Ascom Holding AG (ASCN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to the Half Year Media Conference of Ascom. I also welcome all participants in our webcast. The agenda for today is that we will start with overview from our CEO, Nicolas Van den Abeele, Ascom at a glance, followed by the financial review done by our CFO, then he will get an update on the Ascom strategy and the equity story, including the guidance. And finally, we'll have the Q&A. The Q&A only is open for the participants here in the room here at the Metropol Hotel in Zurich. People and the webcast just may listen to the questions and answers. This is for technical reasons. With this, I hand over to our CEO, Nicolas.

Good morning to everyone. Good morning to everyone here in the room. Thank you for being here. Good morning to everyone who joined remotely through the webcast. So welcome to the first half media conference. What I would like to do to kick off our presentation today is to give you first a number of highlights on where we are in the first half, and then I will give the floor to Dominik, our CFO. So some key highlights, which we'll come back to in the presentation. First of all, Ascom is active in a market with quite a number of what we call secular growth trends. digitalization, both in the healthcare domain but also in the industry with quite some opportunities, we believe and we'll show it in the presentation today, opportunities to come strong traction in the market. Secondly, as you will see in our results, the first half year results show some strong momentum in the market, but also some strong growth potential. Momentum in the market, which is translated by the significant order intake that we have achieved in the first half, plus 13% year-on-year at constant currencies. We will show in the presentation also both constant currencies and actual currencies, but also a strong revenue growth in the first half, which was 7% versus previous year also at constant currencies, and this despite the component shortages that we are still facing. So we could have achieved actually more, but 7.1% is a strong performance in first half. EBITDA came in at CHF 1.7 million and on a normalized level, CHF 6.9 million. which is not yet satisfactory, but we are definitely working on that. But important to mention that the first half has been impacted by some one-off noncash charges, which are related to a pension fund in Sweden, which we will come back to of CHF 4.5 million. But also a timing effect between cost inflation and price increases that we have seen over the first half and where we are, I mean, diligently and since the beginning of the year have actually been successful in pushing through price increases to our customers. So that's point 2. Point 3, and we'll come back to that in the presentation as well. Our strategic plan confirms the growth potential, but also the value creation and equity story potential of Ascom in terms of continued growth over the next couple of years, and we're very committed to that, but also continued EBITDA accretion throughout the second half of this year and the next few years to come, linked to working further as well on our operational efficiency. We're not yet best-in-class in where we want to be, and that's also a major point of attention that we are continuously working on and we'll highlight some progress there over the first half as well. Last but not least, we did announce on the 21st of July, an acquisition that we did, which is a company in France, a software house, a small company called Appliware, which has a solution which is called Ofelia. which is one data point, one proof point on the focus we put on software, on the growth that we want to generate more linked to software, and I will come back to that in the presentation as well. It's a very nice state-of-the-art alarming alerting solution, which we are using already today actually as a partner of Ascom in long-term care, in enterprise and which we also use in acute care going forward. So that's in a nutshell the agenda of today, but we'll come back in detail on each of these elements in the different sections of the presentation. With this, I would like to give the floor to Dominik, for the highlights on the financials. Dominik?

