Operator : Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the hVIVO Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout today's recorded meeting, attendees will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your question at any time and press send. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll, and if you give that your kind attention, I am sure the company will be most grateful. I would like to hand over to the management team today. Mo, good afternoon.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Thank you, Mark. Good afternoon. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to hVIVO's interim results covering the period of first half of 2026. This is the obligatory disclaimer we have for publicly listed companies under AIM. I am Yamin 'Mo' Khan. I am the CEO of hVIVO. I have been here for about four and a half years. On my right here is Stephen Pinkerton, who is our CFO and has been the CFO for over four years. And on my left, we have our friend Andrew Catchpole, who is our Chief Scientific Officer, and he has been with the company for over 20 years, and he has really been the brains behind the development of our challenge models that we see in action these days. We will come straight onto the interim results. For those of you who maybe do not know about the company, we are a full-service, early-stage clinical development provider, providing non-clinical and clinical services to both the biotech and the pharma industry. We have locations across Europe, in France, Germany, Netherlands and also the U.K. We have clinical trial units in London, both in Whitechapel and in Canary Wharf, and three units in Germany in Kiel, Mannheim and the recently acquired unit in Berlin. In the Netherlands, in both Breda and in Leiden, we have a consulting arm, and then our biometry, which is data management and biostatistics office in Paris. As you can see, we have grown significantly, both with regards to the number of staff we have and also the number of countries we cover across Europe. Late last year, we reorganized the company into four distinct service lines. The first line is the consulting arm, where we help customers design new clinical trials, provide them consulting services to meet with regulatory bodies across different countries, and also look at what is called the pre-clinical data, the CMC and the drug formulation, the PK, and so on. Secondly, we have the clinical trial unit. This is where we typically conduct all our non-human challenge trials. So the phase I and the phase II clinical trial, as well as phase III site services. And then of course, the original human challenge trial service line still continues to exist and grow. We also have a laboratory standalone service line. So not only do labs cater for the clinical trial and the human challenge trial, but now on their own, on their own merit, we can outsource this as a standalone service to customers. The reason why we have done this, that we want to be able to provide end-to-end service to our customers. The way I look at this is we have four distinct verticals, but we have one horizontal in the sense that we can take a client through from pre-clinical, so this is before even the drug has gone into humans, all the way to what's called proof of concept or phase II, where you expect to see a signal of effectiveness for the drug in a human body. This also means that our addressable market has increased, and we're able to talk to our customers independent of what stage they're at during the drug development. Whereas historically, we typically spoke to them around the phase II stage, which is the HCT phase. Now, whether they're in non-clinical, pre-clinical, or across the different phases of clinical development, we have a service that we can sell. That basically means that effectively every drug developer is a potential client of ours. Now, coming on to our H1 2026 results. Stephen will provide a little bit more color, but we've already provided a fairly detailed trading update in July of this year, and we're basically mostly reinstating the numbers we provided then in the first half of 2026. So GBP 16.3 million of revenue. We said low single digit EBITDA loss, and then GBP 13 million in cash at the end of June. We've now given guidance towards the full year 2026, and we're stating around GBP 47 million. So this is slightly lower than what's currently in the consensus, and this is mainly due to deferment and not cancellations. We're expecting our contracts to continue to execute. But unfortunately, for a number of reasons, a couple of contracts have been delayed and pushed into 2027 and 2028. But we have seen significant growth across our new sales and new contracts, including in HCTs. We've signed three different HCTs, and Andrew will provide more details on that. And this is helped by the fact that a 45% year-on-year increase in new proposals, 26% increase in the value of the proposals, good conversion rates, building up the order book to GBP 65 million underlying, and then with the addition of the acquisition in Berlin, taking this up to GBP 72 million. So that really gives us excellent visibility for the rest of this year and good visibility into 2027. This is the highest the order book has been in the history of the company. I feel very confident that we are on the up. We believe strongly that the first half of 2026 is a trough, and we'll see almost doubling of the revenue from the first half to the second half. And we expect a year-to-year growth from 2026 to 2027 that we are turning significant.
