Operator : Good afternoon, and welcome to the EKF Diagnostics Holdings plc investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to Gavin Jones, CEO. Good afternoon, sir.
Gavin Jones : Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. As already said, I am Gavin Jones, CEO at EKF, and I am joined today by Helen Jones, our new CFO. We are pleased to walk you through a solid set of interim results for the first half of 2026, and update you on the progress we are making against our five-year strategy. For anyone newer to the EKF story, we operate across two complementary divisions. Point-of-Care, where we manufacture diagnostic devices and tests that deliver rapid, accurate results right where they are needed at or near the patient. This is distributed through our global partner network, reaching over 120 countries. Our Life Sciences division supplies high-quality reagents, enzymes, and contract manufacturing services that help companies out there bring their own products to market across pharma, biotech, and healthcare. Both divisions are growing, and both sit at the heart of our five-year strategy, which I will come to shortly. Briefly on us, I joined EKF in 2013 and served as chief product officer before stepping into the CEO role in March 2025. So I do bring a real continuity on product regulatory and commercial execution. Helen joined as CFO in April 2026, and I will allow Helen to introduce herself.
Helen Jones : Thank you, Gavin. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Helen, and as Gavin said, I am the CFO of EKF since end of April 2026. Just in terms of, by way of background, I started my 20-year career at PwC, qualified there as a chartered accountant. For the last 10 years I have worked within a number of different AIM listed businesses. I was formerly CFO of AIM listed company, Intelligent Ultrasound, for five years. I am experienced across all areas of financing, including tax, transfer pricing, fundraising, M&A, restructuring. I am excited to bring my skills and knowledge to EKF in leading the finance function and helping Gavin and the team drive forward the five-year strategy.
Gavin Jones : Thanks, Helen. In terms of the agenda, here is how today is going to run. First we will go through the H1 2026 highlights, then an update on our five-year strategy, commercial and operational progress. Helen will then take you through the financial detail, and we will close with a summary before opening up for questions. I will let Helen take the financial element of the 2026 H1 highlights.
Helen Jones : Yeah. Thanks, Gavin. Financially, we delivered a strong first half, and importantly, in line with expectations. Group revenue was broadly flat at GBP 25 million, but the quality of that resilience improved, with gross margin up 2.8%-2.53%, and adjusted EBITDA up 2.4% to GBP 5.9 million, and basic EPS up 26%. Net cash flow in the period was broadly neutral, and we ended the period with GBP 16 million in cash while continuing to invest for future growth in the business and return capital to shareholders. To date, the share buyback program has returned more than GBP 5 million.
Gavin Jones : On the commercial and operational progress, our Point-of-Care revenue was GBP 15 million for the period, just down 3%. Most of this was very much a timing related effect, not a demand issue. We do have a very strong order book for H2, and I will unpack that on the next slide. Life Sciences grew by a pleasing 8% to GBP 10 million. We have fully exited our Elkhart facility we are now just dealing with one facility in South Bend for our Life Sciences division. We have added now digital capability through our Beep Insights acquisition, for our sports performance portfolio. Again, I will go into more detail on that in a little second. And continued investing in our commercial capacity, including an uplift in our sales function, which we do believe is a big part of delivering on our full year 2026 expectations. From a strategic point of view, we have made real progress over the year. We are up 4% on our BHB growth year to date, that is 9%. On Contract manufacturing and fermentation, that revenue is up 20%, partially on new contract wins and partially on growing organically within the already existing business that we have there. We signed earlier on in the year in March, an agreement with the Blood Centers of America, which is really helping us and supporting us to deliver the DiaSpect and opening up the U.S. blood bank opportunity for us. Again, our investment now is really focused on growing the capacity that we have and developing the priority markets for our strategy. If I go in a little bit deeper in terms of the revenue by division, you can see that Point-of-Care came in at GBP 15 million against GBP 15.4 million the previous year on a like-to-like basis. That is a 3% difference that is fully explained by two factors we have already resolved. We had some key tender closures that simply pushed order deliveries into H2 from H1. We have got a full order book there, so we are very comfortable and confident that that will improve in H2. We did have some production timing issues on our lactate deliveries, but again, that is now fully fixed and on track for the second half. I think it is important to state that this is deferred revenue, not lost revenue, and we expect to see it come through fully in the second half. Life Sciences delivered strong growth, GBP 10 million versus GBP 9.3 million, up 8%, underpinned by structural changes that we made previously to our BHB sales team, which are already paying off with a 4% growth there. An excellent execution in the fermentation and contract manufacturing facility, which is now up 20% against the same period last year. If we go a little bit deeper again into the revenue by product portfolio, hematology was relatively flat at GBP 7.8 million. But again, this was down to that timing shift. We do have full visibility on some of our larger tender orders, like the Egyptian business, for example. Hemo Control is remaining to be the largest contributor in this area, with DiaSpect a close second, and it is really encouraging to see the HemataStat II up 9% as full availability returns to that product