Bachem Holding AG ($BANB)
Earnings Call Transcript · March 12, 2026
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesGood morning, ladies and gentlemen, here in Zurich and online, wherever you are joining from. Welcome to our Full Year 2025 Results Presentation. I am especially pleased to moderate today's session as it is the first results presentation in the new role of our CEO, Anne-Kathrin Stoller. Joining us on stage as well is our CFO, Alain Schaffter. My name is Barbora Blaha, and I am responsible for Investor Relations. So let's start with some remarks on the housekeeping. There will be sufficient time for questions after the presentation. [Operator Instructions]. And also, as always, this call is being recorded, and the recordings will be uploaded on our web page later today or tomorrow. So a few words on the agenda. First, Anne will provide a review of the year 2025. Then Alain will walk us through the financial results, and Anne will close the presentation with an update on market environment and our business priorities for the current year. We expect this event to take about 60 minutes. And after the presentation, we will host an [indiscernible] here in this room and everyone attending in person is warmly invited to join. And with that, I am happy to hand over to Anne.
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesThank you very much, Barbora. Good morning, everyone. A very warm welcome also from me to everybody here in Zurich and of course, also to everybody joining us online. It's my great pleasure and honor to be here today and talk about the 2025 year results and also the outlook for 2026. So let's start by looking a little bit back 2025. It was a very good year. Our sales grew to CHF 695.1 million, which is a growth of 14.8% or 19.2% in local currencies. Also, our EBITDA increased to CHF 214.7 million, which is an EBITDA margin of 30.9%, and Alain will talk a little bit more about the effects behind that. As you are all aware, we are in a phase of strong growth, strong market growth and also growth for Bachem, which means we are also investing a lot of money into our sites. In 2025, we invested CHF 332.6 million, and we also grew in terms of personnel. We added more than 300 people to our workforce, and we ended the year with 2,511 FTE. So if we look into our sales in a little bit more of a historic context, you see that we have been very consistently growing year-over-year. And this growth was even more emphasized, more pronounced growing from '24 to '25. What is behind that growth? If you look at the distribution of the sales by top 5 customers and top 10 customers, we see that the share of our top 5 customers increased from 2024 to 2025. However, I would also like to remind everyone that these are the top 5 customers, and many of these customers have more than one product. So this is not the same as the top 5 products. We have our 3 distinct product categories, which are research and specialties, CMC development and commercial API. And in 2025, all 3 of these product categories contributed to our growth. And we see that amongst those 3, the CMC development contributed or grew the most. And on the next slide, I will talk a little bit more about each of these 3 categories and what was behind the growth that we saw. Commercial API is where ideally, you primarily produce in campaigns, and we have seen in 2025 that we had more campaigns, longer campaigns, larger campaigns. And that had a lot of beneficial effects. On the one hand, it makes our production planning much more reliable. And also, on the other hand, it has a positive effect on our equipment utilization. In addition to that, we launched a quite comprehensive operational excellence program in 2025 with a very strong focus last year on Bubendorf. We also see positive effects coming out of this operational excellence initiative. And we also -- we had shift work before. We are producing shifts since many years, but we further extended shift work at our sites. If you look into CMC development, we see that our portfolio, our project portfolio is maturing. We'll also see a little bit more what that means on the next slide. But we also saw a strong effect from late-stage projects where our customers ask us to also already build inventory for their prelaunch activities. So this means we have late-stage projects here where we built stock prior to launch. And so we would expect that some of these projects would, in the future, very likely show up in the commercial API category. For Research & Specialties, very much in line with what we have seen in recent years, the primary growth drivers are peptides, which are being used in either diagnostic or cosmetic applications. I already talked