Alliance Pharma PLC
LSE:APH
Earnings Call Analysis
Summary
Q2-2023
Alliance began 2023 on solid ground despite lower Kelo-cote sales in China with their distributor scaling down inventory. Revenue still grew, buoyed by Nizoral's strength in new Chinese channels and Amberen's e-commerce pivot. Out-of-stocks due to regulatory transitions and manufacturing delays impacted sales of other brands like Aloclair and Optiflow. After addressing these issues, Alliance remains optimistic about their sustainability and portfolio growth, driven by marketing campaigns and line extensions for key brands. As a result, Alliance is set to continue its trend of impressive growth, with Kelo-cote franchise revenue expected to hit GBP 60 million in 2023, upholding their year-end guidance with increased certainty over orders.
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Okay. Good morning, everybody. And a very warm welcome to our 2023 interim results presentation. My name is Pete Butterfield. I'm the CEO of Alliance, and I'm pleased to be joined by Andrew Franklin, our CFO, as always; and Jeyan Heper as well. And as you may remember, Jeyan joined Alliance in February as Chief Operating Officer.
He has over 25 years' experience gained in international consumer health care businesses. So, today, you'll hear a lot more about the growth plans and the key drivers behind our main brands from him later in the presentation.
So today, I'll cover the business performance for the first 6 months of the year. I'll then hand to Jeyan to talk you through our key brands and their performance. Finally, Andrew will go through the financial detail of the first 6 months, concluding with a summary and outlook for this year. And after that, we'll be happy to take any questions, both in the room and I think online as well.
Okay. You should be quite familiar with our headline results following the publication of our trading update in July. So I won't dwell on too much detail here. We've had a solid start to the year. I'm pleased that we continue to deliver revenue growth despite relatively little sales of Kelo-cote in China as our distributor reduced their inventory holding in line with the level we indicated to you at the end of last year. And Jeyan will cover this in more detail as the presentation moves on.
Nizoral sales were strong. As the new Chinese distributor we signed last year, accesses new channels for the brand and also with weaker comparatives in the prior year due to order phasing. Amberen still not quite where we want it to be. But we commence -- we're continuing to pivot our business to lean into the strong growth in e-commerce. And whilst revenues declined in H1, if you look at like-for-like, sales grew in quarter 2, and we have the first of many product launches planned for October. And again, Jeyan will walk you through this later in the presentation.
We were also held back a little bit in the first half by some out of stocks on the rest of the portfolio in Europe. Other consumer brands declined 12% and but this is largely due to the fact that 2 of our most important products, Aloclair and Optiflow, were out of stock for most of the period, following delays to the registration process, arising from the transition to the new medical device regulations.
And a number of smaller prescription medicine suffered manufacturing delays, whilst our partner CMOs and API suppliers responded to quality audit findings. Adjusting for these, the base Consumer business would have grown at 7%, which is at the upper end of our estimated range for the wider consumer health care market globally, and the underlying Prescription business would have grown 4%. And I'm pleased to say that these issues are now resolved with all products in stock for the second half of the year.
The financial results only tell part of the story. So during the period, we also worked hard to ensure the business remains well positioned to deliver sustainable growth for the long term. We continue to invest in marketing support for our key brands and launched a very successful U.K. campaign, which some of you may have seen for Kelo-cote and a TV campaign for MacuShield in its home market in Ireland.
We've also widened the reach of our consumer activation campaigns for Nizoral in the APAC region now that we have that brand fully under our control. One of the more recent developments in Alliance is the creation of our own in-house innovation and development team with the new product launches being vital to the longevity of the brand in their marketplaces.
I'm really excited that our innovation and development pipeline is really beginning to deliver. Our first launch was Kelo-cote Kids in 2022 and this year, we launched Kelo-cote scar sheets in China as well as ScarAway fabric sheets back into the U.S. and also [ cancorrect ] in the U.S., the latter of which is on track to deliver over $1 million of sales in its first 12 months.
At Alliance, people have always been fundamental to our success. We continue to invest in our team, creating new roles to meet the evolving needs of the business and nurturing talent through our graduate and year-end industry programs. You'll note that we've also strengthened our executive team and Board through the appointment of Jeyan and also the recruitment of Martin Sutherland as an independent nonexecutive director.
We've also successfully rolled out our ERP system to the APAC region, another important step in preparing our platform for further growth. Turning to the financials. I'm pleased with the progress that we've made to generate cash in the period with over GBP 17 million worth of cash from trading in half 1, despite higher interest payments.
This cash allowed us to reduce our net debt by GBP 7.5 million and Andrew will cover this in more detail, and we'll also update you on the refinancing of our revolving credit facility, which was completed as planned in the period, ahead of the expiration of our previous facility in July 2024.
We also continue to make good progress on our sustainability journey. This year, we published our first full TCFD report, which you can find in the Sustainability section of our website. We achieved carbon neutrality for Scope 1 and 2 emissions for 2022 through the purchase of offsets. And by January, we'll have reduced our carbon emissions even further through significant investment into installing photovoltaic panels on the roof of our U.K. headquarters in Chippenham.
We've progressed our social and governance strategies, partnering with the Slave Free Alliance to ensure our values extend through our supply chain. We secured greater compliance with our partner code of conduct and are on track to ensure 100% of our contract manufacturing organizations, signed their commitment to the code by the end of this year.
