Ascom Holding AG (ASCN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is your conference call operator. Welcome to the media and analyst conference call and webcast of Ascom about the full year results 2021. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Daniel Lack, Company Secretary of the Ascom Group. Sir, the floor is yours.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our annual conference also from our side. You'll find the today presentation either on the webcast, but also on our Ascom website, where you also can see the annual report. The agenda for the today conference call is on Slide 3. We start with Dominik Maurer, who will give you a business and financial review for '21, followed by a presentation about Ascom and our market environment done by our Chairman, Valentin Chapero. Our CEO, Nicolas Vanden Abeele will inform about the strategic direction and the guidance followed by Q&A. With this, I hand over to Dominik.

A warm welcome from my side. Happy to be able to present even once again just virtual. Nevertheless, it seems that this could be the last one virtual, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel that the virtual story will disappear for the next meeting we are going to have and the next presentation we are going to have with you. Ascom full year at glance. We delivered solid growth and we were in line with the communicated targets. We continued our way to profitable growth on revenue and on profit. Despite the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and the global supply crisis, the results of 2021 was in line with the communicated guidance. Revenue with a positive growth of 3.7%, meaning CHF 7.2 million in addition, coming out of a growth in the health care market with 4.1%. In addition, our recurring revenue was growing even faster with 4.7% in constant currency. We had a significant growth of 20% in constant currency with our pure Software business. And incoming orders, with a growth of 6%, resulted in the highest backlog Ascom ever had. A significant improvement in profitability, even with the fact that we suffered from additional logistic costs, higher production costs due to the shortage situation. EBITDA margin almost reached the 10%, and group profit was more than doubled. With the payback of the Infovista loan, our cash position is stronger and the equity ratio reached now 41.1%. Let me highlight it. Ascom is now debt free. Despite the ongoing pandemic you are all aware of, our markets performed well. Let me now show you some of the highlights of last year. We had a double-digit revenue growth in France and Spain, U.K. and in our OEM business. France and Spain with the bounce back effect due to COVID-19. U.K., on the other hand, with the clear path of the midterm guidance to grow double digit year-over-year. Solid revenue growth in Nordics and the Netherlands, with a strong growth in recurring revenue. The increase in the incoming order and especially the win of the significant deal in OEM, together with a double-digit revenue growth in OEM, is a good basis to further support our midterm guidance. Significant health care wins in regions like DACH, Rest of the World and Nordics are following the Ascom strategy and will support further growth in these markets, too. Unfortunately, we were having some challenges, too. Let's have a look at them now. H2 was more impacted by the shortage. Growth was 2.6% lower in second half than the 5% we had in the first half. Competing for talent in some market is getting more and more severe. Just a small growth of 3% in constant currency in the U.S.A. and Canada, mainly impacted by the component shortage. Despite the shortage problem, U.S.A. and Canada was growing in constant currency almost 5% in H2. DACH region was heavily impacted by the component shortage and continued COVID-19 related challenges mainly across the enterprise and mobility sector. We were a little bit better in the second half with minus 7.7% against the first half where we had minus 11%. I would like now to highlight just some of our health care wins we won in 2021. I will not touch everything here as you may saw our press releases during the last year. In the U.S., we signed GPOs, meaning frame contracts with Vizient and Premier, which now opened the doors for IDNs in the U.S. market. The Premier GPO agreement is effective since May and the Vizient one since August. And I can already see a promising pipeline with these 2 new GPOs we signed last year. On the other hand, our largest nurse call order in Macau. This deals covers around 1,400 beds split roughly across over 35 wards. And an additional example here, which I would like to highlight is the frame agreement of the Norway deal, where we have a potential of over CHF 5 million of revenue in the future due to the fact that we were able to close this frame agreement in Norway. Let's now have a look on the summary results on next page. Incoming order was growing 6%, almost the same than 2020 where we reached 6.6%. And this was driven by one big OEM deal. Normalizing this together with the extraordinary deal with WAles we had in 2020, the growth was still good with 3.6% at constant currency. On the other hand, we reached now, as already mentioned, a record order backlog with over CHF 256 million. This is a growth of 19%, which, of course, was also driven by the Wales and OEM deals, which we won last year, the other one 1 year before. On net revenue, a positive growth of 3.7% and 2.7% in constant currency coming out of our Acute Care segment, supported by the growth in our project business. We were able to grow across all regions except DACH and Rest of the World. With all this, we were able to achieve an EBITDA increase of CHF 3.8 million resulting in an EBITDA margin of 9.8%. As we go further, we will understand how we achieved such a strong growth in profitability. The net working capital, here, I exclude the Infovista loan repayment of CHF 16 million. There, we had the main increase coming out of higher receivables -- high receivable balance, CHF 5 million additional due to timing of revenue. Just to highlight, December versus November was CHF 10 million against CHF 5 million if you compare that to 2020. The second