Biotage AB (publ)

Well, welcome to this webinar where we are going to present our Q4 results and also a little bit on the full year. And as you know, there is the disclaimer there, and I don't want to say any more of that. What I want to like to start with is a little bit on what we are trying to simplify the message, what kind of company we are. and we are redefining that we are the global go-to separations company to make it more simple and utilizing all of the modalities that we now have in our portfolio going from small molecules to biologics and it makes it much much clearer seen from our point of view to put the message right out to people like yourself and also to our employees and to our stakeholders in general terms. And saying that, I just want to say it has been a fantastic time to come back. Some of you know that I have been here before and are now just for the time being getting in as CEO. And going to more of the executive summary before I led the work to Andrew Kellett that, as you have also seen, is now a permanent CFO and not just an interim CFO. As you can see by the numbers, we have had a fantastic end of the year and a Q4 with, of course, fantastic results out of Australia. We can say now that we really are in a transformation of delivering both very strong revenue and adjusted profits. I also think you can see that we are having a more balanced focus on the defendable markets. Some of you know that since I was here last time, I was aiming at getting to 60-40 on recurring revenue. And you can see now in Q4 that we have reached 76% and for the year 67%. So first time in a full year that we have overshoot our 60-40 rule and hopefully that will continue going forward. There's no doubt also you can see that with the acquisition of Astraea, we wanted to get into other modalities, specifically in therapeutics. And going from, let's say, 4% of our top line in 22, it is now up to one quarter of the whole business, which gives us also a strong belief in going forward with respect to keeping the recurring revenue at a very, very high level going forward. So I don't think it's necessary to speak that much about the numbers right now. That can maybe come. when we have the question session. And by that, I just want to leave the word to our CFO, Andrew.