a little bit about our pipeline, our project pipeline in CMC development. On the one hand, we see that we have more projects in later phases, but we also saw that in absolute numbers, the number of projects went down a bit. That is due to a very careful project selection that we do. I think we have always said that for us, the main driver behind our pipeline is the quality of projects, not the quantity. And what I can say today is that we are very happy with our portfolio of projects, and we believe we have a very balanced pipeline. We already talked a little bit about growth and capacity expansion. So where did the more than CHF 300 million of CapEx investment go? We'll start looking into our Swiss sites in Bubendorf, in Building K, we made significant progress, and we are very happy to report that we had a successful inspection by the RHI in 2025, which resulted in the manufacturing license for this first phase of the Building K. But we also invested in our Bubendorf site beyond Building K. We are making several investment projects there and working on those where we work on certain unit operations and add equipment selectively to address specific bottlenecks in some of our unit operations. We also invested into our Vionnaz site. As many of you know, that site is primarily focusing on producing precursors for peptide manufacturing, so that can be amino acid derivatives or [ diotide ] peptides. And so especially in times as we see them right now, that is one of the great assets that we have to utilize that site to have an extra secure supply chain. We also made progress for our Sisslerfeld site. So on the one hand, we acquired all 5 plots of land now. And we also founded our Bachem Sisslerfeld AG as a legal entity. And also, we submitted a first permit application to build a utilities tunnel. So let's look beyond the ocean and look into our California sites. We have the Vista site, which is our large-scale manufacturing site in the U.S. And there, we are working on further expanding our capacity, and that project is well on track. And in addition to that, looking even more into the future and potential future expansion, we also acquired a third building in Vista, which is directly adjacent to the current 2 buildings. At the same time, we are working on our Torrance site. And at the Torrance site, we are continuing our modernization efforts. And also, we are investing heavily into a higher degree of automation for the small-scale manufacturing that we do at that site. We are not only relying on capacity expansion projects to increase capacity. I already briefly mentioned our operational excellence initiative. So as I mentioned, the focus of that initiative was primarily in Bubendorf last year. But what we are generally working on is we work on a very large standardization. So across our network of sites, we want to use the same business processes, the same chemistry processes. We want to manufacture on the same type of equipment, and we see first results of those efforts. We are also very much focused on communication, especially communication on the manufacturing shop floor to make sure that this communication is very efficient and very fast and also to be very fast in the resolution of any challenges that we see and all communication measures that we have implemented focused primarily around that. I think in recent years, we also talked about our network approach where we really specifically look into each site and the strength of that individual site. And we carefully balance our portfolio with respect to those strength of the sites. And if necessary and if it makes sense, we start to shift products from one site to another site to allow for extra space and capacity or because it makes more sense for that project to be manufactured at a different site. And that also helped us in 2025. So I would also like to mention in addition to all the business efforts and capacity expansion efforts, one strong focus area always was and will remain our sustainability efforts. I'm very happy to report that since many years, we are working with EcoVadis. And also in 2025, we received a gold metal from EcoVadis, which puts us in the top 5% of all companies ranked by EcoVadis and within the top 2% of companies ranked in our specific area of activity, which is manufacturing for pharmaceutical products. We also joined the science-based targets initiative, and we submitted our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to that initiative. And so we continue to work on various actions and various projects to continue our efforts in the sustainability area. That concludes my 2025 look back, and I'm happy to hand over to Alain to talk more about the financial background.
