Ascom Holding AG (ASCN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So, great. I think we can start. A warm welcome to all the participants here in the Metropol, but also to all our participants in our web call. I'm really happy that we can meet here, means like 1 year ago, we had exactly a window and we thought basically that's it then from the crisis. And now we are still in. Some administrative remarks, we will present without the masks on because, otherwise, it's not very well kind of like heard from the ones that are in the web call. But unfortunately, we cannot serve you coffee and something to drink. After the meeting, yes, now you have a drink, because the COVID rules are forbidding this and do not allow us to have kind of like standing up or something like that. One year ago, we all were sure that we are approaching the end of this COVID crisis and that we can slowly start to recover from all the uncertainty and slowdown of the markets. Fact is we are still under the influence of COVID-19 and all the impacts that this provokes. We do have some impact coming out of this crisis which are influencing our business as well, and I will talk to that later on. The difference in COVID ruling in our geographical markets leads also to increasing effort to manage the upcoming business. This is a fact that we have and we have to deal with. But we stay on track with our expectations in a still challenging market environment. If we look at our agenda today, I will give you a short business review for the first half 2021. Then Dominik Maurer, our CFO, is giving the financial review with some more facts and figures. And I'm going to close with an outlook and also a kind of a midterm guidance. And we will be open for question and answers later on. Good. So let's look at what we have here. If you look at this, it's kind of like a loaded chart, but what do we want to say is that the 2021 half year results confirm the growth path and increasing performance. We continue on our journey on the growth path. But since H1 2019, we achieved a compound annual growth rate of 3% at actual 2020 rates to make it comparable to earlier statements. And that's very important because of the currency exchange rate, sometimes one of the figure is changing and it's not then comparable one-on-one with what we had. And this is despite transformational challenges and harsh economic environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And this is also -- the result is so stable, thanks to a very dedicated and highly energetic Ascom team, and that I always have to say. Because during this pandemic, we saw with how much passion our teams in all the different markets, and it's 18 markets for us, try to keep up at their best. And this helped us a lot in this crisis, not only with the results but also with the general characteristic of our business and how we are dealing with it. The graph on the left is showing, on the base of 2019, we are growing with 6.1%. And for us, this is an important fact. COVID is still going on. We did not have a strong decrease overall in 2020 compared to '19. And therefore, we also do not have, as you can read now from many others, a dramatic comeback in 2021, but we have a solid growth story. Maybe we would have had more growth without the global pandemic, but to speculate is not what we want to do. Instead, we concentrate on producing solid results, sustainable also for the future of Ascom. And that's very important for me because what we are doing is not producing a result that is sustainable for 2 or 3 years, but really giving the company a base that is solid for the future. If we look at our first half year 2021 at a glance, then we have a solid revenue growth of 5%. And for this time, the currency exchange rate helped us a bit, because if you would look at constant currencies, it's 3.1%. But that's basically how the game works. We have improved profitability with EBITDA margin of 7.2%. But we are in an ongoing challenging environment due to COVID-19 pandemic and component shortage, and this is a direct impact that we have from the COVID-19 pandemic. We are, like many others, also hit quite a bit by this global shortage. But as already mentioned in spring, we managed as solid as possible with these difficult circumstances and delivered by today according to our expectations. What helps is that our business is strongly shifting towards solution, services and software, where the supply chain shortage had less of an impact. Incoming orders with significant increase of 7.4%. Here, we see an impact of a recovery from last year's crisis. We do have the right customer segments and also the right solutions to offer in our markets. If we look at the backlog, the backlog increase shows a strong base for the future growth with long-lasting service contracts and larger projects in general. This differs partly from last year, where we had also an increase in backlog because of postponed projects. This is not anymore the case, projects are moving on, but the backlog is growing mainly because also we have larger projects to deliver. Our strong balance sheet structure, also due to the fact that we were able to pay back all our debt. And this makes us declare that basically the financial turnaround is finalized. And when I was standing here 2 years ago in 2019, no crisis was at the horizon, but Ascom was kind of in a crisis. Basically I promised that we will really look into this financial turnaround. And basically, I can declare now, this we finished, and we're really prepared now going into the future with our growth path. What did we basically exactly do and finish, that was the transformation is completed. Just a few words to that, because we have put some emphasis on that in the last year's conference and also in the year-end conference in March. We successfully completed the transformation. We have a leaner organization with end-to-end responsibility in our regions. That's very, very important because our business is, by default, very, very territory-driven, which means you need end-to-end