Vimian Group AB (publ)

Welcome to the Vimeon Group Q3 Report 2025 presentation. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CFO and Interim CEO Karl-Johan Zetterberg-Baudry and Magnus Schellberg, Vimeon Specialty Pharma. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Vimeon's third quarter earnings call. I'm Kaliwan Sattabaibodri, CFO and Interim CEO, and with me today is Magnus Kjellberg, who's leading Specialty Pharma, our largest segment representing almost 50% of Indian. We'll go through the quarterly results, and Magnus will give you some additional insights to our Specialty Pharma segment. We deliver strong revenue growth of 19%, with 9% organic growth in the third quarter. We also saw strong earnings growth with adjusted EBITDA up 17% in the quarter. Both specialty pharma and veterinary services continue to deliver strong performance, and our medtech segment returned to organic growth in the quarter after a tougher second quarter this year. In August, we received the positive news in the US indemnification dispute. The court awarded us $40.2 million in damages, which means that we're entitled to compensation exceeding the amount we paid in the settlement with deficiencies in 2023. Our M&A pipeline continues to build, and we're working hard to progress key targets in the pipeline. Turning to the numbers, And looking at the past years, Veeman has a strong track record of growth and profitability with 16% compounded annual revenue growth and 14% adjusted EBITDA CAGR between 2022 and the third quarter of 2025. For the third quarter isolated, we reported 19% total revenue growth reaching 104.3 million euros. Organic growth in the quarter was 9%, driven by strong performance in specialty pharma and veterinary services. And it was also satisfying to see Medtech returning to organic growth of 5% in the quarter. In total, we had 40% contribution from acquisitions and 4% negative impact from currency movements in the quarter, predominantly from the US to Euro movements. We delivered strong adjusted EBITDA growth of 17% in the quarter to 25.5 million euros. Margin was 24.5% compared to 25.0% the same period last year. Negatively impacted by our investments in the commercial organization in MedTech Orthopedics and the consolidation of the dental business ION3 that has a different financial profile. With the headline overview, I will hand over to Magnus for an update on specialty pharma, followed by a walkthrough of the other segments and financials.

Thank you, Karl-Johan. For specialty pharma, we are satisfied to deliver another quarter of all-time high revenues for individual quarter. We delivered double-digit organic growth of 11% with growth across all four therapeutic areas. The strongest contribution this quarter came from specialty pharmaceuticals and specialized nutrition. In specialty pharmaceuticals, new products, new contracts with corporate clients and internationalization were key growth drivers. In specialized nutrition, we got the opportunity to do another national campaign across the US with one of the leading retailers that supported growth in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA grew band organically with 14% and we had 150 basis points margin improvement driven by the strong revenue growth and good drop through to bottom line. Turn to the next page, I will put Q3 performance into a strategic context. We have a two-pronged strategy, organic and M&A driven growth. Our organic growth strategy revolves around three pillars, cross-selling, innovation, and education. Cross-selling, we currently have 16 cross-selling initiatives ongoing, representing 18% of sales. A key initiative has been to nationalize our portfolio by going direct with our own sales force as opposed to a distributor. Our acquisition of ICF in 2020 is a case in point. ICF, great topical product range, great brands, great presence in Italy, proprietary production, very synergistic with our alley range, but largely an Italian phenomenon, relying upon third-party distributors outside of Italy. We have internationalized the business by terminating the distribution contracts for the veterinary channel in France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. We now go direct with our own sales force in these markets. We have also expanded our channel presence. We have launched a range online in the UK, Scandinavia, Germany, and France. All in all, we have grown the international business of ICF during our ownership by 18% KGAR. In Q3, our internationalization and channel expansion initiatives of the ICF range continued with good momentum. 60% of cross-selling growth came from these ICF initiatives. Innovation. We launched 21 products in Q3 and currently have 70 products in pipeline. Innovations in antimicrobial otology continue to be important. Our antimicrobial otology range typically substitutes antibiotics. Also, it is very synergistic with our allergy range. 50% of all allergic dogs get otitis as a secondary infection. In Q3, we launched a follow-up to our best-seller autodyne called Peptivet4. It reduces bacterial growth in the air canal. It includes two novel peptides, which we have patented. Also, the composition ensures a slow release function, so it lasts between applications. Education. We attended 30 congresses in Q3. A key highlight was the British Equine Veterinary Association Congress in Birmingham, where we were a gold sponsor. We were also a gold sponsor at the European Society of Veterinary Dermatology Congress in Bilbao. PETBET4 was an important launch at the Congress, and we continue to promote the advantages of our molecular algae testing platform, PET Algae Explorer, PACS, at the Congress. M&A. The prospects for M&A are strong, Our industry remains highly fragmented. We have taken our business from 4 million euros of sales at inception 10 years ago to more than 180 million euros today, a growth of 45x. And M&A has been an important tool for the trajectory. And M&A will continue to be an important tool going forward. Year to date, we have screened more than 235 targets in existing and new therapeutic areas, a testament to the fragmentation of the industry. More M&A will also unlock more cross-selling opportunities. Turning to the next page, I will provide more color on cross-selling. 39% of year-to-date organic growth comes from cross-selling. Increased direct market presence and internalization has been the main contributor at 49%. Channel expansion, 35%. And the remainder has come from substituting third-party products with our own products. Our cross-selling strategy going forward rests on three pillars. Grow existing cross-selling initiatives, launch new cross-selling initiatives, we have eight to be launched in 2026, and create new cross-selling initiatives from M&A. I will now hand back to you, Kalle-Johan.