Alain Schaffter
ExecutivesYes. So from my side, some financials review looking back in 2025. Anne already mentioned the sales, CHF 695 million, the EBITDA overproportional growth in this year. I also want to highlight the net income with CHF 148.8 million, which brings the earnings per share almost to CHF 2. Also, we have later a slide, the cash flow from operating activities, which ended up with CHF 271.6 million. Also for Bachem, the strong Swiss francs heavily impacted our numbers in 2025. So this table now represents the first on a local currency base. So we start with the 29.1% from last year. We see a slightly dilution of 20 bps from the COGS area. This is because we invest there for the future growth. It's mainly labor cost. And this is what happened last year, the people to achieve the growth in '26. On the marketing and sales, we kept the cost under proportional and therefore, a positive impact in that space. On the R&D, we spent 1.5% of our sales into that area. It's very important. This is to keep our leadership in innovation and technology in the ties business. We are still in the range, even if it's a little bit less than last year, we always said 1.5% to 2% of the annual sales in that area. The G&A part, we are investing there. We have additional functions that we need as a growing company. We add where we see a need for the growing company. So also there, a slight positive impact on the margin. With all of that in local currency, an underlying business, we would have a margin of 30.2% in the 2025, which is an increase of 110 bps compared to the last year. And then as mentioned, the strong Swiss franc brought our margin down below 29% in '25. And this is the first time we show something like a recurring underlying business, but we thought we had these 2 in the line other income, we had 2 special impacts, special items, which brought the EBITDA to CHF 30.9 million as a reported number. The 2 impacts are: one is the sale of a building in the U.S. It was an old building. It was not on the sites in Torrance or Vista. It was more in the San Francisco area and has been rented out over the last few years to a third party. Now we could sold it in 2025. And the other part is a contribution from external parties to the project Sisslerfeld. So we received money there, milestones, and this is reflected in the other income because it cannot be shown as a revenue. When we look at the cash flow, CHF 214.7 million as a starting point, almost CHF 38 million more than in the previous year. We paid taxes as we all have to do CHF 10 million [Technical Difficulty] accounts receivable, we see a positive impact, and this is mainly driven by a more evenly distributed sales in the last few months of the year. On the inventory side, we have an increase. This includes raw material, work in progress, semi finished goods. Some of the material that we have there, the raw material is partially prepaid by the customers to support the working capital, and this is all needed to produce in '26 the demand from our customers that we can deliver into '26 on the purchase orders we have received from them. On the prepayments from our customer, this includes prepayments for CapEx, but also includes prepayments for working capital, as mentioned, for labor cost or material. There we see a net inflow of EUR 85.4 million in 2025. And the change -- the increase in payables and accruals, this is mainly driven by the course of the business. Growing business means usually more bills and more accruals in that area. So overall, operating cash flow, CHF 271.6 million in '25. Thereof, we spent, so cash out for our CapEx was CHF 329.4 million. We mentioned the sale of the building that brought cash in of CHF 3.5 million in '25. overall, CHF 325 million in the investing cash flow. On the financing part, we had the dividend from 2024 distributed CHF 63.7 million. A part of that CHF 33 million has been kept in-house in the company as a loan from our main shareholder, Ingro Finanz AG. And in addition, we have drawn down loans from the banks of CHF 24.3 million in '25. So overall, we see a net decrease of CHF 64.1 million in the last year. Some key figures on the balance sheet. One on the left side, where we start net debt. As mentioned, we have drawn down loans during 2025. One is the majority shareholder, others are the bank. We ended up with a net debt of CHF 26 million by the end of last year. And we will continue to -- you saw the numbers, you see the investment plans we have. So this should not be a surprise that we will also use banks or third parties in the future for financial support. On the prepayment side from customers, talking financial support, you saw the CHF 85.4 million we received net this year, it ended up with a balance of CHF 369 million, thereof CHF 182 million are noncurrent, which means we have to pay back this money now to our customers through product supplies in 2026. So noncurrent means over the course of 12 months. On the balance sheet side, we grew the whole balance sheet first time over CHF 2 billion. It's an increase of 10%. The equity also increased, but not that much to CHF 1.5 billion. So thereof, a slight decrease in the ratio to 69% for 2025. On the CapEx, Anne already mentioned, we're going to invest further. We have to invest. We invested CHF 332.6 million in 2025. CHF 295 million out of that was for capacity expansion, be it buildings or equipment. The overall number, 48% of our total sales invested in that area. We will invest further. We see the need. We need to invest to follow our growth strategy that we have. So for 2026, we see above CHF 400 million right now. And to preempt maybe the question, we also said that last year that CHF 400 million as a CapEx, we are lower than this number, and there is 2 reasons. One is we had contingencies in plans. Of course, we have to do that. Luckily, we didn't use that at the end of the day. And second, there can always be shifts from one project maybe to a next year. So no worries that big projects are delayed because of that. And with that, back to the future 2026.