responsibility in the markets. Otherwise, you do not have credibility to really grow in the respective local markets. We have standardized offerings. A very important fact, Ascom always was containing of 18 suboptimized entities. But suboptimized, out of that reason, that some of the offerings we had were kind of like locally adapted. And that we standardized, which gives us a lot of more power in the future to roll this out and also work in R&D. Introduction of partner and channel management, also something that is very important. That was handled very, very different in some of the markets from no partners to almost 100% partners, and that's now also launched. And we had a solid development of our delivery processes in -- both in project delivery and service management, inclusive customer care, which is very, very important for the future because our installations in software and solutions are more and more driven over years. This means our customers do need our support in service contracts over the project duration, but also in the years after where you have the maintenance to do. And we have a simplified top management structure, which also helps us to not only have a central site in our Executive Committee, but also balanced out with decentral, means like we have very strong market participation now in our management teams. So if you look at what do we have as highlights and lowlights. And you know this chart already, it is updated actually, just the look and feel, it's basically the self -- the same. We have strong business performance in the Netherlands and U.K. That was one of the highlights we really had. They -- basically, in the U.K., we did not have direct challenge with the Brexit. We did, with a very strong local organization, a lot of replanning and potential time constraints were taken in account, means like we did not have any impact there. The Netherlands, we do have a very strong customer base there with long-lasting service contracts. Last year, you heard about one of the COVID-influenced customer projects, the Slingeland Hospital. That's one example from a very strong health care and long-term care base that we have in the Netherlands. We had a bounce back from France and Spain, and also our OEM business that helped a lot. But if you look at it then, there, maybe we had this kind of dramatic comeback. If you have the growth rates year-on-year of 25% compared with 2019, they have a solid growth, but they really managed to come back. And that's important for us as well. In the U.S. market, and that's very important for us, we were capable to sign 2 additional GPO contracts, and these are the 2 largest GPOs that are there. It's very important to understand this, if you do not have contracts with these GPOs, you're basically not allowed in 2/3 of the market to offer your offering. And that was a substantial breakthrough now in the U.S. that we also want to underline because it gives us a very good base to grow there now in the future. And it was quite some work to do so. Good. And then we had significant health care wins in the DACH region which results now in a strong backlog increase there as well. For me, the very important thing there is that DACH region is very much in a shift from more enterprise-oriented business into the health care ICT as well, and they were basically hit harder by the pandemic because enterprise business suffered more, and that's important for us. But the contracts we have, and this is -- sorry, it's a German name of this hospital group, Barmherzigen Brüder Trier, and we also have a large contract with University Hospital Bonn, as stated in media releases already. So -- but on the other side, there are also lowlights that we have. We have ongoing challenging market environment due to the COVID-19 crisis, in particular in Southeast Asia and Australia. And who is reading the press can see this quite well. I mean in Australia, since 1.5 years, we have lockdown. Yes, lockdown. No -- there is no basically exchange possible, means like a country that is so dependent from migration. We do have challenges on the labor market. We do have challenges there basically that our people can't visit customers, et cetera, et cetera. So therefore, this is really, really a difficult situation. We have a revenue decrease in DACH and I explained that already. That's mainly because they still have a high percentage of their business in the enterprise. And they are hit hard, if you do not need any spare parts or whatever because your business is basically not running. So -- and the supply chain shortage is still affected -- affect our business because there are several parts that are basically worldwide not deliverable. We try our best to come around this because sometimes, as Ascom, we have better chances there because we are in health care than maybe others. But you can believe me, this is a challenge. It's causing us a lot of effort that we can somehow come through that jungle of what's available and what's not. And then we have an intensified war for talent in some markets. That also affect. If nobody can travel in a country like Australia, then you have large companies that try to almost hunt your own people, with double the salary or whatever, they're going to offer. Just that -- this is also clear. So we do have some challenges there as well. But up until now, we are managing quite well that in the end the result is with our expectations. We had some substantial wins in H1, and I want to mention that in Nordic, still, substantial wins are coming. Also DACH, as I already mentioned. In the U.S.A., we have these contracts with the GPOs and also some other projects that we won. The Netherlands, very strong also in the long-term care market. This is only a selection of the larger projects that we could win during the first half of this year, and it continues now also with some other larger projects that are up to come. And with this, I hand over to our CFO, Dominik Maurer, for the financial review of first half of 2021. Thanks a lot. And Dominik, the floor is yours.