range. Diabetes was broadly flat overall, although that is not the full story there. We do see that Biosen grew significantly, and we are seeing some changes in the HbA1c market as the Quo-Lab has gained share from the Quo-Test. This was fully expected as now reimbursement dynamics reset in the market. So it is helpful for us that we had a portfolio that is able to flex well with the market rather than losing ground in that space. In Life Sciences, obviously the biggest contributor here was BHB at GBP 7.4 million. We did have some changes in the market dynamics there, which meant some of our partners' inventory management held back some orders in the first half. But we have seen that change already, and we are seeing full development in H2, meaning that we are moving back to a normal type of usage. I think it is important to say this is not a drop in the amount of product being used, just in terms of how much inventory was being stored at our distributors. Contract manufacturing was up 25% to GBP 1 million, and fermentation was up 40% to GBP 1.6 million, with a strong order book supporting H2. I mentioned before that we have fully exited the Elkhart site as of the 30th of June, which is a clean simplification of our operating footprint moving forward. Coming back to our five-year strategy, everything we do ties back to the three pillars that we have well established. The becoming number one Point-of-Care hemoglobin business, becoming number one in ketone testing, both for laboratory, which we already are, and then also Point-of-Care, adding that in, built on our existing BHB product, and then transforming our Life Sciences division into a true standard CDMO. For 2026, that means we've been very much focused on delivering our BCA contracts in the U.S. blood bank market, and we're getting much better visibility there. We've been investing in our commercial and marketing capability across many of our regions, but certainly the priority markets for us have been Africa, the U.S., and LATAM, and then Europe. We have continued to grow our BHB liquid color market share, and we look to complete our claim support studies this month so that we're able to make a submission for a new and updated BHB product, which will due to launch next year. The third part then from a life sciences, we will be going for a rebrand of our contract manufacturing and fermentation offering. I will talk about that a little bit more in the next couple of slides, and we are continuing to expand and develop the next generation of our diagnostic enzyme portfolio. All of this builds towards our 2029 target, which is to deliver revenues above GBP 80 million and adjusted EBITDA above GBP 20 million, roughly double where we are today. We believe the building blocks are firmly in place to deliver on that strategy. I think from a commercial and operational progress point, we do have some concrete proof points here. In hematology, we've delivered three U.S. blood banks now live with DiaSpect, and three more coming online in the second half. We're in active negotiation with members of BCA for 2027 onboarded, a pipeline that's building well. In BHB, we posted 106% growth in H1 with one of our third distribution partners who's certainly expanding our reach into more of the integrated delivery network market. They've grown in ways that we, let's say we didn't really fully expect that, but it is fantastic to see, and we really fully support them in that. You can see two of our other distributors. Those are the ones who are engaged in that inventory management, but we're very confident now that they're going to return to the same ordering process that we had previously in H2. Operationally, we acquired the Beep Insights asset in April 2026 this was to strengthen our sports performance portfolio. Really, this offers a way for our users to manage their lactate threshold testing much more conveniently on their mobile phones. We are adding additional AI elements to that to really drive that forward as we move into the future of sports performance measurement. Additionally to that, we will now rebrand our life sciences contract manufacturing and fermentation offering as Nexus Bioworks. The idea behind this is to make our service offering far easier for clients to understand and engage with. If I move into the introduction of Nexus Bioworks, we are genuinely excited about this rebrand. It gives our life sciences business a distinct identity from EKF Diagnostics point-of-care portfolio, whilst keeping a legacy association with our long-standing clients, which they already trust. Nexus really signals the convergence at the heart of what we do. Bioworks makes it immediately clear what that means in practice. It's a small change with real commercial purpose. Clearer positioning makes for easier, faster client conversions. If we go on to the next slide, you can see here on the, it's on the right-hand side for me. This is a breakdown of our new dedicated Nexus Bioworks website. I think what we're not losing here is any of the experience that we already have in the industry. We've got over 40 years experience there. This rebrand reflects business with deep proven capability, not a starter. We do want to make sure that people can find us, and it's a lot clearer what our service offering is. We do believe that this is a compelling proposition already reflected in our new client-facing website. Outlook for the rest of the year. We certainly are extremely confident in being able to deliver Point-of-Care growth. We've got a full committed order book, significant tenders due to finalize, with a renewed focus on blood banks and production back to full speed. We do fully expect Point-of-Care to bounce back into growth. Secondly, we've already demonstrated that BHB is continuing to grow, and we expect double-digit growth by year-end. Order patterns are already normalizing. We do have a lot of confidence there. We do have that one partner who's due to do more than double what they had done in the prior year. All of that combined does lead us to be in a strong, confident position to hit full expectations for 2026 full year. I'll now hand over to Helen to go through some more of the financial detail.
