5/14/2024

speaker
Denis Agara
Vice President of Investor Relations and Sustainability

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Grifols Conference Call. Today, we will be sharing a business update on our first quarter financial results. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us. My name is Denis Agara. I'm Vice President of Investor Relations and Sustainability. Today, I'm joined by Grifols Executive Chairman, Thomas Glansman, Chief Executive Officer, Nacho Avia, and Roland Bandler, President of BioPharma. Today's call will last about an hour, including a Q&A session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. All materials used during the call are available on the investor relation website at griffols.com. The transcript and video reply will also be available on the investor relation website within 24 hours. Turning to slide number two, I will first like to share a disclaimer on forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties. They are only valid on the day of the call, and the company is under no obligation to update or revise them. Grifo financial statements are prepared in accordance with EU IFRS and other applicable reporting provisions. These include alternative performance measures, or APMs, prepared under the group financial reporting model as defined by the guidelines of the European Securities and Markets Authority. Please note that Grifols Management uses APMs to evaluate its financial performance, cash flow, and financial position as the basis for its operational and strategic decisions. These APMs are prepared for all time periods presented in this document. Reconciliation tables can be found in our website. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Thomas Klansman.

speaker
Thomas Glansman
Executive Chairman

Thank you, Danny. Good evening, afternoon, and morning to all on the call. It is great to be here with you today. Now, let me start by welcoming our new CEO, Nacho Abia, to Griffles. We are truly pleased to have him on board. He has been on the job for only six weeks, but has hit the ground running and has come up to speed quickly, as you will see shortly. We look forward to his leadership as we move into the next successful chapter of the company's history. I also welcome Roland to his first earnings call. With the changing of the guard, I would also like to take this moment to thank and recognize Raymond and Victor Griffles who at the end of May will step down from their executive roles and become proprietary directors of Griffles. All of their many great contributions to Griffles over the past years have truly left a lasting imprint on the company. I am very pleased and thankful that they will continue to provide their valuable thoughts, insights, and advice as members of our board in the future. Thank you, Raymond and Victor. I also want to share with you another significant change at the company. Alfredo Arroyo, who recently turned 67, decided and already informed me a year ago that he wanted to pursue his next chapter in life after a very successful career of more than 45 years in finance, including the last 17 as Griffill's CFO. We are grateful to have benefited from Alfredo's leadership and financial expertise since he joined Griffles in 2007, shortly after the company went public. Alfredo has been an invaluable member of the executive team, overseeing the company's successful evolution during our critical growth years and effectively managing the impacts of the pandemic. On behalf of the company and the entire board of directors, I would like to thank Alfredo for his contributions over the past 17 years. We have begun searching for Alfredo's successor. The process will be thoughtful and thorough, as he or she will be a key part of the management team taking Griffles into the future. Alfredo will remain with the company throughout 2024 to ensure a smooth transition, which I personally very much appreciate. Now let's turn to my presentation. After closing a turnaround year in 23 and delivering on all our commitments, this first quarter of 24, as all of you know, was marked by an unprecedented and completely unwarranted attack by an opportunistic short seller, who this morning again issued a misleading report for their own financial gain. As you all know, We have already refuted all the false allegations and met all regulatory requirements. The Spanish regulator and our external auditors confirmed and validated our financials and accounting practices. They also confirmed that related party transactions took place at arm's length conditions. Also, as part of our ongoing progress to strengthen our communication and enhance our reporting practices with the regulators, and the capital markets, we have expanded our financial disclosures and simplified the use of alternative performance measures, building on what Danny mentioned. Throughout all this, we have stayed true to our mission and maintained our business focus. We continue to serve donors and deliver our lifesaving medicines and healthcare solutions to our patients and customers. Furthermore, We successfully executed and remained focused on our priorities, implementing a series of improvements to our corporate governance, leadership, debt management, and innovation. With this in mind, I am really proud of the entire team who demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the company and to our mission of making a difference to patients, customers, and donors. On the corporate governance front, and as part of our commitment to simplify our structure, we have, as already mentioned, separated management from ownership. Raymond Griffels and Victor Griffels made the thoughtful decision to transition out of their management roles to serve as proprietary directors in our board. Additionally, The board will soon be reinforced with two new independent members, both of whom will add value in finance and corporate governance. These appointments are pending approval at the upcoming AGM. Undoubtedly, another key organizational change is the appointment of Nacho as Griffill's CEO, clearly separating the chairman and CEO roles. I will continue in my executive role