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesYes. So let's look into 2026, and I would like to do that by starting to look a little bit more into the peptide and oligonucleotide market. So we see a continued strong demand for peptides and oligonucleotides manufactured by chemical synthesis. And there are several drivers behind this continued strong demand, and some of them are listed here on this slide. So first of all, we see an increasing complexity of the molecules in development. I remember 20 years ago when I joined Bachem, most peptides were linear, 20 to 30 were peptides. Those times have changed. We see cyclic peptides, constrained peptides, we see conjugated peptides with side chains, unnatural amino acids, you name it. And the same is true for oligonucleotides. We are starting to see more and more complexity also in that space. So that's good for us because chemical synthesis is extremely versatile, and we can address all kinds of different modifications. We also see that demand is growing. That is on the one hand, based on indications. So both more indications, partially in rare diseases, but also in very large patient populations. But we also see demand is increasing because of new ways of administration. And one, of course, that is also very much in the public domain right now is oral administration, which we all know uses quite a lot of more API. So all of these factors are driving an increased need for chemically synthesized tides. Looking a little bit more specifically into the peptide market, we see a strong pipeline growth and the majority of that pipeline growth is driven by oncology indications and also metabolic indications. Overall, there are about 1,000 peptides in development and a little under half of these are in clinical development. And we also see a growth in Phase III projects, which is also in line with what we have seen earlier in the numbers for the Bachem pipeline. So what are trends that we see in peptide drug development. One is very obviously a strong driver and strong focus on metabolic indications. There's a lot of press around those and a lot of excitement. What we also see is that we have a spillover or a halo effect. So this strong interest in peptides for metabolic indications has resparked an overall interest in peptides. I mean we are in this space since 50 years. For us, peptides always were in the focus for the pharmaceutical industry, that was not always the case, but we now see a very strong renewed interest in peptides as a drug target overall. And I already talked about the increasing complexity. So that means by being able to modify and conjugate peptides, they also become targets which are more easily druggable. So administration and half-life and the time between doses are all very positive effects by being able to make these very complex molecules. We are also very excited and very happy about what we see in the oligo market, both internally as a contribution to our CMC development product category, but also what is happening in the market. There's a very strong growth also in oligonucleotides in development. We see here roughly that we have almost the same number of oligonucleotides in development as peptides, just a little bit lower. And the share of products in clinical development is also a little bit lower at 30%. And that is not surprising because if you look at the oligonucleotide market and oligonucleotide development compared to peptides, this area is much younger. So it's from a timing perspective, slightly behind or slightly shifted in time. But we also see here that cardiovascular indications are a large share of the pipeline, which also speaks to now much larger indications. Historically, when we look at the first approvals in the oligonucleotide field, they were all in orphan diseases. We now see, if we look at more recent approvals or also in the late-stage projects, we see much larger indications and much larger patient populations and also some activities in the metabolic space, for example. So also here, looking a little bit into trends, one very prominent one that we are all very excited about is, of course, the extrahepatic delivery. So all targets so far on the market was primarily targeting the liver. The next big chapter for oligonucleotides will come by being able to address other targets and there are some very promising developments in that area. We also already talked about the broader patient populations, broader indications, which will increase the product demand and also will drive further innovation in how we manufacture TIDES or oligonucleotides in this case. And of course, a trend that is also very much one that we all read a lot about in the news is AI. So we also see AI is changing the way that drug discovery works also in the oligonucleotide field. So what does that mean for Bachem? At Bachem, we have 3 distinct operating modes. And I would like to briefly explain those and highlight those on this slide. Let's start on the left-hand side. This is the area that we call the trailblazing CDMO. And in this trailblazing CDMO, we work very much on research and development. And Alain mentioned, we invested 1.5% of our sales into our own development and research. That is not to develop products or drugs. That's not our area, but we develop new manufacturing technologies or we use new technologies that are out there on the market and apply them to TIDES manufacturing. And we do this very deliberately, always have. And so this is the area where we really look into those new technologies and new developments either on the chemistry side or on equipment side or other areas. And we then use those and apply them to first real case projects and products. And hopefully, if they are successful, they then develop into the middle part, which is the classical CDMO part. This is where we work with all our partners to support them during their clinical development phase with material for Phase I, II, III, but also with a lot of services, analytical services, regulatory services, process development services. And we then apply what we learned on these new technologies, and we work with our customers to use them in the clinical development. And of course, the ultimate goal finally is both for the products as well as for these technologies to make it into the right part, which is the commercial manufacturing of larger volumes of commercially approved APIs for drugs. And so that is the ultimate goal. We work on all 3 of these areas, and we have examples for technology innovation in all 3 of those areas. So I think this is really one area where historically, we always had this focus on innovation, and we now really see that, that pays off. So coming now to specific ideas and results and expectations for 2026. What we primarily will focus on is, of course, a very reliable execution on our manufacturing with respect to existing contracts and to fulfill what our customers need for us. We also -- and that is a big part of that. We also will ramp up our production in Building K. So that is a very strong focus area for this year. And at the same time, looking beyond Building K, we are working on partnerships for the Sisslerfeld site. And then we also want to look beyond what happens at Bachem overall, what and where do we go as a company? What is our next chapter. We work on that together with the executive team and also with the Board, and we look very much forward to presenting the results of that exercise at our Capital Markets Day in November. So looking at some numbers, this is where we expect to be in 2026. We expect our sales to grow 35% to 45% in local currencies and also our profitability, meaning our EBITDA margin to be in the low 30s again in local currencies. I think that concludes the outlook for 2026, and we are very happy to answer any questions.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesThank you, Anne. Let's move on to the Q&A. [Operator Instructions]. So the first question comes from [indiscernible].