Thanks, Jeannine. It's the third time now that I'm here, and you may remember we said we do our best, that we deliver what we say. And if openly you already saw some of the numbers, and what I can say is, yes, it still works. We deliver what we say. We do then take the actions to really be able to deliver. And I'm really proud to say, even in COVID times, we were able to grow and we were able to grow our margin. And looking on other competitors or in other markets, if you look into the markets, you'll see, even on us, sometimes you have things coming down and coming up. At the end, it's the question of the average. And we balance the markets, the segments against each other. Then at the end, we are able to really deliver and to bring the growth forward. And that's the point for me. What I'm saying, I'm proud for the team and proud for Ascom that we were able to do that in these days. Now let's look a little bit into the different financial numbers as normal. By the way, you may realize that we will show -- or we are showing the same slides, to show a constant story. And you can go back and see what it was 1 year ago or 1.5 year ago. That's to be transparent and to show that we are really working hard to be on the right track. Revenue, as already said by Jeannine, a 5% growth on actual rates. But nevertheless, even a 3.1% growth on constant currency, as Jeannine already said, we were having a tailwind in the currency this time. We had a growth across all segments, but the largest one was the long-term care part. Then going to incoming orders. On incoming orders, we had a strong performance of 5.2% in constant currency, which was driven by, already mentioned partly from Jeannine, OEM, Nordics, France and the U.S. market. The order backlog, a high growth there. But important for me to mention to you that you understand the H1 backlog number, the H1 backlog number in 2021 is heavily depending, too, on what we've done in H2 last year. And in H2 last year, to remind you, we were having the project Wales. And this is now reflected in the backlog because project Wales is still running and big part of the backlog is still backlog and not terminated yet. And as said by Jeannine, too, if you win bigger projects, longer projects, of course, the backlog is increasing faster because you're going to turn that later on in revenue. And that's the effect, too, out of the bigger projects which is driving the backlog. Looking on EBITDA. As said, the development continues with a positive trend. We were growing 90 basis points to now an EBITDA margin of 7.2%, which is a really good step forward. And you can be sure we will work even harder. If you saw the midterm guidance, this is going to increase in the future, too. Group profit. We ended the half year profitable with 1.8%. So we closed the first half year, you can see it on the slide, with CHF 2.5 million positive result. And if you look once again backwards and you then may eliminate the special effects we had in the past, you see and you realize, we are, since a long time, profitable already in the first half of the year. This was not the case in the past years, and that's part of the story when I said I'm proud, because that is showing the work we've done on the cost and on the revenue side. Now let's have a look on the incoming orders, which increased on actual rate by 7.4% and on constant currency by 5.2%. Major European regions, very strong constant currency growth, even higher, with 6.4% higher than the growth we had in the company -- in the total company. So for the total company, meaning the 5.2%. We were having a really, really good positive effect coming out in France, plus 27%; and the Nordics, even with plus 33%. We were having, as already mentioned by Jeannine, some slight negative impacts coming out of delays of closing deals due to COVID and due to component shortage in DACH with minus 6%, the Netherlands with minus 3%, and the U.K. with minus 2%. But there, I'm confident, by the way, that this is just the half year view. When I'm looking in the pipeline of what we have, it looks good. And as -- and you will see it later on in the guidance we've done. Americas, there, we have a continued growth of 3.7% on constant currency. And as mentioned by Jeannine, we were winning or closing GPO contracts. There is not yet a significant impact of these GPOs, the new [ WANs ] in, because we recently closed them, therefore, you cannot see that yet. But we are confident that we will see the IO coming out of these big contracts, too. Rest of the World, there, I would like to remind you that Rest of the World is 12% of the total Ascom part. And yes, we were shrinking there a little bit, but there are some reasons behind, and I would like to highlight here some of them. We were having -- last year, we booked in some of these markets large maintenance deals which we were not able to repeat. These were maintenance deals for longer than 1 year. So therefore, this is not repeatable. You cannot do that every year. And as already mentioned by Jeannine, too, Australia is closed. Australia is a special market at the moment, and we are suffering in IO due to Australia and Rest of the World, too. OEM, very strong demand from our major partners there. A bounce back more or less from the COVID crisis from the last year. If we then compare these numbers with 2019, because that's before COVID, I can tell you, we were growing 6% on a CAGR with 3.2%. So you see, it's not just a post-COVID story, we were growing even looking what we had 2 years ago. Now let's look at the revenue development, and let's look a little bit more details in here, what happened. We were having 3.1% constant currency increase, as already said, and a 2% FX tailwind. The revenue tailwind from the FX is coming from the following split, it's coming from the story that euro and British pound were getting stronger. And to give you a little bit insight, 43% of our revenue we are doing in euro, 6% in British pound and 51%, the rest, in U.S. dollars, in Danish and Swedish krona and, of course, with some of the smaller ones like Australia and New Zealand and so on. Now let's look where the growth is split, where we were able to do the 3.1% growth in constant currency and where this came from. Despite of the component shortage, we are in line with the revenue target we communicated to all of you. We were growing the way we were looking forward to do it. In addition, I'd like to remind you that in January, February last year, there was not yet the COVID lockdown. So if you compare the numbers, you have to take in mind that January, February was a normal, more or less a normal when the lockdown came later on in March. By the way, after our conference here, more or less, then everything started in Europe. Let's now look in DACH, minus 12.4%. DACH is moving into the acute care segment strongly, as Jeannine already said, and they are following the same path U.K. done some years ago. And if you look in the past, the U.K. was having a small dip, too, and then they were accelerating the growth. What I see, however, is a strong backlog development. Our backlog went up from 6.8 -- went up CHF 6.8 million, mainly coming out of the bigger deals, the acute care deals Jeannine already mentioned. And when I'm looking at the backlog now, the backlog was growing 17% from CHF 58 million to CHF 68 million. So there you see that we have a backlog and we are prepared for the future. Now going over to France and Spain, strong recovery from the long-term care segment, plus 72% there. And this is driving the growth in France. And France is back where we were before COVID. Netherlands, strong bounce back in enterprise, with plus 63% and acute care with plus [ 60% ]. This was able to offset a little bit decline. In this market, we had a small decline in the long-term care part there. In addition, software was growing in the Netherlands by 81%. And I'm proud to say we were able to grow our biggest market. If you look in -- the biggest market we have is the Netherlands, and we were growing. The biggest market is 9% at constant currency. Nordics, as already mentioned, we had a strong IO there. The health care and large projects we won there are not yet reflected in the revenue. Same story than DACH. Something important, too, if you have more software, you are more stick -- or the customer is more stickier to you, they cannot change so easily. And this will help for the future growth there, too. In addition, a high growth in long-term care, plus 52%, which unfortunately was not able to offset all the enterprise going down. Enterprise was shrinking 16%, which is 1/3 of the revenue in the Nordics. U.K., as already said by Jeannine, too, really a good story. We were growing the 19.4%. And if you compare it to the last years, you see