Thank you, Torben. The business had a great Q4 performance, as Torben has just highlighted. A strong set of results from the core business and has anticipated outstanding results from Australia. The full year, we've delivered over 1.8 billion SEC in revenue and over half a billion SEC in adjusted EBITDA. These results are even more impressive when set against the backdrop of the market environment in 2023. The strength of Viotage is the diversification of products and geography. Viotage now has a strong position in the biologics and advanced therapeutics area, which now represent approximately one quarter of our business compared to 4% a year ago. This complements its existing strength in the small molecule market. For the full year, we grew our revenues in biologics and advanced therapeutics, analytical testing, diagnostics, and water and environmental testing. Our scale-up business grew strongly in Q4, up 32%, recovering some of the declines seen in previous quarters. Overall, our small molecule business did report declines in the year due to the well-publicized challenges with the unwind tale of COVID aftereffects and the near-term customer caution around instrument purchases. Now, just a few words on Astrea. I know there's a lot of interest in the recently acquired Astrea business, so I wanted to provide more color on its performance. In Q4, Astrea delivered 273 million SEC in revenue, a gross margin of 61%, and an adjusted EBITDA of 99 million SEC, or a 36% margin. Since acquisition, Astrea has delivered revenues of 393 million SEC, a gross margin of just under 62%, And then there's just a debit of 109 million SEC, 28% margin. The full year, Australia's revenues were 502 million SEC, an increase of 64%. Since 2021, Australia has grown revenue at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 75%. As I previously commented, Australia is a growing business and not at a stage where it neatly fits into a stable, uniform quarter format like the core business. In 2023, like 2022, we've seen quite large quarter revenue phasing differences. Until the business achieves the largest scale and our investments in the commercial area and wider infrastructure are fully bedded down, we won't be able to properly assess the underlying real phasing patterns quarter by quarter. We believe the phasing in 2024 will not be as marked as it was in 2023. Although, like many of the businesses in the market, we believe H2 will be stronger than H1. Over the last few years, significant investment has been made in all areas of the Australia business, from R&D, commercial, operations support, new systems, new facilities, et cetera. So as the business grows, profits can accelerate, i.e., we have a very scalable business where we can add significant revenue without step changes in the operating cost base. I'd also like to make a brief comment on Australia's recently launched fiber technology, Australia Adept. We are pleased with market reactions since the launch of this technology in late September, 2023. The sales pipeline from a standing Q4 start has grown considerably, as well as very encouraging signals of different customers starting to repeat buy as they trial for themselves how this nanofiber technology transforms cell and gene therapy purification. It's early days, but we've reached, but we're excited about this technology will positively impact the market going forward. Excluding Estrella, our EMA business delivered solid organic growth in Q4 of just under 15%. This helped mitigate a slight softness in the American business in Q4, just under 5%. APAC organic revenue declines continue to moderate. In Q4, it was just under 22%. compared to Q3 of 31%. Overall, our Q4 organic growth rate was just minus 4%. The full year, America's business grew 5% organically. EMA was consistent with 2022, and APAC declined by 27%, with a large proportion of that decline coming from China, which we've clearly flagged in previous commentaries. If we look at our total group business, Americas and EMA grew nicely in Q4 and the full year, and together account for 80% of our business in 2023 compared to 70% last year. Our APAC business in Q4 was steady on Q4 2022, with APAC now accounting for 20% of our total business compared to 30% last year. Our recurring revenue, which we define as consumables and services, were £489 million in Q4, representing 76% of revenue compared to 50% in Q4 2022. With systems, which we classify as non-recurring revenue, of £154 million, representing 24% of our business, compared to 48% in Q4 last year. For the full year, our recurring revenues were approximately 1.25 billion SEC, representing two-thirds of our revenue, with non-recurring of 600 million SEC, representing one-third of our revenue. We are now a far more balanced business, less reliant on equipment sales, sales that are usually the first casualty in any market softness. As I previously commented, the principal KPI we'll be using to assess performance of the business is adjusted EBITDA. This ensures we get clear visibility of real trading performance and can understand trends not affected by either large or one-off unusual costs and non-cash accounting entries. As you can see, overall, we've delivered an outstanding adjusted EBITDA in Q4 of 194 million sec, a 30% margin, which was 119% above Q4 2022. For the full year, we have delivered 518 million second of adjusted EBITDA, a near 28% margin, up 12% over 2022. A reconciliation between the IFRS reported results and adjusted performance figures are supplied in this presentation. So to conclude, The Bataj of today is a stronger, more diversified business, better able to offer customers a broader range of products and services in more markets, and better able to withstand market turbulence now and in the future. It is a business that has attractive gross margins and has the strength to defend those margins, even in a cautious market. It's a nicely profitable business, as we've seen, that in 2023 has delivered 518 million and a 12% increase over 2022, which in itself was a record year. It's a business that is continuing to invest meaningfully in R&D for future success and to be at the forefront of innovation leadership. In 2023, we invested an adjusted 159 million in R&D, approximately 8.3% of sales compared to 6.4% in 2022. We've got a business with a strong balance sheet backed by gross cash of 0.6 billion SEC and a net cash of 335 million SEC. In Q4, our adjusted cash generation from operations was 187 million SEC compared to 133 million SEC in Q4-22. For the full year, it was broadly static at 435 million. Finally, we have an attractive set of assets focused on the right markets, with a highly committed and engaged employee base with a passion to win. We're delivering today and we're excited about tomorrow. Back to you, Torben.

Thank you, Andrew. And as you have just heard from Andrew, fantastic good results in Q4. And of course, that is invigorating us to continue to work on getting the good results also in the coming year. Just I want to remind you all that it's still vulnerable business area we're in and as you have seen other companies cautious in the first half of 24 and just wanted to make everyone aware of that that could be the same for us but so far so good it looks very well and you have seen outstanding numbers for Q4 and with that I will leave it over for questions.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Victor Sundberg from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi guys. Congrats on a very strong quarter. I just had a question here on the new targets. For me, they seem to be pretty much in line with the previous targets. Is that how we should view that? And a double-digit in organic growth, in your opinion, is that below, say, low teens, or does it include a teens range in that number as well? Any color here on guidance would be helpful. Thank you.

I think that what you should read into it, that we strongly believe that we will be double-digit, but we also need to be a little cautious of what we have seen happening in the market. Would we be very disappointed to get... Short of that, yes, we would. But of course, we would like to perform even better. But we are shooting for double digit. And if that's going to be 11, 12, 15, has to be seen. But that you at least have, you can say, a bottom floor. What is our expectations? With respect to the adjusted EBITDA, we would of course like to see we have seen in the late 20s could we expect to be even higher has to be seen but we have an ambitious to improve year-on-year on our adjusted EBITDA thank you and given the kind of extreme seasonality we see in Austria

It makes it kind of hard to model for 2024. And you kind of alluded to here and recall that we might not should put in as high a seasonality in 2024. What's the underlying reason for this Q4 trend, if you could dig into that a bit more? And how should we view that for 2024? Can you give any color of the number of customers that ordered this much in Q4 and how we should view that? Thank you.