Thanks, Nicolas. And of course, a warm welcome from my side, too, for the audience here in the room and the ones which are in the webcast. Let's have a look on the numbers. Let's have a look on the key numbers and the key figures. Looking on incoming orders, as already mentioned by Nicolas, a strong growth of 8% and a strong growth of 13% at constant currency. Last year, in H1, we just had a growth of 5.2% that you can do the comparison last year to this year, 13% this year, last year, 5.2%. The really good growth came out and was driven by markets such as Belgium, DACH, France and Spain. This good growth in incoming orders had once again an effect on a record order backlog. Now we are at CHF 276.9 million which was driven as set by the new orders and which is, of course, influenced by the NHS Wales deal and the [indiscernible] deal we've done some years ago. Now on net revenue, we had really a positive growth of 2.6% in actual currency and 7.1% at constant currencies. Coming out of our acute care and enterprise segments, we are starting to see the bounce back, especially enterprise after the COVID restrictions are lifted. On EBITDA, it decreased by CHF 8.4 million, driven by the one-off costs, as already mentioned by Nicolas, the one-off costs of the Swedish pension fund is CHF 4.5 million, and the change of the CEO was CHF 0.7 million. Adjusting for these one-off items, the EBITDA would be at CHF 6.9 million. meaning EBITDA margin of 4.8%. In addition, after adjusting the special spot price, the special spot price we've done to get the hardware and to be able to produce hardware, the EBITDA would be at CHF 13.4 million, sorry, meaning an EBITDA margin of around 9%. So if you eliminate these special things, which influenced our result, the result was much better than the 7.2% we had last year. Now going on the net working capital. It increased by CHF 12.9 million and it was impacted and influenced by higher trade receivables, a balance, which is CHF 5 million higher, driven by additional revenue we have, and we had a higher working [indiscernible] part of CHF 9 million, which influenced due to the fact that we were not able to finish all the projects and we were forced to do the spot price, as already mentioned. CapEx is slightly higher than we had it last year. What we had, as already mentioned, a strong development in incoming orders, with a growth of 8% at actual and 13% at constant currency, despite the COVID and the component shortage, as already mentioned. Maintenance and support increased by 25%, 31% at constant currency, supporting the growth in recurring revenue and supporting the growth in revenue for the future. Incoming orders on the normal project products business grew by 2%. Here, it was 6% at actual at constant currency. Looking now on the markets, major Europe markets were with a strong growth. We had here an 8% growth and a 14% growth at constant currency. Just a smaller growth in the U.S. and Canada due to the partners delaying orders as a result of the component shortage. Nevertheless, we believe that in H2, we will grow significantly in U.S. and Canada too. We had a very substantial growth in rest of the world, mainly driven by Belgium and Asia, where we were growing over 50%. The OEM iO was impacted by the component shortage as we could not really meet the demand and the backlog buildup was used to get the revenue in and they were not really looking forward to do new orders before they have used the backlog we had in the books. Let's now look on the next page about what happened with the backlog. Since 2019, we increased our backlog heavily. And on average, we had a CAGR of 18%. Looking now on the maintenance and support part, the backlog growing moderately and is reflecting the increased IO growth, meaning as we burn the backlog, we are replenishing it with new orders, which large deals and to be able to support that backlog. Nevertheless, a CAGR here of 7.8%. Backlog remains stable over CHF 100 million since 2021. Now projects, products and service backlog. Here, we had a CAGR of 27.1%, including the NHS Wales and the large OEM deal we had. Still a substantial growth in CAGR of 18.1% when now normalizing out the NHS Wales and the OEM deal, which we have in. So still there without these deals, the underlying business is well and stable. More of 60% of the backlog is long term, meaning relevant in 2023 and beyond. Again, illustrating we are building revenue security for the future. To highlight, 40% of the backlog will be converted in H2 following the availability of the components, of course. And be aware too, we will increase the backlog in the future as once again, we are looking forward in the meantime to close new deals, which will help us to grow in the future. Just to highlight, too, 1/3 of the backlog is hardware related, meaning cost inflation on supply is limited on that part. Just to highlight to see what you may were thinking when you saw the backlog. Now looking on the revenue. To give you a little bit more details about the revenue, you can see here the table showing that we had done from CHF 140 million, we were growing to CHF 150 million. And that means we were growing CHF 9.9 million. If you just look on that part, which means, as already mentioned, 7.1% growth at constant currency. But we had a FX headwind, which reduced the growth by CHF 6.2 million, which had a negative effect of 4.5% that at the end, the actual rate was a little bit lower than and that's the constant currency one. On the next page is, I'm looking forward to show you what happened and where we have done the revenue. I will show you a split of the revenue profile, then we will look into the markets. And at the end, we will look bottom market segment and where the revenue type, what kind of revenue type we were producing in H1. The positive net revenue development of 2.6%, 7.1% constant currency, was driven by the increase in products, projects and services, which grew 8% at constant currencies. This strong increase in revenue growth was driven by our ability to get on site and to complete major projects even with the challenge with the component shortage, we were able to sell more mobility products into our partner network. Now let's look at the regional development and where the 7.1% growth came from. First of all, I would like to highlight that the performance of our markets was influenced by the component shortage situation. Some markets received more of the available items due to product availability, timing and project implementation. Now looking in the markets, Nordics, strong performance achieved by selling mobility into secure establishments combined with a healthy recurring revenue backlog. Growth was less impacted by the component shortage. France and Spain, France continues to grow in long-term care plus 24% at constant currency, which is the main driver for the growth here. OEM, significant backlog carried over from 2021, driving the OEM growth. Growth was less impacted here by the component shortage. U.K., there, we had a moderate growth, impacted by component shortage. However, softer growth was very strong here, which was offset by a lack of available nurse call components, which impacted the long-term care segment. And as I said already, take in mind or don't forget that everything was influenced by the availability of the products. And I'll give you an example, if you take U.K. nurse call, in U.K. nurse call, we need as we are doing there a lots of projects, we need to have all components in to really reflect at the end the project. is not the same is happening in France, for example. And if you look in France, where we have a partner business. And in the partner business, we delivered it, we can deliver separately. And at the end, we have the reflect it directly. And if you compare it to the U.K., there we need everything, in France, we do not need everything. And the same is happening in some other markets, and I will come back to that later on. Netherlands, strong growth in enterprise, 32% at constant currency was offset by the decline in Acute Care. Decline is heavily impacted on the component shortage, resulting in incomplete projects as products were missing. Same story, as I mentioned it few minutes ago in the U.K. U.S. and Canada, strong growth in patient systems with 38% at constant growth at constant currency, but reduced growth in projects, sales due to the fact that some nurse-call components were missing and especially here, gateways for the software part, were missing too as we were not able to reflect that part too. Rest of the world with the exception of Finland and MEA, all the markets were growing. The growth came mainly out of the Acute Care segment, where we were growing 21% at constant currency. And we were able to deliver some major projects. Software sales helped to grow in the revenue in this region too. Italy grew 23% at constant currency and was driven by large Digistat projects where we were able to deliver it where we were not connected with shortages on the component. Asia, in addition to was had very good growth due to several large hospital projects being delivered now in 2022, which were for originally to be delivered in 2021. DACH, growth mainly out from the Acute Care, where we were able to complete major projects as staff was bouncing back from COVID restrictions too. Now let's have a look at the beginning at the market and the