Medios AG

Good day and welcome to MEDIOS AG analyst and investors call on our first half 2026 results. My name is Katrin Neufer and I'm director investor relations at MEDIOS. It is a pleasure to welcome you to today's call. Our CEO Thomas Meier and our CFO Stefan Bauerreis will take you through the presentation today. They will provide an overview of our business performance in the first half to 2026. including the key financial figures and important developments at Medios. Following the presentation, we will have time for a Q&A session during which you will have the opportunity to ask questions. As a reminder, this conference will be recorded and all participants will be in a listen mode only. All relevant documents can be found on our website. And with that, I would like to hand over to Thomas Meier. Thomas, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. We prepared 30 slides today. We want to keep it short so that we have ample time for Q&A and for the partial solar eclipse later over Europe. So the executive summary to start with, we achieved revenue of 1,075 million, and that's a plus of 8.4%. And the first time that made us achieve more than a billion in the first half year. Our EBITDA pre is at 44 million. That's minus 5.1% and a EBITDA pre margin of 4.1%. Our focus is unchanged. We focus on profitability, cash conversion and operational efficiency. For that, we started the project Avanti Medios that is helping us to cut costs and to help those operational excellence initiatives that are long-term, but I think we see the first positive development in the second quarter. Yesterday, we announced a strategic milestone with the acquisition of Salo, a company that fits our compounding initiative and helps us to enter the German market. We're excited about this opportunity and we will give you more detail in this slide deck. Looking at the numbers of the first half year, we see that our revenue grew. All segments helped with the revenue growth and at the same time EBITDA pre-margin is lower than in the previous year. That is due to lower profit margin and increased operational expenses. We see those effects continue in the second half of the year and that's why we adjusted our guidance as we told you last week. If you look at the different business areas, we see pharmaceutical supply within a revenue growth of 8.5% and at the same time price pressure on specific marching high products. That resulted for that segment a 2.7% margin compared to 3.3% last year. That's where we had the biggest impact in the first half year.

Patient-specific therapies, on the other hand,

We also see a strong revenue growth of 8.5%. And what's very rewarding to see is that in Q2, our operational excellence measures helped to increase the EBTA margin to 10.2%. We expect positive development for the second half of 2026 in that business area. Our international business revenue growth is 6.9% and also a healthy EBTA and at the same time we see some marching pressures going forward and we took that in our adjusted guidance. On the regulatory radar we see the drug price regulation Hilfstaxe still under arbitration so we don't really know what the outcome will be. We expect that to be closed this arbitration procedure in 2026, and in our forecast, we have only a limited impact there, knowing that it is not yet known. For pharmacy reform plan, we don't actually see a significant influence on medios, and the GKV Contribution Rate Stabilization Act is in force since the 30th of July, and we got a negative there that the cannabis flowers are no longer reimbursed. That movement was a little bit faster than what we expected and we took that negative impact into our adjusted guidance. Health Security Act is still under planning. It is not yet in the government bodies. We expect that to be happening in the fall window and see there an opportunity for medias once the regulation is known. The EU directive is a rather long-term project. There is nothing changed. We believe that the national law will integrate those adjustments in the second half of 2028. And we see those developments in Europe. We are rather supportive of our business model. So much for the regulatory radar. And now to what everybody's probably most interested in is the acquisition of SALO. Here are the details. We are going to buy a 74% stake in Caesar & Loritz GmbH. That's a total consideration of 9.4 million. We pay 7.9 million for 74% of the shares. We have a 1.5 million control premium, which later can be deducted when we will buy the remaining 26% of the shares. Included is an earn-out provision. that depends how the market develops of 1.8 million. SALO is the market leader for compounding ingredients in Germany so it accelerates our entry in the German market that's something we were looking for and it has a complementary product portfolio to our PST business that is complementary and also serves the pharmacies so we see synergies there. We also see process synergies in combined sourcing, marketing and sales mainly going forward. Signing up was yesterday and now we are going to the antitrust process and we hope that we can close the deal in a relatively short period of time. What's the company Cesar Loritz? We have 240 employees working there. We're serving pharmacies, hospitals, industrial clients, mainly in Germany. And overall, it is the compounding essential business. We sell OTC products to pharmacies, to hospitals, and also to the pharma industry. Overall, they make $40 million. Revenue is the expectation in 2026 and they expect a EBTA of 1.6 million. Our target for the EBTA is higher. We see that we can, as a combined entity, we can increase this margin profile going forward. It was founded a long time ago in 1886 and headquartered in Hilden and Bonn and the managing director, Asiya Dogan, will remain in the director role while Ulrich von der Linde will retire to be shareholder going forward. How does that deal fit with our strategic objectives? It will strengthen our core market in Germany, that's very important, and will and it will add services for pharmacies as we do the dispensing for smaller quantities in those facilities that are GMP approved. CELO is the clear market leader with what you see up here in the right corner, a very, very well known brand in the pharmacies. You really see the CELO label in every pharmacy that does some compounding business. So we see a good opportunity to further strengthen that brand recognition and position it in the Medius network even more successful than in the past. It is also a next step for our European API platform extension. We have Meta Pharmaceuticals in Spain and Markies in Belgium, and we will combine that as one compounding essential GMBH under the leadership of Constantijn. And we see growth opportunities in Europe and have now a solid platform to further go after those opportunities. Where are the synergies? Certainly in the supplier network, it's important that we have a professional sourcing organization for all three companies and we see opportunity there to have a better procurement operations going forward. We also add capacities to our network where we believe we can further grow the business and we'll do that in our integration office going forward. With that I pass it on to Stefan who explains you more about the financial details of this transaction.