Finally, we've introduced an employee code of conduct and implemented an independent reporting help line to allow colleagues and external partners to raise concerns anonymously as part of our speak-up policy. All of these available to review on our website. So I think you'll agree, we've had quite a busy first 6 months within the business.
And before I hand over to Jeyan to talk you through the performance of our key brands, I thought it would be useful to remind you of the strong progression of our business. Over the last 6 years, we have transitioned to a leading consumer health care business, supporting the growth in Kelo-cote, whilst adding new brands such as Nizoral and Amberen, to internationalize the business and selectively discontinuing some of the smaller assets as part of our ongoing portfolio optimization.
And whilst COVID presented a few challenges, the breadth of our portfolio meant that we could weather the storm, and we've successfully delivered 11% compound annual revenue growth in the period. We'll continue to lean into our strengths, developing range extensions through our in-house innovation and development team and developing effective marketing campaigns to drive further growth in our brands.
And our U.S. business has been a key part of this strategy, building our exposures to the world's largest consumer health care market. This business has grown from just over GBP 5 million worth of sales in 2018 following the acquisition of Vamousse, which many of you will remember, to over GBP 25 million in 2022. And with further growth anticipated in 2023, this will be close to GBP 30 million very soon.
We're on a journey to pivot this business away from its original bricks-and-mortar focus, the main channel for Vamousse to greater e-commerce focus as we support Amberen and ScarAway and introduce further range extensions. We're working with marketing partners as well as recruiting in-house experts in e-commerce to ensure that we're well equipped to deliver our strategy. And with that, it's probably a good time to hand over to Jeyan to talk you through the 3 key brands in our portfolio in more detail. Jeyan, good morning.
Thanks, Pete. Good morning. Today, I'm going to take you through each of our key brands, detailing the current market value, growth and alliance market share. Then I will walk you through the levers that we are pulling to drive future growth.
Starting with Kelo-cote, the global scar treatment market. This is around -- this is worth around GBP 400 million and ex factory sales and it's growing. The acquisition of ScarAway and the U.S. rights to Kelo-cote completed our global footprint and we are now the leading brands in this segment with share around 15%. This is an extremely fragmented market, and we are delivering growth.
Outside China, the Sky treatment market is less developed. So this year, we have leveraged our global platform to create marketing assets that can be used in multiple territories in order to raise consumer awareness of scar treatment category as well as to promote Kelo-cote. We have launched a number of line extensions such as kids formulation and scar sheets to drive organic growth and have further products in our pipeline in the coming years.
I'm particularly pleased that we have extended our distribution agreement with our cross-border partner in China, which gives us confidence to reiterate our guidance of over 20% growth for the whole Kelo-cote franchise in 2023 versus '22.
This slide shows the progress we have made over the last 5 years. Remember, when we acquired Kelo-cote from Sinclair in 2015, the franchise had around GBP 8 million revenues. We have delivered consistent franchise revenue growth since then, and we are on track to deliver GBP 60 million of revenues in 2023.
You will note strong growth in other territories as we leverage our global position and increase consumer awareness. U.S. sales benefits from the full 12 months of ScarAway versus only 9 months in 2022 and we continue to deliver strong growth in the domestic market in China as our distributor accesses new channels.
In the China cross-border channel, we anticipate further expansion of the business-to-consumer channel as our distributor deepens its relationship with the major platforms and our flagship online store builds momentum. The business-to-business channel is the most exposed to distributor destocking we referenced last year.
It is also the market with least visibility and accurate market data as large proportion of it is traded through offline or physical retail stores, which were closed during the COVID lockdowns of 2022 and are now open again. These markets also tend to attract a higher proportion of counter feed products than online channels. Our strategy is to prioritize our efforts and resources on the e-commerce channels, which are more strictly regulated and through which we have much great control, whilst optimizing our presence in the physical markets and maintaining brand protection efforts here.
As I mentioned earlier, consumer activation campaigns and effective marketing are essential tools to deliver our growth strategy for Kelo-cote. We see huge potential to build brand penetration and we use our early campaigns to build our knowledge as we track return on marketing spend to optimize each of these campaigns.
I just wanted to share some images from our U.K. campaign for Kelo-cote. I hope many of you have seen the outdoor campaign in the tube and some shopping centers in the first quarter of the year. The images on the right are stills from our TV campaign that's followed in July and August. The campaign was really successful, driving 70% growth in e-commerce point of sales revenue at Boots and 40% growth on Amazon.
I am particularly pleased that the London outdoor campaign was recently declared the best digital brand promotion by the pharmaceutical marketing society. The positive results of this campaign give us confidence to roll out similar campaigns in other territories in the future.
I would now like to drill a little deeper into some of our key territories of Kelo-cote. Starting with China. Firstly, the domestic markets, where we have a dedicated Chinese distributor and a packaging with Mandarin characters. The e-commerce part of this market generated total revenues of around GBP 100 million in the year to end July, which is the most recent data we have.
Kelo-cote is the market leader with 23% share, up 5 percentage points on the same period in the prior year. We are seeing the market consolidate with smaller players losing share to major brands. Yet still, some 56% of the market is compromised of other brands which allows us plenty of opportunities to grow market share further.