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsI have a question about the outlook, and you were hit quite heavily by currencies in 2025. Could you give us any hint about what you expect on the top line and on the margin, which -- how much they are affected by currencies? And my second question, Sisslerfeld, you have this extraordinary positive inflow of effect. Can we expect another CHF 13 million in 2026? Or is the outlook without extraordinary effects?
Alain Schaffter
ExecutivesSo I can answer the first question. So the impact now with the actual rates we see compared to the rates from last year, I would expect millions, low 30s on top line and low 20s on EBITDA. So about CHF 70 million from top line is impacting the EBITDA with the actual rates. And on the second, I would not expect something similar in 2026.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesOkay. Next question, Tanya.
Tanya Hansalik
AnalystsTanya Hansalik from UBS. So I was wondering for the guidance for 2026, you gave a range for us. Can you give us the building blocks for the lower and upper end of the range and maybe the contribution you expect from Building K and the base business and also if there's a bit of the U.S. ramp in there? And then my second question is on the customer ramp-up. When do you expect commercial deliveries for this one? Just to think about the phasing for H1 and H2, please?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesSo for the 2026 guidance, Building K, obviously, and the ramp-up in Building K has a very strong contribution to that guidance and to the growth that we expect. We don't disclose any specific numbers, but also based on, as we say, this ramp-up will appear in phases. And right now, we are on target with respect to that ramp-up. The primary contribution from this ramp-up will -- we will see in our revenues in the second half of the year. So we expect a much stronger second half of 2026 than first half.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesOkay. Estelle Betrisey from Berenberg.
Estelle Bétrisey
AnalystsJust to maybe build on the Sisslerfeld. You talked about the partnerships. So maybe you can elaborate a bit more what's the plan here? Originally it was a bit more of a one can open a client? Like what are your expectations right now? And where do you stand? And then in terms of financing also, how you talked about third-party also financing. So if you could elaborate a bit further on that, please?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesI can start with the Sisslerfeld question. So we are in negotiations with several parties on Sisslerfeld. And as long as these negotiations are ongoing, we cannot comment on any details. And then for the second question, which I -- as far as I understood was around the financing. I think the general financing question, I would give it to Alain.
Alain Schaffter
ExecutivesSo you've seen we have taken out loans in '25. I have right now enough credit lines with banks that doesn't make me feel sleepless in the night. We are evaluating the best option. It's still no equity-linked instrument is planned at the moment. So it will be third-party loans, and we are working on that, but no bad feelings to finance that growth in the next years.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesOkay. [ Dani? ].
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsThanks Barbora. [ Dani, KB ]. I was a bit surprised when you talked about Sisslerfeld milestone. First glance, I thought it's maybe a cantonal subsidy. But when you talk about milestone, does it mean you have an anchor client? You always talked about you only build Sisslerfeld when you have an anchor customer. Is that the correct interpretation? If so, it would, of course, be very nice to hear.