Thank you very much Thomas and also welcome from my side and I will jump in directly in this slide regarding the financial assessment of the transaction and the acquisition of the 74% of Salem. So let me focus on three topics, synergies, the valuation and also how we will finance the whole transaction. once closing takes place. So on the Synergy side, as Thomas already pointed out and mentioned, there is mainly opportunities around there. in terms of the cooperation between all our API businesses that we have now with CELO in Germany but also in Spain and in Belgium and combining this kind of stuff and we are also trying really much to separate and to see what are the opportunities in terms of synergies that we could get out for and that you can see on the black bar which are the synergies that we will see on CELO level itself and what are the ones that we believe that we will see on the level of the other two companies. So that will mean we will have, let's say, a good two to three years to really come to the full extension of the synergies that we want to get or that we believe that are realistic. They are obviously mainly focused on the strengthening of the cooperation of a very good purchasing network and therefore really much this has to be the focus of our synergies, the operational excellence, the cooperation between Machis, Meta and Zelo and this will start immediately after closing took place and all the approvals are there. So in total, we will see a 2.1 million opportunities, which compared to the EBDA number that the company currently has is a quite significant improvement that we believe that we could get. In addition, then coming to the valuation, all what you see here, the EBDA multiple based on the 2024, 2025, because the company has a fiscal year which is not the calendar year. That's why it's called like that. It's an EBITDA multiple of 5.4. You have to know that all these numbers that were discussed with Selo as of now before closing are numbers of the company which is doing all their accounting based on German GAP. So all these reclass what you normally see or you have to see based on IFRS 16 for leasing expenses is not yet included and therefore by technical The issue itself will also increase margin and will optimize also here the multiples that we see. So what you see here in the numbers is all the EBITDA multiple based on the German Gap numbers and therefore with the synergies we really strongly believe that we will bring a significant improvement of the quality of earnings in there. Talking shortly about the financing of the transaction. So we made there a bridge financing of one year, which is based on the following condition. This is the Euro short-term rate is the basis and we have there an interest margin of 0.85 that we have to pay. I think these are very, very good. in terms of getting the financing structure of the company. Why we decided to do a one year based bridge financing in the first instance, because you know in our credit facility that we have with our core banks, There is also a kind of revolting credit facility involved where we have an increase option that we then can take in 2027. So the point is here, we will not refinance the bridge with a complete different transaction in terms of financing, but we with the structure of the extension increase option of the RCF, we are able to do that in a very Thank you very much. in mind the leasing obligation that we then have to show as financial debt. We will change that to increase from 1.32 to 1.42 due to the fact that we have to finance the purchase price and on the other side also having there a five-year rental agreement for both locations in Hilden and Bonn, but with additional extension option also for the future. So flexibility in that perspective is 100% on our side and that is very healthy and very good. So this having said, I would like to close my additional information on the financing side of the transaction and give you a flavor what are the next steps so obviously yesterday as Thomas said we had the signing of the of the contract now In the following days, on short term basis, we will make them a notification to the competition authorities, the Bundeskartellamt, with all what we know, all what we got as information from the lawyers. It's nothing that we should expect in terms of any issues. So it's a formality that we have to do. But nevertheless, it's an important one and we take it serious. And then the intended closing Once again, it's always depending on when we get the green lights from the Bundeskartellamt. We'll then be there and hopefully we believe that in Q4 we can manage that and having the closing of this transaction. This having said, going back to the financial overview of Medius and coming back to the half year numbers and giving you a little bit more detailed flavor of where we are. Thomas already pointed out that we have a strong organic growth in revenues, but at the end of the day, when we're talking about the EBITDA pre-margin, we reduced from 4.7 last year to 4.1 percentage point. We will come when I guide you through the different segments to the different reasons why we have that. An additional information I think which is needed is even when it's not yet guided, it's the cash flow from operating activities. It reduced significantly from 23.4 million in the first half of last year compared to the 11.2 this year. This is mainly due on the one side, obviously, due to the somehow a little bit lower level of the EBITDA that we have as a company. But on the other side, and that is what we have to know, it's mainly timing issue due to tax payments because significantly higher tax payments or lower tax refund took place in the first half of 2026 compared to 2025, what we saw there. And this alone on the tech side, these are impacts on around 6 million euro, which obviously negatively impacting the operating cash flow. Talking about everything what is working capital, we are absolutely on track in optimizing that. For sure, you see an increase between the first half of 2025 to 2026 but let's say the development in the first half last year and the development of the working capital was quite positive and we were able to optimize also here and to improve slightly our ratios that we have. Therefore, working capital transaction activities are on track, mainly impacted cash flow by additional tax payments, which did not take place in the first half of the year 2025. Therefore, not that somebody believes that due to the operational business, We are not able to generate any cash flow anymore, so this is absolutely not the case. We will come back and also our targets that we see with a straight operational cash flow steering and management will continue in that way for the second half of the year. Now, as promised, getting back to the growth and the overview of the different segments, pharmaceutical supply, patients, specific therapies and international businesses. Here you can see the quite significant good growth, mainly with 8.5% in pharmaceutical supplies, but also in the patient-specific therapies. So there we are very happy that we were able to realize there in the first half of the year a very good performance. You see on the EBDA preside, that in the pharmaceutical supply, we are below prior year. This is mainly due to pricing issue with some specific products that we were not able to get this higher margin in this year on the pharmaceutical supply side. On the other side, when we go to the patient specific therapies, it's always still on the half year, a little bit below prior year, but the second quarter was already very promising