market segment split. Healthcare share remains stable at 67%. And there, we had an absolute growth of CHF 4.8 million at constant currency. Despite the challenge on shortages, as already mentioned, especially on nurse call, we were still able to grow the Acute Care by 6% at constant currency. Long-Term Care, the growth here was just at 2.4% at constant currency. The moderate growth was influenced due to shortages and especially impacting projects and the delivery of projects and the readiness of the customers on that part. Enterprise was growing 12.1% at constant currency, mainly due to mobility despite the component shortage there. We grew recurring revenue by CHF 2.2 million at constant currency, which is part of the Ascom strategy. With CHF 7.5 million, 7.5% growth at constant currency, the recurring revenue was growing more than the normal one, the normal total Ascom volume. Recurring revenue is now at 26%. And just to remember, we are looking forward, reaching 30% in the future on that part. The growth in recurring revenue was driven by a higher software and hardware maintenance contracts, especially led by the U.S. and the Netherlands. I showed you now on the last slide, the revenue profile, the performance of the regions, the market segment performance and the revenue type. And now let's have a look how this had an influence on the EBITDA and the gross margin. Starting with the gross profit. That's the smaller one on the left. It was offset by the one-off costs, the Swedish pension adjustment had here an effect too. The productive employees working for the projects are booked on that part. And here, we had a CHF 0.5 million effect out of it. Taking that out, we would be at 43% margin. If now taking out the exceptional spot markets, which we've done and just to highlight once again, we've done that to be able to produce hardware. The margin would be at 47.5%, comparing now that with the 48.1% we had last year, we were not really able to fully compensate the cost increase for components in energy, in raw material and in logistics with our own price increases we've done in the markets, Nevertheless, in the long run, the price increase which we've implemented in our markets, we bring back the gross profit margin. And to the level of last year and in the long run, we will even strive to the level of 50%. Now let's look on the EBITDA bridge. EBITDA in the first half of 2022 amounted to CHF 1.7 million and was affected by one-off cost of CHF 5.2 million, including the cost for the new CEO change CHF 0.7 million and for the required revaluation of the Swedish pension plan. This one-off cost is based on a change of assumption, which I will show you on the next slide. The Swedish pension one-off charge was resulting in a one-off effect of CHF 4.5 million. Both one-off charges or one-off effects, the Swedish pension and the CEO change were exceptional and will not be repeated in H2. Adjusting now the explained one-off costs and looking on the EBITDA adjusted, we would came to CHF 6.9 million, which means an EBITDA margin of 4.8% or 5% at constant currency. Now normalized and comparing that to last year, where we had 7.2%. But now if you take into consideration the exceptional spot markets, which we've done, and if you put that back, we would be at a much higher level. We would be at around 9% EBITDA margin. And if you compare that once again with the last year's number, you'll see that we increased our margin, taking all these special effects out, we increased our margin by around 170 basis points. This shows that under normal circumstances, taking out the special effects, Ascom is able to really deliver high EBITDA margin in H1, which shows that we are on the right track and that we are able to deliver what we said we are going to do. Let me now show you a little bit the main points about the Swedish pension adjustment, the one-off cost of the Swedish pension adjustment. The noncash relevant change in provision with the amount of CHF 4.5 million, as already mentioned, was based on a change of assumptions. A reevaluation of the Swedish benefit plan taking into account an assumed decrease of the discount rate of future disbursements and higher life expectancy. And just to remind you, last time we've done that or last time the Swedish government decided to do things like that was in 1994. Now on the P&L, I would like to highlight some points here, too. As already mentioned, the gross profit suffered from the exceptional spot market purchases of CHF 5.9 million and by the burden of a substantial cost increase, as already mentioned. We had a timing effect between the material cost increase and the customer price increases we've done in the markets. The negative currency effect influenced the gross margin by 0.4% too. Positive is the following. With the net sales, excluding the spot buys and the currency effect, the gross profit margin would be at 47.5%. We were able to increase our prices, which will have a bigger effect in H2 and beyond. Now let's have a look on our marketing and sales cost. We've done investments in frontline sales and presales, and that's the reason the marketing and sales cost was increasing by 4% compared to 2021, all at constant currency. If you normalize out the Swedish pension adjustment of that part. R&D, research and development, R&D cost is 8% lower than 2021 at constant currency. Once again, after normalizing the Swedish pension adjustment out and taking out that effect on the R&D part. Admin. So G&A is 6% lower than 2021 at constant currency, once again, taking out here the Swedish pension and the CEO change out. In total, when you now look on the total story, the functional cost would be CHF 3.9 million lower than last year in Swiss francs, showing that we worked on our cost base and as said during the last conference when I was standing here in front of you. Looking now on our total Ascom personnel expenses, one of the biggest items we have. Here, we came down by 3%. Normalizing it, as mentioned with all the other ones, out the special effects of CHF 5.2 million, the amount came down from CHF 72.5 million to CHF 70.4 million. On the CapEx, not really a big story. The CapEx slightly increased. The intangible investment increased despite that we lowered the R&D costs. And so we've done a little bit more here, but nothing really special to mention here. Now looking on the operating cash flow or the cash flow development and starting with the operating one. The operating cash flow is down by CHF 10.1 million if you compare it to 2021. The main reasons out of that is CHF 6.6 million lower reported group profit driven by the spot price and the CEO change, CHF 2.3 million higher working capital and CHF 1.2 million effect out of foreign currency differences and some smaller items. When you look on the working capital, the working capital was influenced minus CHF 7.2 million by an increase on inventories and WIP, plus 4.5 effect out of the change of receivables and payables. CapEx, as already mentioned, was more or less in line than last year. We purchased for a smaller amount owned shares for the long-term incentive plan. And we paid out dividends. We paid out CHF 7.2 million dividends. And if you may remember, we were not paying out the last 2 years dividend. So this year, we've paid out dividends on the amount of CHF 7.2 million. The key point here now on the balance sheet, lower cash than 2021, which is directly linked to the spot price and the higher inventory is done. No borrowing. We have no borrowing in H1. We have not done anything on the bank side. As mentioned, we have an increased net working capital. The total assets decreased mainly due to the fact that we have lower cash. And then we have a lower equity coming out of the less profit, the dividend payments we've done and some currency translation actions adjustments we've done. At the end of my part, I would like to highlight a little bit the challenging macro environment we are in. Supply visibility is still very limited. Due to industry-wide component shortages, shipping concessions and even still COVID-19 lockdowns, especially in Asia, we expect that the shortage is to continue over H2, but we see that suppliers are adding additional capacity, and they are looking forward to bring that in late 2022, beginning of 2023. We, from Ascom side, we have taken some actions to navigate through this special macro environment. We started the Tiger team to best manage the component sourcing and redesign of certain components and products and to do alternative and dual sourcing on that part. We continue to focus on operational efficiency and on cost actions. We continue to do that the way we've done it, and we will even continue to do that this year and next year. We have done some price increases, and we will monitor that part really closely and to see if we need to adapt once again the prices. With all this, I would like to highlight at the end that looking on the macro environment, I'm proud with the result we were able to produce a growth of 7.1%, a good result if you take out the special effects and if you normalize that out, we are on the same level of the group profit than we were on last year, out of all these things with the special effects we had and the challenging macro environment. That's it from my side. I would like to hand back to you, Nicolas, that you can go to the next part of today's presentation.

