Medios AG

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Conference Call of Medias AG. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listener remote. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulty hearing the conference, please press 0 followed by the hash key for operator assistance. May I now hand it over to Claudia Nikolaos, Head of Investor, public relations and USD communications and media.

Welcome everybody to our conference call on our results for the first nine months of 2023. As always, all relevant documents can also be downloaded from our investor relations website. Additionally, this presentation can be followed in parallel via the internet link provided to you in the invitation. Today, with me is our CEO, Matthias Gärtner. and our CFO, Falk Neukirch. Matthias will start with an executive summary, followed by Falk, who will then provide details on the financials for the first nine months of 2023, as well as on the outlook for the current fiscal year. And finally, Matthias will comment on Nino's growth story. Both gentlemen will be then available to answer your questions. I would now like to hand over to Matthias.

Thank you, Florian. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our conference call on the results for the first 9 months 23. We already published our preliminary key figures for the reporting period on the 24th of October. I am happy to give you some more insights now. were again very successful for Meteos, especially against the background of the ongoing global challenges. Let's go directly to slide 3, providing an overview of the highlights for the first nine months of 23. First, both segments were doing well. Thermaceutical supply had an excellent third quarter, not only benefiting from the sale of inventories, Furthermore, we managed to compensate the headwinds from regulatory changes since September 22 in the patient-specific therapy segment. The business development shows that we are well positioned with our specialty pharma platform and our two operating segments. Additionally, we increasingly benefit from the diversification of our customer groups and have strengthened our position as a reliable partner in the specialty pharma sector. One good example is that we offer highly specialized parental nutrition care for prematurely born babies and therewith prevent an impending supply bottleneck. The integration of DDW and the sterile manufacturing volume of AFS in our lab as part of this acquisition further advanced successfully. Following the strategic sale of Calciplist and Kuhn, we have centralized all blister activities in DPW's lab near Stuttgart. Second, we posted strong 9-month and Q3 figures. Revenue for 9 months grew by around 11%, and EBITDA increased by almost 6%. Excellent Q3 results and record quarter. Revenue up by almost 17% to 490 million euros. EPDAP increased by almost 13% to 17.2 million euros. Operating cash flow was positive for the first nine months and extremely strong in Q3 with 86 million euros. That allowed us to fully repay our loan liabilities. Meteos is debt-free and therefore has a strong financing power for growth and potential M&A. We are confident for the development of the fourth quarter and narrowed our forecast 23. Revenue is now expected to reach 1.8 billion euros and ETT A3 to come in at 60 million euros. Files will provide some more insights on the financials later. And first We are making very good progress with the implementation of our extended growth strategy 25, especially regarding the internationalization of our business. The current focus is on value enhancing acquisitions and on developing mutually benefiting partnerships in North Western Europe. Regarding our ESG activities, we can announce major participation in the UN Climate Ambition Accelerator Program. The six-month program supports us in setting ambitious climate targets and provides guidance on aligning these targets with the Paris 1.5-degree target. Furthermore, we are currently working on the implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, abbreviated the well-known CSRD, and EU taxonomy requirements. Elements will already be included in our Non-Financial Reporting 23 for meteors still on a voluntary basis. Finally, we are proud to have received another award in October. In addition to the M&A Award and the Best Job with the Future Award in July, we received the Employer of the Future Award in October. In a nutshell, in Q3 we made progress as planned, despite some headwinds. The strategic inventory build-up in the first half of the year has paid off and resulted in a strong cash flow. We were also largely able to compensate for the effects of regulation. This positive development is reflected in the good financials for the first nine months and especially in Q3. Furthermore, we continue to successfully integrate BBW and intensify work on our internationalization strategy. Let me now share a short summary on the financials for Q3 and the first nine months as illustrated on slides four to six. Slide four shows the quarter-on-quarter development of our two KPIs, revenue and EBITDA-free. Q3 was the best quarter ever in Meta's history. Record revenue and EBITDA-free. Nevertheless, the ongoing regulatory price adjustments impacted our PST business to some extent. Consequently, the EBITDA-free margin for the third quarter was a quarter of 3.5%, was slightly below last year's level, but above Q2's margin. This slide is a wonderful example of how regulation offers great opportunities for majors. While our financials were affected by the regulatory headwinds in Q4-22, we posted regular KPIs three quarters later. I would like to stress that regulatory changes may have negative effects in the short term. but has positive effects for Mechos as the market leader in the mid to long term. They also offer opportunities that we know to use, like for example the change distribution process of hemophilia products in the past. Revenue in the first nine months increased by around 11%. to a new record of 1.3 billion euros, and EBITDA III also amounted to a new record level of 46.3 million euros, as shown on slide 5. Most of this growth was attributable to organic growth. Despite regulation and difficult framework conditions, such as high interest rates, NATO has once again recorded sustainable growth. Slide 6 shows that the share of the peer segment increased, especially regarding EBDA screening. We are now roughly at our target share of 40% for PST. This slide also clearly illustrates that we are very well positioned with our two segments. The ratio can and does always change, just as the therapies change. The good thing about our setup is that we can use synergies between the segments and compensate for any possible weakness or influences. Now let's move to slide 7, which you already know very well from my various references. Our network of specialized pharmacies now includes 750 partner pharmacies. We are clearly the number one outsourcing partner for specialty pharma. This is an excellent basis for our further German expansion. Based on our increased capacity and the agreement of manufacturing for AFS that we mentioned before, we target to expand our compounding up to approximately 400,000 individualized preparations in 2023, depending on indication areas and margin profiles. This is all from my side for the moment. I now hand over to Falk to provide more details on the financials for the first nine months of 2023 and on the guidance for 2023.