Thank you very much, Magnus. Let me give you some insights to the other three segments of Vimeo, starting with MedTech. where Medtech delivered 46% total revenue growth and 5% organic growth driven by mid to high single digit growth in orthopedics in Europe and Asia Pacific, combined with the flat development in North America, which is a recovery from the second quarter this year. Although I'm pleased with the recovery in US orthopedics during the quarter, The surgery market is likely to remain soft over the coming period, and we continue to deploy our actions to further strengthen our commercial performance and outperform the market. Even if it will take some time before we see the full financial benefits of these measures, I'm confident that we're operationally are taking the right actions and now have a strengthened team in place. Long term, this is a very attractive market with millions of untreated animals and opportunities to educate more veterinarians to unlock growth. Our dental operations with IM3 and the two Bolton acquisitions completed earlier this year continue to deliver solid growth in the quarter. And in the beginning of October, we completed a small acquisition of an AI-enabled imaging software that further complements and strengthens our dental portfolio. Adjusted EBITDA grew 26% in the quarter and the year-over-year margin in MedTech was impacted by our investments in the commercial organization in U.S. Orthopedics to drive growth and the consolidation of IM3 from the 1st of October last year. All in all, the third quarter marked an important step in the right direction for our U.S. Orthopedics business and our dental operations continues to show good performance. Veterinary services continued to perform well with 11% organic growth driven by new member growth and increased penetration of services across the member base. The total number of member clinics reached 9,940 at the end of the quarter. The margin showed a sequential improvement, but year-over-year decline as we now start to initiate planned investments in new geographies and services which we'll see more of in the coming quarters. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter grew by 4%. Overall, we're satisfied with the continued good momentum in veterinary services. Diagnostics delivered 4% organic growth despite lower level of disease outbreaks compared to the same period last year. Year to date, the segment delivered 13% organic growth The margin reflects our investments in new products to diversify into the companion animal market. And we also explore M&A opportunities to strengthen our offering within the companion animal diagnostic space. Before I would go deeper into the quarterly financials, I want to give you a brief summary of M&A activities and the important part that has played in us executing our strategy and continue to build Vimeon as a leading player in the global animal health industry. M&A continues to form an integral part of our strategy, and we're now accelerating our efforts to advance and progress our pipeline, covering both existing platforms and new market niches. The past five years, we have completed 44 acquisitions, adding approximately 170 million euros in revenue across all four segments and spread across the key regions, North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. In the past 12 months, we have completed four acquisitions in veterinary dental, adding 47 million euros in revenues. Veterinary dentistry is a new market niche for us. and one of the fastest growing categories in the veterinary clinics today. 