and last but not least obviously the international business also developing here good with an growth of 6.9% in sales and a slightly better EBITDA pre-margin in that year. As I already mentioned revenue went up in pharmaceutical supplies but EBITDA pre-decrease so that is obviously not the structure we like to see but this is due to continuous price decrease on selected individual products which unfortunately also we will see that this will maintain in the second half of the year. So there we do not believe on a big recovery in that perspective. Nevertheless, I think we are all nevertheless here on quite good track and also compared with other wholesalers, we still have a good margin that we are able to achieve. Medicinal cannabis business already started. You know that from the presentation of the first quarter. It was a little bit later, so it was a delay in the first quarter, but it developed quite positive in the second quarter of this year. So we gained the momentum. Unfortunately, with the now new law in not getting any reimbursement anymore of the cannabis flowers, that will make the development very difficult or more difficult in the second half of the year. but that as Thomas said is already included in our new guidance in there. Also you have to know that nevertheless cannabis is not the big revenue contributor still for meteors. Going to the bridge that we showed first time in the Q1 year over year. So you can see the major impacts are the 2.7 million with the price drop of various products, individual products that we have there. Then we see a good development in new businesses like the Novartis and also the cannabis one. And on the other side, there are some operational expenditures increasing labor costs increase which are normal so apart from this price drop we would say businesses are developing okay but the price drop unfortunately in that business we cannot compensate here. Coming directly to the patient specific therapies also here, the situation now and here, I would like to draw the attention mainly to the second quarter. So also those who participated in the call of the Q1, Notice that we were there due to several reasons below expectations in the margin. Now the good message here is we are back on track regarding the growth of the business in terms of the revenue. So we increased from 54 in the Q2 to 59. million revenues. It's a growth of 8.6%. And that in this market in Germany, I think it's a good development that we have. Second, also here, and that is also what we promised on Q1, the margin and the margin quality of these segments will come back. And here we are. Now we managed to get the 10.2 percentage point EBDA. So Thomas already mentioned our Avantis Medios project. Also here shows the first good positive impact. And also I just want to draw the attention on the fact that in what we announced that we closed the location Aschaffenburg and the site Aschaffenburg end of last month. So therefore that will mean positive impact due to this Let's say change in the structure. is not yet included in Q1 because this just will take place in Q3. And that's why we are quite positive that the good development will continue in that segment. And we are absolutely delivering with our business here in Germany what we promised. And our guys with our colleagues with Christoph, they make a really great job to optimize your margin in a German market. In terms of our bridge, what does that mean? So we have here a quite positive volume impact, which is obviously helping us and which brings us the growth. The drug price regulation, that is this impact on the German Hilfstaxi. That is the normal, let's say, price impact that we have to to compensate and we have to live on that perspective. On the other side then there is also an increase in personal costs and also some other costs still in the first half of the year. We were working on that mainly on the other side to improve the situation and also the operational efficiency and excellence will help us going forward in the second half of the year. So I think well done. Coming now briefly to the international businesses also here revenue went up. So we are now at 44 million. When you have a look at the Q2 last year, it's a 42 million. It's also here quarter by quarter increase of 4.8 percent. in terms of revenues and sales. And also the EBDA margin is with 17.5%, one of the best that we had. Obviously, it's not the best, but compared to the Q2 of last year, I think we were quite significantly improved. Also here, management and the people made there a good job. And also here we know that on the terms of operational efficiency we have already identified the activities to do and we will work on that also with the Avanti Medios project which is a total group perspective program also will then step by step show positive impacts on the next month to come. We know that there are some higher material costs mainly with the eye syringes that we are delivering to our customers and also these are topics where measures already are started to solve that issue and to improve here the gross margin in that product segment. coming also here as a summary to our EBITDA bridge. So positive volume effects of about 4.2 million. Then we had last year and this year, both two different disinvestments, which we believe that for transparency reason, we should show there a separate impact. These were mainly sale of one pharmacy in last year and this year, it was the let's say the sale of a building that was not used anymore in Belgium where we had extraordinary earnings if you want to say like that of 0.8 million so still last year more higher positive one-timers than this year if we compare that and then on the other side we have Thank you very much. unfortunately compensated via the OPEX on the other side. Why is that the case? Because currently some internal plant people are not hired currently, mainly on the pharmacy side. and are used with external people and these costs are shown in the other operational expenditures and therefore it's more, let's say, a change in the cost level or in the cost line where you can see that. Finally, we were able to increase the EBITDA pre, we were able to increase for the half year one the total number, that is great. The second quarter was even a very good development of margin and that makes appetite to get more and to develop further this international area. Last but not least, coming back to the Medias Group as a whole. You already know with the announcement that we made last week that we say on the sales or revenue side we developed quite good. So also here our now revised guidance is a little bit higher. in terms of sales than what we had in the first guidance. So we now say it's 2.1 up to 2.16 billion euro as our sales or revenue guidance. On the other side, and that is not our target, but due to the fact that we have these pricing issues mainly on the wholesaling activities in the PR segment and on the other side the positive development of cannabis not coming in the second half of the year. These are major impacts also if you want to say it like that. that we have to take down a little bit the EBITDA pre-guidance margin from 94 to 102, now down to 88 to 92 million. You can see on the right side all the different reasons for that. I can assure that the management is working hard on really focusing on the Avanti medias and make all the operational excellence activities Thank you, Stefan. I'm going to keep it really, really short. Nothing changed here with our focus activities. We have the One Team Medias initiative. We want to bring more transparency and collaboration