part, the inventory and the WIP. We have a CHF 5 million increase material WIP from projects where components were missing, and therefore, the project could not be completed. On the other hand, the CapEx, there, we have a slight increase of CHF 1 million additional CapEx. Now going to the strong development of incoming orders. And let's have a look on that even despite the COVID-19 and the shortage constraints what we had. The maintenance and support decreased by 16% due to the switch to longer-lasting contracts, which was not continued on the same level in 2021. Important to mention here that these orders are not renewed annually and instead are renewed every 3 to 5 years. Hence, the decline in 2021 against 2020. Really positive is the much higher incoming order of almost CHF 257 million on the project, product and service business, of course, mainly influenced by the significant win in OEM. But normalize this in the project, product and service business, the incoming order was still growing over 15.9%. This shows that we were not dependent on big deals, like the ones we had in Wales and OEM. Major Europe markets were slightly lower as we were not able to compensate the major Wales win in 2020. Normalizing that out, we achieved in our major Europe markets a growth of 6% in actual rates or 5.6% in constant currency compared to last year. This good result of incoming orders is not reflecting everything. As I already mentioned, the wins of the frame contracts were not booked as incoming orders. The frame contracts, as already shown like the GPOs in the U.S., the Southeastern Norway and the University of Bonn deal, these incoming orders will be booked when the customer places the order following the framework agreement. So this will even be incoming order in 2022 and in the future. Now looking on our strong backlog and the backlog growth. We had a growth of 19%. And since 2018, the backlog was increased on an average of 20% per annum. So we had a CAGR of 20%. In the maintenance and support part, we had a CAGR of 8.6%. We remain stable over CHF 100 million for 2020 and [ 2020 ] in this part. On the projects, products and service backlog, we have a really good result here. The CAGR is even 30%, including Wales and the large OEM deals. The CAGR would still be over 18% when we're normalizing out Wales and OEM, which is showing that the underlying backlog growth is very strong. And especially to mention here that more than 48% of the backlog is long term, meaning relevant in 2023 and beyond, again, illustrating we were building revenue security for the future. Let's now look on revenue and on -- our revenue growth on the next slide. To give you a little bit more details about our revenue, we had an increase in revenue from CHF 280 million to CHF 291.5 million, caused by a real growth of plus CHF 7.5 million, meaning 2.7% at constant currency and with an additional exchange rate effect of plus CHF 3 million. I will now present and explain the main drivers for the positive increase in local currency on the following revenue slides. Firstly, the development in H1 and H2 and then the development in the regions. The positive net revenue development of 3.6% was driven by the increase in maintenance and support, which grew 7%. This business is less influenced by the shortage of components. On the other side, the project, product and service business suffered from the COVID-19 and especially from the shortage of components. As already mentioned, H2 was more impacted by the shortage. Growth was 2.6%, which was lower than the first half where we realized 5%. In H2, the project, product and service business just grew 1.3% compared to H2 2020. Projects and products could not be delivered as some remaining parts were missing for the project completion. As already mentioned, this missing project completion was the driver for the increase in WIP. I would like to conclude this slide with a short summary. The H1 result is showing too that we are able to grow with almost a double digit in some part of the business. This is a clear indicator that the basic conditions are there. Now let's look on the regions and where the 3.7% growth came from, from which region. Once again in U.K., very strong growth of almost 17% compared with the 15% in 2020. We've done that with -- via key deals in acute care, long-term care and in enterprise. This shows that Ascom is ready and able to grow with double digit in some of the regions. And even on a constant basis, we were able to grow year-over-year if you look backwards in the U.K. with double digit. France and Spain, as already said, strong bounce back in health care after the Covid lockdown, especially in the long-term care segment. The positive improvement in the second half of the year 2020 was continued during the whole 2021. Same, we had a strong bounce back of COVID-19 compared to 2020, was resulting in an increase of almost 19% in the OEM business. The strong performance with Myco together with the solid recurring revenue base helped to grow a solid 5.1% in constant currency in the Nordics. Comparing this once again with the growth in 2020, where we had 13.3% in constant currency, once again, a good growth rate here too. After a really strong growth with 6.2% in the Netherlands, with all these COVID-related lockdowns, we were once again able to grow more than 4% in constant currency in 2021 in the Netherlands. The strong performance in Software with more than 25% increase in constant currency was not able to offset the decrease in mobility due to the component shortage in the U.S. and in the Canada region. Despite the shortage problem, U.S. and Canada was growing almost 5% in H2, which then resulted in a yearly growth of 3% in constant currency. Rest of the world suffered from severe lockdowns, especially in Australia, across both the enterprise, where we had low mobility sales; and long-term care, where we had low patient system sales as we could not get on site to close the projects. We also had a much slower decision-making across our health care customers as a result of this COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, which further hindered our ability to grow there. A decline due to the hard market conditions in the -- especially in the enterprise sector, the reduced demand for mobility products in enterprise due to COVID effect, together with the component shortage and mainly the timing in mobility was influencing the result in DACH. On constant currency, we were a little bit better in the second half with minus 7.2% against the first half where we had minus 12.4%. The health care share was remaining at 68% of revenue. We had here an absolute growth of CHF 8.9 million, with 4.8% growth at constant currency, mainly driven by the growth in acute care. In addition, as already mentioned, enterprise suffered, and we had a decline of CHF 2.6 million, or respective, CHF 3.6 million at constant currency. We grew recurring revenue by CHF 3.8 million, which is part of the Ascom strategy to not start new every year, and instead, we build on the recurring base. This needs to be seen together with the high backlog volume, meaning the 48% to be converted beyond 2022, as already mentioned some slides ago. As already explained, with a 4.7% growth, the recurring revenue was growing more than the total revenue. The growth in recurring revenue was mainly driven by higher software sales and the long-term maintenance contracts and the growth in this part. We will now have a look on the EBITDA margin. The EBITDA bridge will show us that -- the EBITDA bridge will show the strong EBITDA development, which was resulting in an EBITDA margin of 9.8%, as already said. As already mentioned, we had an increase of an additional CHF 3.8 million in EBITDA. And here, you can see the main pillars of this positive effect. Revenue and productivity related is CHF 3.4 million. Just CHF 1.5 million from revenue as CHF 4.7 million was eaten away from the higher material cost of CHF 4.7 million. CHF 1.9 million based on efficiencies in services around our implementation and also how we administer and manage our support services. Then we have cost and efficiency savings of CHF 4.8 million. CHF 2.3 million reduced on all employee costs. In addition, CHF 0.6 million less third-party costs. And not to forget the CHF 1.9 million increased efficiencies here. Then we had incremental costs due to the component shortage and the product mix. As you can see, we had a severe impact of CHF 4.7 million, but we were able to mitigate this by lowering the cost and being efficient where we could. This CHF 4.7 million consists of the following main drivers: additional costs of CHF 1.2 million in logistics; higher component costs due to spot price of CHF 1.5 million; and then the different product mix, as already mentioned, influenced the cost base by another CHF 2 million. Now on the P&L, I would like to highlight some of the points. The gross profit had a small decline of 50 basis points. But it's important to note that we lost 160 basis points of margin, the already mentioned CHF 4.6 million due to higher costs from the component shortage and the product mix as shown one slide before. Had we not had these challenges, our profitability would have grown. Marketing and sales. We don't hear investment in new sales capabilities for our future growth. The increased marketing and sales costs have its positive effect on the incoming order. As presented, we had an increase in incoming orders of almost 16% in the project, product and service business. On the R&D, we optimize the cost base as we seek to drive more efficiency in our processes. This is, of course -- this, of course, will go on in 2022 and onwards. Mainly, we had here a reduction of CHF 1.7 million due to the reduction of complex customer issues that required R&D effort and CHF 1 million where we changed our processes to improve the project and resource planning. So we removed excess capacity here. G&A. A little bit less growth across all G&A functions as we optimize here our processes, too, and where we looked especially on our IT part. On the CapEx, intangible investments remain at the same level despite a little bit lower R&D costs resulting from our focused approach, which reduces the maintenance works and increased development on that. So on here, you see on the CapEx more or less stable. We are on -- back on the level we were some years ago. Now let's have a look on the cash flow, and we continue to manage our cash flow in a good way. Key points here are the following. Operating cash flow is lower than 2020 because we already had improved our net working capital to the right level in 2020, and this was a onetime effect. And in addition, the shortage had here, of course, an effect, too, as we were not able to finish projects, and therefore, the cash of these projects will come later. On the other part, the vendor loan repayment was used to repay our outstanding borrowings with our core banks. Finally, let's have a short look on our balance sheet. The key points here are the following. The cash is remaining stable year over year. Borrowing has been repaid. We have no outstanding debt anymore. No outstanding debt in COVID-19 and shortage crisis is a really good and healthy story. As a result of this, the net cash position improved by CHF 16.7 million. We had an increase in net working capital due to higher receivable, as we had a higher amount of revenue in December and a buildup of work in progress, the WIP, as we had components missing to close the projects and invoice customers. All these points were already shown in earlier slides. Total assets decreased as Infovista loan has been repaid by Infovista. We have a continued increase in the equity ratio, and now we reach an equity ratio of 41.1%, so it went up by 6.1%. To make a short summary of our numbers, the results are in line with the communicated guidance. We had a really strong development in incoming orders, especially mentioned here, as already said, the products, project and service business, and we have a record order backlog. This, together with the changes and optimization we have done, we are now ready and we have the basic conditions for the future of Ascom. Group profit almost doubled. And together with a strong balance sheet, we are ready to pay dividends this year. Thanks to all of you. And I would like now to hand over to Dr. Valentin Chapero, our Chairman. Valentin, it's your turn now.