Thank you, Dominik. I would like to give an update now on Ascom strategy. Against the financials that Dominik highlighted with a strong revenue growth in the first half, but also a very strong order intake, we are really fully committed to continue the same trajectory in terms of growth and in terms of profitability accretion also in the next -- I mean, second half and in the next couple of years. Ascom today is focused on its mission, which is to really transform data into insights and actionable outcomes to deliver better patient outcomes, if we speak about health care and also a more effective delivery of care. Now we want to -- going forward, increase our success, our impact in the market, increasing our market share in the different areas in which we are present, which is a full solution comprised of bedside devices, nurse call and patient systems of end-user devices, mobility devices and displays or dashboards, and the whole connectivity and middleware that we offer to our customers. Now specifically there, we want to grow our position to accelerate our position, increasing market share, but also providing more value to our customer, increasing the different workflows that we offer and increasing -- hence, more value to the solution. Now we have defined a 3-year -- not a 3-year, a 3-step framework with 3 factors, in terms of transformation and in terms of equity and value creation for the company. It's a simple framework, which we use internally with a number of actions and a plan behind that, but it's also something that we would like to use externally to communicate further on that. Now these phases are not sequentially; Phase 1, Phase 2 are done actually in conjunction. We're working on both today, as you will have seen in the figures that we disclosed. So Phase 1 is what I call Shape; it is a focus or an increased focus on perform, increasing our performance, making sure that we have the right foundations in the company in terms of processes and tools in order to become more efficient, but also in order to become more effective and successful on the market. Strengthening our competitive capability, very important to make sure that we also can scale better, the solutions that we have that we offer to our customers, with also more metrics in order to define the return on investment of these solutions. Working on thought leadership, working on financial performance. So we are pretty much working on Shape today, as well as on Expand, increasing our growth accelerating our pace of growth, also increasing our bottom line performance and working on additional, what I call, outcomes capabilities. So that is Phase 2. Phase 3, Excel, making sure that we have a sustained growth part and EBITDA accretion, working further on our solutions enrichment and enhancement, and also on sustainability. So we have a comprehensive plan in place, which we are executing upon internally and based on these actions, we are confident and we see a clear path towards our guidance, which is double-digit revenue growth and a continued significant EBITDA accretion in the coming quarters and coming years. Now to give more information on that, I would like to go into much more detail on the growth model that we have defined, and you can see it here, which is a highlight overview, a growth model based on 8 boxes, you can see here going from the top left, clockwise to the right, and I will highlight each of these in a minute. The sector in which we operate, which is conducive to growth. That's the first one. The next 3 are linked to the strategies that we have defined for each of our 3 segments, which is acute care, long-term care and enterprise. The third one at the bottom is on our geographic expansion in the different regions. The next 2 is on our software plan and execution on growth in software and last but not least, operational excellence. So I'll go one by one now through each of these 8 areas that we are working on, to deliver upon our growth model. So the first one is on the markets in which we are present, we show growth, which shows secular growth trends, and you see it translated in the figures, both in order intake as well as in sales for the first half. So first of all, digitalization. Digitalization is key. The pandemic has been an additional catalyst for digitalization, both on the healthcare side in acute care long term care, but also in the industry with an increased amount of safety solutions, communication solutions in mission-critical environments. And software really is an enabler to provide better outcomes for the patient, to provide better delivery of certain services or care, but also to mitigate certain shortcomes in terms of workforce and staff shortages. We have seen, over the past few months, quite a number of substantial investment programs, which have been launched, particularly in Europe, European Union, but also in U.K. European Union, which is linked to the Recovery and Resilience Fund that has been launched, of which a big portion is actually dedicated to infrastructure and a very substantial portion also to healthcare and digitalization of healthcare. I will not go into the details here, but I mean there is quite an amount of funds being made available to hospitals to invest and to accelerate also the digitalization of care, which is a very significant trend that we see in the market and also in the traction with our customers. Second, let me go in the next 3 slides through our strategy for each of the segments. First one being acute care, where we see high potential growth going forward. What we do in acute care, is to transform data into insights and what we call actionable outcomes, to provide the healthcare worker make vital decisions. Now there's quite a number of pain points in the health care sector or industry in terms of staff shortage, in terms of work overload, in terms of inefficient delivery of care, alarm fatigue, leading to overload, leading to stress, but also to, let's say, a lot of errors, which are being made and sometimes significant medical errors. Now the solutions that we provide -- you can see this at the bottom and on the right side of the slide for the people in the audience. The solution that we provide help overcome a lot of these bottlenecks and pain points, in terms of providing more efficient care, providing better patient outcomes, reducing the administrative burden by automating, digitalizing that and reducing also the operational costs linked to that. Going forward, our strategy is to increase our thought leadership in the market, with a solution that we offer for acute care, working on better value propositions. And I mean, we're already far advanced in that, and we'll be launching in the second half, an important new platform linked to acute care, better value propositions, more scalable and standardized solutions, better metrics also to show the return on investment on the solutions that we offer, so this is linked to thought leadership. Secondly, boost our software growth in existing and in particular, in new customers. I mean there's a lot of new potential hospitals that we can address and which we are working on in existing hospitals. We can also expand our position from one area, general ward to acute care or to intensive care, and vice versa from operating rooms to emergency department, for example. So significant growth that we can pursue in software. Likewise, for nurse calls, we have a plan to boost our growth there, addressing new customers, working also on renewals as nurse calls have a