in the entire group, now also with SALO, and we are using processes to do so, but we also use digital, and we will introduce a SAP S4 HANA system at 1st of January for Medius Pharma. Operational excellence is key in the business that we are running, so we are focusing on capital master plan, Business Integration, Digital Roadmap. We get those concepts out. We want to bring that on a group level and make sure that we can lift those synergies we see when we have more transparency and processes that span all our geographies. We continue to accelerate our organic growth. We have shown We are looking for growth in all business areas and we want to keep it that way. We are looking for additional business with existing customers or new customers. And as we have done with SALO, we are looking for selective M&A activities that are value accretive in add-on acquisitions or collaborations. It's important here to mention that an M&A starts with the integration plan and those plans are already in the making for the sale of integration and I think we can set a nice piece there in showing that we really can gain together going forward. We will talk about all this and more at the second Majors Capital Markets Day on the 29th of September. A good opportunity to see compounding hands-on and personal and also to network with the top leadership team for that. We also have a dinner on the 28th and I I hope all of you will join and use the opportunity to know ourselves, get closer together and also see what we do in our Breda operation in the Netherlands. Key takeaways I would like you to go and see is the broad-based growth we have in our business. So growth is there. We are delivering a market that likes our services. So that's very positive. We see first small but still I think sustainable progress on margin in the PST business more should be coming there and we have now an acquisition of CELA where we want to further strengthen our compounding business where we bring additional services in Germany for the pharmacies and we really have a broad product range that pharmacies will be able to buy from us I think there's A lot of strategic sense to this acquisition and I'm really looking forward to have a nice integration process starting as of today. With that, we come to the question and answers and I pass it on to the moderator.