Thank you, Dominik. I just wanted to make a few remarks around Ascom and the marketplace in which we play. The reason is basically that over the last years, as you know, several acquisitions have been carried out. Some of them with astronomical valuations where people basically were scratching their heads and wondering what is it around RTCC, what is the nature of this market, what is the nature of the companies working in that market environment and what is the competitive situation for Ascom. So let me just jump into my 3 slides, where I tried to explain the nature of our market. You have -- on the one hand, you have bedside devices and infrastructure on the left side of this slide, which generates data. This can include EEG systems, blood pressure devices, ventilation, pumps, nurse call, buttons pressed by patients asking for help and so on. So these generate data. This goes into this large, friendly orange or red cloud you see in the middle, which is one of the core areas of Ascom, where we use middleware software, connectivity software, cabling systems, radio systems, all sorts of hard and software devices, which basically aggregate all these data, evaluate it and decide who should get the data, what type of measures should be taken and so on. And this then is redirected towards the specific people who have to take action. And this is done typically using some sort of a handheld device, some sort of communication device, which triggers an action, which is on the right side of this little graph. Below, you see this big services area. This is very important because by the very nature of the heterogeneous data sources, by the very nature of the heterogeneous customer situations, it's always a major integration job, major professional services and consulting job, to integrate into an existing infrastructure. So when you see all these little logos. And that's trying to explain why we are dealing with companies like Philips or companies like GE or companies like Honeywell in very different environments. At the end of the day, and that's on the right side of the slide, you see that specifically the middleware part, the complicated part is extremely fragmented. The big guys, the household names like GE, even like Philips, don't really play in that space and it's typically consulting jobs done locally. So Ascom really is one of the few companies having a global approach to that more complicated part of system integration. If I look at the smaller competitors we have in that specific area, they are typically local and they typically also come either from very specialized hardware parts, like pagers or telephones, or from a very limited software application part. So they also have had to develop their offering over time towards a comprehensive solution. And from where we stand, we have to say again that Ascom probably is the company with the most comprehensive and integrated solution in that space. Now if we look at the market dynamics over the last years, then I think we can clearly state that RTCC, as we call it, real-time communication and collaboration, has gained significantly in relevance. And the reasons are clear. People want to enhance productivity. People want to enhance quality. Delivery of care has to be "industrialized." Of course at the end of the day, it's about people, so industrialized is maybe not the best word. But of course, we need more productivity. We need more cost efficiency. And we need a better understanding -- qualitative and quantitative understanding of the quality of delivery of care. For that, we need typically infrastructures as supplied by Ascom. Now over the last years, and you see here 3 examples from 2019, '21 and '22, large companies like Hillrom, like Philips, like Stryker, have acquired companies that play in parts of the market segments in which Ascom is active. This is good news because it underlines, again, it underlines the relevance of these market segments and of these technologies. But on the other hand, it's not really a risk from our point of view for Ascom. And the reasons, I think, are quite obvious. We are device-agnostic. We have no conflicts of interest. If a company like Stryker acquires Vocera, obviously, they have many other products like Philips, like Hillrom, that they also want to sell. So there might be, every now and then, some sort of conflict of interest. We are a pure RTCC company. Secondly, we do have all the bits and pieces it takes to have -- to be able to give a complete solution. Our professional services resources are global and specialized and trained exactly in these complicated integration jobs I mentioned earlier. And last but not least, many other big names, big device companies, are not really interested in in-sourcing this very specialized skill set and prefer -- and in my personal point of view, it's the way going forward, prefer to have a tight collaboration with a specialist like Ascom. And as you know, we do have a number of collaborations with very, very large players in the medical health care and device space. Now to finish my little explanation of the market environment of Ascom, the question is, of course, what's the way forward? I mean in which direction -- and this is obviously very, very generic. I'm very much looking forward to Nicolas explaining to us the strategy in more detail over the next years. But in very general terms, we can say that Ascom today is a very, very solid enterprise within the RTCC space. We have -- I don't want to go through all the detail -- all the points here in detail. We have a long-standing experience. We have a clear and comprehensive portfolio as proven by a lot of large customer projects and we have the specific know-how when it comes to integration of complex solution projects. Going forward, there are 3 areas which are the most important ones, and which open up huge opportunities for us. One is the optimization of workflows, which, of course, already today, is part of our job, but where we are still at the very, very beginning. We still are mostly dealing with infrastructure projects, with signaling, with devices. Going forward, when people really want to optimize delivery of care, of course, the workflows will have to be handled and will have to be improved. The second area is the continuum of care. As you know, the health care systems are trying to reduce costs also by relying less on extremely expensive hospital environments, have patients earlier at home. Of course, this requires additional supervision, additional measuring of vital data, additional communication and so on. So that's another huge area where Ascom can leverage its core competencies. And last but not least, because we will be in the middle of this workflow and data flow, we will be able to use real-time data to create actionable decisions. So we already have examples today like in Slingeland, where we are measuring a number of biometric data, movement data, and based on that, we can predict situations, critical situations with patients. So you go from a reactive care model to a proactive care model. And this will be driven significantly by real-time data flowing through our systems. So that's the third and very, very exciting perspective for the further development of our company. So as you hopefully hear, I'm extremely -- and the Board are extremely excited about all the opportunities has -- Ascom has. Going forward, of course, it's linked to a lot of hard work. I think the team has done a great job over the last years in enhancing the starting position to enter into this new period of the development of the company, but the best is clearly still ahead of us. Last but not least, a few housekeeping items. You have read it already, I guess, we proposed a CHF 0.20 dividend payment, which is 53% of our net profit. All Board members stand for reelection. After many, many years with PwC, we have also decided to change and have a new audit firm, which is KPMG. We are very thankful to PwC. They have done a great job. But after such a long time frame, I think it was in order to have a new audit partner. And last but not least, another housekeeping point we want to extend the authorized capital, which will be finalized this year according to Swiss law. As you know, every 2 years, you have to repeat that process. This is all from my side. As I said, I'm very much looking forward to work with Nicolas, Dominik and their respective teams in the further development of the company. And having said that, I hand over to Nicolas.