Yeah, Victor, I think what you're seeing with the phasing, I wouldn't say it's seasonality, it's more the phasing, is the kind of just receipts of orders and then obviously the lag between us being able to produce it and then deliver it. So I wouldn't, don't think of it as a seasonal business. It's not, it's just we've seen, particularly in 23, you know, a lot of orders coming later and then know we're just the sheer scale of that being able to then produce them and uh make sure that they're fit and then deliver them so um you know we we as as this business grows and develops um and we expand our commercial teams um we're going to get more well known and we're going to get more um a steadier flow of orders into our business so you know we can't at the moment kind of make detailed guesses on a quarter by quarter basis. But as this business grows and becomes a lot bigger, we will see a more normalized phasing pattern of revenue rather than maybe what we've been seeing in 22 and 23.

Can I just add one comment to that? I think when we went into Q4, the issue was more are we able to do all of the manufacturing. And I must give very, very strong credit to the people in Isle of Man that they were able to put all of the product through in one go. That gives us confidence in that when we believe that it's going to take off in the future, we have capacity to manufacture because that was more our issue going into the quarter than if the business were there because the orders were there, but fantastic performance of the people out on Isle of Man.

Thank you. And given, just a question here on another topic, but given that your instruments such as Isolera and Select and some other products in your peptide workflow are being included in research around GLP-1, Do you expect any kind of tailwinds within that business from the current GLP-1 frenzy surrounding obesity, for example? I guess what's a bit weak here in Q4, but maybe going forward. Thanks.

There is no doubt that what we're seeing also in some of our, let's say, basic business of what we have called the core biotans, there is quite a lot of new things happening, not the least in the peptide area, the workflow of peptide. And we are seeing an interesting flow of requests and orders coming in in that area. So there is something cooking in that area. And we have been spending quite a lot of time and research resources. And as you also heard in Andrew's speech that we have increased the percentage of R&D compared to the top line. And some of that has gone in that direction. So there is something that we are believing in in there. And of course, we are going also to look more and more into synergistic effects between Astraea products and core biotasks products, what we can do there.

Okay, thank you. Very helpful. And just had a final one here also on the small molecules. It seems that APAC is continuing to weigh. Maybe not a surprise there, but when will we start to see growth in that region again? And I just wonder also globally, with this inventory challenge that has been going on in 2023, do you see any light at the end of the tunnel in terms of inventory? Thanks.

Yeah, I think APAC is we've seen declines moderate. And I think we will continue to see that. Obviously, we're washing out all that COVID effect, particularly from China. One of the biggest drivers of declining APAC is our Chinese business. Saying that the Chinese business is, we're back to a stable Chinese business pre-COVID. So it's not as if the Chinese business has gone away. From an inventory perspective, You know, yes, we have been carrying more inventory over this period, particularly when the supply chain shocks and issues. We want to be sure that we've got inventory on hand to meet customers. And that's kind of one of our kind of selling points as well into the market. But, you know, we're happy that there isn't, you know, we haven't got some sort of obsolete inventory overhang that's weighing in the balance sheet. You know, the stuff we've got, we can use.

Oh, sorry, I meant the inventory at your customers, if that's coming down, you know, globally, I mean, because that's been a problem for a lot of other life sciences.

Yeah, well, obviously we don't, you know, we don't know, but we're seeing our customers, yeah, we're seeing our customers beginning, you know, ordering particularly. So I don't, I think that's, you know, with a lot of other questions, a lot of the commentary that other businesses in the market, they're seeing that kind of washing out and maybe, you know, maybe that has effectively been washed out now. It's a bit difficult for us to know in detail what's going on within our customers, but from our perspective, a lot of that has just about been washed out.

Okay, thanks. That's all for me. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Simon Larson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Yes, good afternoon, gentlemen. A few questions also from my side, please. So if you could maybe help us understand a little bit better on the seasonality pattern for Austria here, maybe in Q1, as we don't really have the numbers from last year's Q1, right? So it's hard to really understand the sequential sort of development here. So obviously a very strong enter this year. But are there any sort of dynamics we should be aware of here going into Q1? I would assume we're looking at a quite sharp sequential decline in sales, but any help here would be good. Thank you.

