Welcome back everybody. It's great to have over 130 of you here live for us at this moment in time. It's great to see in the chat box that people are enjoying the festive background.

We thought you'd enjoy that. So I'm delighted to, to bring our first speaker to, to you all, and hopefully you're going to get some great insights on this. Now, Carlos Mitchelson.

I have found out in the last half an hour, he is not just an expert when it comes to market research. He does in fact play international level hockey for Scotland over 50s. So we are in the presence of not just marketing greatness, er sorry, not, not, not just research greatness, but also hockeying greatness.

Carlos runs CM Research, which is a market research agency that works exclusively. In the veterinary and pet owner sectors across the world. He has over 30 years experience in market research.

And during this pandemic, he's helped many veterinary practises gauge the effect of the pandemic it's having on veterinarians. So, Carlos, over to you. OK, assuming that you can see my screen.

Thanks, Ben, Ben, for, for that introduction and you humble me. Yes, I am an international hockey player, although past my prime. Over 50s, is everything quicks nowadays, so then, it's, it's a struggle to be as, as quick and as effective on the pitch as it used to be.

But putting that aside, to what we are, we've come here for today, which is taking a look at Not just the fact that COVID has had on veterinary practise, but also the trends that we've identified over, over the last years and try to predict where where things are heading to. We're gonna be using a lot of data that we've been collecting since 2013, because we do run many veterinary surveys, and the results that we're gonna show to you today summarise thousands of interviews to companion animal vets. Now, the most recent data we have is from November this year, so it is very, very fresh.

And that's data that we run in association with the WCVA. Some of you may have actually received an invitation to take part in it. And it includes opinions of around 6000 veterinarians globally, not just about COVID, but about how veterinary practise is.

Is doing for them at the moment and the expectations they have for the future. Of these 6000, around 1000 were in the UK and a lot of the results that we're showing today are mostly UK centred although we do have some international comparisons. So, so based on that, what have been the largest trends that we've seen over time?

Well, since 2015, we've been asking veterinarians to, to indicate what have been the biggest challenges that have been facing their practise. And 2015, what we saw and probably even before 2015, a lot of the reasons were economical and there were things about clients unable to pay their bills or competitive issues or Things about staffing were starting to come up, but staffing issues and happy staff were, were not as important. We see, over time, there was a slight change, particularly since 2017 in which issues like Too much work, or issues with recruitment, with staff and happiness, managing and retaining staff were things which were Becoming significantly more important.

And I don't think that will come as a surprise. I think most of you will be aware that the last couple of years have been challenging for the veterinary profession. It's not just us who have been reported as being, being reported, in the UK veterinary, professional press, and it's not just a UK phenomenon, it's, it's a global phenomenon, generally.

Now, what we've also seen this year is that we've almost going back to full circle to what's happening in 2015 where The economic issues that clients were facing 2015, which, which weighing the bit all the way to 2018, are starting to become more important. So now issues like clients' inability to actually pay their bill. When they weren't so important in in in 2018.

They have been quite important nowadays. And then also the other thing which has increased quite a lot is some clients An ability to actually follow recommendation or, or compliance and we'll, we'll be take more of that in a moment. So COVID has brought along new challenges and affected the sector like no other event in, in recent times.

I think we all agree that the challenges have been many, they have been deep and will remain for a long time with us, but we look at more of that in, in detail in the future. So in the things that, that have been Changing at the moment. It will come as a surprise that a lot of these measures that have been put in place to deal with pandemic being things like hygiene and protection measures, which were the first to be adopted and currently remain the most commonly adopted measures some practises have continued to be using using these.

There's also been an impact on staff too. Either through redundancy, pay cuts, adapted shifts, homeworking, and we'll see the impact that this has had in terms of, intention to leave the profession, stress, and so on. Of course, limiting the numbers inside the clinic has also been a huge focus to stop the spread of coronavirus, but as we'll see later, this is causing more and more pressure on veterinarians.

And finally, we've seen an accelerated adoption of digital tech. Now, we see an accelerated adoption. We're not going to see this, we're not saying this is something completely new.