The kids formulation has been a really important contributor to growth and has helped to expand our market share rather than cannibalize existing franchise. We estimate that the market growth has increased by about 1 percentage point in 2022 due to kids launch. You can see from the chart on the bottom right that the Kelo-cote now has 66% share of the kids scar treatment market only after 12 months. We expect to drive further growth by leaning into e-commerce opportunities supported by new product innovations.
Chinese cross-border -- turning to cross-border. The latest data shows that the e-commerce sales in cross-border totaled nearly GBP 25 million in the year to end July. Again, Kelo-cote has a market-leading position with 52% share, an increase of 3 percentage points versus the same period last year, taking share from dermatic and other brands.
As I mentioned earlier, we are seeing strong growth in business-to-consumer channel. Our flagship online store delivered over 50% increase in revenues in the year to end August versus the same period in the previous year. We have worked closely with Alibaba to optimize marketing keywords and implement learnings from the recent June 18 festival, in which allowed us to be in a stronger position to deliver revenue growth during the Singles Day festival in November.
We have optimized our content across all cross-border e-commerce platforms to increase our in-store conversion rate. Having extended the range with the launch of scar sheets in May, we are now able to offer product bundled deals. We are delighted that Kelo-cote is the leading brand in scar treatment category on Tmall platform.
In the business-to-business channel, our distributor has invested into its capabilities beyond the existing platforms of Alibaba, JD, Pinduoduo. We expect incremental sales as we increase our presence with Hong Kong traders.
Moving to the U.S. We are delighted with the progress we have made with our recent acquisition. The U.S. market is the second largest for scar treatment globally and is worth some USD 90 million in end user sales. And ScarAway is commanding a 27% market share, the second biggest brand behind Medarma.
When we acquired ScarAway in early 2022, the product range was nearly 50% out of stock at retailers, a position we were aware -- we were aware of, but we knew we had the capabilities to fix. We integrated the business in just 4 months and expanded distribution in 2023 with the relaunch of the fabric reusable sheets that Perrigo had discontinued. We have added a number of SKUs to enhance our product range, modernize the packaging, and we expect 2023 sales to grow further. In 2024, we expect to launch in Canada and we have a number of -- a number range of extensions coming in our innovation and development pipeline.
Turning to Amberen. The U.S. market for menopause relief product is valued around $200 million. The market is pivoting rapidly from bricks and mortar to e-commerce channels. So while bricks-and-mortar channel is declining, the category as a whole is growing. And as the chart on the right demonstrates, you see that e-commerce has generated quite significant growth.
At the end of H1 '23, the bricks and mortar channel represented only 25% of the market by value. We have already explained that Amberen sales are more weighted to bricks-and-mortar channel. However, we have focused our marketing efforts on e-commerce, which now represents 42% of our H1 revenues, up from 34% in fiscal year '22. Amberen has 21% market share in bricks and mortar and 7% share on Amazon, which accounts for the majority of e-commerce channels of the category.
However, we need to remember that this is a rapidly evolving market online territory, and it is still not well defined by various market data suppliers. We continue to see a proliferation of new entrants with limited regulatory oversight of claim sets. You will see in the Amazon market share chart on the bottom left that the better body currently commenced 50% share in the market.
This is a premium priced product primarily for weight loss rather than a complete treatment for multiple symptoms of the menopause like Amberen. This illustrates why our consumer education campaigns are so important to build the market and the brand. We faced a number of industry-wide challenges with Amazon this year. The platform changed the way it's built its warehouse space and changed the way it compared the price of its products in order to allocate all important buybacks.
This caused a temporary spike in the warehouse cost and restricted our sales for a period of time. However, we have worked with our marketing partners to address these issues, including adding access to an internal Amazon service expert, who works with us weekly to escalate issues to Amazon. This helps us to ensure that we are well placed to identify any future challenges that are on our way.
We continue to believe in the long-term growth of the menopause category, and our strategy is unchanged. We are leaning into e-commerce opportunity, focusing on advertising investment on digital, video, social media and search engine optimization. We also have our own direct-to-consumer website, amberen.com, and we have refreshed this to optimize the consumer experience. Rather like our marketing campaigns for Kelo-cote, we continue to refine our online sales campaigns for Amberen to ensure marketing efficiency.
Secondly, we will stabilize the bricks and mortar sales through the prioritization of key retail accounts through leveraging innovation and through doubling down on our key points of differentiation versus the competition on shelf. Thirdly, we will increase brand awareness through effective campaigns, which highlight the benefit of using Amberen and its product superiority.
Finally, we will use our innovation to attract new brand users and increase penetration with our existing users. I am really excited to share with you the news on the latest product launch, a unique gummy formulation of Amberen for menopause relief. This was the result of many months of proprietary hard work by our innovation and development team, and this is the first coming to market in this category.
The gummy segment for vitamin and mineral supplements has been has seen significant growth in recent years and now the single largest format in the market, representing over 21% of the total sales. The packaging, which you can see here on the right, features the same strong differentiated and compelling claims as the recently updated packaging for the tablets, which we showed to you earlier in the March presentation.
We highlight that the product is clinically proven, that it relieves 12 symptoms of menopause and delivers 91% reduction in hot flushes. We have had really positive feedback from consumers in our pilot test and many retailers have already expressed interest in carrying this product online and offline. However, we are adapting a digital-first approach launching on Amazon and on amberen.com in October before rolling it to a bricks and mortar in 2024. But the innovation doesn't stop here. And we have further products in the pipeline, and I look forward to sharing these details with you in the future presentations.