Thank you. We will now begin our question and answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial star nine and the pound key on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find out your question is answered before it is your turn to speak, you can dial star, three and the pound key to cancel your question. If you are connected online and listening via the web interface, please click the telephone handset button and then the raised hand icon. This will allow you to ask your question verbally as well. If you're experiencing technical issues, you can also send a written question. Please use the ask question button just for technical problems. So if you would like to ask a question with the telephone, please click star 9 and the pound key on your telephone keypad. Or you can also use the web.in function in the browser. And we have the first question from Tim Kruse from Montega AG. The floor is yours.

Good morning, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you very well.

Perfect, thank you. A couple of questions on the CELO acquisition, if I may. The first would be, was that a structured sales process from the seller or how did that originate? Then the second question would be if you could comment on the total sales volume of the RP business in the whole group. So you mentioned that the 40 million of the CELO, how much addition is that to the current business and maybe also on the margin profile compared to the RP business in the IB segment compared to CELO. and then can you confirm that I understand the slide correctly that you expect in total roughly 3.4 million in synergies in the three-year time frame and then the last question on CELO would be that the multiple slide you provided, thank you very much for that, implies a slight EBTA decrease in the current fiscal year for SALO. Could you maybe comment on that also? And then I have a few other questions, but I'll start with that. Thank you.

Thank you, Tim. That's a bucket of questions. So I would say it was a half structure process. It was probably initiated by personal contacts at the very start. And the discussions were ongoing for quite some time. And we are really happy that we could ultimately closed the deal in the way we could now structure it. I think it was a good work of the team of the M&A team and everybody involved. So quite pleased with what we could achieve in terms of financial numbers and also collaboration with the sellers team there. We don't break out the API business as a reporting here, but we I can tell you that our margin expectations, as we mentioned in the call, is substantially higher for that business than what is currently achieved in Hilden and Bonn. So we get to work to lift the margins there. That's the key initiative I see from an operational standpoint. And for the synergies, maybe Stefan, you have those numbers better in your head. I think they were correct, but I'm not absolutely certain.

Yes, I can confirm the synergies you mentioned are correct. So you made the right adding up of this both. So one part will happen on our existing companies in Meta and Machis, and the other one, the bigger one, obviously will happen on Celo side, what we see here. And perhaps also to add to your last question, as the multiple will increase based on the current forecast. Yes, it is correct that the overall EBDA margin of this current fiscal year is expected to be slightly lower. On the one side, and I think that is the main issue, Here is also, there are a little bit lower in terms of sales this year than anticipated. But we strongly believe that this is only a temporary activity and issue. And therefore, I'm really much convinced that we will gained track on that perspective very soon in terms of sales and also on the one side with the improved, let's say, synergies that we believe that we will get on the one side. On the other side, I mentioned that shortly during the presentation, all the numbers you see here are based on German GAP and the company uses in both locations rented buildings. So if you take a real IFRS 16 approach where you have to show that to compare Apple with apples because on Mediaside it is an IFRS let's say accounting in place for sure and also here applying IFRS 16 so then you would add up somehow a little bit and the EBDA by another 1 million around to reclass the rental payments from EBITDA to EBIT to compare Apple with Apple. On the operational performance of the company, it's nothing to do. But if you compare multiples on an IFRS basis, you should do that to get on a clear structure. That is the one. Second, we also, and that is the last comment that you see on that slide, is that the purchase price, it's really much covered by net assets. So at the end of the day, we do not expect a significant goodwill to come in our balance.