It was already happening and probably the future had this already. Telemedicine was already part of the future. What COVID has done is just accelerated, the implementation of, of technology and veterinary practises.

So for example, right now, today, 89% wearing protective clothing during regular consultations and that's almost universal. Half have also limited the number of clients allowed per day, either because of lack of vets or because the actual protocols lengthen the consultation. This is slightly less than it was a couple of months ago and these are all numbers from November, so then they're very, very recent.

And then half are offering telemedicine. And even though it seemed that almost all were offering telemedicine and it was the way forward, that's not really the truth. You can see that the, the numbers that are currently using telemedicine have actually dropped quite markedly from Almost 80% to almost 50%.

And we've also noticed a downward trend, with less practises now offering it. And, and that is, of course, due to this having more face to face consultations then the, the, the end of lockdown one has a lot to do with that. Now the question is, of course, if telemedicine will continue to have the importance it coverage enjoys or will its use actually wane, but we'll have more on that later.

But what have been the largest trends over, over the last 10 months, just looking at COVID. Well, this is an international comparison, but let's just concentrate on what's happening in the UK, in April. Clinics in all countries are reported a negative percentage change versus the past week in all areas, including revenues, which were hit the worst, especially in the UK also to France and Spain.

So the revenues were hit quite dramatically. You can see, in April, all the numbers were negative. I don't think we've gone back to where we were, previously, but they have started to increase again and probably in November, we haven't measured this in November.

We'll reach a point. Almost at pre-pandemic levels. However, we've seen that the number of clients still hasn't recovered in the UK and staffing actually does remain an issue.

So generally, where we would say the UK is in relation to, to COVID, where, where the veterinarians see the country to be? Do they consider that the worst is past us? And this came as a bit of a surprise.

We weren't expecting this, generally, specifically considering how optimistic the country and the veterinary sector generally is, and we asked nearly 1000 UK veterinarians where they thought the country was. Along a COVID dimension, for example, on one side, where COVID now is completely behind us and it's over, and the other where they say it's going to get worse. And the UK was more towards the end of, of the scale.

So then a large part of them were indicating, and these are veterinarians that it was actually going to get worse and a third of the of UK vets, and this is November data, think that we won't get out of this until at least 2022. This is a higher percentage than the rest of the world, which was 21%. In fact, it was only Spain and Poland which had a more pessimistic view of the future, the COVID-related future than the UK.

And the optimists, well, it only 2% of global vets, think that everything was behind us, and this was almost exclusively in Australia and, and New Zealand. So that, that's where we are at the moment, with a lot of veterinarians think that things are going to get better. Now, of course, this, these results were part of the of the data that we have was pre-announcement of, of the vaccine and part of it is post announcement of the vaccine.

But still, the, the announcement of the vaccine, it was be global, so the relative position of the UK in relation to other countries wouldn't have changed. So that's the present, that's where we are at the moment. But how do veterinarians actually see the future or how do they see the future of the veterinarian, industry, being?

Is the future getting further and further away or do they see it constantly evolving as it changed over time? And how has COVID changed the perception of what the future will bring? Again, we've been asking veterinarians in the UK how they see the future and some themes actually do pop up.

First, even though veterinarians see the present with high workloads, they also see the future differently. So then increased workloads on 39%. And we do know for a fact that the current challenges as, as I show you initially, a very large proportion of them were saying that it was increased workloads so that the present is quite different to the future.

And we've also got more demanding customers and telemedicine. In fact, customers that think that they know best, more litigious are demanding as an area which is, which has grown in their perceptions of how the future will be. The growing influence of the internet, that's actually reduced and it's almost like achieved its peak and probably because you recognise that it can't probably be any more influence influential than it currently is.

Other areas have actually grow is customers, increased cost of treatment. And also more online consultations and telemedicine, and we'll go back to, to that one in, in a moment. So generally, the future has four themes, more demanding customers, the corpoitization, telemedicine, and insurance company, and insurance companies is, is a new one that's actually appeared and, and these are veterinarians that say that insurance companies now more than in the past actually directing care.

So generally, at least, at least we think that veterinarians are seeing the future as more economically stable with less competition, but still challenging and the challenges are related in more in relation to to pet owners and in cost of treatments. But COVID is still a spanner in everybody's predictions. The future now is like different because of, because of COVID.