Turning to Nizoral or Triatop in China. We are really excited about the increased potential for this brand that now that it is under our full control in APAC region. Nizoral is a treatment for severe dandruff, which affects around 3% of the population around the world. And it's creating a market worth of some $300 million and it's growing at 4% and estimated to accelerate further to 6% from 2025.
Nizoral currently holds a leadership position in 4 markets: Australia, South Korea, Thailand and Japan and is the second largest brand in China behind [ Quanguan ]. We see significant opportunity to grow the brands by expanding the reach to younger generation through consumer activation and specific focus on this demographic through appropriate channel mix, partnering with local distributors and agencies to tailor the execution by country.
We have also introduced more modernized packaging in 2023, featuring a stronger claim set. And again, it is designed to attract younger generation. We recently relaunched a shampoo sachet in China. This is an important SKU for us because it provides the opportunity to sample and attract new users and to support promotions on e-commerce platforms.
We recently also see further opportunities and brand expansion into adjacent markets and we have a number of innovation products in our pipeline. We will provide more detail when we bring these products in the market. This slide shows us our updated modernized packaging. The all designs only detail the indication for the product, whereas the new pack calls out that the product is clinically proven and it reduces reoccurrences, for example.
The images are on this slide come from our marketing campaigns. On the left is the South Korean campaign, which we shared with you at the preliminary results. We use the learnings from this campaign to support our latest activation in China, targeting 7 key cities.
In summary, today, I took you through our key brands and our strategic focus areas. So with that, I will hand you to Andrew to go further detail of our financial performance for the first 6 months of the year. Thank you.
Thanks so much, Jeyan, and good morning. The group delivered set revenues of GBP 82.4 million, up 1% versus the prior period and 2% lower at a constant exchange rate. Changes in revenue mix and increased warehouse and distribution costs resulted in a lower gross margin of 56.8% leading to a 7% reduction in gross profit to GBP 47 million.
We continued our investment in the business in the first half, improving our operating capabilities and marketing effectiveness whilst maintaining good cost control. OpEx in the first 6 months was broadly in line with that of the first half of last year at GBP 28 million. However, due to the lower gross margin, underlying EBITDA decreased 17% in the first half to GBP 18 million but still represents a healthy 22% of sales.
Similar to other companies, our interest rate was higher versus last year. And together with increased net financing costs, we delivered -- we delivered underlying profit before tax of GBP 10.3 million and an underlying earnings per share of 1.58p.
As part of a wide holder -- a wider stakeholder engagement, the Board met with a number of shareholders to understand their views on dividends. And in response to their feedback, we have decided to pause the interim dividend whilst we consider a new dividend policy. It is our intention to continue to pay dividends and further details will be provided in our preliminary statement in March next year.
Revenues from Kelo-cote grew 12% or 6% at constant exchange rates at GBP 25.6 million. And adjusting for ScarAway and currency tailwinds, like-for-like revenues for Kelo-cote franchise declined 4%, mainly due to the destocking by our cross-border distributor partner in China. And we -- but we anticipate strong growth in the second half and remain on track to deliver over 20% revenue growth for Kelo-cote this year.
In the first 6 months, Amberen's revenues were down GBP 1.7 million -- down GBP 1.7 million to GBP 5.9 million. However, revenues declined 4% when we adjust for the loss of the leading discount store last year. But importantly, Amberen returned to growth in the second quarter on the same like-for-like basis. As Peter has already mentioned, Amberen isn't quite where we wanted and we now expect low single-digit revenue growth on a like-for-like basis this year.
Nizoral revenues grew strongly, rising 41% at constant exchange rates at over GBP 11 million reflecting both market share and distribution gains. The timing of orders in the prior period. Our new Chinese distributors created strong growth opportunities, and we expect to deliver high single-digit revenue growth this year on a constant currency basis.
The performance in other consumer health care and prescription medicines category was hampered due to specific regulatory challenges, which we've now overcome. This slide shows 2 charts cross-walking both revenue and profit before tax. And if you take the left-hand chart first, the first 3 bars show the movement in Kelo-cote, including the destocking at our Chinese cross-border distributor. And then moving across the chart, we show the impacts on sales due to regulatory challenges of GBP 5.3 million. And the currency tailwind of GBP 2.2 million, benefiting the first half this year, resulting in revenues of GBP 82.4 million at the end of June.
The chart on the right-hand slide shows the key movements in profit before tax with a lower gross profit due to sales mix and higher warehouse and distribution costs. The tight control on costs mentioned earlier and the increase in net finance cost of GBP 5.9 million, which includes higher borrowing costs of GBP 2.6 million and net finance losses of GBP 3.3 million versus the prior period, which delivers a total of GBP 10.3 million profit before tax.
Cash flow from trading was good at over GBP 17 million for the first half. And despite higher interest payments in the period, free cash flow was significantly higher at GBP 11 million in the first 6 months, up GBP 6 million on last year. This cash flow allowed us to reduce our net debt by GBP 7.5 million to GBP 94.5 million. And due to the timing of EBITDA generation, our leverage marginally increased to 2.7x.