Thank you very much, Valentin, and good morning to everyone. I'm very glad to be here today in my first analyst call and annual media conference. Unfortunately, as Dominik said, still in a virtual fashion, but I hope that in the next edition we can meet face to face. So what I would like to do, I would like to start with a brief introduction on myself, as I'm new in the job, now 1 month with Ascom, then give a little bit more highlights on the Ascom strategy, but also a number of key priorities and way forward, basic observations and key priorities I would like to set forward for the company. And I will conclude with the guidance for 2022 as well as beyond. So let me first start with a quick introduction about myself. So I have about 25, 27 years of professional experience in a number of leadership functions with multinational companies. And most of my career was actually spent in technology companies. So before joining Ascom earlier in the year, I was 5 years with Barco. Barco which is a company -- technology company specialized in visualization and also medical workflows. Before that, I spent 6 years with ETEX, which is a Belgium-based multinational and industrial company. And before that, actually, I spent about 15 years in the telecoms industry with Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent. And I started my career in the mid-'90s actually as a consultant -- strategy consultant with Arthur Andersen. So 25-plus years of experience, mostly in technology functions, where I worked on growing businesses, on transforming businesses and creating value. And as you can also read, I have quite international exposure, having lived and worked abroad for quite a number of years. So graduated from the University of Leuven in Belgium, with a degree -- Masters degree in Business Administration. Then after that, traditional masters degrees and also an executive MBA in INSEAD and Ashford College. With this, I would like to give a little bit more highlights on the strategy of Ascom. So everything we do at Ascom is really centered around transforming data into insights and actionable outcomes and workflows. And as Valentin mentioned, RTCC, or real-time communication and collaboration, is really very important and getting more important as we speak. And our strategy is really anchored around that, growing our position as Ascom as a global leader in real-time communication and collaboration. And actually, I would say that the pandemic has been a strong catalyst also in that respect, where we see that both in enterprise but also particularly in health care, the digitalization of care is still in its very early stages. And that's where we will see, in the years to come, a very significant transformation and digitalization actually coming ahead. And we're definitely convinced that Ascom has a great position in that ecosystem and a great role to play in the years and months ahead. So that's point number one. Point number two, we want to evolve our company to much more -- becoming much more a customer-centric and solutions company, meaning providing really workflows, which create a lot of value for our customers, be it in the health care space but also in the enterprise space, where we want to make things more efficient, make patient outcomes much more better and, in the end, make it at a much more less costly way. And that's where, again, we believe we can play a huge role in transforming our company. Accompanied by that will be boosting our software and services component. As Valentin mentioned, we are a software player, we are a service player and one of the only players actually in the industry that can really understand an end-to-end workflow and provide also consulting support in developing these workflows with the different customers. In doing so, we are very committed to drive significant shareholder value by reaching our short and midterm guidance, which I will come back to later in the slides. Now let me give a little bit more an update or a flavor around our RTCC, real-time communication and collaboration, strategy. I would say the beauty of Ascom is that we're one of the only vendors in the industry that really provides a full end-to-end solution. Full end-to-end solution covering mobility devices, nurse call systems, software platforms, but also then the services linked to that, to integrate complex workflows for our customers. And we do this in a very seamless way, providing the right information to the right person at the right point in time to take really the right action or the right decision. And that's all -- that's what it's all about that we're doing. Now we have an ambition to become a much stronger leader even going forward in the real-time communication and collaboration environment. In the 3 segments that you can see on the chart, being long-term care and acute care, where we integrate data from different devices from the environment, where we analyze and orchestrate basically these data and transform it into actions to caregivers in long-term care and acute care environment, and really make it much more efficient, much more visible, much more actionable in that particular environment. Secondly, we also apply similar workflows in the enterprise environment, where we want to provide or protect basically the integrity of processes and the efficiency of processes to our different enterprise customers, applying similar type of workflows but to a different environment. And that's also the beauty that Ascom has, that we can leverage similar type of solutions and workflows across the 3 segments in which we're active, combining devices that we have, combining software platform, as you can see in the middle of the slide, and then translating this into actionable workflows on various types of devices or displays. Now on the left-hand side of this slide, you can see the different building blocks of our RTCC framework. Building blocks are going from the basic communication and devices that we offer to much more complex type of activities going to alarming and alerting, medical device integration, workflow orchestration, and eventually, which is really what we're working very hard on, going from more reactive to much more proactive and predictive workflows. And that's what I would like to highlight on the next slide. Now proactive workflows are becoming key, are becoming more important, and that's also where we believe Ascom has a key role to play in the near future. Proactive workflows means identifying potential issues before they arise based on certain data, based on running algorithms on data sets, and by doing so, really generating additional insights. And insights that can predict, for example, the situation of a patient that could deteriorate or predict in an industrial environment based on some metrics that the situation can turn bad, right? And this is really the whole predictive analysis that we're doing -- that we're starting to do with a number of customers today, but where we believe there will be a lot of more value that we will be able to create in the near future. Value by integrating different devices, by integrating wearables, by artificial intelligence, and this is really key and a key component of our future, where we believe with our software solutions on the one hand side, but also with our clinical and consulting teams, in general, will be able to provide much more added value and relevant information to our customers. Now I'm currently about 1 month in the job as the new CEO of Ascom. I had the opportunity to meet, I mean, a substantial amount of people in the teams, obviously, at Ascom and we have great teams at Ascom, a lot of great experience. But also quite a number of customers, first interaction with customers, I've been in the U.K., I've been in Sweden and Italy. I will be going to the U.S. next week. So that gives me, I would say, first important insights on the company, but also first observation on, let's say, the key priorities I would like to address going forward. And I've listed actually 4 here on this slide. Ascom is in the transformation journey, meaning that we have embarked on the real-time communication and collaboration strategy, which is definitely the way forward, which resonates very well with our customers in the market. So that's an important proof point that we have. But I would like to step up and accelerate our transformation journey towards becoming a key leader in RTCC. My key priorities today are based on the 4 pillars, which I've highlighted on this slide. First of all, becoming even more customer-centric, which means providing workflows which provide even more value to our customers, and do this in a tailored and customized way but also in a much more industrialized way. If we want to grow, we need to be able to scale, meaning we need to have value propositions, which are also much more standardized and which also provide the right proof points, data points to our customers in terms of return on investment that we can provide. Meaning, for example, in the medical domain, reduction of length of stay in hospital, which is key. So this all delivers better patient outcomes and, in the end, better outcomes also for the hospital. The second one is really accelerating our growth base by boosting our sales, but also by boosting and ramping up our marketing engine. And there, again, what I mentioned earlier on, standardizing our go-to-market approach, making our value proposition much more relevant and standardized for our customers is key. But also working on diversifying our position in each of the markets in which we are across the 3 segments