Boule Diagnostics AB (publ)

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the first quarter's earnings call for Bool Diagnostics. I'm Holger Lemberg, CFO for Bool since the last three months. With me, I have Torben Nielsen, our new CEO for Bool Diagnostics, that will present together with me the first quarter's earnings. After the presentation, we will open up for questions, but please also feel free to write questions in the chat field. With that, I'm leaving over to you, Torben.

Thank you, Holger. Good morning, everyone. I'm excited about this opportunity. I'm excited about being able to speak to you today. I joined Bool on April 16th, and I bring with me more than 20 years of commercial experience in the MedTech industry, where I've held leadership roles of increasing responsibility, complexity, and geographic span. Most of my leadership experience I've gained within the Danaher Corporation. An organization that is very committed to building a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence. And I intend to bring these values and skillset with me into my new role as CEO here at Buhl Diagnostics. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the former CEO Jesper Södergren for all the work that he's done bringing Buhl to where it is today and for his active support in the transition process. Bull Diagnostics is a great company with a great team and a strong following. I believe there is significant opportunity to create value for all stakeholders. I understand the work we have ahead and I'm energized about this opportunity. I believe in this company and I voted with my feet. Much more to come in the following quarters as I complete my immersion and form the direction of the company. Now let's take a look at the highlights for Q1. Despite challenging market conditions with uncertainties and geographical disturbance in some of our key markets, we had a good start to the year. Organic growth was 5.4% and I'm pleased that we can report improved profitability, growth at the gross profit level, as well as for EBIT. We've extended our successful partnership with Fuji with five more European countries, and we are seeing positive results. The supply chain situation is stable, and we closely monitor the situation in the Middle East to mitigate any future risk. We continue to focus on improving our profitability and efficiency across all areas of our operation. If we take a little closer look at the financials Net revenue total 147.8 million, up 3.3%, with organic growth of 5.4%. Gross profit improved 3% to 68.3 million. Gross margin was flat compared to last year at 46.2, with lower margins on continued deliveries to our strategic customer in India. Operating expenses were in line with last year when including a one-time redundancy cost of 3.7 million Swedish crowns related to the CEO change. EBIT was 15.4 million, an improvement of 27%. Operating margin improved by two percentage points to 10.5%. Cash flow from operating activities improved significantly to 12 million, and liquidity strengthened in the quarter. Looking at sales from a longer perspective, we continue to see sequential growth in sales with Q1 up 3.3% and reaching an all-time high revenue performance. Growth in Q1 was supported by a large one-time unit order to India with deliveries to be completed early Q2. From a regional perspective, Europe and Asia delivered strong growth. US and Middle East were stable, while Africa and Latin America declined. In Africa, we are challenged with payment restrictions and weak currencies. And in Latin America, the demand for three-part technology is declining in favor of five-part technology. If we look at sales by product area, two-thirds of our revenue comes from consumables, including OEM and others, which is in line with our business model. Double-clicking on our instrument sales, Q1 performance was strong. We sold 1,377 units supported by a large order from India and continued growth in our vet business in Europe. Consumables slightly declined quarter over quarter as India switched to a reagent license business model. On the OEM side, we saw a small decline in the first quarter of the year, primarily driven by some customers reducing their inventory level. In general, our OEM business is very stable. The sales funnel for new projects continues to grow and mature, creating significant growth opportunities going forward. Turning to our next generation five-part hematology system for humans, we continue to making progress on the system. Based on our current timeline, we expect that the instrument will be submitted for validation during the second half of 2024. FDA has requested a larger test sample than initially planned for, and we now expect an FDA approval and CE marking to be completed during the second half of 2025. With this timeline, we expect the first sales from our new platform, BM900, to be reported in the beginning of 2026. With that update, I hand it over to you, Holger, to walk us through the financials.