it's not a 1-month story or a 1-year story. It's constant growing and they are following the strategy. There we had a bounce back in the long-term care market of plus 142%. And the same in enterprise, is plus 10%. Americas, there, we had the growth in acute care, which was driven by software sales. Software sales alone was growing 37% in the U.S. But this was not helping to balance all the decline we had in some other products. The modest increase is due to the extraordinary gain. If you look, the percentage is not so high, extraordinary gain we had due to COVID last year. But once again, if I put a comparison to 2019 and look where are we in the U.S. compared to 2019, we were growing 14%. So even there, you see we had last year in the first half a special additional growth. But nevertheless, we are still growing and we are continuing to grow there when you compare it to last -- to 2 years ago, 14% higher revenue there. Rest of the World, as mentioned, severe lockdown in the Australian market and we were not able to compensate going back in Australia with all the other markets, although the other markets were all positive. OEM, following the same story that I showed already in IO, we see the returning on the OEM business and the growth, with almost 17% there in the OEM markets. Now let's look on the income statement. As we said the last meetings in March last year, we will work on our cost base, we will look that we can reduce the cost base, and we will run our transformation program to be able to grow in the future and to be prepared for the future. And when you're looking on the total story, you'll see that our revenue was increasing more than our costs and that we are more profitable and that we are prepared for the future and we believe we are prepared for the future. Looking now on cost of sales, it's slightly higher than the net revenue increase, but there are some effects herein coming out of COVID. Coming out of COVID, we have higher material costs. Part of it, out of COVID directly, we have higher freight cost. And we have, due to COVID, sometimes even a different product mix. And both numbers, product mix is having an effect here, too, that you have higher costs, because you have not the same products you are able to sell from 1 year to the other. And in addition, we were able to reduce here our people discretionary costs by 3%, meaning we were taking out CHF 1.5 million cost, people cost, do the projects more efficient, do the processes more efficient. And this is showing that, as I said, we worked heavily to look on our cost base. Marketing and sales. We are and we were reshaping our marketing and sales departments. We invested in frontline sales, where we added CHF 1.2 million more costs. We invested in solution architects, CHF 0.9 million additional cost. We invested in presales, inside sales and product specialists, CHF 0.4 million additional cost, which is coming in due to the fact that we are investing, investing for the future. We are investing not just in central organization, we are mainly investing in the regions. Research and development. If you look in the real expenditure, taking out the CapEx and the depreciation, we reduced that cost by CHF 2.6 million. Now you can say, "Hey, you were reducing R&D costs." No, it's part of R&D, yes, but it's the maintenance part, the bug-fixing part. That part we took out because that part is coming out of the transformation, the reorganization. If you can take that -- you can take that easily out if you do less bug fixing and things like that. And you may remember, the last meeting at the last conference, we said we are looking on things like that, too. We are having higher administration costs. Higher administration costs is coming out of ICT. We invested in a new [ WAN ]. So we have new [ WAN ] infrastructure, which we built all over the world. And we are having the finalization of our ERP platform and the additional cost we have there. Now looking at EBITDA on the waterfall chart, the waterfall chart we showed you the last meetings, too, the last session, too. The waterfall chart showing that CHF 1 million exchange rate effect. And then you have the big part of CHF 5.1 million reduced operating costs. That's the part -- the outcome of the program we were running, the outcome of the program Jeannine mentioned, the transformation, the transition and so on, which is now completed, that's the cost we said we are going to take out to be prepared for the future. Then we have revenue and productivity related, plus CHF 1.5 million. That's coming out of the point that we have additional revenue. And if you have additional revenue, you have more EBITDA. That's, by the way, CHF 3.7 million out of the additional revenue. Then we have higher freight cost, CHF 0.9 million higher freight costs due to COVID and all these supply chain problems the market is at the moment in. And as already mentioned, we had a different product mix, minus CHF 1.1 million less EBITDA due to the fact that the products are not equally the same we had last year. Then we were investing in sales, as already mentioned, to be prepared to have a sales force and an organization who is ready to grow. We've done the same in ICT. That's the story of the [ WAN ] I said some minutes ago. And then at the end, if you look, we have less capitalized a little bit on our own cost in ICT and R&D, having the effect that this part is still remaining in the P&L and not going over to activated own work. Let me summarize it. We reduced the cost, you can see that. But of course, you will not see the full effect in the P&L because we prepared the company for the future. We worked, we invested, we hired new people that we are able to grow and that we are able to go forward and to deliver the growth we are looking forward to do in the midterm guidance. Now the cash flow statement. Really proud to say, yes, we started with CHF 31.8 million and we closed with CHF 33 million. And there were, in between, some things we've done. First of all, operating cash flow was CHF 8.4 million. If you compare that to last year, you'll see that the number is much different, but there is a reason behind that. Last year, we were working on reduced overdue receivables, and you cannot reduce receivables to a minus number. So there is an end, and we were not able to copy that. Although we are still working to even reduce our overdue, our receivables further. When you look on CapEx, more or less in line that what we had 1 year ago. And then we were having a big jump coming out of changes in financial assets. That's the Infovista loan, the Infovista loan we were granting some years ago during a transaction. We received 15.6 million, which we then used to pay back the debt. That money was going in then in the repayment of the debt or not using debt anymore. And you may saw it in the balance sheet, we are debt-free. We are debt-free and we are ready for the future. I know that we have here banks in, the banks which were helping us to do the syndicated loan, but I'm still proud to say we are debt-free. This is a good signal and a good story. Coming now on the balance sheet, final page from my side. Highlights, as you see, cash situation heavily improved. Net working capital, some highlights there to show you what is happening there. We have less receivables, CHF 4 million less. We have more work in progress, plus CHF 3 million. Due to COVID, sometimes you cannot close the project so fast as you were looking forward to close because you need to be able to go to the -- to the customer and the customer needs to be there and sign the contract or sign the official handover. We have more deferred revenue, plus CHF 4.5 million. Less payables, CHF 2.1 million. And more customer prepayments of CHF 4.8 million. All this number I'm highlighting here are compared to year-end last year. But if you see, working capital, same level than 1 year ago, with more revenue. Therefore, on the good track. The point of what I already said, net cash, net debt, no debt at all. So that's one point which is really, really good. And then looking on all the story on the equity, we were able to increase our equity by CHF 14.1 million, and now we have an equity margin of 39.1%. 39.1% equity ratio, really, really good story, helping to have a solid balance sheet, a really good balance sheet. So doing the summary of all what I said, proud to say we have a solid growth in IO. Proud to say we have a solid growth in revenue even in COVID times. Our cost reduction program is finalized. Of course, we will work to further find cost efficiencies and so on. We are prepared for the future. We have a motivated team. And, making the summary out of the last page, too, a solid balance sheet. Thanks from my side, and I would like to hand over back to Jeannine.