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesIt doesn't have to be one anchor customer. It can be also several anchor customers. And the payment was based on a contractual term, which -- where we reached a certain milestone and that payment was then the result of reaching that milestone.
Alain Schaffter
ExecutivesBut there's no anchor customer side right now.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsOkay. [indiscernible] in what indication that is obviously, with the GLP-1 cooling down -- until the end of the decade, I mean, it's difficult to interpret as an outsider.
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesYes. So I think what we can say is what we said in the past is the Sisslerfeld site will be a site for large-scale manufacturing. It will be a pure production site for large-scale products. And well, obviously, the majority, not all, but the majority of products that require manufacturing at that scale are in this obesity or metabolic area.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsSecond last question. On the slide, if oncology drugs in Phase III on the market, it's actually a higher amount of drugs than metabolic. But I guess the volume in oncology is, of course, much smaller but probably more profitable for you in the end when compared to the large contracts in GLP-1. But let's say, if the famous customer B, once you named a few years ago, is not so successful as the market believes, does it mean that you can repurpose some of the second part in Building K to oncology? Or will that happen somewhere else in Torrance or in Vista or I think you see the direction of the question.
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesSo maybe to start on the first part, I would not say that oncology products per se have a lower margin, right? The volumes, I fully agree with the volumes are lower, but I think they still -- these products across all indications still make a very nice contribution to our margin. And then the -- to the second part of the question, the equipment that we built is generally multipurpose equipment. So we can manufacture peptides on these equipment. That doesn't mean we can only manufacture peptides for certain indications. However, the equipment has a certain size. And that means the product that needs to go into that equipment also needs to have a certain batch size. And I briefly talked about our network strategy. So within Bachem, we have a network of sites that range from smaller scale, for example, at the Torrance site to large scale now in Building K and in the future in Sisslerfeld. And we really try to be very deliberate about where does a project fit and what site is the optimal fit for that project.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesGood. Let's take some questions from the other side, Laura?
Laura Pfeifer-Rossi
AnalystsLaura Pfeifer from Octavian. I would like to come back first on the sales guidance. I understand you don't give out an exact split, but maybe can you indicate how much growth could come from the base business? So excluding Building K, can this be, I don't know, 10% to 15%. And then I guess the rest is depending on Building K. So a little bit more color here would be appreciated. And then also, is there a potential for an upside if things go really well in the ramp-up phase? And then secondly, maybe on the margin guidance, you say low 30s EBITDA margin in local currencies. This compares to [ 30.2% ], the clean base from 25%. So can you clarify what is low 30s? Is this 32%, 33%? And then also why are you so highly confident given that you still have the dilution from the new capacity in it? So just a little bit more clarity maybe on the margin drivers. And then just very quickly, maybe on your first kind of feedback from the ramp-up of the first line, how is that progressing? And what are your learnings so far?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesI hope I still remember the first question correctly. So yes, I think what we can say is the majority of the growth will have to come out of Building K. We don't provide specific numbers, but it's a mixture, of course, of the base business and ramp up also in other facilities, but the majority comes out of Building K. And the current ramp-up plans and manufacturing plans go according to plan and any upside or downside is currently reflected in our guidance. And I think the other one is probably... question.
Alain Schaffter
ExecutivesYes, on the margin, I mean, we say low 30s, this can be between 30% and 33%. We see like we have a bigger bandwidth on the top line with 35% to 45%. And we also see, depending where this goes, it can impact the margin. So that's why I also leave this range there of low 30s. There is always something can happen in a ramp-up, not only top line, but also cost-wise. And that's why we keep this low 30s. But I would say we don't want to be lower than this year, of course.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesGood. Any other question?
