it, in the U.K., which were directed at sort of patient flow opportunities. And I think what's pleasing for us is the U.K. have seen really good results from the deployment of health care information technology during the pandemic. It's well documented. And when you read the release, you can see that they're referring to wanting to maintain the momentum and to continue to invest because they say that's the way in which they're really going to transform the need to provide more care from -- to patients in England obviously. So they're clearly convinced of the value of further investment, and they're putting their money to it. So this is a good move forward for us, a very positive one for Alcidion, of course. Our team in the U.K. will continue to engage with NHSX and with the trust on how our solutions are going to be best placed to see them address the current issues they have.

[Amy Miller]

Thanks, Kate. Are platforms from diagnostic companies potentially good channel partners in your markets?

[Kate Quirke, MD, CEO & Executive Director]

Look, at this stage, we're not focused on using diagnostic companies as a channel partner per se. I mean as a data platform, we take results from a multitude of systems and obviously, diagnostic solutions, pathology solutions and so forth. And we bring that all into our platform. And our ability to accept these independent of the solution is a key strength to what we provide. So for us, if we were to go down the channel partner sales model, it would be more likely to be with consulting firms or IT services firms or companies that want an independent platform to support the work that they're doing around health care data. So there are a lot of great diagnostic solutions out there, and we'll happily partner with them in terms of creating a longitudinal record of all of the health care data for a patient, but we're not sure they'd be an ideal sales channel partner at this stage.

[Amy Miller]

Thanks, Kate. Broker consensus has revenue for FY '22 at around $36 million. Are you comfortable with that figure?

[Kate Quirke, MD, CEO & Executive Director]

Look, we're continuing to see strong opportunity in our organic growth. So yes, I'm comfortable with that sort of consensus revenue figure. Of course, as I said earlier, we need to be mindful of the possible impact of COVID slowing down decision-making in Australia. It's not -- I'm not seeing a lack of opportunities by any stretch of the imagination, but we obviously need to be mindful of being able to get those contracts through the system as fast as we would like to see. The U.K. seems to be getting on with it, which is deploying what is needed to improve health care. So I'm optimistic we'll see continued growth across all our territories as this year unfolds.

[Amy Miller]

All right. Thank you. That brings us to the conclusion of the Q&A session. I will now hand it back to Alcidion Managing Director, Kate Quirke for closing remarks.

[Kate Quirke, MD, CEO & Executive Director]

Thanks very much, Amy. And once again, I'd like to thank all of our shareholders for their continuing interest and support of Alcidion. As I've indicated here, Q1, as I said earlier, is generally one of the slower quarters that we have in terms of how it represents into results. But the truth is in terms of what's happening from our sales pipeline and engagement with Alcidion as a solution that the health care market is interested in, I'm very pleased with our progress, and look forward to keeping all shareholders updated as the year progresses. Thank you for your time today.