until February to support the transition. But at that point in time, the role of the chairman will no longer be an executive one. All in line with our plan and good corporate governance. Now let me talk about our debt management. I am very pleased to confirm that the Shanghai Ross transaction will close in June. now that all the domestic and overseas government approvals are in hand. Upon the closing of the transaction, all of the proceeds as previously communicated will be fully allocated to reduce secured debt in line with our priority and our commitment. We also made significant progress in addressing the 25 maturities through the completed issuance in April of $1 billion in senior secured notes due in 2030. This transaction will further streamline our maturity profile and, together with the upcoming closing of the Shanghai Rust transaction, position us well on our path to address our overall debt. Turning briefly to innovation, we were pleased to report that our Phase III topline results for fibrinogen have met the primary endpoint. We expect the regulatory approval process in Europe and the U.S. to begin in the fourth quarter of this year and are now on track for the launch in 2025. Pivoting to our financial results, our first quarter performance was overall aligned with our plan and therefore in line with our full year guidance, which remains intact. Please note All figures are presented on a consolidated basis, which include biotests, unless otherwise highlighted. Our first quarter revenues exceeded $1.6 billion, up by 5.5 percent compared to Q1-23, a 6.8 percent increase, excluding the $19 million one-time commercial true-up in our diagnostics business last year. Both of these figures at constant currency. Revenue growth was primarily driven by the strength of our biopharma business unit, which saw a 9.4 percent growth on a year-over-year basis in constant currency. We also delivered solid EBITDA adjusted of 350 million, representing a margin of 21.6 percent. On a like-for-like basis, which excludes 20 percent of Shanghai Ross EBITDA contribution, This represents a 280 basis point increase. Our free cash flow was negative 253 million, primarily due to non-recurring impacts in net working capital as we increased our plasma inventory levels to meet expected revenue growth. and simultaneously a delayed commercial payment of 150 million U.S. dollars from China that was expected for March but came in early April. Improving our free cash flow is Griffo's top priority, and we have clear line of sight to a stronger free cash flow generation through the remainder of 2024. Nacho will address this shortly. Turning to our financial position, the company's leverage ratio, as per the credit agreement, increased in the short term to 6.8 times due to the non-recurring impacts in working capital. As a reminder, we will use all 1.6 billion of Shanghai Russell's proceeds to pay down secure debt. Considering this, the pro forma leverage ratio stands at 5.7 times at the end of March 24. We remain confident of our continued progress and the improvement of all key financial metrics throughout the year as we drive towards our full year 24 guidance. Lastly, our plasma supply increased by 8 percent versus Q1 23, and the cost per liter declined by 2 percent in March 24 compared to December 23. This cost decline follows a 22 percent drop from July 22 to December 23. Taking a closer look at our revenue performance, the first quarter growth was driven primarily by a 9.4 percent increase of the biopharma unit, as mentioned, on a constant currency basis. This figure underscores the very strong momentum of our plasma business. Led by the growth of biopharma, Grifols is poised to generate more than $7 billion in revenues in 2024, exceeding our record high revenue in 2023. This growth is underpinned by strong market dynamics, including robust underlying demand supported by a solid plasma supply. Within biopharma, our key contributors are our flagship immunoglobulin franchise, which grew by 13% driven by our subcutaneous immunoglobulin, which had a remarkable increase of 62% in the quarter. Albumin increased by 7%. All of these figures are in a constant currency basis. We are observing and benefiting from a significant market growth ex-U.S., which is offsetting slower growth in the U.S. Our commercial efforts continue to focus on bolstering our growth trajectory in the U.S. Turning to diagnostics, the fundamentals of our diagnostics business remain strong as we saw 2.7 revenue growth on a constant currency basis excluding the one-off revenues from the first quarter of 23. Our blood typing solutions reported low double-digit growth, and the performance of NAT was impacted by the timing of shipments to China. Turning to biosupplies, despite reporting a significant decline, biosupplies performed as we had planned, impacted by phasing, which we anticipate to be more than offset by the robust revenue growth we are expecting starting in the second quarter of this year. Now turning to margin. Adjusted EBITDA increased to €350 million, representing a 21.6 percent margin, up 280 basis point compared to Q1 23, like for like, which excludes 20 percent of Shanghai Russell's contribution. Please bear in mind that since January 1, 24, in light of the upcoming Shanghai Ross deal, we are considering Shanghai Ross as an asset held for sale and consolidating only the 6% of its net profit in 24 versus 26% in 23. Therefore, Shanghai Ross contributes only 0.5 million to EBITDA in Q124. For your reference, these contributions represent Euro 11 million in Q1 23 and Euro 25 million in Q4 23. EBTA margin in Q1 was also impacted by the lower absorption of operating expenses as the weight of revenue in Q1 is lower compared to upcoming quarters. This sales pattern had an impact on profitability this quarter, which we were already factoring in as part of our full year 24 guidance, and it is the baseline for the sequential improvement throughout the year. As Nacho will explain, we expect to deliver sequential improvement in profitability in the upcoming quarters, driven by increased revenue, improved product mix, operational leverage, and ongoing benefits from a decline in the CPL throughout the remainder of the year, considering the nine-month inventory lag which is characteristic of the industry. Now, turning to cash flow. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, free cash flow was primarily impacted by nonrecurring items that affected net working capital. The negative free cash flow of $253 million in the first quarter of 24 was driven primarily by negative net working capital of $339 million. Despite this, I want to emphasize our confidence in upcoming improvements and in our underlying actions to make that happen. So let me unpack that figure and give you a sense of what the key factors were triggering this result. As the company increased inventories to meet expected strong revenue growth in the upcoming quarters, Q124 working capital includes an inventory buildup amounting to $130 million. We believe that there is still room for improvement to optimize this, as Nacho will discuss later. Accounts receivable finished $154 million higher due to a delay in the commercial payment. of 150 million that I mentioned from our main customer in China, which was subsequently received on April 2nd. We also had an increase in our accounts payable in the quarter of 55 million, as the accounts payable ratio abnormally increased to 60 days in December 23. In Q1 24, it normalized back to 55 days, so we are not expecting such fluctuations going forward. With a $150 million payment collected and receivables and inventory buildup in the process of being normalized, we expect a meaningful recovery of free cash flow starting in Q2 24 and then continuing throughout the year. As it will be discussed in more detail in a moment, we anticipate significant improvements in upcoming quarters, which will enable us to achieve, at a minimum, the full year 24 guidance of 5 million positive free cash flow. It is worth mentioning that we had an impact of Euro 37 million of extraordinary items in the free cash flow in the first quarter. Most of these were related to CapEx in Egypt, where we continue to execute our growth plan. To a lesser extent, it includes some restructuring costs linked to the extension of the operational improvement plan. Be assured that generating free cash flow is our highest priority, and we are focused on activating all possible levers to enhance cash generation in the short, medium, and long term. With that, I will now turn the call over to Nacho, who will not only introduce himself, but also provide you with our priorities and outlook for the rest of the year as we, together with the Griffles team, continue to move the company forward. I thank you for your attention.

speaker
Nacho Avia
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Thank you, Thomas, for your words, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. First and foremost, As a newcomer to the team, let me begin by sharing a bit about myself. I am an engineer at heart, driven by challenges, and I have a results-oriented mindset and a commitment to facts. This approach has brought me here today as I am convinced Grifols offers an incredible opportunity to unlock tremendous potential built upon its rich history and solid foundation in an exciting and growing industry. By building on our legacy, I'm committed to steering the company forward and serving as a catalyst for positive change. As you know, I'm originally from Barcelona, and I have spent most of my career at Olympus, serving for more than two decades in a number of capacities and geographies, including the United States, for the last 13 years. At my former company, I led significant strategic initiatives that transformed and globalized the company. enhance operations, and deliver sustainable business improvement. These experiences will serve me well to define and execute the next chapter of Grifols. First, addressing cash flow and leverage, followed by a sustainable plan to increase revenue and expand margins over the years to come. And all that with the strong backbone of our powerful commitment to improve patients' life across the world. I see a remarkable combination of opportunities and expertise that will take us to achieve those goals. We are a company with an inspiring mission to enhance patient health and well-being. Having always been passionate myself about the great honor and responsibility to be part of the healthcare industry, I feel that this step in my career is a natural, personal, and professional feat. I want to begin by telling you what I've learned over my first six weeks in this company and why I'm excited for the future to come. During this time, I visited offices and met with people in Spain and in the United States. These insightful meetings span across all functions within the organization. The first thing I noticed at Grifols is that our team has an outstanding dedication and devotion to our mission. This idea of human-to-human medicine is truly embraced by all Grifols employees, and I am convinced that solid commitment of our people has been and will be a continuous key success factor. The company also has challenges, and I'll talk later about them. But at the same time, the business foundation is extremely solid. We operate in a market which is nicely growing, high single digits. And this, paired with the investments the company has done to be prepared for the future, gives me confidence that those challenges will be addressed soon. The COVID-19 pandemic was a difficult period for the plasma industry, and for Grifos as well. But as the saying goes, never let a good crisis go to waste. And Grifols took full advantage from those times to emerge as a renovated company, and the efforts and investments that were done following that period will fuel our profitable growth moving forward. During my first weeks at the company, I have also learned about how capital-intensive is this industry and how critical it is to act decisively and well in advance in order to be able to meet future demand. Grifols did that, and thanks to it, we are now well prepared to successfully face the years to come. However, as you know well, those necessary investments also increase significantly our leverage and