Stephen Pinkerton : Thanks, Mo. Just talking about the H1 performance versus last year, 2025 H1 performance, GBP 24 million versus GBP 16.3 million. You can see the huge difference here is the decline in the HCT revenues year on year. If you remember, in 2025, we did have a high level of cancellations, and that is part of it. Also, in the current H1 2026, we did expect some higher HCT revenue, but that has been pushed out, as Mo has just mentioned, to 2027 and 2028, as well as into the second half of 2026. The clinical services has increased, but actually year on year, really it is on a like-to-like basis, it is flatlined. It is just because it is an additional GBP 1 million that relates to the full year impact of acquisitions that we made in January 2025. Labs is a good solid increase. It is growing 110%. It is off a slightly lower base, but it has got a lot of potential. We have invested heavily in our lab space in London, and we are beginning to get traction there, and that is good to see, and that is building up nicely. Consultancy, part of the delays that we have faced in clinical services and HCT, and it has also impacted the consultancy work as well. Going on to what we look at for the rest of the year. You can see the second half of the year, we are looking at delivering GBP 31 million. It is almost double what we delivered in H1 2026. This is what we guided. We did guide that we would be H2 weighted. GBP 31 million includes GBP 3 million from the acquisition that we made beginning of the year, at least in August. It is backed by a strong order book, and it is a strong performance, and therefore we are guiding now GBP 47 million for the rest of the year for the full year. It does go back to the fact that we have had. I think one of the things I take away is that when we set the guidance of GBP 50 million, GBP 51 million for the core business, all those contracts that we expected, because we started from a very low order book basis of GBP 30 million, has materialized. What we have not really understood was that some of these things would delay more than we expected because we always hedge those bets. But some of that is out of our control, and that is why it is pushed on. But that bodes well for 2027. Lower revenue means lower outputs in EBITDA, so we made an EBITDA loss of GBP 4.5 million. This is a sort of an analysis between what the profit that we made in the first half of H1 last year. It is the HCT revenue. If you remember in 2025, we had a lot of cancellations. That cancellations did not have any very variable spend attached to it, so it flows straight through. As well as we also spent in 2025, we were doing some building some new models, which I completed in 2025. As we are no longer doing that, the difference in revenue from GBP 16 million-GBP 24 million has sort of dropped through to the bottom line from an operational point of view. Full year impact of the acquisitions and overheads is obviously adds to our cost base of GBP 0.5 million, but we have also made some savings during the year on a year-on-year basis. We do maintain a very tight control of our costs. With that higher revenue in the second half of the year of GBP 31 million, we do expect to be we are forecasting to be EBITDA positive. We will reduce that loss to a low single digit loss for the full year. This cash flow, this is a walk forward from the beginning of the year, GBP 14.3 million and GBP 30 million at the half year. Cash from operations is going to be negative because we made a loss of GBP 4.5 million in EBITDA. What is interesting to see is the GBP 4.5 million net working capital movement is positive. That is a turnaround. In the last three reporting periods that we have done, what I have been presenting at, we have had net working capital negative. That is a positive, and that is why the cash has held up nicely from GBP 14.3 million-GBP 13 million. Some of that will reduce in the second half. That GBP 14.5 million will reduce. That is because it is driven by some of the HCT trials that we have signed up, the three that we have signed up this year. Some of that starts getting delivered in the second half of the year. It will reduce, and so cash will end up lower at the end of December by about down to about GBP 8 million or GBP 9 million. We do expect cash to reduce, but that is also because at the end, the second half of the year, we do have a lot of field study work, and so it will impact our debtors because CROs take a long time to pay you on delivery. It can be anything up to 90 days. We do have a high volume of work that we will be delivering in October, November and December. Cash will be lower by the end of December, but With the strength of the order book going forward, cash is looking reasonably good in place. The other thing to note is that the acquisition we have made will have no impact on our cash position to date. Investments, we have not had to make much investments in the business. We are already quite well-invested. There is maintenance investment that happens, but it is not very significant at this stage. Next slide. It's yours.