But, but still, it turns out that veterinarians are, are quite good. So then what's happened is that COVID, what I've done has, has exacerbated some of the changes which were already going to, to happen. It's just brought them forward.

And I don't think this will come as a surprise. I'm sure most of you are aware of the, of the many changes that happened within your practise due, due to COVID, particularly around technology, but we'll talk about that in a moment. So based on all of this, we've come up with 5 main themes that start to describe how we think the veterinary sector will actually change.

Some of these are already with us and some others will gain even more momentum, but none of these should, should be, very surprising. So the first one is growing pressure. So because we think there are, there are more pets, there are high expectations, there are even less vets going around.

Second, job dissatisfaction, there were rising stress levels and frustration, and this has been widely reported and we'll dig into that as well. The third area has been the, the right of the traditionals. So things like telemedicine, curbside services, all of these, which we think will still have a role to play in the future.

But the world may be slightly different to what you expect it to be. Evolving relationships as well. So in the, the relationship that veterinarians have with their clients will evolve and also the relationship that veterinarians have with the veterinary manufacturers that supplies their services will also, will also be changing.

And finally, something that was already happened particularly in the UK and will continue to happen in the UK but more internationally is a coritization, the increasing corporate. We'll explore each one of these individually. So first of all, let's start with pressure.

And again, as I said, all of this did not come as a surprise, as it's been widely reported by multiple service surveys. So starting with stress levels, back in 2015, slightly over half of veterinarians were stressed. Now, we, we, we've been recording this numbers since 2013.

And we know that stress levels have increased slightly over time. In fact, in 2018, it was 59%. But stress levels now are at all time high, 69% of veterinarians are stressed at the moment.

So then if you see 3 veterinarians, most likely 2 of them have some sort of stress at the moment on all of them and only 1 of them doesn't. But what has caused that increase in stress? We know veterinary practise is, is, is stressful, yes, but that 10 point increase in stress must have been due to something and of course, COVID has a lot to do with that.

Now, there are many reasons, both internal and external. The internal reasons are related, of course, to staff management, the workloads, how well management is dealing with issues. And that also has, is, is an effect of the number of clients that go through the door, which is, which is, which is what we call the external factors as well.

So these external factors are. There are 4 of those, 4 of them generally. First of all, we've estimated, and this is at a European level, we don't have this for the UK, but we're almost sure certain that this holds true for the, for the UK.

There were fewer vets per pet. In 2015, there were 0.38 veterinarians per 1000 people in Europe, the same number that they are now, even though we know that there are more pets and pets are living longer and the demands for veterinary services are higher, and that only means more workloads.

There are more pets. We estimated that in Europe. The number of pets have grown by roughly 10% over the last 78 years and this trend will only grow, particularly now, but more on that in a bit.

Longer life expectancy as well, 2002, the average expectancy of a dog was 10.5 years, that's increased by 11.8.

So they not only are there more dogs, but they're also living for longer and living for longer means that they require additional extra care, particularly here in the, in the last years. And finally, it's also more proactive care and a lot has been talked about this, about the, the increase in veterinary services use among some pet owners. And is it primarily due to the fact that pet owners are becoming more engaged with the animals healthcare, but of course, for because of lockdown.

They've gotten to know their pets well before they would go to work, come back, and walk the dog, and that, that was probably it, but now they actually have to live with them. So they, they recognise the issues that their pets are actually having. And that potentially has been leading to, to more preventative vet visits.

. So first of all, growing pet populations, it's not just about, this year, it was, it was a trend that's happening over time, but if we look at the increase in pets adoptions, and again, this has been widely reported it was in, in the, in the press as well. The searches for, for puppy adoption of puppies for sale increased dramatically as soon as lockdown actually, . Started, so then.

There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that a lot of the shelters have, have had high demand for pets and, and in fact, if you look at the inflation and, and puppy prices, that also reflects the demand for pets. So if anything, the number of pets has been increasing. This also means that the import of pets from, from Europe, from puppy factors has also gone up and I know it's a campaign to try to make that legal.