Helen Jones : Thank you, Gavin. The headline for the first half of 2026 is that we delivered resilient revenue with improved margins, and higher EPS, while continuing to invest in growth and return capital to shareholders. Firstly, solid revenue of GBP 25 million, down just 1%, and as Gavin explained, that was largely timing related on the Point-of-Care side of the business rather than any weakening in demand. Second, gross margin strengthened by 3 percentage points, 53%, and adjusted EBITDA grew to GBP 5.9 million. Operating cash flow was GBP 3.3 million, with the reduction mainly relating to higher U.S. tax payments rather than any particular weakening in trading or material shift in working capital. The balance sheet remained strong with GBP 16 million of cash, supporting our plans for capital investment plans. Basic EPS increased by 26%, helped by the share buyback program. In short, although the first half has seen a flat top line overall, we have achieved stronger profitability and better returns per share, and we've got a strong financial position to continue the focus on the five-year plan. I'll just walk through the profit and loss in a bit more detail on this slide. Revenue was GBP 25 million, as I've already said, against GBP 25.2 million last year. Essentially flat. Gross profit rose 4.8% to GBP 13.3 million, with margin up 3 points to 53%, which was driven by a favorable mix of higher BHB sales and consumable sales on the Point-of-Care side of the business. Administrative expenses went up to GBP 9.7 million. That's around just under a 6% increase before exceptional items. This reflects our planned investment across sales and marketing to support the revenue growth anticipated in the five-year plan. During the period, we recruited three new commercial leaders to support the Americas, which includes Latin America, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Those are three of our key focus geographical markets. Alongside that, we strengthened product management capabilities and implemented a more focused marketing strategy centered on our highest growth opportunities and our key product platforms and the priority geographic markets. Even with higher operating expenditure, adjusted EBITDA increased 2.4% to GBP 5.9 million, with the margin improving by 0.7% to 23.6%. We did incur a GBP 0.3 million exceptional charge in relation to the early settlement of the Elkhart lease, the U.S. lease there, reflecting a one-off payment that closed out all our remaining lease obligations on that site a year ahead of the original expiry. The tax charge, that reduced to GBP 0.9 million, and that includes a GBP 0.7 million tax provision release on parts of our German tax audit that is still ongoing. The underlying rate of 46.5% reflects U.S. tax normalizing now that our historical U.S. tax losses have all been fully utilized, which was flagged at the full year last year, as well as the losses we have got in the U.K. However, with profit weighted to the second half, we expect the full-year underlying effective tax rate to be below the H1 level. Profit for the period increased by 18.2% to GBP 2.5 million. On the next chart, I am especially pleased to show this, and it does show that the H1 adjusted EBITDA of GBP 5.9 million was up 2.4% year on year. More importantly, it marks the fourth consecutive year of first half growth. From GBP 4.4 million in 2023 up to GBP 5.9 million now in 2026. This is not a one-off improvement, it is a consistent multi-year trend. The 23.6% margin shows the benefit of stronger gross margins more than offsetting the additional investments we have made in sales and marketing, especially. Because the business is typically weighted to the second half, we expect that momentum to continue. It just gives that confidence that we are going to achieve that market expectations for the full year. Our investments we have made across OpEx and CapEx, it is very targeted and closely linked to our growth plan. On the operating side, that has been focused very much on our senior commercial hires in the U.S. and Europe and Africa, as I previously mentioned, supported by the product management teams and the targeted marketing campaigns we are now doing. On the balance sheet side, the CapEx investments are being directed more into practical capacity, and that includes a 30% expansion of our Hemo Control production line, which is expected to cost around GBP 4 million over the next 18 months. We are also investing in a new sensor production line of around GBP 2 million over the next 18 months and continued ongoing development of our next generation analyzers and the connectivity, as well as a small ERP upgrade that we have done in the first half of this year. We need to invest in these areas to achieve our growth plans, the capacity and capability needed to support our GBP 80 million targets for 2029. The balance sheet on the next slide. Thanks. This puts us in a very strong position with total assets increasing to GBP 82 million from GBP 81 million last year. Still very robust balance sheet, supported by retained earnings of GBP 53.6 million. Working capital was GBP 10.3 million at the end of June, of which GBP 9 million was inventory, which is higher, mainly because we were holding finished goods we had originally expected to ship in the first half of the year, but these moved to the second half of the year. Receivables and payables largely balance each other out. Overall, the balance sheet gives us enough capacity to continue to fund our growth investment plans while maintaining appropriate financial headroom. We ended the half year with GBP 16 million of cash. That does include GBP 2.4 million of restricted cash held in Russia, but we are maximizing the amount of cash we are able to extract from Russia through ongoing dividends. We have had GBP 0.3 million of dividends in the first half of the year. That cash position supports continued capital investment, lease payments, and GBP 0.9 million of buyback returns in the period. Our free cash flow was GBP 1.1 million, from GBP 3.7 million last year, but that movement is very well explained due to the over GBP 1 million of higher tax payments we are now making in the U.S. following the utilization of those tax losses last year, plus GBP 0.9 million of higher CapEx. Working capital also has absorbed some cash, as I have said, with the higher inventory, but I am expecting that to normalize by the end of the year. Just an update on the share buyback. This has continued to be an effective way of returning capital to shareholders. To date, we have bought back 23.5 million shares, equal to around 5% of the share capital that we had at the start of the program. We have returned over GBP 5.9 million at an average price of 25.2 pence per share. This also has helped support our earnings per share growth, with basic EPS growing nearly 26% to 0.54 pence, up from 0.43 pence in the first half of last year. That is it for the financial update. I will hand back to Gavin to do a summary. Thanks, Gavin.