Thank you, Dominik. And very important thing always and I think -- thank you, Dominik also, you and your team, you have all the right to be proud on that because there was a lot of work and a lot of effort invested. And I think the spirit of the whole team is going into the right direction. With this, we come to the future, our second half year and an outlook into the next couple of years. Very important for me. Ascom target for 2021, a low single-digit revenue growth and strives to achieve a double-digit EBITDA margin, is still valid. That's what we want to do and that's exactly what, basically if you look at all the numbers that Dominik presented now, is also possible to do. Our growth will also be moderate because we expect the year-end orders in hardware a bit less high, as in normal years, due to supply chain shortage as a consequence of COVID-19 and the linked crisis of it. That's important for us, but we do not use this as an excuse, we already have programs set up to compensate at least a part of what we were expecting is coming lower. And that's the reason why we stick with our guidance that we gave for end of the year. And as you maybe know me now already for 2 years, we are not talking about a big storyline that is not reflected in the figures in the end. I told you when we want to have a growth story with Ascom, then it's very important that we first identify with what we want to grow. Because it makes absolutely no sense to basically organize something like a sale and then just disappear in the end and leave all the buildup and the creation of our growth path to others. Therefore, it is a bit more easy for me to talk about where we want to grow because that was really where we invested a lot of time in than to say, yes, and it's this and this and this program that will help us, also to be very accurate now on where we are going to land with our EBITDA. And that -- the story behind this is the following. Ascom sees a clear path to double-digit growth over the next years. And for me, this is important. And what we want to do this with, some explanation about that. We see above-average growth in the health care communication market driven by digitalization, post-COVID developments, governmental funding programs. This is something that is very important for me, also out of the fact that now all these kind of programs like [ zukunftsgesetz ] Horizon from European Union. But also, in other countries, program will start. And they're all investing in critical communication and collaboration solutions, means like we are exactly in a spot where we also can deliver. Now you know exactly that you have to be prepared to -- all to be ready for that. And that's exactly what was the work of the last 2 years and will be also in the future. We see a lot of growth opportunities in the U.S. market due to the new GPO frame contracts and agreements that we have. We see more software sales, and I remind what Dominik said, we had in the first half year 37% growth on software in our U.S. market. And there is, for sure, also coming more recurring revenue with that. Why is this so important? The point is that we were very often compared to competitors that are also in the software area, but we were never playing in the same fields. Basically, it's like if we play soccer and the others do baseball. And that's the reason why it's so important that we are having these contracts with these GPOs, that we can play at least in the same fields and then there is competition, and that I can promise. Good. We also have new opportunities in the OEM business due to a development towards more solution-oriented. And this is a movement or a development that is very important for us in the future, means like the pure hardware sales over distributors is also changing, means like with larger distributors, we are going to have large projects where we are developing solutions together with them, because whatever they do have in communication infrastructure, they do want to add the software related to that. And that's important. That's where Ascom has the expertise, and that's exactly where we are also aiming to have larger contracts. And that's, for me, then also something where I can say, this -- what we say, see, with double-digit growth, it is possible to do, but we do have to do it in the right way. And it also needs a lot of effort and hopefully also not having the same crisis again showing up then next year. Good. And the second one is Ascom expects an annual improvement in the EBITDA margin of about 100 basis points until 2025. This is what we see kind of like in the normal development that we have, that is very strongly influenced not only from the top line but also with all the saving programs we have set up. What is very important for me is this is not a story where we can say, in 2025, we invented how you can do this and that and we can take a lot of cost out. That's exactly what has to be evaluated now, and that's basically also giving us then room future development. But it's important for me that when we are here that we say what is possible out of today's viewpoint and not speculating with you because you are our partners here, and we want to be transparent and honest also with you. And with that, I hand over to both of us, we are going to answer your questions that you might have. And then basically also -- I tried hard, but that's the first time since a long time that I really forgot to move the charts. But we go to the Q&A. And I think if you just listen to me, then sometimes it's much better than just reading the charts. Thanks a lot.