The population in the UK has also increased slightly, not, not enormously, but still it's 10%, over the last 10 years and we haven't really seen a comparable increase in the number of veterinarians during that time. And this has resulted, of course, in a much heavier case loads and more clients, to add to match admin, etc. Which has led to unhappy staff.

So more pets and the same number of vets or less can only mean more work per vet. Critically, we also know that up to around 2018, vets were not working longer hours. So the length of the consultation was going down.

We measured it in 2013 as around 15 minutes and it went down to around, so, it was 20 minutes, it went down to 115. I can't drop any further than that. So then, today, what we find is that vets are simply putting in longer hours because they, they can't shorten the consultation.

Now, what does this resulted in? Well, it resulted in a huge 44% of veterinarians now thinking about leaving the profession. So it's, it's a combination of everything, a combination of too much work, general and happiness within the practise, which has led them to now start seriously considering what's their veterinary future actually is.

The second theme, so heavy workload and lack of time leads to unhappiness and dissatisfaction. And, and that this is assumed and we, we know that. So back in 2015, the majority of vets were satisfied with their jobs, and 2/3 of them were satisfied with the job.

Even those stress levels were high, like for example, 6, 71% were satisfied in 2018, even though we saw that there was a slight increase in stress. Veterinarians were recognising that, yes, veterinary services, veterinary practise is a stressful job. But The big increase in stress levels 2018 to 2020 has also meant that it's been a big reduction in the proportions that actually satisfied with the jobs now they're now, and this is a number that we've never seen before.

It's never been so low. There's ample evidence that stress is the main driver of intention to actually leave the profession. And you see, since 2014, the numbers for the UK of are intending to leave the profession are very slowly been increasing.

No, nothing at a huge pace, but it has actually been a trend. And if we look at early in the year when we did the first wave of our COVID trackers, see that trend was probably slightly faster and, and then finally here in November is exacerbated. So what COVID has done is actually exacerbated a trend which already existed before.

And it's not just in in the UK that we see this, we see that. Stress levels are very strongly related to intentionally leave the profession globally. So it's not, it's not just a UK phenomenon, it's, it's a global phenomenon.

Critically, disillusionment, grows over time. So veterinarians start practising, with very high expectations of how, satisfied they're gonna be with veterinary practise. But unfortunately, over time with experience, that satisfaction actually drops and in the numbers of them which start to think about leaving the profession.

Actually starts to, to increase. And it comes like what we like to call the moment of truth, which is after around 15 years of practise, 1015 years of practise, where, where a veterinarian actually decides, OK, shall I stick it out and just accept that I'm going to be a veterinarian and I want to retire as a veterinarian, or shall I look at something else? And that's what we see at around 15 years of work.

But the other thing that worries that even though veterinarians, when they start their, their veterinary career, most of them, don't think about leaving. You still have got a relatively large number of them that actually do. Still around 20-30% will start the practise.

And almost immediately start regretting it. So that's something that actually management and can actually do with the new veterinarians to support them as much as can be done to make sure that they do have a rewarding and good first years of experience. So, yes, it's bad out there.

So what we've seen is that there is also an enormous disconnect between what management considers are the main issues and those reported by employees. And when we looked at this the first time, we were quite amazed, because we, we would assume that there would be a quite close communication between management and then employees and, and both would be pretty, pretty much synced up in terms of what are the main concerns of priority, priorities for the practise. And if you think about, we have owner partners and 19% of them said that unhappy staff is a current concern, but you compare that versus same employed vets and it's 54% of them saying that.

So it's enormous disconnect between owners and employees and it's extremely marked and in fact, it's even higher amongst a vet nurses. And while we do see this in most of the countries, we survey is by far the widest in the UK. And this is not a new issue.

It's been going on for new years. And it may be just to be to, to the fact in the UK that the UK has got probably more commercially motivated practises or slightly larger or increasing corporates, but there definitely is an issue, and this is something that is potentially going to get worse over time. And also a large 4 in 10 vets have experienced some sort of loss of income.

And we do know that does come as a surprise, that's probably due to furlonging, and 30% of them are working remotely. We remote work has also been particularly prevalent in the UK with 70% doing some sort of remote, remote work. In the UK, 38% said they had lots of income.