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : This is my favorite slide of the whole presentation because it is the most important parameter looking forward when you project what is going to happen with this company for the next 6, 12, 18 months. You can see the way the order book has progressed since 2023, and how we have seen that slow decline due to market conditions, drop in HCTs and so on. But we saw increasing proposals, especially from towards the end of last year into the first half this year, and second half of this year. And some of those have now been contracted. Remember, we changed the algorithm of how we determine our order book. We want to be more conservative and try and reduce the cancellation rate that we saw previously in 2025. As a result, the underlying order book at the end of June this year is still at GBP 65 million. And with the addition of the acquisition of Berlin, it is increased to GBP 72 million. This gives us excellent visibility, as I said, for this year, but also for 2027. In fact, some of this order book goes straight into 2028. This is on top of additional awards we have had that not have been fully contracted. This is the main reason why I feel confident about 2027 and what we can do, and why we are forecasting a significant growth from 2026 to 2027. And with all of this, human challenge trials remain our core business, but we are not just solely relying on human challenge trials anymore. You can see the dark green segment of this pie, this donut, if you will, and how that is decreasing. And that is partly due to inorganic addition of new clinical trial services, as well as organic growth in the clinical trial business, as well as the lab business especially. And I think this to me is key that we are no longer a niche provider in human challenge trials. We are a much more diversified, resilient provider of clinical and drug development services. But as I mentioned, human challenge trial is still a key differentiator for us. This also means that the addressable market for us has significantly increased. We are now able to run clinical trials in a number of therapeutic areas and not just be focused on infectious diseases. It also means that we have a greater number of customers providing us with revenue, so we are not relying on one or two top clients. And also means that we get more revenue per client because we are engaging with our customers at a much earlier stage and continuing with them through the life cycle of product development. A key example of this was Cidara, with whom we ran a human challenge trial, and then a phase II field trial, a phase III trial, and laboratory services. In fact, when you look at the metrics, only a third of the total revenue we recognize with the program came from human challenge trials. The rest were the non-challenge trial-related revenue. And I think that to me really speaks volumes when we think about growing the company forward and how we can maximize revenue per client.
Andrew Catchpole : As Mo mentions, human challenge trials are still a really important part of our business, and we still are attracting customers to do that type of work with us. That is mainly because they do get their data so much faster. From the moment they contract with us on that clinical trial agreement, they can get their data within 12 months, which is about 3.5 times faster than if they did it with the natural infection studies. Of course, time to market is really important for these products, so that is absolutely everything for them. What we have seen in 2026 is there has been a sub-shift of the type of studies that we are getting. You are probably aware of some sort of anti-vaccine movements in some parts of the world. What we are seeing in 2026 is an actual shift towards slightly more antiviral studies coming towards us now than the vaccine studies. This is cyclical. This does go in different waves, but it is really positive at the moment that we are seeing antivirals getting good funding. These people are coming to us to do these studies because we are the world leader in doing human challenge studies. That really comes from our extensive experience in doing it, and of course, the very important infrastructure you need to be able to deliver that. Of course, that is our 50-bed unit, very vital delivering that, our dedicated recruitment team, and the FluCamp database. All those combined are really vital to be able to deliver these challenge studies. Not only that, they also act as a barrier to entry for others and the competition in this area. Because we are infectious disease experts, we are able to offer these studies and actually design them as well. That is really where challenge studies underpin the whole of this business, because they do interact with all the other three pillars of the business. When the contract comes in, unlike a traditional clinical trial where their sponsors come in, give you the protocol to run, with the challenge studies, it is very specialized. You need the infectious disease and the challenge model expertise to be able to design those studies. So we design the studies for our clients, and we use the consultancy group to do that and use the medical writing to build around it. The laboratories, of course, who are analyzing the samples and doing the screening for the trials. Our recruitment team coming from the clinical trials site, and of course, the 50-bed unit to actual