We expect revenues, including the Kelo-cote franchise to build throughout the second half and we will drive strong gross profit improvement and EBITDA expansion. Net debt and group leverage are both expected to fall in the second half, reflecting the group's strong cash generation and leverage is expected to be below 2x by the end of this year.
And in August, we completed the refinancing of our revolving credit facilities expected with our existing bank syndicate. Also, we have updated technical guidance, and this is detailed in the appendix. The main change is an increase in our anticipated net finance costs following interest rate rises and a slightly lower effective tax rate. We now anticipate net financing costs in the region of GBP 9 million to GBP 10 million, an ETR of circa GBP 22 million for this year. And with that, I'll hand back to Pete for a summary and outlook. Pete?
Thank you, Andrew, and thank you, Jeyan. So as I said, it was a busy first 6 months with the business progressing well on many fronts. I'm pleased to say that we remain on track to deliver 2023 expectations and strong growth in the second half of the year. Revenues will reflect a slightly different mix than we anticipated at the start of the year, but that's one of the benefits of having a portfolio.
The manufacturing issues have been addressed, and we're on track to deliver leverage below 2x before the end of the year. Before we close for questions, I also wanted to just touch on the CMA case. So our appeal was heard at the Competition Appeal Tribunal from July through to August this year and our involvement in that appeal process has now concluded. We await the verdict but have no influence on the timing of this, nor do we wish to speculate here on the outcome.
But in summary, we have some great brands. We've continued to invest in the business, and we now have a stronger team in place with management solely focused on building this business for the long term. Thank you for listening today and for coming along in person. And with that, I think we'll open up for some questions. Andrew? Good morning.
It's Andrew Whitney from Investec. Just 3 questions, if I may. Are you able just to talk through the gummy innovation in Amberen? It sounds like there's quite a lot of optimism around that. Is that gummy -- sort of the formulation, is that tested in this -- I guess it's a demographic that is it a familiar piece in that demographic and how that plays out?
So I think behind your question, you might think in the U.K., gummies are more of the sort of pediatric or child format. That is not the case in the U.S. So they are the preferred method of delivery in the VMS category and the fastest growing right now. So if you go into the States, you'll see a lot of formulations in a gumming format, you'll start to see that coming through Europe as well. That development is one that we've developed as a proprietary development. So we've got all the ingredients of Amberen into a gummy formulation that also tastes really good and is acceptable.
So within that demographic, we've also tested that with consumers of the right demographic, as you would expect, and it's gone down very, very well indeed. So yes, we're optimistic about the brand. I think it's the right development for that brand. But as Jeyan said, that's not where the development stops. We've got some quite exciting stuff coming along in that product range.
And then I know you referred to Amberen, Nizoral and Kelo-cote as key brands. I noticed there was a bit of new marketing in MacuShield, I think, related to Ireland. How should we think about MacuShield going forward?
Yes, still a core brand for us. So we have 3 larger brands that we focus on, got a lovely set of consumer brands that work well quite locally. In terms of the MacuShield campaign, Jeyan, is there more you want to say on that and our thoughts about MacuShield moving forward?
So we had the MacuShield campaign in Ireland, which is the home for MacuShield, and it's responded quite well to ourselves. And we are experimenting also in which markets we have assets where we can develop further and how we can expand and return of investment is key for us to -- not to spread our limited resources too thin. So we look in each case where we can get the best return of investment and MacuShield Ireland was one of that. We also have quite good MacuShield in other territories in Europe as well, and we are looking into ways how we can leverage that campaign further.
And then just a final 1 on gross margin, I guess, for Andrew, it was I think you said 56.8% for the half. We're expecting 20% Kelo-cote growth year-on-year. So the second half is going to be very strong gross margin. And then are we thinking gross margin at a group level can progress from where we get to at the end of the year, it just orally ticks up. Is that the right way to think?
I would think at this point, the end of this year, gross margin keep it sort of in that same level going forward.
It's Charles Weston from RBC. Two on Kelo-cote and China, please. First of all, on the cross-border side, you talk about a new relationship or a change relationship with the distributor giving you greater visibility. Can you just touch on how much visibility you have in that channel for the second half, please?
So we have to change visibility. We have a continuation of our current relationship. So we have our cross-border e-commerce partner in place, and we are extending our partnership with that. which allows us to also see more visibility on how they go. They are aiming to invest into this category, especially in B2B to reach new markets and open new markets for us. So as you know, China has a very complex structure. Cross-border has a very complex structure of B2C and B2B. And the B2B part is modern traders. day good traders, also some pharmacies, online pharmacies as well as offline beauty retailers. So their aim is to go and build their presence in wider network of markets and we are supporting them in that journey.
And on the B2C side, which is the business to consumer, we have great data coming through from our partner on that side of things. So that's very well defined, and we have very good sales data from all the key platforms that we're working on.
And just to clarify on that one. The inventory was a little bit higher than you thought it would be at your distributor but it's sort of in line with where it was as a normal inventory level before. Have you got any indication that that's going to trickle down a little bit more or whether we're going to just sort of steer steady i.e. orders come through regularly?
Sure. I mean, as we communicated in March, our distributor aim to have 3 to 4 months of stock in the market, which they believed was the right level. And we reached that level, but they also saw that it was not a very sustainable way to move forward. The brand is growing. Some SKUs were performing quite well. And it is coming to a point that if you are out of stock in this market, you lose opportunities, you create a gap.