With this, ladies and gentlemen, we will start with the Q&A session. Tobias Fahrenholz, you were the first one, and then I think Jörn Iffert.

Coming back to your midterm targets, 2025, you're basically looking for 400 basis points higher operating margin. Could you split this up in kind of a waterfall chart, what comes from scale, what comes from mix and what kind of further headwinds you might look at? And on top to this, people might be interested also in the figure on ROCE level. Normally, your business is quite asset-light. Maybe you could also provide us with a range there.

You can answer that.

On the assets, taking the last part of your question, we are not looking for to change the way we are doing the business at the moment. We will -- may have some additional investment. If you're going in long-term contracts and with long-term customer relationship, then you invest at the beginning and then you get it back during the time. So there will be an effect on that, but the effect will not be tremendously different than what you saw up to now. First part of the question. Second part of the question, to give you now the split, that would be economics and scales on. I will not do that. You will get that when we are going step by step, when we are showing you the results. There is not -- otherwise, we're going to discuss here, you said 10% and then it was 12% or it was just 8%. Therefore, be a little bit patient, you will get that when you see what is going to happening when we are showing the next year's figures and so on.

Exactly. And as I already said before, the impact that we have from the top line and from constant cost-improving programs, that's exactly what we can see now and that's also coming from this constant positive development. If there is anything that has to be invented or done later on, this is then also communicated later on because there is no room for speculation with this one.

Is this okay, Tobias? Okay. Jörn Iffert, please.

Three questions. The first one would be please on the medium-term targets. When the path towards double-digit sales growth is there, can you give us a rough feeling when this should happen? Is it already something for '22? Will it be '24? '25? Just that we have a rougher feeling -- a better feeling for this. And then also on the medium-term targets, please, the margin progress. If I look back at 2000 -- I think it was '16, '17, on a similar revenue line, you had already EBITDA margins of 14%. Now you are pointing to that in '25 you achieve 15% again. But you had a CHF 15 million cost saving program. You were talking more about cost savings, product mix more skewed towards software, as we see in the order backlog. So what has really changed that the margin prospects incrementally versus history is more muted at the end of the day? And then maybe the last question on R&D. SG&A, I mean, was coming down in the first half by around CHF 3 million R&D. Can you just tell us, I mean, why exactly this was happened? Also in particular, looking forward, how you see the R&D line to develop, because I thought you are investing more in software where engineers are potentially more expensive. This will be my first question. Then maybe I can have some follow-ups later.

Okay. If I look at the margin comparison to 2016, if you look at the mix -- the business mix from Ascom in 2016, it was heavily influenced by hardware, means like more than 2/3 of the business was pure hardware selling. That was also the reason why so-called recurring revenue was relatively low, less than 20%, but this gives you fortunately a much better margin year-on-year. Now, basically, we are developing in a direction of more services solution business. And yes, I agree with you, in the future this should have, specifically with the software, better margin as well -- better margins as well. But there is the dependency we do have from the development of our customers. Just take one example that you have, something you can imagine. If you look at something like Software as a Service, means like it's something where you could do quite a good margin. But for that, you have to have your customers being ready to really also believe and invest in so-called cloud business. And what we see is over the next years is that our customers are going into that, but they're not doing this basically in a speed we would maybe expect, and how innovation and technology allow it already. So it means like most of our customers are reacting when they anyway have to renew their infrastructure, and that's giving us kind of like a development path we just have to follow. But that's one of the explanations. There is margin -- margin will develop, but it's not as kind of like simple to calculate as in hardware business as it's going to be in the future. That's point number one. You asked about the development of the growth. Yes, we do have a plan, but this plan also basically tells us we can -- we have to be very careful with when this COVID crisis is over. And the last year, when we were discussing also in March, we were kind of all surprised that it's still going on and that we still have influences. We will feel this in the first half of '22 still because we expect that supply chain shortage will recover during '22, but not at 100% from first of January on. But we see that from '23 on, we can have quite solid growth in the area that we already said or mentioned. That's basically the thing. But what we do not see is kind of like moderate for 3 years and then having a hockey stick like hell, that's not how we plan and that's also not how we see it. But we see that '21 and '22 are still kind of influenced by the whole impact out of this COVID crisis and that's giving us maybe a bit slower start in '22 as if it would have been normal. And the third question is the R&D question, you can answer that.

I will take that. The R&D part, if you compare it this year to last year, we were having more development, but less maintenance bug-fixing part, and we will continue to do that. So in the future, the development part will grow. And of course, our R&D spend will grow, too, following the revenue growth because we need to be ready in that part in the future, too. And therefore, if you take your assumptions in the future, it's going to be the similar way, continuing growing with revenue, we will grow the R&D part. And to one point, what Jeannine said, just to highlight. If you take 2016 a little bit black and white, that you understand a little bit better. If you take 2016 margin and revenue, the company was a different one, as Jeannine said. If you are hardware shipping, you are processing hardware equipment and you send that out. There is no projects involved. There is no real big installations. There is no project for the software installation and so on involved. So you cannot just take and say -- even if you're saying you're selling more software, and software normally the margin is, let's say, 100% because you have the development cost, that part is not working because you need to have the service business in addition. And this is showing that the margin total came down. And yes, we are working to come back with the growth we are doing. But you cannot compare a company who was doing just hardware or almost just hardware with a company which is now going in the service business. So that's a little bit the story behind what I would like to highlight.

It's very helpful. Just exactly on this point, does it mean in the cost of goods sold, you have much more project teams, engineers now working on the software solution, which is keeping down the gross profit margin versus historic level? Is it this additional headcount costs you have there?

Yes, this has an effect because we are having the people installing the solutions to doing the installations. And these people, that's part of the cost, too, which is going in that part of the business, yes.

But it's also kind of like a buildup of what we need for the future, because a project business is almost always a different kind of calculation than a service contract that you're doing later on. And Ascom really is preparing for the future that all these customer support that we have to deliver in the end with our solutions at the hospitals can be delivered. This is the good side of the story, it's the recurring revenue. The bad side of the story is you have to have once a time where you build that up because it's not coming from nowhere.

Now we have Serge Rotzer, first. Sorry, he was first. And then Mr. Bamert.