Okay, that's very helpful. Then maybe two follow-up or two additional topics. The PS margin, you mentioned that you don't expect big improvements. Can you clarify, does that mean that you see a further decline in margin or that we should expect sort of Q2 levels to sustain in the rest of the year? and then on tax and cash flow. Can you maybe elaborate? You said this was a sort of a one or timing effect on the tax effect. So that should even out over the year. Maybe just clarify that. And then if you could give a rough free cash flow outlook for the full year, that would be very helpful. And thank you very much.

Thank you for the question. I'll take the first one on pharmacy supply side. The pharmacy supply side business has a certain level of volatility in there that we should expect at times to be maybe a little higher and at times a little lower and to my understanding right now we are rather on the lower side so I would hope that we can stabilize or even increase going forward over the next one or two years. But keep that in mind that specific initiatives sometimes come and sometimes they're not there. It's a little bit of a binary situation. So that impacted our profitability in the first half year. And for the other questions, Stefan, you're probably the better person to answer them.

Okay, thank you. So coming to the tax perspective, so as I said, these are mainly, I call that one-timers that you cannot, let's say, put in exactly in a quarterly level to be comparable. So I nevertheless try to give a little bit more flavor on that. So this very significant higher tax payment Overall, when I'm talking about tax payment, I'm talking about net tax payment. So it's the net between tax payment on the one side and lower tax refund on the other side for prior years. So in Germany itself, the impact on these two bonds is 4.2 million. because in the first half of the year 2025 we got a tax refund of 3 million which in the first half of 2026 did not took place. On the other side in 2026 we had to pay for former years additional taxes of 1.2 million. So that will mean now 1.2 million paid out and in the first half of the year for prior years and last year we received 2.9 million also for prior years as a tax refund so at the end it's about 4.2 million only in Germany which obviously will not repeat in the second half of the year. In the Netherlands, which is the other big country where we also have exactly the same situation, there is 1.5 million net higher tax payment, which is mainly due to the fact that also here we had tax refunds in 2025, of around 0.7 million, which now we did not have in the first half of 2026. On the other side, you have to know that in In the Q3, that is what we already know because we received it in July, there is a tax refund in the Netherlands of about 1 million. So therefore it will be a positive impact on that. Will that be a complete wash offset between the quarters? No, it will not be because it's an impact on prior years. but it will definitely not repeat anymore and therefore part of that, like in the Netherlands, will be compensated. Part of what we saw in Germany will not compensate this year but will not repeat anymore because these are one-times. That is to the tax question. What does it mean in terms of So you know we are not guiding the current operating cash flow. So therefore, unfortunately, I have to disappoint you a little bit that I cannot give you a clear guidance now on the total number. To be sure also on that side we do everything when you take out this specific impact on the tax payments and to maintain and to improve our performance and our cash generating capability in future and therefore also we will be able to generate good cash in 2026 for Medius Group.

Okay, thank you gentlemen. Thank you very much. Looking forward to seeing you in Breda end of September.

Perfect. Thank you. Looking forward to meet you.

Thank you. And we have the next question from Simon Scholz from First Berlin. The floor is yours.

Yes, good afternoon. Can you hear me? I can hear you well Simon. Okay, very good. I've just got two questions. So on page 7, the English version actually of the H1 report, you cite some figures for the pharmacy market in Germany in Q1 from IQVIA. And those seem to suggest that on average prices rose for the prescription segment of the market, which is about 90% of the market, by 7%. So I was just wondering why there's a deviation between the overall market and the price pressure you're seeing. And secondly, I was just wondering is substitution by biosimilars having a significant impact on price development at PS? That's it from me.

Thank you, Simon. Yeah, I think it's relatively straightforward. We are working on specific products and we had a Hilftax reduction in the fourth quarter of 2025 that is subsidized, is shown in this bridge that that was one specific product that had a lesser price going forward and it's one of the products that is a substantial part of our business and we could Thank you very much. Biosimilar exchange that is in the ophthalmology business, something we were expecting. But right now, as we see it, the originator have their contracts out there and are still in a very strong position. So probably a little less biosimilar exchange than what we have expected a couple of months back. But that's something that's outside of our control. It might happen at a later point in time, I would expect.