It's this drop in pay that has been a strong driver of unhappiness. This loss of income has also been strongly associated with general concerns about the profession. And it's not just In the UK it is again, it, it's a global phenomenon.

So then the more you report loss of thing on income, the more concerned you are, are about the profession generally. So all the changes on how the situation has made veterinarians stressed and unfortunately, in some cases, depressed. Now, these quotes are just some of the few many stories that we actually have from veterinarians that actually shared with us.

I'm not gonna read them all in, in detail, but you can read them at your leisure and For example, . Veterinarians consider the government considers that headdressers are more important or veterinarians are depressed, not seeing their friends, . Communication is difficult, stress, and so on, and this has led to COVID really been a big driver of many veterinarians' plan to, to leave the industry entirely.

And, and this is a real quote for veterinarians, so. My work almost completely disappeared. I do not qualify for any state support above 90 pounds per week.

I've been extremely frustrated that I'm having to compete with veterinarians who have 80% of the wages paid for by the state, yet continue to pick up shifts. When they should stay at home, etc. I want to leave the profession even now more than usual.

Boss has been very, not being very helpful or appreciative, working extra hard, killing morale. We may have staff quit, crisis has polarised to the profession, and, and this goes back to the slide that I showed you before between management and employees, want to leave the profession. So then, It is, it is quite depressing and .

And it It's not just been stress that that's been affected. It's also been pay and we already alluded to this earlier so then financial worries weren't a main cause for concern back in 2015. Hardly anyone reported that they were worse off financially compared to the previous year.

That increased very, very marginally to the end of 2019 or early 2020, where only 1 in 5 were reporting the worst financially, but look at now, 40% consider that they're worse off now financially than they were before. And not surprisingly, that's also another driver or pressure point for veterinarians actually leaving, leaving the profession. But it's not all bad news.

I know it may sound a bit depressing, but, but, but COVID and the associated changes that that has had on the profession and the trends that we've been seeing over time, some of them are actually quite positive. For example, we do think that the gender pay gap is closing and COVID-19 has also helped highlight the value of vets. So we did an analysis a couple of years ago, I'm looking at real yearly salaries of by age of males and females.

And if you compare like for like, yes, there is a difference between males and females, probably around 7% in favour of males, but amongst newly graduated vets, there is no difference. And there hasn't been any difference in, in salaries for the last probably 57 years and we expect this to continue, at least we, we hope we would want it to continue. So that, that's a good, that's definitely good news.

The other one is that COVID-19 has helped highlight the value of vets, because first of all, the veterinary industry has contributed, in creating tests and also providing medical assistance. There's been a halo effect as well, with the, the general, community having higher appreciation of healthcare professionals than they would normally have, . And then also the increasing importance of pets has also helped to shape, shape perspectives.

The, the role of pets and households has, has changed very slightly. Now they're considered more, more family than, than they were previously. The third theme is the goals of non-traditionals.

By this we mean things like telemedicine and curs side, services, but first, let's concentrate on telemedicine. Now, indicated earlier that. We know that telemedicine has been extremely impactful.

Before the pandemic, around 13% were using telemedicine. I mean, it was used, not extensively. And the pandemic, of course, forced veterinary practises to, to change the way they, they did consultations and telemedicine actually helped in doing that.

And the use of telemedicines was almost universal. Now, there is a big discussion as to exactly what telemedicine is, but in the broad sense of telemedicines being Phone, internet, other, other sorts of, of remote consultations on 92% were actually using telemedicine, which is a high proportion across all the countries that we were surveying. Now, that doesn't mean that most veterinarians want to keep on using telemedicine when we asked them, the likelihood to continue offering telemedicine or telemedicine calls in the future.

Only 1 in 3 actually thought it would potentially be, be a good idea for them to do so. Is their interest of appeal is higher in countries which have got very low incidence of telemedicine. So telemedicine is not going to solve all the problems that we currently have, even though right now it's widely used, we don't consider that it's, it's use will be very wide in the future.

We'll go to the reasons why in the moment. The trends over time, very high use and since August, the use of telemedicine after the end of, of the first lockdown has gone down. In fact, in some other countries, it's also gone down.