So how can we prevent that? That was also the thinking of the right way of moving forward. So we think 6 to 8 months of stock is quite comfortable way of operating in China. Given the market dynamic, current issues that we see on supply chain all around the world. I mean there is a hurricane in one part of the region. It impacts the delivery of products in the other, so anticipating all this and also in line with our ESG policy, which we want to focus more on sea freight compared to airfreight, that takes longer, and it requires a bit of more stock built.
Our distributor is comfortable with that level, and we monitor how we perform each month on those metrics and then take action accordingly.
Okay. Second question on the China domestic market. It's been a massive growth driver for you. What's the underlying market growth versus the consolidation? And do you think consolidation will happen -- will continue to happen even further?
Of course, I mean, it's a lot of opportunity there, especially on the e-commerce platform. E-commerce is delivering majority of the sales in domestic China. And there, we are a market leader with 23% share. So if you compare our presence in cross-border where we have 52%, we believe there is more room in domestic China for us to grow. And that can be done with consolidating all our efforts on e-commerce, brand building, brand awareness, penetration, extension of our product line.
We mentioned about kids, how it brings incremental volume to us. So there is so much there. And then the brand portfolio is fragmented there. So there are a lot of brands in China, 56% opportunity to grab in that area. So we believe further consolidation will take place. And we, as the market leader with the right innovation, investment and focus, believe we can generate more market share growth.
Last question, please. On Amberen, you showed a chart showing that the market growth has been -- I mean my brief math was almost 50% last year in the category as a whole. What's driven such a massive growth there?
So since 2020, we saw quite a big significant focus on health and supplement market. That's probably triggered by the COVID period. Consumers are more aware of health and trends around it, and they were looking for online solutions for that. And that resulted in categories like menopause relief symptoms grow significantly. They come to Internet to look for options and then they look for brands and then we said that this proliferation of brands, some with spurious claims consumers find, they try, they're not happy. They keep finding. So for us, it's extremely important to have the education platform in place. Tell consumers why they are going through this journey, how they are feeling the changes in their body and what we can offer to them to make their life better.
I think, Charles, as we've seen, as Jeyan says, a lot of digital-first brands come in burn quite brightly and then maybe not have the longevity. So it's a very, very busy space. The category is also really ill defined when you look at the data set. So we've got the best we can get through Amazon and through our in-store data on what that universe looks like. Every so often, there will be a brand that falls into that category that perhaps has got a claim weight loss, which is one -- weight gain or anti weight gain, which is one symptom of menopause rather than the complete set, and that falls into the category, and that's what's driven you'll see quite a large uptick in that.
So without giving too much of all the answer, it depends on the data that we're looking at. We have great data in bricks and mortar. That's our -- the only channel that we work on. We've got great visibility in there, and we're absolutely holding our own in bricks and mortar where the market has moved to is definitely online. So I think we just got to be careful with the comps. We give the best picture that we possibly can, but undoubtedly, we need to work hard to get our online offering absolutely right. And we hope that gummies will be the first part of that. It's about education around the menopause as a whole and the relief that Amberen can give as one supplement. And yes, we think we're starting to get that right, which is great.
Paul Cuddon from Numis. I mean just focusing a little bit more on the decline on the B2B side and in China for Kelo-cote, to what extent that could come back? Or could they go for different brands that may then in turn kind of increased competition for your domestic and e-commerce?
Yes. Jeyan, do you want to take that -- on the B2B side for cross-border?
We don't see much of a cannibalization between cross-border and domestic. They have to complete different set of consumer's needs, price points and different search coming from that. So there was during COVID some form of cannibalization because the market was closed for a period of time. But now that restriction is gone. We see that both domestic and cross-border continue to grow strongly, and they have their own focus areas to build this business.
And just adding to that, what we need to make sure is we've got to get the B2B side right because it's an ecosystem in China. So you've got to make sure that your brand protection. We've done a great job online in terms of our brand protection efforts. And now we're focusing very much on that B2B part of the market.
Okay. And then secondly, on the U.S., with the problems you've had with the Amazon algorithms and to what extent you can use those learnings across the entire U.S. portfolio to improve your e-commerce performance.
Definitely. I mean that's why we have appointed also support that helps us to connect better with Amazon. We are working with our marketing partners to anticipate those kind of things. When we have that algorithm issue unfairly penalized Amberen in that period, we immediately went back. So those issues lasted in the first half of the year between February and May. And now we are back and then there are other issues that are coming, but now our response rate is much faster. And we are maybe well prepared to tackle these issues in the marketplace. But it's a very complex business, and a lot of key players in the market are also having struggles in how they move with Amazon and how they build their business. We just want to learn as we go as fast as possible.
It's Sam, not Paul, from Berenberg. First question around the dividend. I just wondered whether pausing the dividend was partly the result of the desire to get the leverage down and get back to doing M&A at some point? Or are there some obvious internal investment opportunities that you see that you need the capital for? Or is it a bit of both?
A bit of both. I think we -- if you look at our AGM results, we had a significant vote against our dividend policy as it stood. I think it was about 37%, 35%. So that's quite a high number of shareholders expressing their desire for a bit of a change there. So I think it would be remiss of the Board not to take that into account and we've done quite a lot of shareholder outreach in the last 3 months or so.