Okay, thanks very much, that's very helpful.

Perhaps adding your question regarding the half-year report, you're referring about the 7% increase of the cost for medicines in that perspective, if I understood you correctly.

Yes, that's right. So this 7%… Pricing, pricing, because you've got volume, you've got… You've got sales up 6% and volume down 1.3%. So it looks as if you've got a price increase of 7%.

Yeah, so there is overall, there is, let's say, The total segment of those medicines where you can get a compensation increased by 6%, but the volume reduced. So therefore, it's a positive pricing. I agree. So first of all, you have to know that this is, let's say, the full market. And there are also quite significant increases in terms of specific areas of where we are, mainly when we're talking about new products coming there, which are licensed products. which are also for very specific therapies where we still see, let's say, a quite significant increase on that perspective onto pricing. But, and that is what you have to take it clear, this pricing impact is absolutely not homogeneous in the whole market. So we cannot say if this calculation, the math that you've done, that have said, okay, there should be a price increase and why Medios does not see that because here we're working on a very specific niche. and therefore whenever you get completely new and specific other ones where we can see an increase in that perspective. So therefore it has to be very careful because also Medios is not a fully fledged, let's say, wholesaler on everything what is the medicine there, but we are Let's say it's a nice, it's a good niche, but it's still a niche and a part of that. And that's why you cannot compare this growth or not growth in that perspective in terms of the pricing. Unfortunately, this is not doable.

Okay, thanks very much.

Thank you. So if you would like to ask a question please press star 9 and the pound key on your telephone keypad or you can also use the dial-in function in the web interface to click on the telephone handset button and then raise the hand icon. And we have one more question from Janik Ziering from Münchmeyer Petersen Capital Markets. The floor is yours.

Yeah, thanks a lot. Quite some questions have already been answered. Maybe another one on the guidance and especially on the guidance range. I mean, you now stand at 44 million EBITDA pre after age one. Are you able to quantify the drivers of EBITDA in age two, so specifically between the run rate savings of the Avanti program, the PST Germany recovery, and also the pricing issues in pharma? Are there certain bits already contracted? And maybe just some additional color would be very helpful. And the second part would be again on pharmaceutical supply pricing. Any color here, if that's reversing at some point or if it's stabilizing at a new lower level, would also be helpful. And also here, where you see it exiting in 2026, from the current levels of around 2.7% FDA pre. Thanks a lot.

Thank you for the question. I mean, it's clear that we made a bottom-up calculation for our revised guidance and that's what we are seeing right now. And I think this is a reasonable guidance that was done under the new leadership team and I expect that we can to achieve what we now forecast in terms of EBTA pre. All things need to come together. That's the saving targets we see for Avanti Medios. We have there a single-digit middle range number that we try to achieve. also all segments need to continue to have a good volume development and margin improvement in PST especially. We cautioned that maybe in the Netherlands we have a little bit harder time to keep the margin where they are right now and for PS, for the pharmacy supply, we also I think that what we are seeing right now and or a little bit more is what's going on going forward and I think I spoke to the volatility of that business that that's some kind of baked in but I can also let you know that of course the people who are working in that business are looking for improvements every day and I give them A lot of respect and also trust that they will continue to achieve the marching profile we see today or even a little bit better going forward. I think that's all I can say and that's what I see.

Perhaps to add of what Thomas said regarding your point of what is already contracted and what you see in terms of our contract with the customers. So that is in our area where we are working, it's different than in other You have to be very flexible, you have to be very fast and therefore react on everything that is coming across on the market. Let's say in terms of revenues, a good stable development of our revenues in the wholesaling activities and also I'm sure that we can improve year step by step revenues. We also will focus on the on the portfolio of our products. But here these are always mid and long term smaller improvements that you can see because it's mainly dominated by the pricing and what you get there. and all the others. As Thomas said, Avanti Meteos is running. We started the program just in April, so therefore there will be positive impacts to come. I said also that Schaffenburg will contribute on that, that we were able, without losing any customers, to use the other locations in a very more efficient way to compensate and to get also improvements here. PST is on track and all the rest will do the same over the next months to come. Great. Thanks a lot. Pleasure.

