Medios AG

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the earnings call of Medias AG for the financial year 2024. 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 the opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulty hearing the conference, please press zero followed by the hash key for operator assistance. May I now hand you over to Claudia Nikolaos, Head of Investor and Public Relations, ESG Communications at Media.

Thank you. Welcome, everybody, to our earnings call for the 2024 financial year and the fourth quarter of 2024. As always, all relevant documents can be downloaded from our Investor Relations website. Additionally, this presentation can be followed in parallel via the internet link provided for 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 fiscal year 2024 and the guidance for 2025. Finally Matthias will comment on the status of the Milos 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 financial year of 24. We had a successful financial year 24 with a significant improvement in profitability and we laid the foundation for sustainable growth, especially with our transformative acquisition of Sefan in the first half of 24. So let's directly go to slide 3, starting with an overview of the highlights and achievements for 24. Revenue grew of 5.5% to 1.9 billion euros and EBITDA3 increased disproportionately by more than 30% to €79 million. All three operational segments contributed to this strong EBITDA3 increase. PS and PSD grew organically and PSD is back on its growth track with an EBITDA3 growth of more than 30% in the second half of 2024. after a disappointing first half of 24. For Q4-24 alone, we posted a strong organic EBITDA increase of 17.1%. Our new segment in the national business, reflecting the state-run acquisition, has been consolidated for seven months and contributed significantly to the good business performance. Consequently, we substantially improved our EBITDA free margin from 3.4% for financial year 23 to 4.2% for 24. We are aiming to further improve the margin for financial year 25. In 24, we have also shown that we can generate considerable cash from our operations. We recorded an exceptionally strong operational cash flow of almost 74 million Euro, part of which is due to reporting-based related effects. Paul will provide more insights on the financials later. We have also made progress in terms of governance. Our shareholders approved an expansion of the supervisory board from four to five members at our annual general meeting in August 24. Following this AGM, an ESG committee was implemented by the Supervisory Board, which is headed by its chairman. We have also made great progress in implementing our strategy. One of the most important milestones is for sure the internationalization of our business. With the acquisition of DATON, we created the European specialty pharma platform. With the state line integration just nine months underway, our current focus is on implementing the integration steps as earlier announced. We also start driving strategic initiatives, particularly in procurement and cross-selling, utilizing the strong and leading platforms of both major and state lines. We recognize that integration processes require a lot of time and effort. However, we are fully confident in the future success of combined companies. Briefly summarized on slide 4, you can see the status of our European platform, which gives us leading position in the specialty pharma compounding in Europe. This network is an excellent basis for our further international expansion. 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. Now some further comments on the financials for Q4 and the full year of 2024. Slide 5 shows the quarter-on-quarter development of our two KPIs, Revenue and EBITDA-3. In Q4 of 24, EBDA pre and the respective margin grew significantly compared to the fourth quarter 23. We reached an EBDA pre-margin of 4.8 percent. earnings contribution of our segment International Business, in short ID, but also due to the strong organic growth in the PSD segment in the second half of 24. This positive development is also reflected on slide 6, illustrating the very strong EBITDA free growth of more than 62% for the fourth quarter of 24. Now the same illustration for the fiscal year 24 shown on slide 7. Whereas revenue increased by 5.5%, EBITDA3 grew strongly by more than 30% with a corresponding margin of 4.2% compared to 3.4% last year. This is fully in line with our strategy to focus on margin improvement. Let's go to slide 8, providing a short overview on the ESG progress we made in 24. We focused on compiling our non-financial report in line with the corporate sustainability reporting directive and EU regulation, widely known as CSRD. At the end, it was not a legal requirement in Germany, but nevertheless, we already used the European Sustainability Reporting Standard, so-called ESIS, of the CSRD as the framework for our non-financial report 24. For the first time, we reported as a group, including Saban, across several countries. We gathered respective ESG key performance indicators for the meters group, which will provide the basis for revision and further development of our ESG strategy to be conducted this year. With this strategy we will set new targets, including climate targets. We also completed our first and mandatory double materiality assessment. Overall, we laid the foundation for new group-wide and strategic management of ESG issues. Looking ahead, we are well prepared to fulfill new mandatory reporting regulations and to further develop our ESG strategy. More information on some key ESG figures for 24 and on our ESG ratings can be found in the appendix of this presentation. This is all from my side for the moment. I now hand over to Falk to provide more details on the financials for the fourth quarter, the financial year 24, and the guidance for 25.