deliver these. So it truly is an integrated platform. On the next slide, we can go and talk to you about the actual contract wins that we have had recently. You probably would have seen the phase III pivotal trial in Bordetella pertussis, that is whooping cough. This is a really big moment. This is a challenge study that is being used for efficacy for a phase III trial. It is one of the first times that has been done. So this is a really big, important study, not just for hVIVO, but actually for the scientific community. In addition to that, we have also signed two influenza trials, one is for monoclonal antibody, test for flu prevention, and also a prophylactic flu prevention, again, for the trials clients. We are seeing a very strong order book and growth back returning into the challenge business. This dimension really is creating good opportunities. As we are now talking to our clients earlier, now we are able to offer phase I studies. We are able to do phase I combined with human challenge studies, so we get that earlier engagement. The earlier engagement means we can then have a greater platform to sell. For example, we have clients coming in also for the laboratory work pre-clinically, and then we can extend to do laboratory work for the challenge studies, and then that extends on to support them into phase II, phase III studies. We were not able to do that until we moved into our new facility two years ago because we had reached capacity in the labs. The labs have now got much more capacity and able to support our clients moving forward. That really does drive pipelines, not just in challenge trials, but of course in the lab business as well. In addition to the traditional infectious disease market for challenge studies, we are actually seeing this branch out into new types of areas as well. COPD and asthma challenge studies, where we are still using viral pathogens, but instead of being conducted in healthy individuals, being conducted in asthma and COPD challenge. We are seeing some emerging new opportunities into this space. On the right-hand side is a really important graph, actually, because it is a nuance about how these contracts are run. Our customers understand that doing challenge studies are unique, and they need to reserve their space in this very specialized unit. Because of that, on the point of contract signature, there is a milestone payment, hence we are cash positive right from the very point of contract signature. That is the dark line on the graph on the right-hand side, and the green line is the revenue. Then once we start to actually recruit the volunteers, our clients also understand that these challenge studies need a big recruitment engine to screen lots of people because we need to screen people to make sure they do not have too high antibodies against the pathogens, so they will get sick. That is different from any other type of trial. Because of that very large screening, we need to have an influx of a milestone at that point. Again, that is the next inflection you really see is a milestone payment upfront to cover those screening costs. This is why for the large majority of the life cycle of a challenge study, actually, they are cash positive throughout. What we are seeing, just to really summarize on the challenge study, we are seeing this core differentiator driving our growth still and creating new opportunities. We are actually really pleased with how this has picked back up.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Thank you, Andrew. I just want to refer us back to some of the strategic growth priorities we set ourselves earlier this year and what progress we have made on those. First one is cardiometabolic. As you know, our Mannheim colleagues, the clinical trial unit based there, is led by a key opinion leader endocrinology. He is an expert in diabetes, obesity, or what we call the cardiometabolic therapeutic area. I think we have been able to capture a significant amount of business related to obesity and diabetes. I am sure all of you are aware the big boom in obesity, clinical research, clinical development, and all that entails. As a result, we have been able to recruit patients using a flu equivalent that we launched in Germany late last year. On top of that, we have been able to create some really good relationships with mid-size pharma, as well as providing clinical trial services to a lot of the big pharma that I am sure you know the names of who are working in obesity and diabetes. We have made significant progress in that and done quite a few deals in the obesity area. On respiratory, of course, we have got inherent experience in respiratory, considering all of the HCTs we have run to date, at least have been in what we call respiratory diseases. The fact that they are infectious diseases, but they impact the respiratory system. We already have in-house experts in dealing with respiratory diseases, and we have utilized that to basically prepare ourselves to run non-HCTs in respiratory diseases such as COPD, and also asthma. This market really, and we are targeting not only pharma biotech, but also other CROs whom we are helping to recruit patients into large scale clinical trials. We have also got an ongoing pre-screening clinical