lifetime of, let's say, around 10 to 12 years. And we're working very proactively on that with our various customers. Moving to Long-Term Care, expanding our position as well in long-term care, similar type of pain points in the industry, where the population definitely is aging quite a number of older people homes being built, shortage of staff, difficulties in managing that in an effective way, quite some accidents and an increased cost overall for the system. So the solution that Ascom brings, again, at the bottom part of the slide, is to reduce and simplify the delivery of care, first of all, but also increase the situational awareness for the, let's say, the medical people or the support staff situation awareness in monitoring where the resident is detecting any anomalies, if the person is for quite some time in a bathroom or has not yet left his bed at a certain point in the morning. So there's quite a number of sensors and technology that are conducive to increase situational awareness and improve, hence the support and the believer of care to those residents. Our strategy going forward is to there also boost our presence with combination of software and nurse call patient systems. With respect to software, this is where the acquisition that we did of Appliware and the solution Ofelia comes into play, and will definitely support and reinforce our position to grow our software business in the long-term care market. We're working on engaging with a large number of partners and very large partners in this area. You have some very large European, but also North American groups, active in long-term care. Each of these groups have hundreds, if not thousands of residents, and we are successful actually in landing a number of deals, and we will continue to work on that to have bigger regional deals or frame contracts with these large groups. Moving to enterprise; our solutions are very suited to enterprise and industry environments, which are environments with mission-critical challenges and which really require a highly reliable and role-based communication solution. And that's where, again, our solutions come into play to improve the security and the safety and the geolocalization of the workforce. And technology can be conducive there as well, to improve efficiencies and workforce shortages. Now in enterprise, we are focusing on what we call a 2+2 strategy, which are 2 times, 2 segments on which we are primarily focusing basically our commercial effort, which is on the one hand side, industry and security, which have similar type of workflows in terms of alarming communication, geolocalization of workforce and triggering information alerts, in case of critical events. That's the first step of segments that we are addressing. The second one is in terms of retail and hospitality, which are 2 segments which have also similar requirements in terms of workflows. Workflows, which are more linked to the staff safety, the coordination of work, the communication between the different workers, and that's where also a set of workflows that we have, is efficient to offer. Next point is on our geographical expansion, and we are focused to increase our investment in certain markets to accelerate growth there and you can see a number of markets that we've highlighted here, a certain set of markets where we see significant growth potential and market share increase potential, which are the markets highlighted in light blue. And these are basically 5 key regions on which we have a very high focus and which will deliver also a significant growth going forward. These markets are the U.S. and Canada, U.K. and Ireland, DAC, France and Spain and Italy. Now that doesn't mean that we don't focus on the other markets. The other markets in dark blue are definitely very important and have a significant potential to grow as well. But these are markets where today in certain segments, acute care, long-term care or enterprise, we have a strong position, but we want definitely to diversify into the other segments and continue to grow across the 3 segments as well. So we've made a deliberate choice to focus -- put a high focus on certain markets where we will invest significantly. We will continue to invest also in the high blue or dark blue markets, but we've also made some choices to go more optimistic or not to invest in certain other areas or regions. Now let me move to the next 3 slides, which are linked to our software platforms, and the first one here is on the Ascom Healthcare and Enterprise platform. So digitalization is really a key enabler to provide better patient outcomes on the one hand, but also personal outcomes in the industry and we have 2 platforms which we are converging and integrating, one on healthcare, the other one on Enterprise. Healthcare, which is focused on clinical workflows and real-time communication and collaboration. And the solution that we offer there is a full end-to-end solution, including nurse call patient systems, workflows, mobile devices and it's conducive to workflow optimization, going from alerting alarming to predictive analysis. In terms of enterprise, this is more centered around communication solutions, around productivity improvement around safety, and it's also an integrated solution, which includes enterprise-graded hardware, software and different devices. Now we are working on integrating the 2 platforms on having a seamless software suite across those platforms, but also integrating our existing software platforms with Digistat and Unite. Important to mention here, is that our solution is fully modular, vendor-agnostic and SaaS and cloud capable. Now if we look at the next 2 slides. Here, I would like to underline the importance of software going forward and our plans also to execute on, let's say, the software growth that we want to achieve in the company. The first one is with an important launch in the second half of the year of our healthcare platform, our new healthcare platform, where in September, October, we will be launching worldwide, an integration of the Digistat and Unite platform with a number of standardized solutions, 7 standardized solutions, which then leads to 100 plus of different workflows that we can offer to our customers. Now this is a very important launch that we will be making. It is an integration, again, of our software suite. This is [ Staten ] Unite with a fully integrated graphical user interface, making it also much more scalable from a deployment point of view and from a solutions point of view. This will support our effort to reinforce our position, both in long-term care as well as in acute care with hospitals, and step up our growth in the delivery of the digital care. Second one, proof point on executing our software strategy. We've announced in July the acquisition of Appliware with the Ofelia solution, which is a technology injection, enriching our software solution going forward. We have been working since quite some time with Appliware. That is a company, which is developing that platform, and it's a technology injection and a bolt-on acquisition that we are doing, which is a cloud-based -- fully cloud-based solution for alarming and alerting, mainly directed to the enterprise and the long-term care segment. It's a very cost-competitive solution, which will support us to scale, also our deployment going forward. It's a fully cloud-based solution, allowing for multi-tenant deployment across multiple sites, basically and cloud-based. Now this is a very important acquisition, which