80% of grown up dogs and cats suffer from periodontal disease, and we see significant white space here. Looking ahead, we'll continue to build on this platform. We have established a strong network among entrepreneurs in the dental space. We also continue to execute on our sustainability agenda focused on animals, our people and the planet. During the third quarter, our efforts in this area was recognized when we achieved improved ESG ratings with Sustainalytics to low risk. And earlier this year, MSCI upgraded our rating to AA. With that business review, let me give you a walkthrough of the financials for the third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter was 25.5 million euros, an increase of 17%. This represents a margin of 24.5%. The lower margin compared to the same period last year is driven by our investments in the commercial organization in U.S. orthopedics to drive growth and the consolidation of IM3 from October 1st last year with a lower margin profile. report an operating profit of 17.5 million euro a significant 74 percent increase from last year's result 10.1 million items affecting comparability decreased in the quarter and totaled 1.7 million euros with the largest contribution from medtech relating to m&a the net financial items of minus 4.1 million euro consists of three main components Finance expense of minus 4 million with an average interest rate of 4.6%. The quarterly discounting impact of minus 0.8 million euro and impact of 1.3 million euro from probability adjustments on continuing considerations. And lastly, a negative impact of 1 million from exchange rate effects on revaluation of debt. The income tax expense for the quarter amounted to minus 6.6 million euro. inflated by additional taxes paid for reassessment of prior year taxes in one of our entities. We're currently reviewing tax management in the group to over time reduce our effective tax rate. In total, this results in a profit for the period of 6.8 million euro with earnings per share of one euro cents for the quarter. Cash flow from operating activities reached 10.8 million in the third quarter. impacted by the higher tax expenses in the quarter and a negative impact from currency effects. Networking capital amounted to 102.2 million euro at the end of the quarter, which is equal to 24% of revenue. The 102.2 million is an increase from 99.5 million at the end of June, which represented 25% of revenue. So in relation to sales, networking capital decreased slightly in the quarter. The majority of the increased working capital is mainly related to lower trade payables. Cash flow from investing activities of minus 5.1 million is driven by investments in intangible assets and equipment. And the cash flow from financing activities of minus 22 million euro is relating to repayment of borrowings. After the end of the quarter, we received the first payment of approximately 15 million dollars following the court decision in the US indemnification dispute. At the end of the period, net debt amounted to 253.5 million euros, which is down from 260.6 million at the end of the second quarter. leverage in the quarter equal 2.1 x and will remain well capitalized for future m a opportunities a concluding remark perspective this will conclude the review for the third quarter where we delivered strong revenue growth on 19 and nine percent organic growth we also delivered strong earnings growth with 70 percent adjusted evita growth Specialty pharma and veterinary services continue to deliver strong performance, combined with a recovery in medtech orthopedics. Looking ahead, we'll continue to implement our actions to strengthen commercial performance in US orthopedics. And we're also accelerating our efforts to expand and progress our M&A pipeline, looking at both existing and new market niches. We see our market continuing to grow with increasing pet ownership, humanization of pets, and an aging pet population. And I appreciate that we remain well positioned in the current geopolitical landscape with a well diversified operations. With these concluding remarks, I would like to open up for a Q&A session.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Arvid Nekater from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. So first off, could you just comment on the CEO recruitment process? What's the current status and when do you expect to be able to announce a name? And secondly, for spec pharma, can you break down the organic growth by sub-segment with allergy dermatology and specialized nutrition and perhaps comment a little bit on the momentum and your expectations going into Q4? considering all these recent launches, but also the campaign you ran last year. I'll start there. Thanks.