trial, which we use to supplement our database, and we have already been awarded several projects in these areas. The third piece to this is laboratory. As I mentioned already, we started as a company as a laboratory service provider. Then we evolved into the laboratory being the support service for HCTs. Since the move to Canary Wharf, we now have the capability and the capacity to run standalone laboratory projects, and that is what we have been able to do. Not only do they support the HCTs we run, but also we have been able to do standalone projects. One of the key advantages of this is that we are able to create a relationship with the customer at an early stage. We now have a case where we have a client with whom we are providing very early laboratory services and now moving into potentially an HCT. That is really the key model for us when we look at the end-to-end unified platform. In addition, last year, we invested in some new capabilities with regards to next-generation sequencing and ddPCR, and those are already producing excellent revenues as they go forward. This is another area that we are developing. We are hoping to continue to increase the order book. Also, you will see higher revenue coming from the laboratory service line. When you look at the broader market, what we now see is that there is more funding for the biotechs. There is more M&A activity within the biopharma industry, and people are making decisions. I know I've spoken to you over the last 12, 18 months, and always stated that we have this huge sales pipeline. I've also said this, and the key risk with that has been that that sales pipeline has not always been converted into what we call contracted work or contracted order book. Now we're seeing that decision-making. As I mentioned, we have a current GBP 72 million order book. First half last year it was GBP 27, end of 2025 it was GBP 30, and now it's GBP 70. Clients are making decisions. They are signing contracts and progressing. Admittedly, a couple of our projects have been deferred, which have impacted 2026, but they're not lost or canceled, and we hope to progress them in 2027 as well as going into 2028. We also know that biotechs are doing more and more clinical research because the big pharma, with what you call this huge patent cliff they're approaching in the next five years, will need to supplement their pipeline with new M&A activity, buying new biotech assets. The biotechs are busy developing these drugs, and we as a one-stop shop for small companies are best suited in helping these customers to go from preclinical to just about getting into humans to proof of concept, which is a value inflection point, and they can demand big money from big pharma. In addition to this, when it comes to infectious disease, we're now also seeing more interest. I mean, Eli Lilly and Company, for example, acquired three vaccine companies in a week. That shows that Eli Lilly and Company, who have really deep pockets, are also interested in the ID space. Obesity, of course, I've already mentioned there continues to be huge interest in drug development in that area. We acquired CRS Berlin in August of this year, and if you ask me why did we do this, there's kind of a number of reasons. Of course, the numbers were very attractive, so the financial terms which Stephen will talk about were very, very good to us we felt. The fact that it's able to expand into new areas, so dermatology and women's health was key. The other key item for us was that we are able to cross-sell to these customers. Remember, the platform we have for clinical trials is exactly the same. The facilities, the resources, the processes, the systems that we utilize, whether we run clinical trials in infectious disease or respiratory or cardiometabolic or women's health or dermatology, are exactly the same. Without addition of huge CapEx or anything, we're still able to service these different types of therapeutic areas with the same platform. The only difference is the fact that we may have one or two key opinion leaders who can show disease expertise when they're designing and executing these clinical trials. This also means that we have access to a much larger catchment area. Berlin being a very major city, has over 6 million potential patient population, so recruitment for new clinical trials makes this much easier. It has also increased the capacity to over 200 beds and gives us the option to run multi-site large clinical trials. All under one umbrella. Remember, our key differentiator compared to most of the CRO is the human challenge trial, but the second one is that we own our clinical site. There are not many CROs out there who own multiple sites where they can run their own clinical trials, and that is a key thing for us. Dermatology and women's health are both good growing disease areas, and we expect to see increased interest in both of these. Dermatology also falls under immunology, so indications like atopic dermatitis are on the up and a lot more drugs are being studied in there. Women's health is generally underserved when it comes to drug development, and we expect to see increases in this area going forward. All this effectively makes us a leading European provider in early clinical development.