will boost again our growth both in long-term care, as well as in enterprise, but also basically will serve as an entry-level solution for the acute care segment. Last but not least, on operational excellence. Just to recap, we are executing on our plan to improve our customer centricity, to work and support our sales acceleration. As I mentioned, with an integrated software platform, with much more standardized solutions with also the right metrics linked to these solutions to give really data points and proof points to our customers on return on the investment. We continue to work on our portfolio in terms of increasing our outcome-based solutions, adding new workflows, additional workflows on the existing ones that we have to provide more value to our customers. Last but not least, we are focusing on operational excellence, working on our cost base, as Dominik has indicated in the first half, but also continuing in the second half of next year. We're not yet best-in-class in terms of our cost structure, and we will continue to put quite some focus on that, tuning that further going forward. Secondly, processes and tools as an enabler to become more efficient, to become more effective and successful in the market. We're also working there on changing certain tools on ARP, on our CRM system, making it more efficient for our sales -- our sales staff to be more successful in the market. And as Dominik also indicated, we are significantly focusing on improving, let's say, the supply chain situation, working with our semi-manufacturers and our suppliers working in the market on finding alternative solutions, but also developing and adjusting our products, changing some components are going to dual sourcing wherever possible. Now this concludes the focus I wanted to put in the plan I wanted to share with you on our growth plans or growth acceleration. I would like to give you 3 reference cases, just as an example of a project that we've closed over the past few months, across the different products in our portfolio. The first one is in Germany with a hospital or a foundation, which is called Mathias-Spital Rheine based in Rheine in Germany. And this is a software platform, digital solution that we have offered there. It is a very large foundation with 50 facilities going from hospitals to every care homes to healthcare and education centers. And we've actually deployed or we have won the contract to deploy a full digital solution, collecting the information from the medical devices and integrating them, triggering alarms, displaying these alarms, but also integrating that information actually in the PDMS, which is the Patient Data Management System for that foundation. So a very important win so we're very proud on that. And as Dominik said, that's also reinforcing our position in the DAC region. Secondly, a very nice important win as well and particularly nice in the sense that, this is a major contract that we've signed recently with our new Ofelia platform. which, by the way, will be integrated in the full software platform that I was referring to. And this is a nice win in Belgium for a very large long-term care group, which is called Korian. It's a French-based group, but which has -- I mean it's a huge group, which has really operations in most of Europe. You can see the countries on the slide, has several thousands of resident homes and has about 0.5 million of elderly people residing in these elderly homes. And what we have signed there, is a first major contract specifically for Belgium -- the whole of Belgium, which is about 71 sites that they manage and operate there, and it's a large deployment of the Ofelia platform for long-term care, where we have a cloud-based solution multi-tenant, meaning a solution, which is deployed basically in their data center and which covers the 71 sites -- on each of those sites remotely. It integrates also there the information from -- on the one hand side, to the nurse calls and other data systems that they have and integrates it in -- to improve the delivery of care to the residents but also for quality and for legal reasons, basically that they are recording that information. So a very nice and important win. Third one is an important win in Norway, which is part of our Nordics region, and it's a very important win in the sense that it's a major contract that we've signed with a hospital chain and region, which is called Health South East. Southeastern part of Norway, which is the most populated or dense area of Norway, a region where they have that trust is monitoring or managing 75 different sites, 33 hospitals, 80,000 employees, a huge site. And that's a major win where we will be deploying a very large nurse call intelligence project, but also alarming solution for their network or part of their network actually to start with. But we're quite confident that following the deployment, there will be significant follow-on business with HSO, Health South East as it's called going forward. So 3 references to give you, a flavor on some major projects that we've won, but there's many more that we have announced that we will also continue to announce in the months to come in our different regions. With this, I would like to conclude the strategic part but move to the outlook and guidance, starting with the guidance of 2022. So we're very confident that we will be in a good position to convert our large order backlog to revenue in the second half of the year. And that is also why we maintain and actually increase our guidance in terms of revenue for the full year 2022. So increase our guidance from mid-single digits to mid-to-high single digits revenue growth versus 2021 and we maintain also our guidance in terms of EBITDA accretion, versus what we announced in the beginning of the year, which is 100 basis points margin accretion on the EBITDA level on a full year basis compared to fiscal year 2021. So an increase in our guidance, in particular, on our top line going from mid to mid to high single-digit revenue growth. With this and with all the actions on the growth plan that I shared with you a few minutes back. We're also confident and we see a clear path going forward in terms of our midterm guidance and we reconfirm our midterm guidance that we see a clear path to double-digit growth over the next couple of years. We were at 7% over the first half. We could have done more, if it was not because of the component constraints that we had, but we really see a clear path going forward to get to the 10% or plus growth over the next couple of years. Same on the EBITDA margin, where we reconfirm our guidance in terms of margin accretion, which is 100 basis points per year up to 2025 compared to 2021. With this then to conclude the presentation, I would like to conclude by saying that Ascom is well positioned for growth. As you will have seen through the presentation, we are active in markets which show underlying positive growth trends, sustained positive growth trends -- we have a set of businesses which are niche and complementary both in healthcare and enterprise, but with strong growth potential. And with strong growth potential where our integrated platform solution can and will make a difference in terms of success in the market. Our foundations are solid. Our strategy and our approach is clear. So with this, we are very confident in our plan and ability to significantly grow Ascom going forward. Thank you. With this, I would like to conclude the presentation, and I give the floor now to Daniel for Q&A.

