Fagron Sa Ord

Good day and welcome to the Fagron Trading Update Q3 Results 2019 Conference Calls. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Rafael Padilla, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Hello and good morning, everyone. Thank you for calling in for the Q3 Trading Update. Today, Constantine, Karen, and myself are very pleased to announce, as stated during our first semester update, an acceleration of our top line during the second semester. that proves the success of our clear strategy. All regions have performed as planned, and we would like to remark the growth in Europe, driven by the restart of our sterile facility in the Netherlands, and strong growth in the brand segment, driven by a clear strategic focus, together with the promising start of Fargron Genomics. In North America, we have reached an important milestone by getting a round rate $50 million sales in our Fargron Sterile Services Division. And ASEO has performed very well, growing almost 7%. And our brands and essentials activities are impressively gaining market share in the attractive U.S. market. Latin America is showing high single-digit growth, driven by the fantastic results of our own developed brands. We surely expect this trend to continue as we have an extensive field pipeline. Having said this, Karin is now going to elaborate on Agile technology.

Thank you, Rafa. So yesterday, Vagron signed an agreement with the management of HL technology for the sale of the activity. In 2013 and 2014, Vagron divested the dental and medical division. Only HL technology was not sold. HL technology sells precision components to the dental and medical industry. In 2018, HL did approximately 7 million of sales with 0.8 million of recurring ABDA. HL technology is a non-core activity with no strategic fits with Vagron. Management indicated a few months ago that they were interested to buy HL technology. We believe the transaction we announced today is in the best interest of all our stakeholders and we wish the new owners and employees all success for the future.