So I think, as Andrew said, we do still intend to pay dividends but also our leverage is high at the moment. We want to get that down as quickly as we possibly can. We also want to reinvest in the business. I think you're starting to see the IND pipeline, delivering new product development. We feel we've got a lot of white space with these brands. If you look at the size of the marketplace as well. So we are investing for growth as well. So we've listened really carefully to our shareholder base. We take that into account and we'll be bringing out a new strategy for dividends and announcing that in March, I think, next year. So we're working hard on that. So I think that it's -- to answer your question, it's a little bit of both and taking into account the shareholder feedback.
Okay. Great. And just on the internal investment point, I just wondered how much more investment needs to go in, in the U.S. as you shift to a more e-commerce-led strategy. I think you mentioned some headcount additions strategy.
We've had -- we've built out the team in the U.S. And I think -- if -- and that's happened over this year. We've got the odd headcount that we've added into that. So we now have an in-house Amazon escalation individual that we'll talk to the main platforms. But the headcount is pretty much built out around the brands that we have in that marketplace. I wanted to reiterate today that, that U.S. business is growing very nicely. We've often thought of Amberen in the U.S., and that's all it is. Actually, it's a lot more than that. So we're delighted with the way ScarAway is going. We're delighted with [ Cancorrect's ] coming in and albeit small product now.
That's something we couldn't do that without that platform. So we've been able to really, really build that out quite nicely. It's at the scale we want now. E-commerce does not come for free. So a lot of people sort of think it's quite easy to do that. You need to put a lot of marketing investment in terms of education and moving that forward. So for us, we're at the right sort of scale now, we feel in the U.S. And we've got a good portfolio that we can extract some good growth out of. So we're about right.
Okay. And just one final one around the prescription medicine side of things. Can you just talk about where you are in terms of the recovery from the regulatory use in the first half. And as we look to next year, do we expect that business sort of bounces back and sees stronger growth next year given the declines in the first half? Or do we just think about it as being sort of flattish as it's been historically?
Yes. Good question. So 2 distinct parts of the out stocks. The first one is in our Consumer business. That's predominantly Aloclair, and that was a result of the change to the MDR regulations, the Medical Device Regulations. What has happened in Europe as new regulations have come in, but the notified bodies have not been able to keep up with the work rate of everybody having to applying new registrations in and we've fallen foul of that. And that also happened for Optiflow, which is part of our Prescription Medicines business. So we're back in stock of both of those now, that's starting to flow through, and we will gradually build that up over the second half of this year to get to a run rate by the end of the year, an exit rate that we think is about the same moving forward for next year. So we see those products retain to stock.
It was an unlucky confluence of events. At the same time, we happened to have a couple of audits in our -- one of our CMOs and one of our API suppliers that have meant that we've been out of stock of a couple of the smaller prescription medicines. Those are now resolved. One is back in stock as of this week, I think, one and there will be stock in coming back in, in October, November, and that will happen from time to time in an older Prescription Medicines portfolio that we really do manage very tightly, but sometimes you do get these. And it was just unfortunate that they happened at the same time, all in half 1. So we'll get a gradual ramp-up of the products towards the end of the year. And then in next year, we'll see that run rate hopefully stabilize.
James Orsborne from Stifel. Just a quick one on Kelo-cote and the counterfeiting. Just interested to know, does that remain very sticky? Where are you now? And how kind of much of an issue was it looking back when that was happening last year.
Over the last year, we saw quite some counterfeits, especially in the B2B part where market regulation was not there. As you remember, in 2020 and onwards when the COVID lockdowns happened in China, our brand enforcement agencies, they were focusing on COVID lockdowns. And in that period, there was no raids, there were no arrest, and that was the period where counterfeit went up. As of end December '22, when the market opened again and COVID lockdowns finished, brand protection teams started doing what they were supposed to do, and we saw quite significant reduction on the counterfeit products.
So we communicated in March that counterfeit online went down less than 5%. We did further progress on it, even better numbers. And on the B2B side, we are constantly checking that area because this is off-line markets, beauty parlors and we go, we do raids. We work on those. And in one specific market, a significant one in China, we have done recently quite dedicated brand protection activities and 1/4 of the counterfeit was eliminated in a very short period of time. So this is China, counterfeit unfortunately happens on online platforms that is pretty much regulated and controlled. So we see very small of that coming and going away. Whereas on B2B, we are focusing on further reduction of that.
Great. And just one more on -- you seem to be quite successful in the marketing campaigns you've done. Are we expecting a step change in investment there? Or is that kind of within your current expectations?
Of course, we would like to invest further to our brands, but we need to do it in a way that brings the turn of investment as well. So we are calculating what is the best way to move forward and how it can also help the big picture on our EBITDA leverage debt. So definitely, I mean, for a marketer, if you ask them, yes, we would like to invest. But it needs to be done in the right way. And we are testing with these campaigns what is the right way to move forward.
Edward Thomason from Liberum Capital. I'm just going to ask Andrew, 2 questions quickly. Just technical questions. Firstly, can you give the new facility terms? Have you seen an increase or any material increase in the spread? And then just also why are you spending on innovation developments on an annual basis? You don't detail that out?