Thank you. With this, we will open the Q&A session. Tobias, you want to start?

Tobias Fahrenholz from Stifel. Let's start with pricing, what is, at the moment, your estimated pricing impact on sales and maybe also net on EBIT level for the second half and '23? Maybe it looks a little bit like that the sales guidance upgrade is only price driven?

No. So we have introduced a number of price increases over the first half. So we did already 2 price increases in the different regions. We're also working now on the third price increase that we are implementing. I will not disclose the exact price increase, that would not be correct. But it is a significant price increase that we have done in the different markets. The impact on first half is fairly limited, because the effect of price increases is coming through gradually, part in first half, part in second half and then in 2023. But there, the effect in the first half is around 2% on the revenue. So that's relatively small. So the growth is really more organic growth and based on the traction of the projects that we have in the market rather than price increase.

Yes. Okay. And another one I would have on your order backlog, your solid order backlog. What is the margin quality of this backlog? You mentioned supply chain issues. We have rising wages everywhere. Are we rather speaking about a single-digit EBITDA margin or double digit?

So the quality on the order backlog. I mean, we have a significant order backlog, which is good on the one hand. To your point, as also Dominik mentioned, about 1/3 of the order backlog is actually hardware related, which is potentially impacted due to the cost inflation. Now because on software and on services, we are more shielded or we can protect much more our margins. Now on the 1/3, which is related to hardware, we have a number of contracts where we have price inflation clauses or price adjustment clauses. So the potentially impacted part is much less than that. But we have a number of contracts which are public tenders where we cannot change the conditions of pricing or other conditions in these contracts. But I think that gives a good overview of the part of the backlog basically that is potentially more subjected to the cost inflation that we see.

Okay. Then Walter Bamert please?

As a follow-up on the order backlog quality, when you mentioned that 1/3 is hardware related. How was that at the end of last year? Was that also 1/3 or was that much more. And there, you had a lot of unfinished projects at the end of last year, with only a few components missing. How did those projects get finished? Did you incur losses on those projects, or was it still possible to get decent margin? Because now at the mid of the year, you again have the same situation. And the question remains, can you finish with some unfinished projects if [indiscernible]?

So taking the first part of your question, the volume was more or less the same, the 1/3. There's no change. Now looking on the projects, if one item is missing, we will then reflect everything and this one item will not have an effect that the margin is going to be negative or that it has a huge influence on the margin. Same is happening now with H1 this year and same will happen at the end of this year, too. So there will not be a big effect out of -- the part of your question coming out of that story. I do not see that. The BURDEN, the big burden -- or the big burden where we were suffering, as I said in the presentation, we had 5.9 million spot buys to be able to produce. So we went to the spot markets because we were not getting enough volumes from our normal suppliers on the normal distributed supplier -- distributor park. And therefore, we went to the spot market to buy items to be able to produce and then to be able to deliver.

Wasn't there an issue with the completed contract method, which prevented you from booking the gains on the entire projects at the end of the last year?

The completed contract method, yes, due to the fact that we have the threshold, which is over 200,000, we do percentage of completion, below we do not do it. Of course, there, we have the effect out of that part due to the fact that if one item is missing, if the project is below 200,000, then it's not booked.