Very, very slightly and we would expect this trend to continue, in the UK. Telemedicine generally is, is not something new. It's been around for, for quite a while.

And if we ask veterinarians what they really thought about telemedicine, it's not really extremely popular because of course, veterinarians would always prefer to see a, a client face to face, would always prefer to be able to examine the pet, face to face. In fact, in the UK, only 3 and 10 vets say they enjoy using telemedicine, and the majority actually agree that there are limitations and these limitations are, well, They say that there are too many conditions that they can't diagnose, and then it's got some usefulness, but not for everything that they actually would potentially need it for. Some even being more extreme, saying that it's, it's pointless, that patients have to come into the practise anyway.

And finally, there's an economic motivator as well, indicating that teleability will make it harder to make a profit. Because the charges for telemedicine consultation will be perceived to be cheaper or of less value than actually a face to face one. And the UK is one of the only countries that's here a negative.

Trend for the interest in, in pickup of telemedicine. You can see it was 38% in May, now it's 33% in October, whereas other countries, particularly the US, are, are really getting behind telemedicine. And we don't know exactly why that appeal exists in the US compared to the UK and we'll, we'll be exploring that more in, in the new, new year's.

Also, other areas have actually seen growth, and these are areas which already existed before, but, but probably were, were a bit niche and weren't very, very widespread and COVID and pandemic and, and remote consultations and not being able to bring your vet into the practise is probably accelerated on the pace that these new different types of Veterinary services, will come online and things like mobile vets, 100% online vets is an area which has grown a lot, triage vets as well. The traditional big and mitor model is currently being disrupted and it's being disrupted, at a faster pace than ever. The future what's going to be in some ways like this is just being brought forward.

The first theme is relationships. So what do you mean about relationships? Well, there has been 4 areas that we've seen have had an impact on the vet pet owner relationship.

First of all, there's been an increase in the number of clients. There has been changing communication channels then. A lot of emails, a lot of Facebook, a lot of internet type communication channels, telemedicine is one of them.

Changing consultations, and also veterinarians' role in, in client's life, and we'll, we'll explore each one of them individually. So client loads, post lockdown, the number of clients, It's larger in the UK than it than it was before, particularly in, in the UK and, and the US and that, that is it. That shows why workloads have also been affected so much.

The actual numbers may not be larger than they were before, but the actual workloads of veterinarians, so there may be a perception that the number of clients that the veterinary practise has is actually larger than there was before, but there is also evidence that there is a larger number of clients as well. This phenomenon is particularly true in, in the UK and the United States. Also, at the same time, we need to remember that pet owners now are more demanding and COVID has actually exacerbated that.

And I know Ben mentioned that initially at the introduction and yes, we do see that and veterinarians that actually are seeing that as well. And they're not just demanding, they're also Put it mildly, rude, because they, they are exhausted, they are impatient because all the situation that everybody's currently living in, living in, of course, is challenging, . Now we're not gonna say, we're not saying that COVID, that this wouldn't have happened anyway.

I think COVID is just exacerbated this and what we'll show the trends that we're seeing in a moment, but you just have to read some of the comments that we have. Sample receptionists are exhausted from answering the phones and want medications, etc. People are getting easily agitated.

We are several clients lashing out at us, utterly rude and increasingly demanding income. And so on and, and actually some demanding that something has to be done about it, the RCVS and the VDS have to defend invest more. Also vets think that having pet owners, the value the veterinary services they provide.

It is becoming more and more important. Now, if that's actually one that it's because what. They are Because what they think pet owners are receiving is not what they expect.

So in pet owners for valuing the veterinary er veterinary services they receive, we say that there's a very strong Trend over time, now it's become the most important one. And this goes back to the previous point that we that we made, that The, the problem consultations or the issues that patients are having when visiting a, a veterinarian, the, the stressful levels and probably vets are, are thinking really that the pet owners aren't valuing them potentially as much as they, as they should and that's why we're seeing that very large increase. And that also ties in with the increase on less pressure on vets.