in which we play, which is acute care, which is long-term care, which is enterprise. And last but not least, also working further on key strategic alliances. We've signed up last year some very significant contracts in the OEM domain. This is something that we want to continue to focus on with strategic alliances with many other partners, with medical devices, also with ICT companies, but also with telecom players going forward. So that's the second pillar where I want to accelerate the growth of the company going forward. The third one is on the strategic execution of RTCC, real-time communication and collaboration, where we will be launching later this year our first suite of RTCC, which will be an integrated software platform, and we are confident that this will be a significant success in the market. So we'll continue to work on that. And last but not least, making sure that we are an agile company and that whatever we provide, we provide it in the most efficient way possible. Meaning, looking into our portfolio, where we can streamline, where we can better manage the product life cycle, looking into optimizing and improving more our processes and tools to make it more efficient for everyone, but also looking at our organizational readiness and fine-tune further where needed. So these are the key priorities I'm currently focusing on and which we will be working on throughout 2022 with the whole management team of Ascom. Now I would like to highlight a couple of references, a couple of nice use cases we have won last year with Ascom. And I will highlight 3, which basically will give you an overview of the portfolio that we have in different customer situations, but also of the increasing complexity going from reactive to much more proactive and predictive analysis in each of these 3 cases. So starting with the first one, which is with an enterprise customer, which is called EDF, Électricité de France in France, which is a solution around safety of the workflow -- of the workforce and a much better visibility of the workflows in an industrial environment here with EDF, which is the largest French electricity producer and distributor. And we have a very long-standing relationship with EDF. EDF wanted us -- wanted Ascom, to improve the safety and mobility of their staff across the multiple sites they have. And they have, I mean, thousands of people on these sites and very complex and potentially hazardous environments. And they wanted to improve the safety and also have a better management of technical alarms. So the solution that Ascom provided was a combination of both mobility, mobility devices and software platform to really provide that real-time, global view of the critical workflows. And then again, communicate the right information to the right person in the right time about the real-time effective situation on the ground of each of these people, but also the facilities and the infrastructure in each of those sites. So we basically provided alert messages in an automated fashion. We enabled that these alert messages and alarms were able to be presented in a consolidated way, but also dispatched to the relevant people on the ground, and all this in a very transparent and traceable way. So this is the example number one. The second use case is closer home in Switzerland with, I mean, a very important partner and hospital that we have, which is Kantonsspital in St. Gallen, which is a state-of-the-art hospital, really with key competence centers in various disciplines, ICU, cardiology, neurology and infectiology. And we provided, in a partnership mode with St. Gallen, a quite comprehensive solution, which was really consisting of almost all the building blocks of the Ascom solution, going from basic telephony to clinical communication to tracing and tracking to alerting and then also collaboration, basically. So it's a very comprehensive solution that we provide, where we integrate all medical and nonmedical devices as well as the hospital system data into a very seamless and automated way. And where you can see in the middle of the graph, which is the Ascom healthcare platform, which really analyzes and integrates all that data and then really orchestrates actions based on that, basically dispatching information, dispatching alerts or alarms to the relevant people to the relevant caregiver on the different devices, which they have as a kind of handheld, but also on centrally displayed displays in order to have a very good overview of the patient status. And again, there -- also there's an integration with the hospital and the patient medical systems to have a continuous and automated tracking of all data and logging of the patients. So a very nice project. This is a pilot project that we're deploying today with Kantonsspital St. Gallen, which will become, in the very near future, one of our flagship projects as we speak. So that's actually the second stage of a solution where we do the full integration and alarming and alerting and we really orchestrate the whole workflow in a medical hospital environment here. Now the third example is also a very nice example that we have going from the reactive to full proactive care. And this is an example with the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu in Barcelona in Spain, where we have also been working since a very long time with this hospital. They have a large amount of our solutions and software platforms installed. But the key application, which I want to highlight here is an application that we've developed with the cardiology department and where we, really together, do proactive care, proactive care in a cardiology environment where we do live patient monitoring, where we also look at historical patient data. And based on that, we have a prediction model where we do predictive analysis and where we can detect potential deterioration of the patient status in the cardiology environment. And based on that, raise alerts or alarms to the specific caregivers. So we're working on this project together with the hospital in Barcelona. We're working on specific metrics and outcomes because they want to measure the impact of that and how it can improve, first of all, patient care, patient quality, but also in the end the efficiency of their system in the cardiology environment. So it's a very important reference and we really look forward to be working further with that hospital going forward. So to conclude, I would like to say that although I'm just 1 month on board with Ascom, I think I have, in the meantime, acquired a relatively good view of the company based on the various interactions with our teams but also with the different customers. And our way forward and priorities are clear. As I said, based on 4 pillars, ramping up our customer centricity and sales growth, continuing the execution of our strategy, which is based on real-time communication and collaboration and in doing so, moving much more from reactive to proactive care and predictive care as Big Data and personalized care will become more and more important in the years to come. And as I mentioned, I believe that the pandemic has been a very important catalyst to the further digitalization of the health care ICT environment. And that's where going forward, Ascom can and will definitely play a very important role. With this, I would like to conclude my first slides on the business and on the strategy. And I would like actually to finish with, obviously, a very important part of the presentation, which is the guidance. And 2 parts, which I would like to highlight. First of all, the midterm guidance and a confirmation of our midterm guidance, which we presented in the half year media conference in August in 2021. And where I would like to reiterate our midterm guidance, both in terms of revenue growth, where Ascom aims to reach double-digit revenue growth in the next couple of years, really based on growing our business and our focus in all markets. But primarily 5 key core markets, which is the U.S., in which we see a huge potential; which is the U.K.; which is DACH, which is France, Italy and Spain. So these are definitely markets where we see a huge potential and where we, as Ascom, can grow our position significantly going forward. Obviously, as I mentioned just before, health care ICT and the digitalization of care is important and will all but accelerate in the years to come, triggered also by the pandemic. So I reconfirm and I reiterate our midterm guidance in terms of double-digit top line growth, but also the guidance in terms of EBITDA accretion, where it is our commitment to continue to work on a 100 basis points accretion per year based on -- working on a better operating leverage, growing the top line while maintaining our cost base as efficient as possible. But secondly, also working on a better product and margin mix. And thirdly, on making sure that we have a very agile and efficient organization that supports that. So with this, I would like to reiterate that we are fully committed to executing upon our strategy, but also reconfirming our midterm guidance. Secondly, guidance of 2022, which we have not -- I mean, we've just announced it basically in our press release but not officially in, let's say, our media conference. Hence, I would like to indicate that for 2022, we target a mid-single-digit revenue growth and also an EBITDA margin accretion of about 100 basis points. So this is the guidance that we give for 2022. With this, I would like to thank you. I would like to conclude my part of the presentation and hand over the floor now to Daniel for the Q&A.