our cash consumption. And I want to reassure all of you that to improve cash flow and reduce leverage will be my most important priority moving forward. We have aligned the organization and are starting to implement already cash flow improvement measures, and I am confident results will be shown soon. At the same time, we will continue working to strengthen our commercial organization, especially in the United States, to harvest on existing strategic initiatives and product launches to secure and enlarge our market share. As I am sure that once the concerns about free cash flow and leverage will be substantially mitigated, the focus, your focus as well, will be back to growth and further margin expansion. From here, let me share you with my views on the business and what we can expect this year. Allow me to focus on 2024 and not comment beyond that today, as I'm still working with the team to fully assess our mid and long-term opportunities. For now, the most important point I'd like to reiterate is that, based on all my conversations and observations, my impression is that the company is well on track to reach its full year 2024 guidance, as Thomas already mentioned. In order to do that, following the pattern from previous year, we are forecasting a significant revenue surge in the second half of the year, with growth accelerating to 10-12% on a constant currency basis. Let me walk you through the factors that will drive this acceleration to give you more clarity about how we plan to achieve it. The first is growth from our immunoglobulin franchise. We are already seeing a significant growth outside the U.S. that will continue. And in U.S., traditionally, the market tend to increase inventory days in the channels towards year-end that normalize in the first half of the year to accelerate again in the second half. The commercial and supply chain teams are already working closely to ensure the growing demand will be met. The second driver is that we expect our highly profitable subcutaneous immunoglobulin to continue gaining traction and contributing to the product mix. This is one of our most relevant products, and despite being launched in 2019, we're seeing it as a critical driver of growth, and we expect to keep untapping its full potential. Our revenue projections are also supported by an improved performance of albumin. As we know, China will continue to grow in the coming quarters. We also see our Alpha-1 franchise continuing to show a stronger positive momentum in key markets following the switch of a new specialty pharmacy partner in the US, which further enhanced our service offering. In addition to all this, we have as well a solid deal pipeline that provide good expectations in diagnostics and biosupplies divisions. And biotest will be launching key products in the second half of the year. All in all, I believe we have strong drivers to continue building momentum and to deliver as committed in the upcoming quarters and in the full 2024. Following revenue growth, we know it will be translated into a significant EBITDA sequential improvement throughout the year. going from 23-24% adjusted margins in the first half to 27-28% in the second half, allowing us to achieve the 1,800 million euros a bit adjusted for the whole year, as we previously guided. The most relevant driver for this will be, of course, the increase in revenues in the second half of the year. But it will be also supported by an improved product mix, including more subcutaneous immunoglobulin, albumin, alpha-1, specialty proteins, and biosupplies, all of them higher margin items. Equally important will be the contribution of the lower cost of goods, as the cost-per-liter initiatives and the yield improvement efforts has been delivering and improving our inventory costs significantly. And finally, revenue increases throughout the year, it will trigger a higher absorption of operating expenses, thus having a significant positive impact on our EBITDA. So to conclude with this slide, and for the reasons explained, I'm very confident we can achieve the guidance that was provided for 2024. Let me address that now the elephant in the room, the cash flow. As I mentioned before, this is going to be my top priority, and we have already started to work on it. Despite the negative free cash flow in Q1 2024, which, as Thomas explained, was impacted by a non-recurring impact of €150 million, the cash flow development follows the established plan, and the company remains on track to deliver positive free cash flow as per the guidance provided back in February. From now on, we expect a slightly positive free cash flow in Q2 and a clear improvement in the second half. Please note that this 2024 free cash flow trajectory includes extraordinary investment CAPEX items, like the payments related to the acquisition of Immunotech in Q2 and Q3, as well as other items including restructuring and transaction costs, which add up to €480 million for the year. The primary drivers that will bridge to our fiscal year 24 guidance are first, the EBITDA expansion, followed by working capital normalization. But in addition, we have started already an organization-wide cash flow improvement plan, a plan to significantly increase free cash flow generation, not only in 2024, but in the years to come. As a result of those efforts, we plan to update our fiscal year 24 guidance accordingly as we gain more visibility into any potential upsides brought at that plan in this year. Our cash flow improvement plan started with a simple but solid and exhaustive analysis of the current situation that has already identified opportunities comprised of five main levers. Working capital normalization, continuous operational improvement, SG&A and spend control, optimizing real estate, and a thorough portfolio analysis. Some of these initiatives will have an impact sooner than others. Some will be recurrent improvement and some just one time off. But all together, we must consider and plan this exercise as a new mindset for the company. And this will be our most important priority till our cash flow generation and our leverage will be at the required level. Particularly important