CPD is also something that we've seen increase in, in general, general importance or, or making an impact and that's why we're having this session today. The other area is, and I'm, I'm gonna try to pronounce this word. I always struggle, increase anthropomorphism.

I wasn't that bad. And it hasn't stopped yet. If, if anything, it's again, it's accelerated and it will continue.

So then there are general themes here. For example, pet owners naming their pets with human names, that's a general theme, dressing them up as babies also. The, the lower fertility rates among millennials and almost replacing babies for, for pets and, and of course also spending significantly more time and money on their pets.

Well, the pet owners have actually changed their relationships with their pets. And, and that changed the relationships with their pets has had an impact on the relationship they have with veterinarians. So there's also signs that pet owners are more keen to follow a self-care approach to their pet's health, more likely in line with what they do with their own health, and So there's, there has been an increase during the COVID search of treatment of minor conditions.

And this is another reason why vets want their services to be more appreciated. There's an increased self-education. Do stay first increased internet nutrition.

Increase preventative care. All of these areas which are outside the veterinary, veterinary fear of, of influence and pet owners taking it in their hands to actually look after their pet and almost like putting the, the pet on a second plane. And practises are still concentrating mostly on just running a good veterinary practise, but some of them are actively looking at increasing their client base or trying to get back on past clients in the clinic.

Now, the increase in demanding pet owners, some of which are unappreciative of the veterinary service they receive, and also the increased workloads. I think that's the second part is probably more important, has led for the first time, some veterinary practises to actively start to reduce the number of clients they have. And, and this is the first, we haven't, we've never seen this before.

So the demands of veterinary services are, are such at the moment that some practises can actually afford the luxury of turning clients away. Now, that is, as I mentioned, #1, due to heavy workloads, they just can't take any more clients, or number 2, just because they may find some of their client clients to be disruptive or not really worth it, to put it mildly. And the fifth thing is corporatization.

And we all know that it has been quite rapid degree of corporatization in the UK, but how does this compare to, to other countries? Is it just a UK phenomenon? When you compare to other countries, generally, it tends to be an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon with the UK, the US, .

Australia, a bit, Canada as well. And to a lesser extent, the Netherlands. Those tend to be the countries in which we see a higher prevalence of corporates.

Now, over time, we see that, yes, the growth has been quite rapid and explosive, particularly in the UK. And now the latest figures we have is more than half of practises are what can be catalogued as corporate or group practises. And we forecast that this will probably reach a max of just near about the, the 60% mark.

Now, this rapid growth in the UK has also been replicated in, in the US and we expect it to continue unabated in the US, almost the same as it did in the UK. But interestingly, even though the present is not currently corporate in all countries, Most countries actually do see the future to be corporate, and we found that extremely interesting. Look at countries, for example, like Germany, where do you see the future?

Well, 70% of them see the future to be corporate. Even though currently I think it's around 3% of practises are they're actually corporate. In the UK, 84% see the future corporate even though currently it's around 50%.

So then in all instances, regardless of what country you are, you do see the future to be more corporate. So in the future, Is in one way or another tainted with a corporate brush. And while corporatization is only affecting some countries, there is a sense that is almost inevitable.

For example, as I mentioned, corporate, less than 5% of practises are corporate, but almost 70% of vets see the future as corporate, and that can be said also of Germany, Spain, or Denmark, which has got very, very low rates of corporatization but very high percentages that actually see the future as corporate. But the main driver of corporatization, of course, there has to be an economic justification for actually a group to go into one country and start buying up practises. And the reason why that hasn't happened in Germany is because practises tend to be quite small, one or two vets at most, then there is really isn't any This reasons to actually go ahead and do that.

So it's all about the size of, of practises. And based on this relationship, in the UK growth should stall a bit. They maybe could increase very, very marginally, but other countries like, like France will become prime targets.

. But generally, should we worry about the increase of, of corporates in, in the UK? . Not, not really.

It will increase poverty in, in Canada and, and, and Australia, but in the UK it may reach a certain level and, and finish there. The UK has almost reaches its, it's ceiling. So that's it.

Thank, thank you very much. I, I hope you found that interesting and of course, if you got any questions, just put them in the, the commentary box and we'll try to answer them.