Yes. With this, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to open the floor for questions. The operator will give you now introductions how to dial in.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Mr. Tobias Fahrenholz from Stifel.

In these days, we also have asked with regards to your sales and profit exposure to the critic regions: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus. I know you have there some distribution business. So maybe you could give us your exposure there. That would be the first one. And then the second one, component shortage is still a major topic. Until when do you expect it to stay in the market and you somehow reengineer the products to reduce the problems? So maybe shed some light on this.

Yes. Thank you, Tobias. Nicolas will answer these questions.

Yes. Thank you for the questions. So on the first question, Ukraine and Russia. We are obviously looking at all at what is happening there in the region with the ongoing escalation. From a business perspective, I can give you as an indication that we have less than 1% of our top line exposure to Ukraine and Russia. So it is a number of activities, a number of teams on the ground, a number of businesses with our customers, but from a materiality point of view, it is limited to less than 1% of the top line. On your second question with respect to the component shortage. I mean, obviously, this is a major issue that we are continuously working on, on a daily basis. We've seen in the past 6 to 12 months, and especially since May last year, a significant increase in issues with respect to the supply chain, which has been affecting the whole industry. We are working on this on a daily basis with all of our major suppliers. We are definitely looking in finding alternative components that we can use on the spot market. But we're also looking at potentially reengineering some of our products. Although you might also know and imagine that -- I mean, from a lead time perspective, this is not done overnight, right, so that's not as easy to be done. Nevertheless, we expect that the situation in terms of the component shortage will remain still difficult in the first half of the year 2022. We expect it to stabilize throughout mid and second half '22 and to improve in the course of the second half of 2022. This is the visibility that we have today upon the discussions that we have with all of our major suppliers. Maybe a little point of caution is that sometimes the visibility is not very long term with our different suppliers. But this is really our utmost priority and we're working very hard on that to limit, to the maximum extent, the potential impact from the component shortages. Thank you.