Thank you very much, Arvid. I'll start to comment on the CEO recruitment and then I'll let the specialist Magnus to cover specialty pharma. As you know, there is an external search ongoing and that is proceeding according to plan. I'm confident that we'll be able to announce a very strong CEO for Vimion. and we expect that to happen within not the too distant future.

Organic growth in specialty pharma. So we had organic growth in all four therapeutic areas in the quarter with particularly strong growth in specialty pharmaceuticals and specialized nutrition. We're very pleased with our business with Costco, which is a great client of ours. It's a repeat business for us and we have increased wallet share with that client and we expect to do more business with Costco also going forward. Specialty Pharmaceuticals, the personalized medicine business, is a business with a strong trajectory. They've grown the business strongly Q1, Q2, Q3, so consistently. I think we're up 15% year-to-date in specialty pharmaceuticals, and we have strong margins in that business, 85% gross margins, 35% to 40% to-better margin, so very pleased with that performance. And there were a few orders in dermatology that didn't come across, that we hoped to come across in this quarter, but we believe that that will come in the coming quarters.

Great. Maybe just a quick follow-up on that. Does the current momentum, in your view, support this being a double-digit growth business going into 2026 as well?

Oh, we definitely view specialty pharma as a double-digit organic growth business. We have grown this business since IPO per quarter on average by 12%. And year-to-date, we're up 9%. So yeah, we view ourselves as a double-digit organic growth business for sure, yes.

Great. Thanks, guys. I'll jump back in the queue.

The next question comes from Adrian Elmland from Nordia. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, guys. Karl and Johan among us. A couple of questions from me here. So firstly, regarding the cash flow, which is obviously down year over year, could you just give us some more details behind what you expect to do to increase the cash conversions going ahead?

Of course. So good morning. Let's start with that question. I think if we look a few quarters back and I think as many of you remember, operating cash flow and cash conversion has been a topic that we focused on an important aspect for us to improve. And we have seen a clear improvement if we look in the latest quarters in terms of operating cash flow and cash conversion. In this quarter specifically, Our operating cash flow and as a consequence, the cash conversion is burdened by the reassessment of taxes and additional taxes paid, as we mentioned in one specific entity. And secondly, we have negative impact from FX. So we've had certain, you could say one offs that impacted us negatively, but we'll continue to focus on the cash conversion and our operating cash flow. That is an important topic for us to drive and to be very good at as well.

Okay, fair enough. Thanks. Kind of a follow up, I guess. You're also starting to discuss the M&A agenda a bit more now as a recent and then referring back to 2021 when you have very high leverage. Are you willing to close to your historical leverage ratios or do you think that you will have systematically lower leverage going ahead even though when you're sort of reactivating the M&A again there?

As you say, we have a two-pronged strategy where M&A is one of the two pillars and a very important vehicle for us to achieve our strategy and to become a leader in the global animal health space. And it's correct that, yes, we are accelerating our efforts in M&A because of the importance to our strategy. We do have a long-term financial target saying that we will reach 300 million euros by 2030 and that we will not go above 3.0x in leverage. Having that said, of course, we are working hard to accelerate our M&A agenda. We have sort of a strong financial, strong financials were able to execute an M&A and which means that we will execute on the M&A opportunities that we think are the right ones when they are able to be executed. But again, I refer back to our long-term financial targets in terms of we do have a target besides the 300 million euros in adjusted EBITDA that we're gonna keep sort of a sound financial profile of our balance sheet.

Okay, thanks. Last question here, if I may. Do you have any remarks on the sort of recent news regarding the UK's watchdog basically requiring vets to make prices more public and etc.? Do you think this affects you in any material matter and do you expect this to affect the overall market in the UK?

No, it does not affect us in a material matter. The scope of the CMA review are the six key corporates in the UK. We are a supplier to these corporates, but we're not in scope of the review. We are supporting price transparency and ownership transparency. We think that's a positive for pet parents. But again, the scope and focus of the review are the six key corporates, not the suppliers and being a supplier to these clients.

And just very quickly, and the market in general, do you think that will change in any way?

The dynamics of the market for Vimyon will not change in any material way. I think that we do very good business with these corporates. We do very good business with the independents. 65% of our clinics in the UK are part of a corporate. So they're important client base. But for us, no, it is not the material matter.

OK, perfect. Thank you very much, Carly, Juan, and Magnus. That's all for me. Thanks.