Thank you. And we have one more question from Olaf Preiss from OKConsult. The floor is yours.

Thank you very much for being allowed to ask questions as well. First one regarding capital allocation. I'm glad to see the structure of the takeover now. I think that is continuing the work which Gertner did well in terms of capital allocation. buying with debt when the stock is depressed and buying with equity when the stock is high. However, I mean, the point of trust in the market is important and the stock is close to an all-time low. And what Gertner did last year, trying to rebuild trust rather successfully, was the 1,077,000 tender at 12,500. From my rough ballpark figuring, that's about one-sixth of the cash on hand right now. Are you considering to repeating that move? Yeah, especially as for Thomas. I mean, when you started, Medios was like one-sixteenth of Bachem and It was 1.14 when the stock was like in between 16 and 17 and now it's close to 1.22. Bachem is 22 times larger than Medios right now. And also your own purchases were at like 16. So would you consider using cash on hand or rather 1.6 of it to do a tender like Gertner did last year as well. So that would be the first question.

Thank you. We understand that the value of the stock is depressed and we work every day to change that and all options are on the table. We will have a discussion whether we do a share payback program and once we have a Conclusion on that question, we will let the market know.

I mean, I think it's especially important as, I mean, you know, in the markets, trust is a very important thing to have. And of course, I mean, guidance is always difficult if they refer to the future. But it surely wasn't helpful that at the AGM it was stated that the GECA4 reform wouldn't have a material impact. I mean, it was None of the two of you I know, but it was C-level. And if then a profit warning like that comes pretty shortly after that, that's of course nothing pleasurable and nothing that creates trust. And also if you look at the top picky folios with 75% bearish sentiments that maybe stems also at least from that. I think discussing that with a positive outcome would clearly be a helpful step to rebuild that trust that has been lost by that statement and profit warning afterwards. I mean, if you press confirm and then afterwards you warn, that's really difficult. So second topic would be cannabis. I understand until now that the exclusivity with Bedrocan, which is a very clear loser, if not the clear loser of the KKV reform as the major asset of Bedrocan was not the quality of its flower products, but the relationship to the payers and as the payers are now completely out of the game. That advantage is completely lost. It didn't deteriorate. It's gone. And as I understood, the contract binds only Bedrocan, while Medios is only bound by a board resolution, which was by the old CEO and CFO to work exclusively with Bedrocan. But that's internal, not in the contract. Is that board resolution resolved by now or is it still existing? And if so, do you consider to work on that in the near future.

Thank you for the question. It's correct that we were focused on the reimbursed market because we did not target much larger self-payer market in the past. We are now exploring our options we have going forward and personally I share your sentiment that Betrokhan is impacted by this change quite significantly. And as Stefan mentioned in his words, the cannabis business is not crucial to the Medius Group and we will assess our options going forward and make sure that we can limit the negative impact of a change that came somewhat faster than what we were expecting back at Assembly General.

I mean, an important point in that context is that extracts are still refunded by GKV and of course there will be a wave of patients who are not affluent who needed the reimbursement of flour. to change to extract dronabinol first of all. I understood that there have been talks on sea level with the market leader with dronabinol, but as of now, as I hear from the other respective company, no material progress has been made. Do you consider kind of vitalizing that or changing anything in the process or the personal responsibility to not only not lose business with Pedro Kahn but to as a medias and I mean you have the clear effort of a thousand pharmacies being able to provide and also give people advice on the product and basically tell them yeah okay you need it you don't get a reimbursement for product A but you can get product B here which is still reimbursed I mean, your pharmacies are existing and it doesn't cost you any money. And I think it's a chance, not a risk of losing less business with Bedrocan, but rather take an opportunity to do that. But I mean, it would have to be done before somebody else does it, I suppose.

Well, Jordan Abinol is part of our offering and we hope that we can grow in that segment, but that's independent of the Betrachan, the flower situation.

Oh, you're doing that already. That's good to hear. Okay. Good. Thank you very much. I hope you have a lot of success in not only earning Thank you, Dan. No further questions, so back to you or to Kathleen Nolfa.

Thank you very much for joining today's conference. We look forward to meet you in the Netherlands end of September. If you have any further questions, please drop me an email. Thank you very much and have a good day. Bye bye.