Stephen Pinkerton : Some of the highlights on the acquisition costs. We paid EUR 25,000 just to get the deal over the line. Obviously, it is a minimal effect on our cash flow. The earn-out for the deal is 18% of each revenue across 2026, 2027, and 2028. The annual revenue achieved in those years across those three years. The effective rate is slightly less because the 18% only applies to certain revenues and other revenues are slightly less than that. In essence, we are expecting a sort of an earn-out of roughly EUR 6 million. If we deduct the pension liability that we are taking on, then the net impact that we will be paying out in cash terms is EUR 4 million. It is self-funding. The business is profitable. It is generating good revenue. It is profitable. It is generating cash. That cash will be more than sufficient to pay the earn-outs. The other thing to understand that the earn-out is scalable. It scales up and down. There is a minimum level of revenue that has to be achieved before the earn-out starts kicking in. Effectively, you are paying about 58p in the pound for every pound of revenue, which we think is a really good deal, less the pension liability. The impact on this year's results, it will get GBP 3 million, and this is the incremental revenue to the group. If you look at their revenue, we guided and the RNS was EUR 10 million. About 18% of that revenue is already work that is outsourced to hVIVO, the other companies of hVIVO, and other services hVIVO provide to deliver that revenue. That GBP 3 million is net of work that we provide from our other companies to deliver that. I think it is very ingrained with CRS Berlin. EBITDA contribution will be GBP 0.5 million. They are having a strong H2 as well. They did have a slow start in the year, but the full year is looking good. Certainly in the four months that we own them, they will deliver a contribution margin of GBP 0.5 million. Contracted order book is really solid. I think what I really like about it is that it is on the top end. If you think about clinical services, because of the short timescale on getting new contracts on board, generally at the beginning of the year, you are looking to be about 50% or 60% contracted, and these guys are just over 60% contracted of the next 12 months of revenue that we are forecasting for them. It is a good order book, and they do have a good pipeline backing it up. I think that's a list to give you a flavor. In summary, it's earnings accretive, it's self-funding, and it's backed up by a very good order book. It's a good deal.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Thank you, Stephen. Just to sum up, appreciate with the headwinds we've had in 2026. We are showing a guidance of GBP 47 million. You also have to remember the order book coming from 2025 and 2026 was GBP 30 million. We've done a lot of work to build that order book up. Unfortunately, it was too late for the first half. The second half, the revenue is almost doubling, but even then, a couple of projects have been deferred impacting the full year 2026. As I said, that revenue goes into 2027 and 2028. You can see that staggered growth, right. You see increase in proposals, you see increase in order book, and then you see increase in revenue, and that's the logical sequence we expect to see how this company will grow. The CRS Berlin position I think is a pretty good deal. Almost everyone agrees with that. A strong commercial momentum across the different service lines continues, especially for HCTs and labs, I feel. If we go in 2027, I think as said, we were going in with at least the first half record order book, and we're forecasting significant year-on-year growth, and we're also forecasting positive EBITDA for 2027. We will integrate CRS Berlin as it comes up. We also widened our addressable market for the whole company. The general industry dynamic seems to be improving, as I mentioned. Biotech funding is loosening up, and the big pharma are busy doing a lot more M&A. We had an Investor Meet Company date in July of this year where we had key venture capitalists, biotech CEOs, and also big pharma presidents who presented some of the key advantages of the service that we're offering and why it's a good fit for the biotech industry. Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to the questions.
Operator : That's great. Mo. Stephen, thank you very much indeed, guys, for updating investors. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of the screen. Just while the team take a few moments to review the questions submitted already, I'd just like to remind you, a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your Investor Meet Company platform. Mo, as you can see, as usual, a number of questions from investors. Thank you to everybody once again for your engagement on the call this afternoon. If I may just hand back to you, if I could ask you please to read out the questions where it's appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Great. Thank you, Mark. Yes, I'll go through as many questions as I can within the time allotted. The first question really is, when can we expect to see a pickup in winning HCT contracts again? Without these, the share price will never really recover from previous highs. I believe we are already seeing that, right? We've illustrated, we signed our largest ever human challenge trial contract with ILiAD, and then we've also signed two additional human challenge trials in the meantime. Maybe, Andrew, you can talk about what types of drugs are of particular interest to our customers now.
