Biomerieux S A Unsp/Adr

Hello and welcome to the BioMario Half-Year 2026 Financial Performance Call. Please note this webcast is being recorded, and for the first part, participants' lines will be in listen-only mode. You will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This can be done by pressing pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. I will now hand the conference over to Americ Fichet, Head of Investor Relations.

Thank you, hello everyone, good afternoon and thank you for joining this call. I am with Pierre Boulud, CEO, together with Guillaume Bouhours, CFO. Please note that this conference call will include forward-looking statements that may change or be modified due to uncertainties and risks related to the company's environment. Accordingly, we cannot give any assurance as to whether we will achieve these objectives. I also remind you that today's call is being recorded and that the replay will be available on our website www.biomérieux-finance.com I will now hand the call over to Pierre and then we will open the call to questions. Pierre?

Hello everyone, good afternoon. So a couple of words on the agenda first. I will first of all share a few highlights on the business The first half of the year. Then I'll head over to Guillaume, who will go into more details around the financial performance and 2026 outlook. And I'll finish the call with a few words on ambitions for 2027 and 2028. So you've heard the disclaimers from Aymeric. Moving on, on the H1 highlights. So as you've seen, we are reporting a sales growth that accelerated in Q2, plus 5%, 7.3% excluding respiratory panel sales. That is compensating a lower Q1, that was at 3.9% of decline, significantly impacted by the low respiratory epidemiology. Our SEBIT at the end of H1 declined by 5% organically, reflecting especially the modest sales evolution that we had in Q1. We kept a sustained focus on innovation, I come back to that, with multiple product launches in H1 Almost 300 million euros of pre-cash flow generated in H1 growing 76% versus H1 2025 and Guillaume again will share more details on this cash flow generation. Moving into to give you a bit more color on the financial performance. I would like to give a bit more qualitative comments on the different pillars of the Go28 initiatives. I've already mentioned multiple launches. So Q2 was heavy actually in terms of innovation. We have filed in June a revised panel for biofire gastrointestinal panel that includes its performance and its relevance in the market. With regards to point of care, we are accelerating with the filing of the vaginitis panel to the FDA and to the European authorities. And we are very happy to get the approval in June of Spinship, the first test on Spinship, the immunoressense platform that we acquired last year for high sensitive troponin. Finally, in industry, a couple of launches I would like to highlight, Gyneptyper for Salmonella, very common contamination that we see in the food industry that allows to better identify the source of the contamination and axelix acquisition that is further strengthening offering in the pharma quality control with regards to go simple making also good progress in q2 headcount evolution is very much under control we actually have 200 accounts less at the end of June versus end of December, so managing costs efficiently, and especially with the reduction of workforce in China following the difficult 2025 that we have gone through, and also decided to accelerate the closing of the San Jose site by one quarter. We are progressing also on SG&A efficiency and implementing the different operating models that we have engineered. With regards to COGS improvement, I would like to highlight two elements. Automation for BioFire. We are now at 60% of BioFire approaches 100% automated. And with regards to procurement, additional savings above 10 million. With regards to Go Stronger, we've conducted a voice of employee and we are, for the third year in a row, within the top 25% of the healthcare industry in terms of engagement. With regards to our sustainability objective, we are very much on track with the CSR ambition. At the end of June, we have reduced by 31% our greenhouse gas absolute emissions. So moving into business highlights, I would like to highlight Q2 performance. As I said, very strong performance actually in Q2. A good 28 growth drivers have grown 8.5% in Q2. And if you allow me to start with BioFire non-respiratory, we've grown 7.5%. Further increase of our install base, we keep increasing the number of instruments that are in the market and leveraging a cross selling strategy. With regards to spot fire, very strong performance. If I look at reagents only in Q2, we grow 40% in the context of low epidemiology and 400 instruments installed in Q2. with no specific one-off either in Japan or in the US. It's actually the strongest Q2 since launch, further demonstrating a good commercial uptake. We are now at 7200 instruments, so the install base is 60% bigger than it was in June 2025. In microbiology, very much in line with the 2026 guidance, we've seen improvements in China, we've also seen improvements in instrument sales, as you know, we are slow in Q1, and very solid dynamics in blood culture. Finally, industrial applications, very strong 9% sales growth, with very strong performance for reagents, growing double digits, with price increase 6%, a little bit of tricerogen, very similar to what we've experienced in the past, 2 to 3 percentage points, and even though it impacts us less than in Q1, a couple of points, but lower respiratory epidemiology, immunosafety almost flat, with good dynamics on virus Q2. Now with this, I wanted to highlight Q2, but I'm handing over to Guillaume to share with you performance for H1.