Gavin Jones : Yeah. Thanks a lot, Helen. I think to bring it together, we delivered a solid first half. We expect a strong return to Point-of-Care growth in H2, and we remain confident that full year 2026 will be in line with expectations. We are going to continue to drive that BHB expansion. Very confident, again, that that will come in in H2. We remain focused on delivering our five-year strategy. A strategy already showing some tangible progress this half from the Blood Centers of America agreement to Nexus Bioworks rebrand, to record BHB growth. We are building a bigger, more profitable, more diversified EKF Diagnostics, and H1 2026 shows that we will continue on that path. Thank you, Tamara.
Operator : That's great. Thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Paul, if I could just hand over to you just to read out the questions to share with the team, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Analyst : Thanks very much. The first question was about how much operating leverage do you expect as Point-of-Care revenues recover, particularly given the investment already made in sales and marketing?
Gavin Jones : Yeah, look, we do expect that to improve as we do get higher volumes through our facilities, manufacturing facilities. We already have, like I said, good visibility on a number of different orders. We do expect to be having particularly high volumes going into H2 with those large tenders. So yeah, we will see an improvement in operating leverage.
Analyst : Just staying on revenues, a question from one of your shareholders was that what percentage, roughly, of EKF's revenue would you consider to be recurring?
Gavin Jones : Ooh, that's a good question. We do have a lot of run rate business. It's a challenging one because it's probably around about 50%, should we say. The difficulty bit in terms of answering that question in a very open and clear way is that a lot of our business is tender driven. Tenders, they don't last forever. They're anywhere from one to five years in terms of their term. So although it might be recurring for three years, it may then go away if that tender, if they decide, for example, to go to a different type of technology or they go to a competitor. So we've got to be careful about what we consider to be recurring. But given that, our whole business plan, certainly when it comes to Point-of-Care, is that we put devices out there and really then we get most of our margin and revenue from the consumables. So everything in Point-of-Care really is recurring business. We do have a significant amount of recurring business in the Life Sciences part as well, certainly with BHB and then also with some of our larger contract manufacturing and fermentation customers.
Analyst : Thank you. Another question here was regarding how large do you think the U.S. blood bank opportunity could become for DiaSpect following the BCA agreement and the transition of legacy UltraCrit customers?
Gavin Jones : Yeah. So we believe that the total market size there for the blood bank U.S. market is around about $60 million. 40% of that is already taken up by the American Red Cross, so we can't really access that business. The rest is the independent blood bank businesses, and the majority of those come under the BCA umbrella. Not all. There are some outliers there. But really, that's the market we're trying to attack.
Analyst : Well, I think your [R&S] and your presentation must have covered everything because those are the only questions we have.
Gavin Jones : That's good.
Analyst : There are no more questions, but thank you very much and I'll hand you back to Lily at Investor Meet Company.
Operator : That's great. Thank you for answering those questions you have from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Gavin, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?
Gavin Jones : Sure. I think I just want to reiterate that we had a solid first half, but we anticipate a much stronger H2. When I say anticipate, we are very confident in that. We do have significant orders already in-house. We know that we can deliver the product. We know that payment will be coming through. We know that BHB is going to continue to grow. We've got good visibility on new contract manufacturing opportunities. I think we are very confident being able to deliver full year 2026 in line with market expectations.
Operator : That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good afternoon to you.