Andrew Catchpole : Yeah, we are seeing an upscaling in all of the challenge study contracts actually, which is great. We are seeing certainly more antivirals coming through. The amount of money that was going into infectious disease is still the same as it was previously. It's just instead of being split between vaccines and antivirals, we're seeing more of it going towards antivirals, although there are still some vaccines coming through for testing as well. Although the type of products that are shifting to the antiviral market, still that's a good sign because we're seeing these new products being developed. We're also seeing some antivirals, not just for treatments, which is the traditional use of an antiviral. We're actually seeing a pickup in business where from proposals of customers who are designing antivirals as a preventative for diseases, so alternative to vaccines. These will be targeted against people, for example, who might have immune deficiencies where they wouldn't respond to a vaccine, for example.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Great. Thank you. The next question is, how will the company be affected by AI? Drug development in general, I do not think will be severely impacted by AI, considering we still need to test a molecule in a human body. I do not know what is going to happen in 5 or 10 or 15 years' time. But for now, at least there is no replacement in obtaining data from doing clinical testing in human beings. We are using AI in the sense of some of the processes we have across the different departments. That is already in place. But if the question is, will AI basically stop all types of drug development, I cannot see that for the foreseeable future.
Andrew Catchpole : I think it would actually increase drug development because the AI will enable data to be analyzed across multiple different pathways which humans could not do. Actually, what I think we will see is new classes of drugs coming out of discoveries made by using AI in the R&D platform. So I think it is actually very positive for new classes of drugs to come through, and you will never replace the need to be able to do human clinical trials. So actually, I think it could be a very good upside for us in the future years.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Great. You changed the order book methodology to make revenue visibility clearer and more reliable. Yes, we changed our kind of algorithm to not report on order book for what we call Study Start-up Agreements, but instead on clinical trial agreements to reduce the risk of cancellations. Historically, we are seeing cancellations from SUAs, but minimal cancellations coming from post-clinical trial agreement. As recently as July, you were still going for a high single-digit revenue growth in 2026. Now, less than two months later, revenue guidance have been cut and you expect a full-year EBITDA loss. What has gone wrong? Wanna take that?
Stephen Pinkerton : Essentially, it has come down to two. As we have already discussed, it comes down to delays. The HCT contracts have delayed. They are delayed in 2027 to 2028. That has had an impact. Obviously, in H1, you have seen the impact. But it is also having an impact on H2 to some extent. The other thing is that we do have high volume in H2. Not all of it is HCT. Only a smaller portion of it is HCT. The mix of revenue in the second half of the year has a margin is somewhat lower, and so therefore, we are not getting quite the profit to swing that around. But I do think this is the beginning of a change, and it is evidenced by the order book. If you looked at the trend of the order book and the revenue that has been recognized at the beginning of the, if you look at the trend of the order book at the beginning of each year and the revenue that is delivered in the following year, you are getting a sense of where we could go. The order book is changing. That will have an impact on the performance of this business and a positive impact on the performance of this business.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Thank you. A kind of link to the same question really is why should investors trust the order book in 2027 guidance if contracted work can keep being pushed back? We feel much more confident now because a lot of the contracts are near time to start of execution, so that helps. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, the pre-step to having a contract signed in what we call the awarded bucket. This is work that has been awarded to us but not yet contracted. Typically, it takes three-six, nine months to get that into the order book. That is a significant amount. We feel that together with the existing order book and the visibility that gives us into 2027, and also in addition, there is awarded part of our work that will hopefully go into contract in the next six, nine months. That is amazing visibility for 2027, and that is why we are confident about 2027. I guess, Stephen, this is for you. You expect positive adjusted EBITDA in H2. Can you give us some indication of the EBITDA margin you expect to achieve in H2, and should we regard this as the beginning of a sustained return towards the group's historical margin levels?