Thank you, Torben. Starting with a financial summary, we had a good organic sales growth for the quarter of 5.4%. The cost of goods sold increased in line with the sales, which made the gross margin to stay stable at 46.2%. Operating expenses remain in level with last year and other operating expenses improved due to less currency impact than last year. Altogether resulted in a strong increase of operating profit for the quarter. And if we're adjusting for a one-time redundancy cost for the previous year, operating margin was 12.9%. Net financial items increased slightly in the quarter year over year due to a bit higher interest rates than last year. Earnings per share increased with 25% to 25 öre compared to 20 öre last year. The cash flow from operating activities improved up to 12.5 compared to minus 9 last year. If we're looking on the operating margin over a longer trend, we see that the operating margin continued to improve quarter over quarter for the last eight consecutive quarters. Adjusted for the one-time cost for the CEO, redundancy cost, operating margin was the highest for us since the pandemic period. If you're looking then on the operating profit in terms of value, we reported out 15.4. Adjusted for the one-time cost, it was 19.1, giving us a rolling 12 profit of 42.5 compared to 30.7 last year, which is an increase of 38%. If we're looking on the cost as a breakdown of percentage compared to sales, cost of goods remained at 53.4. In the quarter, we continued to deliver on the large order to India, and this put pressure on the margin with about 1.9 percentage points. So the margin that was kept flat and the dilution was offset by increased efficiency gains in the production, as well as high capacity utilizations in the quarter. The selling expenses was up, mainly due to salary increases and FX conversion from US dollars to SEC. Administrative expenses was up due to the redundancy cost for the previous CEO. R&D expenses was down in percentage of sales, where our quality expenses decreased with 42% in the quarter. Most of our R&D work is currently done on the BM900 project and those costs are capitalized. In operational expenses, if we just for the one-time cost, our operational expenses was decreasing with 7% compared to last year's first quarter. Our operating income and expenses supported the margin of 0.9 due to less headwind from FX. Moving over to cash flow, Our cash flow developed in the quarter. We increased inventory 3.9 million, and that is mainly due to some buildup from low level last year to be able to deliver on the large order for India. We also had an increase in operating receivables, mainly related to accounts receivables, which is the backside of having growth of sales. The adjustments of non-cash items mainly relates to depreciations and currency impact. Altogether, we reached a cash flow from operating activities of 12.5 compared to minus nine last year. It's a good improvement, but we still have more work to do and continue to work on our working capital levels. If you're looking on the chart to the right, we see a continuous trend here of positive development for the cash flow. It's a result of both improved profitability, but also good work that has been done on the working capital side. Moving over to Liquidity, we ended the quarter with a solid cash position of 41 million SEK. If including the additional untapped credit facilities, the available liquidity was 100 million by end of the quarter. And the net cash to EBIT was 0.2. With this liquidity situation, we confirm that we have the financing required for completing our ongoing development of the platform BM900. With that, I'm leaving back to you, Torben, for final conclusions.

Thanks, Holger. So concluding on the first quarter, I think it's fair to say that Q1 2024 marked a good beginning to the year. Our priorities are clear. We need to bring the BM950 to the market. We need to continue to grow our vet business. We need to invest in future OEM growth. We need to continue to optimize working capital and efficiency in production. That concluded our formal presentation, and we will now open up for questions.

We have one question coming in from Stan.

Please, Stan, you can unmute yourself.

Great, thank you. Sten Gustafsson from ABG. Sten, can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. I can hear you. I have unmuted. Can you hear me? Now we can hear you, Sten. Yes, go ahead. Okay, great. So a few questions. First of all, with regards to the order to India, how much of the shipments in this quarter was related to that order and how much is left to be delivered I think you had a bit of shipments also in queue for last year that would be my first question so thank you for your questions then if you're taking a larger order to India we delivered

the majority of it in the first quarter this year. We had, let's say, 20-ish percent in Q4 and 20% probably remaining to be delivered in the second quarter. And then about 60% was delivered in the first quarter.

Okay, thank you. And then when it comes to the install base, I'm trying to understand what has happened from q4 it looks like your your i don't know if you have made any adjustments or anything because you had 31 700 systems installed at the end of q4 and now you have uh 30 314 uh but you delivered a very high number in in the quarter so you you must have deleted something like 2700. Is that correct or? But we deleted 2700 from the installed base. I mean the. How do you get to that number?

The the 30,314 given that it's hard to track exactly how installed base is situated. We have an estimation of the lifetime of the product to be out in the field between seven and eight years. And then we also, of course, adjusting the total volume of installed instruments on the market. I think that's related to the adjustment you see.

Okay.

Yep. Final question then is on this delayed launch, how much do you expect to spend on this additional tests you need to do?

The major impact of increased sample test that is required by FDA It's mainly impacting the timeline of a project as such. Because we need to have a bigger sample than we initially had in the plan. There is, of course, also related a little bit of cost to it, but it's not, I would say, a significant impact on what we have assumed to be the cost or a spend for the project.

So when do you expect the capitalization to start to come down again?

As we said, when we released Q4, we guided, we said that we expect the investments for 24 to be about in line with 23, given that there is a requirement for a little bit of additional studies, might be a little bit higher than compared to 23, just by mathematically. But when we're coming into 2025, the spend will, of course, come down. without giving you specific numbers, but for sure.

Sure. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Stan. Any other questions on the line? We have a question from Christian Lee.

Please, Christian, you can go ahead and unmute yourself. Yes. Good morning.

Thank you for taking my question. I have one, please. You mentioned that increased efficiency in production supported the gross margin to improve. In what product area did you see the most significant impact?

I would say it's in two things. We have, in general, increased the output per headcount in the manufacturing. There is also, of course, work that has been done on the material side. But it's also so that we have been running the factory on a very high capacity utilization. And that by overall also taking down the fixed cost, of course, per instrument. So it's a combination.

Okay, thank you very much. Any additional questions?

With that, we are thanking everybody for calling in today and for questions and looking forward to continuing discussions going forward. Thank you very much.