Yes, I think Q4 was clearly very, very strong. you wouldn't be expecting Q1 to be anywhere near that. I mean, the business clearly is in a growth phase. We've not disclosed, obviously, what Q1 2023 was, but, you know, we could expect, we're happy we're coming into our business with good backlog, with good visibility of the pipeline. So we're happy that the business is on the right track. It is growing. As I say, it's difficult for us to, again, give you guidance on an exact quarterly phasing because we're still understanding that as we grow and we get all the commercial teams embedded and we got all that infrastructure in place and we get our name out into the market more as to how those ordering patterns are going to bed down into a quarterly phasing. We're still, in a way, going through that learning process as well. So I don't want to kind of start giving you quarter number that we can't actually, it's not actually backed up by real science. So at the moment, we believe, as I said, that H2 is going to be stronger than H1. You know, that is pretty customary for I think everybody in the market who's saying that.

And Simon, can I just say, you know, that we're never giving guidance on individual quarters or the year. If you're asking, do we believe in that we are growing the business over the year of 24 compared to 23? Yes. As Andrew says, we're still learning on the pattern. Yes, there's been a couple of years, 22, 23, where it has been very clear that it's second half of the year that is for the Australia business very high. But we're also seeing that There is hopefully coming a more normality into it, but we will have to wait and see how much that is. But we are expecting growth for the year as a whole.

Yeah, makes sense. That's clear. And I guess you touched a bit upon it, Andrew, but on visibility, I mean, really, I mean, how far into 2024 do you have a good idea of what sort of sales will look like? What's the visibility typically in this kind of business?

It's getting a lot better. Our pipeline is growing. We're investing significantly in the commercial infrastructure. And so with that, you'd expect our pipeline and our backlog to be growing, which it is. So yes, as we go into 2024, we have a lot more visibility, a lot more comfort around the year than maybe we did in 2023. but you don't expect that we we're more of a um you know grown-up organization we've been investing and so on so we we're going to get more visibility so yes we do all of our leading indicators are in the right direction yeah okay that makes make sense uh and also um

a bit maybe on the gross margin of the australian business also i mean what what's your expectations uh on improving that number here going forward i think you had some maybe not as uh sort of good contracts here uh going sort of uh out of uh 2023 and those were to be negotiated as i understood it uh can we expect any gross margin improvements uh here in in the in the sort of midterm

Yeah, I think we're systematically working through some of the contracts, and that is an ongoing process. A lot of them have been done. There are still a few where we still need to kind of see the end of the contract and then renegotiate pricing. So yes, our ability to drive margins is kind of multifaceted from self-help in terms of operational efficiency through to renegotiating existing contracts at better pricing, which we've had some good results from, but also, again, getting a lot more new customers at very, very attractive pricing and delivering margins. So, yes, that will take time to just feed through.

um into into into our overall margin picture but you know we're going in the right direction in that regard yeah cool and maybe the final one from my from my end so you mentioned a bit on the industry adapt launch and it sounds sounds quite encouraging to me and i mean do you expect it's obviously a business that needs to be built from the bottom up but i realized that but do you expect any meaningful contribution from austria that the monofiber product here in in this fiscal year

That's, I suppose, a difficult one, Simon. In terms of our overall, in terms of our plans for 2024, it's not a material part, but it's a new product. We just don't know when that flick happens, when suddenly we're seeing all encouraging signs in terms of our pipeline, customers starting to buy. Part of it is seeing is believing. Obviously, we've got data showing just the phenomenal amount of efficiency they can give. And our customers just kind of want to try it and see it themselves. And so it's going to start at a low level, but we don't know when it's going to really start to tick up. I mean, that could be very soon. It could be later. We do know we've got a great product. We think we've got the world-class products out now, and it's just kind of getting the market and getting customers

you know bought into yes the results that you are seeing are real yeah okay no I understand thank you so much both for you I'll get back in line thanks the next question comes from Carl Noren from SEB please go ahead

Yes, hello. Good afternoon, Torbjörn and Andrew. A couple of questions from my side as well here. Maybe if we start on Austria. I mean, of course, very strong Q4 here. But could you maybe explain a little bit what kind of orders this is that you delivered in Q4? Is it to a single customer or a few large customers or is it widespread? Any color on that would be very helpful. Thank you.

Yes, I mean, Australia has some very core key customers, large customers, and Q4 was, you know, driven a lot by these core key customers ordering, which we kind of flagged, I suppose, coming into Q4 that this was the case. So, yes, that's what drove a lot of Q4. These are not kind of, in any way, kind of one-off or whatever like that, but they, yeah, the... scale of the ordering obviously drove that jump in Q4 revenue.