And you finished those projects, and that led to a gain in the first half or not?

It's the way it was in the past. So there is no big difference out of that. The normal story. We are -- we are always doing deals where we gain money. Therefore, it's part of that.

Okay. Completely different question. Your assessment as a CEO regarding the strategically important U.S. market, is that business completely different from the one in Europe? Or is it quite comparable? And it was interesting to see how software sales grow in the first half, but the orders are lacking, and I didn't understand why project delays regarding to components are leading to a temporary postponement? And where is the evidence that this is temporary only?

Yes. So on the U.S., we had a 2.5% growth in the first half, which is not yet satisfactory. So we are working hard to improve that now, not yet satisfactory. What we have seen, and I think that's the comment that you're alluding to, is a certain delay in a number of contracts in the U.S. linked to component shortages, in particular, on [indiscernible]. And that's where in some of our products, actually, we have been mostly affected in first half, on parts of the nurse call system, which is a specific solution for the U.S. market where that had hampered our growth. Now that being said, we're working on quite a number of projects in U.S., software project, nurse call projects. There's quite a number of opportunities in the pipeline that we expect to conclude also in several months to come. So on a full year basis, we are much more positive, let's say, on U.S., and we should deliver more growth in the second half definitely compared to the first half. We've seen a number of our peers or competitors in the industry, showing also or disclosing less good results in the first half than maybe one would have expected in North America. I will not disclose names, but let's say that -- I mean, some had negative growth. So I would say it's a mixed result so far in U.S. and we're definitely, I mean, focusing a lot of our effort there, to make sure that we can show higher growth there, in line with the company's growth going forward.

Thank you. Jorn Iffert, please.

A couple of questions, please. First one would be technical on the guidance, starting with the top line guidance, is it fair to assume that the increase is coming in particular from pricing and enterprises, rather than healthcare? And then the follow-up question on the guidance would be on margins. You need an increase of 3, 5 basis points on EBITDA margins year-over-year in the second half. If I make the drop-through that you are saying, okay, look, you may have CHF 10 million, CHF 15 million more sales in the second half. And then you need CHF 7 million to CHF 8 million or CHF 9 million more EBITDA, the drop through would be significantly higher versus the gross profit margins. So where is this coming from? Are you looking for decelerating component prices, taking out more SG&A costs, to just understand this bridge a little better? And then maybe strategic questions. when you are combining your Digistat software with Unite, have you tested this new product already with some customers? What is roughly the revenue prospects you're seeing here in '23-'24? And the last question, if I may, and then go back in the queue, sorry, for this, on -- going into long-term care. I mean, this is something Ascom tried already 7, 8, 9 years ago. What is the unique selling position right now? What are you -- how can you differentiate there with the competitors, because I think the market is not waiting for you?

So 4 questions. So I think we go one after the other. And the first is the increase of the guidance in revenue for H2.

I'll take that. Yes. The increase on the guidance coming on the segments, we see in all the segments, that is the growth. So it's not just -- if that was the question on your side, if it's more enterprise and less healthcare, it's not, it's both sides, because looking on the availability of components what we see and the mix, both or all segments should grow. Coming on the other parts on your question about how then the additional EBITDA will come in. There are different points to mention there. We will do, due to the fact that we increased the guidance more revenue in the second half compared to -- if you compare it to last year and to H1, this will bring in additional margin. This additional margin will support the EBITDA guidance we gave out. And in addition, of course, we are looking on our cost side to see what we can do and there will be things coming in and kicking in. In addition, as already mentioned, the price increase will have an effect, too, because the price increase will get an additional EBITDA part -- on that part, too.

Then we come to the third question about Unite and Digistat.

Yes, we are in the process actually right now, June, July, August to test it with -- in our different regions, but also with a certain number of customers. So we're in the process of doing that. Good feedback so far. We will be launching that platform depending on the region between September, October, so in the latter part of the year or of the second half. But we're confident that actually, it will be viewed very positively by our customers. That's also the feedback that we have received so far in terms of having a much more integrated and converged platform, a platform which is also much more easily scalable, also from a rollout point of view. And let's say, the Ofelia acquisition that I was referring to, the beauty of that solution, is that it offers a dynamic workflow engine, meaning that you can, in a very easy and intuitive way, program your workflow and change your workflow, without having to hard code and to have a lot of R&D effort if you want to change part of your workflow. So it's done in a dynamic way. And that's the way to go, meaning that we will integrate also that part of the solution in our global software or integrated software suite, right? It's the first important step in that direction with I mean, quite some major improvements for our customers, for Ascom as well, making it easier to deploy, but also making it easier to sell with a number of standardized solutions. Standardized solutions for which we also have metrics, in order to show the impact and the return on the investment of a particular workflow in a given environment. So it's a comprehensive package that we're launching. It's a major launch later this year, and we're confident that it will also boost support our growth going forward. You had a question specifically on the revenue expectations there. What I can say is that, we want to boost our software component coming from platforms from the 11%, 12% at which we were at the end of last year to above 20% in the next couple of years. So that's really a lot of effort that we're putting in that from a solutions and from a development point of view, but also definitely from a sales point of view, investing in our different markets in much more direct sales, much more software sales and changing also part of our sales force, to be much more focused and dedicated on that. So I hope Jorn that I answered your question on that point.