The next question comes from Adela Dashian from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. One follow-up on the development that you've seen in Medtech, and I'm sorry if I missed it earlier, but I guess the organic growth is positive. It's positive development, positive price. Would you say that this is more categorized by an action point in the end market or as a result of the commercial activities that you've onboarded?

So, good morning, Adela. Overall Medtech, the organic growth was 5%. And of course, we're pleased to see that we see a start of a recovery in the Medtech segment. Maybe important to note, as we stated in the earnings presentation, that the growth, organic growth was driven by mid to high single digit growth in Europe and Asia Pacific. And in North America, we saw more flat development. but a clear improvement from what we saw in the second quarter of this year. In terms of the end market, and there are data that suggests that the market is starting to stabilize, which probably resonates with our view of the market, but we don't foresee any clear improvement in, you could say, the market sentiment. in the near term periods. But we are of course deploying a number of measures to ensure that we will continue to drive growth and grow above the market.

Got it. Thank you for that. And then when it comes to your cost base, it has been somewhat elevated this year as a result of the investments that you're making in several different segments. How do you view this going into 2026? I mean, do you still think that you will need to push through with the commercial activities in medtech and then also in diagnostics and veterinary services? You've been focusing on expansionary efforts. So what's your view on that?

So we're making sure that we have a good balance in terms of investing in the business to drive sort of future growth and further growth and to strengthen our position in the market. with i said sort of a combination of a like-for-like margin improvement going forward so we'll continue to invest in the business to make sure that we develop our business in a very strong way both sort of short to long term but with the focus on delivering like-for-like margin improvements thank you

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

Yeah, thanks so much. I had one basically related to the final one, but perhaps a bit more specific to the US MedTech. So the return to growth in US MedTech will be driven by operational changes, including a build-out of the field sales organization. So how should I think about the profit contribution from US MedTech until volumes improve? as most of these initiatives are associated with OpEx expansion first, before perhaps volumes return.

No, as you say, I think our our view and our focus is to ensure that we drive sort of continued sequential improvement in medtech orthopedics and in U.S. medtech orthopedics specifically. I think to your point, and as we stated earlier, we don't foresee any clear market improvement near term. Why? So we will drive growth both by winning new customers, but also expanding share a wallet with existing customers. So we will continue to make sure that we invest in the organization to improve our commercial efforts, but also from a long-term perspective, because we do believe long-term, this is a super interesting niche of the animal health market with a lot of unmet medical needs and sustainable, or sorry, clear opportunities to educate more veterinary surgeons. So we'll continue to drive that. On your question and specifically on margins, Yes, of course, we're investing to build the business long-term why we need to see growth sort of returning for us to also see margins starting to improve gradually.

Thanks so much.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Kavya Deshpan from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hello, thanks for taking my question. I just had one on specialty pharma, please. I was wondering if you could give us more colour on the margin expansion in that business, just because, you know, we traditionally think of nutrition as the lowest margin business, and perhaps it was overrepresented in the mix this quarter because of the sales campaign. And when we look at the last time you did the sales campaign in Q4, you saw margin contraction even accounting for a few one-offs. So basically, has the underlying nutrition margin improved from an operational perspective?

So the business that we won in the quarter, which is a repeat business as you referred to from Q4 last year, is on par with the margin overall for our US specialized nutrition business. In terms of the 150 bps of margin improvement that we see in the quarter, we have expanded margins in the specialty pharmaceuticals segment and in the allergy and dermatology segment, and that has weighed up the business that we won in the quarter. So basically what we're doing is that thanks to the strong revenue growth that we have across the four therapeutic areas, we have healthy gross margins across four, and a good portion of the growth that we generate at the additional gross profit also travels down to the EBITDA line and drives margin expansion.

Understood. Thank you very 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 for participating today and listening to our earnings call for the third quarter. We're pleased with a good third quarter where we delivered strong revenue growth and good organic growth of 9%. We also delivered strong earnings growth of 17%, especially a very continued solid momentum in specialty pharma and veterinary services. Looking ahead, we'll continue the accelerated implementation and execution of our strategy where we will drive strong organic growth combined with strong M&A driven growth. So with that concluding remarks, thank you very much for today and have a lovely day.