No, we don't. The last one we don't, so you're quite right. With regards to the facility itself, it's same 5 banks, and we've -- same total facility of GBP 215 million, of which we've taken a decision to reduce the level of committed revolver from GBP 165 million down to GBP 150 million and increased the accordion by 50% to 65%. So that's what we've done that just because of where we are with our profile. So that's what we felt was right. That facility is a 3-year facility with 2 1-year extensions, which therefore, the facility itself expires in August '26, '27 or '28. So that's we can extend out to those further 2 years.
On the rates, they've gone up a little bit, but actually, they've been pretty -- certainly feel very competitive, but they have increased a little. Yes.
And that's reflected in the upgraded technical guidance?
Yes.
And my second question. Actually goes to -- if you look back last year, where we were at, there was an H2 weighting that was very dependent on Kelo-cote orders. And we are in that similar position this year. So you have confidence then. You have confidence now of meeting the full year expectations. So my question to you is what brings you that confidence? And what's the difference this year versus next year?
I think that's a fair question and we are in a different position at this year. So we have -- with the extension of our cross-border e-commerce agreement. We've got a much better sight of our order book for this year. We've got a much better site of the order book across the business as well, underpinning that, too, whereas last year, we had good intentions, I think, from some of our distributors this year, we've got much, much more firm commitment. So we're in a different position there. And that's why we're confident to stand up here and reiterate guidance for year-end.
Also let's not forget that last year, end of Q4 was COVID lockdown in China. And that was like a period when our cross-border distributor was not able to move products from Hong Kong to Mainland. So they were sitting on a stock, and there was so much uncertainty in the market, that's when they decided not to take any further stock and went into destocking. Move forward to 2023, those lockdowns are eased. Markets are open. All efforts are on brand building and extension of the reach. So we are in a very different way of operating in this year, and it also shows in the results that we are presenting today.
And finally, Ed, as well, just to add to that, we have the reverse of all those outlook stocks coming back in. And that's something -- that was a different position where we -- than where we were last year as well. So that will contribute to growth in the second half of the year. So as I said, we might end up with a slightly different mix than we thought at the beginning of the year, but that's one of the benefits of having a portfolio. Charles?
Just a couple of follow-ups, please. First of all, just you mentioned restocking. And so I guess more on the consumer side specifically. You talked about a trend back up to a more normal run rate by the end of the period. Could you actually see a higher level of restocking, putting product on shelves in the second half?
Okay. I don't think that's contributing massively to -- materially -- you're talking in market?
Yes. I mean you're selling into boots to get that -- to restock the shelves essentially on out-of-stock products.
So only really Aloclair in Consumer Healthcare. So Optiflow was hampered by the same thing, but it was prescription meds, Aloclair is a distribution-led business. So whilst we've been out of stock, not necessarily all our distributors have been out of stock as well. So it's predominantly European business and some Asia Pacific as well. So we've had some distributors that are out, which will need restocking and others that have maintained supply in there. So that really is the situation with Aloclair. So it's not quite the same all around Europe. I'm afraid. All right.
And just lastly on margins. You talked about gross margin and gave some sort of helpful guidance on the midterm, I guess you there. Can you talk about OpEx as well? You talked about plenty of opportunities to reinvest and maybe thinking about changing the dividend policy to do that. But you've also just said you've got the infrastructure in place now in the U.S. I guess, the ERP system investment. So is there opportunity to leverage that? And could we end up eventually at some point back at the sort of level that we saw a few years ago in terms of operating margins?
I certainly think that with the -- as we're pivoting towards the consumer health, we are spending more on the marketing side. But if you look at the actual infrastructure itself, you're right, we've now had 8 offices which covers the globe and there's no need to actually expand in those offices, new locations and with the ERP improvements, which we've just launched out in APAC. China is going next year from a systems viewpoint. We've got that pretty well covered. So again, it will be through the gross margin improvements which will then fall through to then getting an operating leverage on the lower line. So -- but we're very focused on that effectiveness coming through. Do we have any questions online?
So we have 1 question online from Miles Dixon from Peel Hunt. I think you referenced in the RNS that you have eliminated 25% of counterfeit sellers for Kelo-cote in off-line cosmetic markets, but 95% from online. However, you mentioned in the presentation that e-commerce channels is the focus for your brand protection and resource. Is it economically unviable to try and improve on the 25% in off-line?
Jeyan, do you want to?
Sure. So we just need to be very careful with the semantics here. So one off-line distribution channel, we went. We made all the brand protection and there, we reduced 25 -- so 25%. So China is quite big. And there are so many different markets like that, and we keep going on to these markets and expanding our reach and looking for counterfeit presence. So it is important, but you also need to have infrastructure to go and sell products there.
And this is why our cross-border distribution partner is important that they extend their reach into these areas so that we know what is being sold, which percentage is counterfeit, what kind of things we can do on brand protection and how we can open up new markets. And that's where we see the opportunity in China because B2B is still a lot of opportunity and reach for us, for our distributor in China. And each place we go, we will continue working on the brand protection and counterfeit reduction.
Okay. Okay. So reading the room, I think that's probably it for today. Thank you very much for making it here in person. I know it's been a very busy results day today. So we really do appreciate that. Thank you to everybody listening in online and to Jeyan and Andrew for presenting as well today, and thanks to [indiscernible] for hosting. We'll see you all soon. Thank you.