Yes, happy to see a proud CFO and a positive-minded CEO, but still I have some questions here. Again, on this midterm target, with this double-digit CAGR '21, '25, can you just -- can you help us to understand if it's more front-end loaded or back-end loaded? I know you said you don't want to comment it, but you also said you don't want to see hockey sticks, and I see quite a huge hockey stick now in the backlog. So do we see a first wave coming from this backlog? Or how can we understand when you can recognize your revenue? This would be the first question. Then I have 2 others.

As I said, it's not front-end loaded, but it's really true that the backlog is helping us to have a solid start in '22 and for sure also showing some growth there. But later on, it's kind of like a solid growth path over the years. Because if you have more and more contracts, you have more and more so-called service contracts as well that you have over the years. And the renewal of these contracts is we have a renewal rate that is higher than 98%. Because if [ you're once ] with your solutions and also software and you're not failing totally, the chance that you fall out and the software -- service contract is not prolongated is very, very, very low. And that's the reason why I always said the recurring revenue and these service contracts are our base to grow then solid over the years.

So the same would be true also then for the margin probably, isn't it? Because when I look at the waterfall chart and I take out the COVID cost, I have plus 150 basis points. And secondly, when you say you have more leverage in the second phase, then so we should see them higher EBITDA margin growth later than in the beginning. Is this correct?

Correct.

This is correct, yes. The point is just the EBITDA margin is always like if you look a few years ahead, you first have to invest and later you can earn whatever you have planted in solutions. But this is correct.

Okay. Then probably the last one. I know you will not comment the strategy of the previous management, but they said they want to achieve 20% EBITDA margin. So we have a gap of 500 basis points. Probably you can explain me what is different in your strategy that you achieve a 15% -- 14%, 15% instead of 20% over the midterm, obviously.

Yes. I cannot really comment it because I really do not know how they came to this figure. Speculation maybe is that it also was an Excel exercise. But what we can just speculate is that they have put more emphasis on innovation in the hardware area, where we had the judgment that price erosion in some of these hardware components will be larger than what they assumed in 2016 or '15. And if you look at some of the documentations from -- you know what I did, I took 5 years documentations from all Investor Days and conferences there were and looked at it, and if I look at this one, I would say, yes, there was more assumptions in that hardware will have a larger impact on that. Just if you look at the -- now we have the Myco 3 as well. But if I look at some of the presentations you had Myco on every single chart, and this shows me already how the thinking maybe was a bit different, so.

Okay. It's okay, Serge?

Yes.

Then Mr. Bamert, please.

Could you give us the figure for the software and solution part of the revenues, as you did in prior periods, and perhaps also what you expect that figure to result from the current order backlog? And adding to that question, given your midterm guidance, do we have expect a temporary, let's say, decline in that figure because you booked more new business and that includes also a lot of hardware and does not really lift your software and solution part of the revenues in the short term?

On the software number, we were growing software 30.6% compared to last year on constant currency. So that's the software part of the overall business. And if you're you now asking me what is the software part on the backlog and so on, I have -- do not have that with me. I can check and we can release that next one -- next time because we are not analyzing that on this part.

But solution, we do.

On the solution we do. On the solution, it's 40 -- I think it's 40%. If you ask solution -- software and solution, 40% I think. Yes, 40%, the solution part in the backlog, if you look on the backlog part. And the second question was the -- can you once again repeat that, sorry?

[ So second question ] regarding how you expect this software and solution part to develop in the coming years. And I'm talking more on the first 2 years of the 5-year period.

It's -- give me a second, and I will hand you over that. I need to take it out, but you get a little bit of the feeling.

Perhaps a short one, easy one for the CEO in the meantime you're looking it up.

An easy one for the CEO, super.

Now that you finish the financial turnaround, what can you say about the dividend proposal?

That's a question I cannot really answer because it's a question of the Board of Directors -- for the Board of Directors to answer. But they will, for sure, discuss this and come up with respective communication about this.

If they ask you for a proposal from your side?

Also then it's something that still has to be discussed.

We continue with further questions. And now keep the CFO busy, you see. Maybe team can help you, there are some of them here. Jörn Iffert, please.

I checked, it's around 40%.

Okay, Dominik.

Just a couple of follow-up questions, please. First of all, can you share some insights about the pricing trends you are seeing in the industry right now? I understand it's not pure hardware, you sell solutions. But if you net it out, doing kind of some of the parts, how are pricing developing for the different categories in the last 1 or 2 years? And the second question, please, of all these government programs which all stated they will spend billions in the hospital sector to drive digitalization, what is the visibility? Are you seeing already that this money is free up and this is ending up in the hospitals? Or what is your assumption, this will really happen in a bigger wave? And the third question, please, coming back on my colleague's margins question that the EBITDA margin improvement in terms of speed could be a [ bit ] more back-end loaded, but you said it's 100 basis points. I mean looking into '22, is it then too aggressive to assume 100 basis points? Should it be between 50 and 100 basis points? Just to get a little bit better feeling for this statement.

You take the third one. The pricing, what we see is that it's a very diverse picture, you have to see. We do not have a lot of pressure if you look at it from a service and solution perspective. But where we see that there is pressure is kind of in certain components, for example, that you have -- that you need to build your hardware. And that's something Dominik mentioned as well, sometimes logistic costs are going up also. We are less hard hit than some -- if you order refrigerators, it may be a different thing. But that that's what we see. If you look at the price pressure, what we see is that, specifically in the software area, yes, there is a certain pressure but linked with the solution, basically. We are winning projects at the moment because, from a technical standpoint, we are in some of these tenders far ahead. But this does not let us rest because that's exactly the wrong thing to do, means like we even have to be very careful and up on our toes to do more kind of innovation in that sense. But from a pricing, there is a -- if you would ask me if there are many tenders that we lose because of price, then I would say there are segments in the long-term care where price is sometimes an issue. If it's public tenders in hospitals, it's more the technical solution that counts, and we do not lose because of the price.

