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TWST: Would you begin with an introduction to Drew Scientific (London: DRW.L)?

Mr. Asher: Drew Scientific Group PLC is a company specializing in the design, manufacture and distribution of analytical systems for laboratory testing. The Company was founded in 1980, and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1993. I joined the firm in July 1998 as Chief Executive Officer. My remit was to grow and develop the business to create a global supplier of diagnostic solutions to the medical community. Since I joined the Group, we have developed our activities in three principle areas – diabetes testing, veterinary testing, and hematology testing. We also have products for cardiovascular disease testing. The Company has also dramatically broadened its distribution network to a point where today we sell and support our systems in most countries of the world. In addition to our direct sales through distributors, we do a significant volume of business through some important OEM relationships. In the period from 1999 through 2002, sales have grown from £2.3 million to £12.0 million. In the six months from March 2002 to September 2002, the Company announced its first profit ever. The Group is expected to post its first full year of profits this year, ending March 2003.

TWST: Do you do any direct sales?

Mr. Asher: We do some direct sales in the UK, but our primary direct sales efforts are in the United States of America, where we currently have a field sales force of five people. Each salesman is directly responsible for a certain region within which they sell all of our clinical and veterinary products.

TWST: Which are your most important markets?

Mr. Asher: The US is our single largest market. After the US, however, we do a great deal of business in the Far East. China is a particularly important market for us, as is Thailand and Korea. Western Europe is another important region for us where France and Italy stand out as particularly good markets for us as well.

TWST: Can you walk us briefly through the last 12 months or so at Drew in terms of the milestones and significant moves the Company made?

Mr. Asher: I think it’s worth casting our minds back to 2000, when the Company had sales of about £2.8 million. By 2001, we’d grown that to £5.5 million and by 2002, the year just ended, we had sales of £12 million. So we’ve been on a rapid track for sales growth, which has been fueled by the launch of several new products as well as by three key acquisitions. The combination of acquisitions and new product launches, coupled with our growing distribution network around the world, has driven the dramatic increase in sales that we’ve seen over the latter period. More satisfying than just the sales growth, of course, is the improvement that we’ve achieved to the bottom line over that same period. As with many technology companies, Drew has historically invested heavily in research and development and as a consequence has posted losses year-on-year of between £1.0 million to £2.0 million. Our current year, however, which is due to end in March of 2003, should be the first year in which we report a full year profit. The profitability has been achieved through consolidation of the acquisitions we made over the last year, a significant growth in sales, and an improvement in our gross margin. So I feel that Drew has now succeeded in building its turnover to the point where it can deliver profits on a sustainable basis, where as in the past turnover simply wasn’t high enough to cover the base level of costs, which we, as a technology company, have.