Can I give one comment more to that? Yes, that's right. But we can also say that these customers are continuing ordering also in 2024. So it's not a one-off.

Understood. That's clear. And the question related to that, I mean, it goes smart in here for us three. I looked a little bit lighter here in Q4. And I guess maybe it's related to that there is some older contracts, which you delivered a lot on here in the fourth quarter. But I've also talked a lot about improving the gross margins here in Austria going forward. So I'm just wondering a bit on what kind of levels you think it's reasonable to assume for Austria in terms of gross margin if we look two to three years out.

When you write on Q4, I mean, yeah, quarter-to-quarter performance of margin is driven by customer mix. And therefore, you know, when you've got, you've got a mixture of, of new customers, existing customers with a new, you know, to revise pricing and, and existing customers that were due to revise the pricing. So you've got all that kind of mix to come together. Um, yeah, we believe Australia is, is a nice margin business. I mean, right now it's delivering, you know, nice margins. Is there more to come on that? Yeah, absolutely. You know, once we start, um, kind of, um, growing the customer base driving more efficiency out of our manufacturing operations and then renegotiating fully finishing that exercise of renegotiating all prices on existing contracts yeah there's there's there's there's quite a bit in the tank left to drive to keep on driving those margins yeah good and then i also have a question on the astrea target that you

You mentioned when you did the acquisition of Australia of reaching 80 million British pounds in revenues by 2025. Is that still in play or how should we see it?

The numbers you have out there, as we have said also with the numbers for 2023, they are out there. We are working on it. We will see.

what what we get because we're still looking into the seasonality of the business and i would just say so far so good yeah i agree i've delivered strong strong here in s3 i think they acquired it and that then like just a question on the small molecule side i mean we touched upon it before on victor's question but are you seeing overall Are you seeing improved momentum in that business here, or would you say it's relatively stable quarter over quarter from the previous quarters?

I would say that what we're seeing here, as you know, we have been in negative growth in the last year or so. Are we seeing some improvements so we get the first hand up to zero level and then move on from there? Yes, we do. Are we seeing a massive takeoff? No, we're not. But we are slowly but securely increasing our growth in the area and there is more to come. And we're still taking market shares in some of the areas that we are active in.

Yeah, that's good. And just the final one for me on M&A. I mean, you have a quite solid balance sheet right now, and it seems like Astrid is performing quite well. What's your appetite for M&A right now, and do you have a pipeline of acquisitions that you want to acquire near and dear?

We always have a pipeline, but we are also in a situation, and I think we have been a little bit straightforward in that, at least now that I'm back in office, that We are concentrating on what we have right now. We want to improve our KPIs. We want to look at focused areas of implementation, also integration, and looking at the synergies between the Astraea and core biotans. What we are aiming a little more at is this depth, because we have quite a lot of partner discussions ongoing and are wanting to see them continue to develop over time. So, yes, we have a pipeline. Are we putting enormous resources behind right now? No.

Okay, good. That's all for me. Thank you, Torben.

The next question comes from Odysseus Maniciotis from Burenburg. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the strong quarter. I first wanted to clarify something you said on the first question about setting the floor around 10%, 11%. I'm just considering the midterm three-year rolling targets here. I mean, 5.5% growth and 21.8% with the margins versus the targets. It implies quite a step up for 24 and 25. I just wanted to get a feeling, what's your conviction on above 10% growth this year and margin expansion in 24? And are we expecting to see more of that work towards the three-year average being done in 25 rather than this year?

If I refer to my answer to the last question, yes, we are looking at improving our KPIs. And that's the reason why we are putting some emphasis on that right now in the beginning of 2024 to secure that we get efficacy. As you have seen that we have got quite a lot of efficacy out of Isle of Man in Q4, showing that we can absolutely improve when we have a very good business stream in there. We are going to look into all of the areas where we can see synergistic effects and be more efficient going forward. So do I have a strong belief that we can reach these numbers? Yes, I do.

All right. Thank you for that. And looking at China, given that you commented it's essentially stable now since pre-COVID, Should we expect some permanent market share losses here, like some of your peers have been implying? Or do you expect a lot of this demand to just come back as your customers restock and the market recovers there?

I would say that, as Andrew alluded to, we are back on a growth path from before the COVID. Are we going to see China come back to the 15, 16% of our business? No. And we don't have the appetite to see that because then that means that we're stagnating in other areas. And of course, there was a lot of, let's say, fast chromatography business in the COVID times that are not coming back. Can we keep up a steady growth on our China business as is today? We are happy.

