Carl Zeiss Meditec Ag

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Carl Zeiss Meditech AG analyst conference for the six months 2025 results. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Sebastian Frerich, head of investor relations.

Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining the call on our six months results. With me, as usual, our president and CEO, Dr. Markus Weber, and our CFO, Justus Wehmer. And they will take you in just a moment through our half-year results, talk about our financials, and discuss some recent key highlights. And after that, we look forward to your questions. Today, we have a special guest. We have also invited Maximilian Fröst, the incoming CEO of Carthage Meditech, as of June 1st, as we have announced last week, to join the call for a brief introduction at the end of the prepared remarks. And with that being said, I would like to hand over to you, Markus, to start the call.

Yeah, thank you so much, Sebastian, and also a warm welcome. Good morning from my side, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the six-month, 24-25, Analyst Conference of Carl Zeiss Meditech AG. So first of all, and actually Sebastian already mentioned that with my successor, I want to address last week's news that I'm stepping down from the CEO role at the end of May. Actually, I have recently decided after more than 22 years with ZEISS, with the company, to seek a new challenge outside of the company. Now it's the right time for me and my family to take the step As I strongly feel, I'm able to lead the company in very good shape and in good hands. The initiatives we put in place during the last year are beginning to pay off. New product introductions are ramping up and order entry is recovering. The business is returning to growth and expenses are well under control. I will make some further comments towards the end of the prepared remarks and will also introduce you to my successor, Max Forst. Now, with this being said, let's have a brief look at our agenda. I will begin with an overview of the group results. Then Justus will, as usual, provide more insights into the financials. And then following also as a standard that we would like to discuss two recent key topics, including a multi-year trend of sales and orders and also an analysis of impact by U.S. tariffs. Then Justus will update you on the outlook for the fiscal year 2024-2025. And at the end of the presentation, Max will give you a brief introduction. Following this, we will be open, as usual, also to your questions. So I'm happy to report that we achieved robust revenue growth, strong order entry, and the stabilization EBITDA in the first six months. Revenue reached 1 billion, 51 million, representing a 10.9% increase compared to previous year. FX adjusted revenue grew at a similar level. FX in the acquisition adjusted revenue was minus 0.5%, moderately below previous year. After a weak Q1, the Q2 overall demonstrated a strong trend where revenue grew by 19%. It's worth noting that recurring revenue now makes up 50% of our total revenue for the first time in our history, thanks in part to the added contribution from DOC. We also observed strong refractive consumable consumption during the New Year holiday in China. Equipment sales remained slightly below last year across the board, mainly because we are in the middle of the transition to VisaMax 800 and the new Kinevo 900S with the new product not yet being deliverable in large quantities, but we are looking very forward to the second half. We received 1,095,000,000 in orders, making a 33.4% increase. FX-adjusted orders grew at a similar level, FX and acquisition-adjusted growth remained strong at 20.8%. We maintained a stable order backlog of $385.4 million, similar to the level at the end of Q1. EBITDA came in at $114 million, a narrow increase compared to last year, despite last year containing a one-off effect of $18 million gain from the Topcon settlement. EBITDA margins stood at 10.8% below last year's 12%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 10.7% and above last year's 10%. This stabilization is supported by the DOOR consolidation, stronger than expected consumable sales in China, against a weak base, as well as good cost control, against the backdrop of overall weaker equipment and IOL business. With this, now I would like to hand over to Justus who will provide you with more background and will discuss the SBU figures in more depth.