in 2024 will be the optimization of our working capital. Starting with our inventory levels that will be reduced, our revenue will increase in upcoming quarters, especially in the second half. In addition, as previously mentioned, in the second quarter, we're already seeing a normalization of our receivables and payables that we expect to continue throughout the year. Another important contributor to cash flow in 2024 and beyond will be the implementation of the continuous improvement program that they started last year, which includes more than 50 business-lead initiatives to streamline our operations. Some of these projects have already showed impact in our financial, and its incremental impact in upcoming years is expected to be very significant. These initiatives include improvement of yields in both plasma donation and our manufacturing operations, including donor fee optimization and industrial process improvements. In addition, and while the company has made good efforts to rebase its cost structure over the past few years, we will continue to focus on SENA and spending control to operate more efficiently with a continuous improvement and zero-based budgeting mentality. Finally, and although these two efforts will most likely impact only 2025 and beyond, we have already started the process to look into our real estate footprint, which offers some interesting opportunities, and initiated a portfolio analysis of all our projects, affiliates, and businesses to ensure all of them deliver at the expected level. I know you probably will have a lot of questions about this, but let me manage expectations saying that at this point, there's still work to do before being able to provide information regarding specific activities or to provide guidance for our future cash flows beyond 2024. Please be patient and give us the time to work in all these matters. Most importantly, it is clear to me that the company has the levers to improve its cash flow profile and generate additional and substantial free cash flow in the years to come. Ultimately, cash flow generation will be key to address our leverage, and so our leveraging path will continue moving forward. Our focus remains on reducing our leverage ratio below four times, and this year we are expecting to bring our leverage down to 4.5 times. by the end of 2024, mostly thanks to the proceeds from Shanghai RAS divestiture, EBITDA and cash position improvement. As an immediate and important step, as it has been explained already, we are well addressing our 2025 maturities and this will be primarily accomplished by using the 1 billion euro private placement to repay the 2025 unsecured notes and the Shanghai RAS proceeds to reduce the 2025 and 2027 secured notes. I think it's enough of numbers and figures for today. And I would like now to share some of my views on what will be the key priorities for Grifols in the years to come. As I already said, I am a pragmatic person. I like to set goals in a way which is simple, focused, and with clear expectation. So I'm convinced this helps the organization to align and progress. Based on that thought, the core of our activities will be a solid financial discipline and focus in cash flow generation. But this itself will not be effective unless we can continue meeting the need of our patients and donors, continue improving our commercial operations to better meet customers and market demand, and to leverage and continue the operational improvements already started. Also very critical will be to accelerate innovation in a pragmatic and strategic way, and bring to markets new products, new indications in a time and cost efficient manner. in order to create a self-reinforcing cycle that will aim not only to enhance financial metrics, but also to ensure enhanced competitiveness. Over our next interactions, you will hear me to talk a lot about these foundational pillars, and I'll be happy to share more as the specific action plans are developed and implemented. For now and in the short term, in addition to the cash flow improvement plan already explained, our immediate focus will be to strengthen our commercial operations to be able to successfully face for-coming product launches, to work in a talent assessment across the organization to make sure we have the right people in the right place, and to initiate a process that should aim to reduce company complexity, both in our processes and in our structures. I think this slide is a good summary of what you can expect from me and Grifols in the months and years to come, and I look forward to our continuous dialogue about all these important topics. As a summary of what has been said, and before we move on the Q&A, I'd like to reemphasize a few points that we have already made, but that are worth repeating. The board of directors of Grifols asked me to join the company as CEO to lead Grifols by building upon its previous success. To achieve this, we must, first of all, improve cash flow generation and reduce leverage. And while doing this, we must continue enhancing operational execution, maintain financial discipline, and improve business performance overall. Thanks to our cumulative efforts, today Grifols operates in a solid growing market, is well invested in plasma centers, production facilities, a global footprint, and cutting-edge technologies. This positions the company to drive significant and sustainable growth. And therefore, I'm convinced that by acting decisively and with a strong focus in execution, we can significantly unleash shareholder value as well. This is my mission, and this is what I plan to do. Finally, I'm pleased to announce that we will be hosting an Investor Analyst Day on October 10th, 2024. We will dig deeper into some of the things mentioned today and in our future plans, with the aim to provide a comprehensive view of the company's long-term goals and strategies. Thank you all for joining us today and for your continued support and engagement. I look forward to meeting many of you in person over the next weeks and months to come. And with that, I'll turn it back to Danny.

Disclaimer

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