Okay. But last year, [ gross profit was coming down ], which has nothing to do with price developments in the last [ 2 years ].

No.

No, not really. Not really. That's the business mix, yes.

Product mix, business mix and so on.

And the second question you asked was about the programs in the hospital means like [ zukunftsgesetz ] and all these European Union fundings, also a diverse picture there. There are some that are relatively fast, like university hospitals, means like the Klinikum Bonn, for example, they're pretty fast because obviously they have people that knew how to get that funding and immediately start the projects. There are others, also other countries, where the administrative process behind this is a bit more complicated. But what we see is that they all start to plan doing things like that. European Union has, Horizon '21, specific programs that they also do cross-border, means like there is a lot of innovation done at the moment. But they do their clinical studies first before they start to roll out in a -- on the longer run. We expect during this period that we mentioned in midterm that this will pick up quite strongly. That's what we expect. At the moment, we hope that this crisis is over and not a lot of the projects will be postponed again because of a fourth wave.

Then we have a third question, [ guidance for '22 ].

Yes, I'm not going to hand over a guidance for '22, but it's going to be, as we already said, end loaded. But it's not going to be that the end load or the, how to say, the nice hockey stick is going to be a big hockey stick, it's not going to be. We are working that we constantly increase it, but it will be -- it depends all on how much revenue we can grow and how much we invest in additional sales, because normally you need to have sales that you can do revenues. To balance that out and coming back to what I said, it's not going to be end loaded, it's going to be a mix between. That's what I can give you.

Okay. It's okay. Then Serge again.

Okay. Now I have a follow-up question from my colleagues, [ from Jörn ]. It's about tendering. I can remember that last autumn, you have been very bullish about the tender volume out. Can you give us a feeling today? And we have seen backlog was up, giving a constant sales. Today, is the tender volume larger compared to the last 12 months? Or not? Or equal? And how much of this tender volume is government-related you mentioned? And then thirdly, as these are public contracts, they have a clear road map. You know exactly when they will get awarded. So can you please give us a feeling when these government-related contracts will get awarded? Is it next year? Is it the year after? Or what can we expect?

Okay. If you look at the pure volume, then compared to last year the same time, the same time, there are more tenders out, that's for sure. That's one point. Second point is what I always said, it's between 9 and sometimes 12, up until 18 months, until some of the tenders are decided. And we are expecting that public tenders, specifically public tenders, that they will -- how can I say, increase in decisions, et cetera, et cetera, latest from '23 on. But what we see at the moment is that there are more public tenders coming up, mainly in Europe, mainly in Europe. But that has to do now with this bounce back also from COVID, that's one thing. And the second thing is, is that some of these programs are very, very specifically linked to digitalization in the hospital area, means like, too, that's also kind of like the fourth wave in the hospitals digitalization, has a lot to do with orchestration, collaboration, communication because that's where they have the effects from, that's what they all didn't really do in the past or in the last 15 years, and that's where the money is going to be invested. And there, we see the tenders coming now. Then there are also private ones, but that's more -- that's basically an ongoing stream that is coming.

Okay?

I will have a follow-up.

Okay. Please.

Yes.

We have seen some positive movements in OEM business, and from the past, we know that the margin is much better in OEM. So what's the impact from the OEM business going forward? What do you expect growth in OEM and what's about the margin here? So that we see faster results on the margin level.

OEM is a business that's strongly dependent from what you have and also what's the experience of the company. We did a deep dive there. And as you know in the past, it was always said like OEM is going down. It's only going down if you basically go and say, it's just hardware turnover. And what we're doing right now is that we are moving more towards the direction of creating solutions with our global distributors because they're playing in the field, specifically in the enterprise and very small and medium business area where we do not play basically with our direct sales. And this gives us a lot of opportunity to have long-lasting, larger contracts in the future, and that's where we are going to move our so-called OEM business towards. And maybe we even have to give it then kind of like a different name because it's not kind of like classical OEM business. But we are developing us there, Ascom as well. That was the reason and that was one of the things I also promised 2 years ago, that we will look into that and also come with a decent proposal how we can recover also there.

Okay. Now a follow-up?

Well, so margin will remain lower -- will be lower in the future of this new named business?

I would say, from a margin perspective, it's solid but also more sustainable because it's not bumping up and down the business. And that's for me the main part. If you do want to have a solid part of your growth also in that kind of business, you shouldn't be too much dependent from basically going up and down of that businesses with having -- being dependent on monthly orders, means like you need your recurring thing as well. And that's exactly what we're working towards, means like giving us a solid margin outlook as well.

But when we're talking there about margin, we are talking about EBITDA margin.

Yes.

Okay. Next questions? Any further questions? Otherwise, I think the Q&A session is over.

And to make up for before, I really changed now the chart. Sorry for that. The next event, Ascom full year results 2021, this is due to the fact also that we see that we could really enter in a phase again where maybe personal meetings are not taking place. So from our side, eighth of March 2022 will be the next touch point we have. But I'm pretty sure that with all of you, we will have talks in between, and I'm looking forward to that. Thanks a lot for your participation, your interest. And I hope we can manage through the coming months.

Unfortunately, we cannot serve you now the traditional aperitif. But of course, we are still here around if you have any questions or whatsoever. Thank you very much for coming.