The next question is from Mr. Walter Bamert from Zürcher Kantonalbank.

Three questions, if I may. First is, I appreciate the sound commitment of the CEO to strategy and the existing business mix. I think the improvements are rather on the incremental side. Could you highlight, let's say, the most tangible changes or the most drastic changes that you envisage? The second is regarding the real-time critical communication, which was mentioned several times today. I think in the health care environment, this is the most vulnerable when it comes to software upgrades. Can you confirm how the Ascom software architecture overcomes this issue? And the third is, could you please help me with the personnel bill? Are there strategic additions to -- let's say, to middle management? Or are the fluctuations in your workforce rather on the side that you have less employees in the current year than in the last one? Or are you recruiting substantially more people? I saw in the figures that the labor bill was last year at a stable level, which is quite surprising in the current environment.

Thank you, Walter. So Nicolas, you want to start with the first question. It's about improvement, tangible improvement.

Thank you for the questions. So the first one, indeed, on the strategy. And I mean, obviously, I'm just 1 month in my new job. Nevertheless, I think we have already some clear ideas of -- I mean, the key priorities that we want to work on. The first one is all centered about really boosting our top line growth and accelerating the growth in the 3 segments in which we are active, definitely on acute care, but also diversifying much more across the 3 pillars, which is in long-term care, and which is enterprise. So that's point one. Secondly is on a much more increased focus on some of our key regions. And I referred in my speech basically 5 regions, which we define as key growth regions, which is the U.S., which is U.K., which is France and Spain, which is DACH and which is Italy. And these are regions where we do see very significant potential growth for Ascom as we start from a good base. But definitely in the health care and in the other -- the acute care and in the other segments, there is definitely potential for growth, and we need to accelerate our growth there. Thirdly is making sure that we have much more standardized and integrated offering. It's really making sure that we can scale not just from a sales perspective but also from a delivery perspective. And I think they're making sure that we can industrialize and standardize much more. Our offerings will help us from a sales perspective, but also from implementation and delivery perspective. So that's actually on the sales acceleration. A second area which is very, very important is -- and that will be one of my prime focus areas is on R&D. And I know there have been some questions and comments on that. And I mean we are spending, obviously, a significant amount and investing a lot in R&D. And it's also my intention in the next weeks to continue to work strongly on that, making sure that we make the right products and strategic bets, but that we also do it in a very efficient way, making sure that we deliver the best products, but we also look at maybe better managing the portfolio that we have, streamlining to a certain extent the portfolio that we have. That's the second point. The third point is on EBITDA and margin accretion. As I also outlined in my speech, operating leverage is very important, making sure that we can increase our top line while, percentage-wise, keeping our costs under control. But definitely working on a better product and margin mix, and that's where the whole transition to more software going forward has to play a key role also in the EBITDA accretion. And last but not least, our operational efficiency as an organization. So these are the 3 main points I would say that I'm currently working on and focused on. Obviously, I'm just a month on board, so we'll definitely come back to that with a much more detailed picture during our midyear conference in August. So this is on the first question. The second question?

The second question is about software architecture of Ascom.

Yes. So I mean, we have really a number of software platforms, which are centered -- and I'm speaking here about pure software platforms because obviously, we have a lot of embedded software in all of our products, the mobile devices, the nurse calls, et cetera. But in terms of the pure software platforms, as Dominik mentioned, we've made good progress in 2021 in increasing our top line by about 20%, in getting a lot more traction in the market. And it is basically based on 2 platforms that we have, which is called Unite and Digistat. And as I also mentioned in the outline, we will be launching our new RTCC, real-time communication and collaboration, suite in the second half of the year, which will be an integrated approach and an integrated platform going forward. So this is step 1, which we will be launching. There will be follow-ons in '22 and '23 as we move to a much more integrated approach also from a software perspective on these 2 platforms. So it is a good point, and we're working on that, and we'll come back to that also in the August half year media conference.

And then the third question was as well formulated about the personnel bill, about the workforce. Are there any strategic additions already planned now?

Yes. It's -- I mean, a good point on the workforce. And obviously, I mean, talent is key in the organization. We have diligently worked on workforce, invested in workforce, but also diligently worked on cost of our workforce in 2021, keeping costs under control, but on the other hand also transforming our business into much more software and into much more consulting activities. And actually, in certain regions, we have stepped up our efforts and our structure to be ready for the next step in the transformation and growth of Ascom, both from a software perspective as well as from a consulting -- clinical consulting perspective. So we've invested there an additional feet on the street to be more relevant in the market and also more successful going forward. Thank you.

There are no more questions in the queue. Please go ahead.

Okay. Are there any further questions anyhow? Otherwise, I think we will conclude this conference.

Yes, I would like really to thank everyone for today's, I mean, media conference as well as the Q&A. As we said, unfortunately still in a virtual environment, but we hope that by midyear, we can do this live and face-to-face. As a new CEO, I mean, a couple of weeks on board now, we are, as a management team, and as a CEO, fully committed to realizing and executing upon our strategy. But also, as I mentioned, very committed to drive a strong shareholder value going forward and confirming our guidance. So with this, I would like to thank everyone for the presence today and really look forward to engage very soon. Thank you, and have a good day.

This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.