Stephen Pinkerton : Well, on the first part, we talked about, yes, we have made a GBP 4.5 million loss for the H1, and then our guidance is a low single-digit loss in EBITDA for the full year. So that is anywhere between GBP 2 million and GBP 3 million. Therefore, the profit for H2 is roughly GBP 2 million-GBP 3 million. That is effectively from the deduction from the guidance that we are giving, and it is more or less in that realm. In terms of margins going forward, I do expect the margins to improve and come back and be positive going forward. It is very dependent on the mix of revenue. HCT has the highest margin. It is great margin in this business. It is not yet fully back in our numbers in terms of revenue terms. The order book has got some good HCT stuff in it, and that will play out in 2027. But it is not playing out so much or to a large extent in H2 2026. I think the other thing to highlight is that although we have we always talk about ILiAD as a big HCT contract, it is not going to be quite as profitable as a normal HCT because that ILiAD project is an outpatient project, so it is a bit more clinical service orientated. Clinical services margin is much lower. If I am looking at an EBITDA sort of business on clinical services such as Berlin, I would be expecting 10%-12% margin going forward. Hopefully, with our scale and the investment that we make on IT and our recruitment plans, we can actually improve on that and get it between 15% and 20%. But that is aspirational, and that will take a bit of time in the medium to short term. Normalizing, it is going to improve. As to whether it is normalizing, it really depends on the revenue mix, and I cannot give a figure just yet.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Great. I think you answered the next question already, to be honest. The one after that, diversification. As this increases, will your G&A increase, too?
Stephen Pinkerton : Not significantly. We have this year invested in BD. We have expanded our BD reach and our team and our resources and the effort around it and the marketing as well. We are expecting that to pay off. I do not think we have seen the full benefit. We have certainly seen some benefit. We are getting a lot more traction on some of our deals and our contacts. Yes, there will be an increase in G&A next year on year. But it will be mid-single digit percentages, so it is not going to be a significant increase. That is the answer.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Okay. What is the expected EBITDA margin and cash contribution from CRS Berlin, and when should shareholders expect the acquisition to become meaningfully earnings accretive?
Stephen Pinkerton : Berlin is already EBITDA accretive. It will make a profit of roughly, it's expected to make a profit of about half a million in the four months that we own it. It is already accretive. I expect it to be accretive henceforth. It has a strong order book. It has a great strategic value in terms of women's health and dermatology, and these are great indications that we're exploring and working on. It will be accretive going forward, and is immediately accretive.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Okay. There's quite a few more questions.
Stephen Pinkerton : Questions.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : One key one here, I guess. What structural changes are you making so that a small number of delayed HCTs can no longer swing the whole group from profit to loss? That's a really good question. Historically, we've been a pure human challenge trial player. Now that we have the diversified business, I think it does dilute the human challenge trial change impact. I showed you the pie chart which shows that less than 50% of 2026 revenue will come from human challenge trials. As we continue to grow and build on all the different service lines, we expect to dilute the impact of human challenge trials per se, because the bigger the revenue you have, the less impact one change in a HCT will have. Hopefully that answers your question. The next one, what are 2027 revenue estimates and what percentage of that is already signed up? I guess the brokers consensus, if you will, because we haven't given guidance for next year yet except saying significant growth. The brokers consensus is around mid to high 50s, which will be a significant uptick, and again, we've not given the percent visibility for next year, but it's higher than it's ever been at this stage of a year. Because of the order book we currently have, it shows really good visibility going into 2027. You speak of work awarded but not yet contracted. How much roughly is awarded but not yet contracted? Appreciate there are no guarantees.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan : Well, that's exactly why we don't say it, because there are no guarantees, and this is the type of information that we now actually assess a lot more conservatively, and that's why we share what we say the fully contracted piece of work which goes into our order book. So at that stand, that GBP 72 million, which we believe is a very prominent and promising number. But I think that's all we have time for. Thank you for your time today and for your questions.
Operator : That's great. Thank you to you all for updating investors. Ladies and gentlemen, if I could please ask you not to close this session as we now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. It'll take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be deeply valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of hVIVO, thank you for your time.