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsYes, [indiscernible]. Again, for the Building K and the ramp-up, sometimes you say the ramp-up will take place. Does this mean there is actually no commercial production taking place right now? Or what is the stage right now?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesWe have started with production. So the ramp-up is going according to the plan. So we are manufacturing in the first lines.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesOkay. Let's take some questions online. So Amit Thakkar is asking, can you update us on the capacity outlook for Sisslerfeld, specifically your ability and timing to fill the site? And how you're thinking about demand sustainably given recent softer GLP-1-related data and any potential pricing implications?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesYes. So the Sisslerfeld is a very large piece of land, and there will be -- once the site is fully built out, there will be several buildings, and we will grow into that site as we have always done it, as we have also done it in Bubendorf piece by piece and bit by bit, and that will be done in very strong coordination with our customers. So we will build the site at the pace that is required by the market, but we still see a very strong demand for products or specifically also for metabolic indications. So therefore, we still believe that this site will add a great benefit to both Bachem as well as our customers and their patients.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesAnd maybe also a related question to the demand online from Zain Ebrahim. Can you remind us how much of Building K is booked currently? And what your confidence level is in being able to fill up Building K based on your latest conversation with customers?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesA very large portion of Building K is already fully booked. I think we made announcements over the last few years on customers with contracts. So we are very confident about the utilization of Building K.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesOkay. [ Cibil ], maybe.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsYou're going to invest more than CHF 400 million in CapEx. Could you remind us how much will be maintenance CapEx and how much will be growth CapEx and how much was it in 2025? And additionally, I expect also your customer financing, some CapEx, how much will it be this year?
Alain Schaffter
ExecutivesSo on the first question, we -- out of the CHF 332 million, it was CHF 295 million was capacity expansions for the remaining part. It's a similar relation that it was in the previous year. So you can imagine it's about the same. The big part still goes into capacity globally. On the side, how much do we expect? We had in the first few months already, again, a positive inflow from customers, which are contractually agreed in the past. I would not expect other big numbers coming in 2026. So you saw the noncurrent part of the liability. I would more expect a cash outflow in '26 from prepayments.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesOkay. A follow-up question from Tanya, please in the back.
Tanya Hansalik
AnalystsI wanted to ask some questions on the U.S. expansion. I think $250 million is your planned investment for that. How much of this, if you could give us an indication is backed by also customer prepayments or minimum commitments? And when should we expect the first revenue contributions from the capacity expansion? I have a second question. And also the second question is on an update on Oligos. You mentioned the potential of the market on your side. Can you give us maybe an update on your exposure or what we can expect from Oligos medium term for Bachem?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesWe are very pleased with what we see right now from the oligonucleotide. So we see a very nice growth in that area. We expect this nice trend to continue. But of course, compared to the peptides, it's still a relatively small part. And on the U.S. side, we expect that we will see first output from the current ongoing capacity project in Vista next year, so in 2027.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesThank you. Maybe one question. Here in front, [ Andy ].
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsCould you give us some insight in how much FX did cost since you gave us the EUR 1 billion guidance a few years back?
Alain Schaffter
ExecutivesYes, I can. I did that calculation and deferred a bit. So when we gave the guidance, when we calculate today's numbers with that local currency from that day, it's about CHF 80 million to CHF 90 million we lost on top line and about 2/3 of that on EBITDA.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesLet's take some more online questions. So Fynn Scherzler from Deutsche Bank is asking on customers A and B, how flexible are your contract volumes here? For example, if one truck does much better and one worse than expected, have the forecasts you received from your customer changed as of late?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesNo, they have not. So we still have contracts where we have forecast from customers, long-term forecasts and a certain binding period in the forecast. And right now, we don't see any changes to those.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesAnd then a question from Chris Richardson from Jefferies. What are the phases of the ramp for Building K? Is it separate lines or something else?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesYes. We talk about phases, not lines because one line can consist -- one phase can consist of several lines. So we are now ramping up the Phase 1 lines. And then later in the year, we expect the ramp-up from the Phase 2.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesAnd we will take some questions online. Another question from Chris is, what is your time line to signing an anchor customer for Sisslerfeld to hit the end of decade target?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesWe hope to be able to make announcements on partnerships for Sisslerfeld still this year.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesAnd continuing with Chris questions. Could you please also clarify what's the contributing factors for the 35% growth in CMC development in financial year '25. Was it new capacity, price or higher efficiency?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesI think a very large driver behind that was the buildup of inventory for prelaunch activities. So I think the strongest driver behind that, obviously, is more campaign mode, more larger scale manufacturing and also larger volumes in that category.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesGood. