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 listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulties hearing the conference, please press 0 followed by the hash key for operator assistance. May I now hand over to Claudia Nikolaos, Head of Investor and Public Relations and ESG Communications at Medios.

Welcome everybody to our earnings call for the first nine months 2024. 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 invitations. Today, with me is our CEO, Matthias Gärtner, our CFO, Frank Nolkirch, and our CIM, Konstantin van Rietschoten. Matthias will start with an executive summary, followed by Frank, who will then provide details on the finances for the first nine months of 2024 and the guidance for 2024. Finally, Matthias will comment on the status of Midas' growth strategy. After the presentation, We will begin the Q&A session. I would now like to hand over to Matthias.

Thank you, Claudia. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our conference call for the first nine months of 2024. Overall, we posted strong nine-month figures and an excellent third quarter 24, the best quarter ever. The main highlights of the third quarter 24 are shown on slide three. Let's start with the financials of group level. Earnings were up significantly in Q3. For the first time, we reached the 5% mark for our EBITDA-free margin, mainly driven by PST and C-Band. And worth to mention, PST has achieved the turnaround in earnings with an EBITDA-free growth of more than 10% compared to Q3-23. Now some comments to the financials for the first nine months. We achieved a revenue growth of more than 4% to 1.4 billion euros and a disproportionate EBITDA green increase of more than 20% to 55.8 million euros. Our segment in the national business is included for four months from June to September and we are very happy with the performance of Saban in these first months of consolidations. We are also happy that our strategy to trade in lower margin revenues for higher margin revenues is working, especially in the pharmaceutical supply. This helps to improve our margins as well. We posted a strong operational cash flow of 27.6 million euros, a plus of more than 100% compared to the same period last year. And we confirm our guidance 24. I will provide more insights on the financials later. The integration of Stepan is well on track and progressing very smoothly and quickly. When we look at synergies, we are mostly focusing on the cross-selling opportunities and best practices and knowledge sharing. Plus, of course, the economies of scale that the combination will benefit from. First tests have been taken here and we clearly see the potential benefits, but it is too soon to already see them reflected in the Q3 results. Briefly on slide 4 you can see the status of our European platform, which gives us a leading position in the specialty pharma compounding in Europe. This European network is an excellent basis for our further European expansion and the realization of synergies and cross-selling opportunities. Furthermore, it will support the development of our activities in the field of advanced therapies, the future of individualized medicine. In August, shareholders approved an expansion of the supervisory board from four to five members at our AGM. Following the AGM, an ESG committee was implemented by the supervisory board, which is headed by its chairman. And, as already outlined at our H1 earnings call, we are proud that Mateos was re-included in the STAX index on July 15. Now some further comments on the financials for Q3 and the first nine months of 2024. Slide 5 shows the quarter-on-quarter development of our two KPIs, Revenue and EBITDA streams. In Q3 of this year, EBITDA free and the respective margin grew disproportionately. We reached the 5% EBITDA free mark for the first time. This was mainly a result of the contribution of our segment international business, in short IB, the earnings growth in the PST business in Germany and overall higher margins in the PS business. This very positive development is also reflected on slide 6, illustrating the disproportionate EBITDA pre-growth of more than 40%. Now the same illustration for the first 9 months, shown on slide 7. Whereas revenue for the first 9 months 24 remained almost flat, EBITDA pre-growth strongly grew by more than 20% compared to the first 9 months of 23. As already mentioned, this is fully in line with our strategy to further focus on margin improvement. 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 quarter, the first nine months of 2024, and the guidance for 2024.