Thank you, Durban. And last one on the scale-up recovery this quarter, which was quite strong. Was that driven by the lipid nanoparticle purification part of the business for mRNA drugs, or was it more on the small molecule side that essentially drove a strong quarter here?

I don't know that question, actually. Okay. Me neither.

Yeah. But we need to dig into that because I don't have, let's say, the clarity on which areas it was in. So let us come back to that question.

All right. Sounds good. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

The next question comes from Mattias Heggblom from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much. I have a few. So first question. On Astria, full year numbers, I get to in local currency roughly 60% year-over-year during 2023. So when the company reported nine-month figures and Astria, I think, had grown 38% year-to-date. The company said it was on track for its 2025 targets. So maybe can we return to how you feel about those targets for 2025? Because I heard in a previous question here, it sounded like you were a bit shying away or at least hesitant to comment. But given the strong fourth quarter and strong full year, I would anticipate you to be on track for those targets or even ahead. So maybe that's my first question, just a clarification around that.

Yeah, I mean, in terms of GDP, the Australia business achieved 38 million GDP in 2023 versus 23.2 million in 2022. So at the local currency growth, GDP growth, it was 64%, 64%. In terms of, you know, 2025, I suppose, you know, I don't have a crystal ball, you know, because we made... We made those projections a few years ago. I think Australia, as you've seen right now, is delivering. Yes, the goals are ambitious. And as we move into 24, 25, there are lots of opportunities and there are lots of risks around, I suppose. Am I fixating on them right now? No, because I think Australia is growing. There's still more to come, I suppose, you know, it's, there's all to play as it's all been said, you know, it's, it's, it's good so far. There's all to play for. Yes, we're on track, but I suppose if it came to 2025 and you know, we hit or exceeded their goals, I'd say, you know, brilliant. But if we fell a bit short of them, you know, would I be crying? No, because you know, the business would have delivered anyway, some outstanding growth and performance anyway. So it's, it, We're happy so far. We're happy with the direction. End of 2025 is still a long way off. Still plenty can happen. But we're happy so far. So I suppose we're neither confirming or shying away from them. It's just that there's a long way to go yet until we get there.

And yeah, that's clear. Just related to that, can you remind me of the structure of the timing? Because to some extent, I guess they relate to those historical targets, or was it more on a product introduction basis? I can't recall the data series.

Maybe my memory of it. Say that again, Mattias. You broke up slightly.

Yeah, I was just curious, it reminded me about the structure for the earn-outs, those links to the announcement. Wasn't they also related to those targets to some extent?

Yes, so there's three earn-outs. There's a 20 million, these are all in US dollars, there's a 20 million earn-out based on 2023 performance. There's a 15 million USD earn-out relating to performance measures in 2024 this year. And there's a further 10 million US dollar out in 2025 based on performance.

But the last one relates 100% to the nanoparticle. Correct.

That's clear. And maybe can you talk about the softness in America's use on Q4? Was it broad based or was there a certain large customer accounts that used for the effect?

No, it was it was, I mean, I think marriage just got off to a slow start in October by, you know, mid November. And certainly after Thanksgiving, the business really picked up. It was just wasn't, you know, we just ran out of runway at the end of the year to kind of recover a bit of it slow start in October. So certainly, you know, it wasn't just a slowness throughout the court, it was kind of it just it just got off to a slow start in October.

Good. And finally, one, if I may try my luck, you know, we are still, well, legacy biotosh have some easier comps for the next few quarters. I think, Torben, you alluded to whether or not it can return to growth in first half before then, obviously, Astrea will be part of organic growth. But the comps are easier, but the macro is difficult. So, is returning to growth for Legacy Bitage organically first half? Would that be too optimistic?

I hope not, but it has to be seen. And we are working diligently on that going forward. I would say that the first signs of what we see of order in in Q1 and also the backlog we took with us, I think we are at least going away from a negative percentage growth and we need to start to learn walking before we start running. So I'm happy so far and I hope that I can give you numbers around the year saying that yes we are on a growth path again on the the old legacy perfect that's all for me thanks so much there are no more questions at this time so i hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments Thank you very much. Thank you for all of your questions. And we hope that we will continue to deliver good results going forward. And I know we are going to see some of your investors in the next 24 hours. So feel free if there is other questions coming forward and we will try to accommodate you. But thanks for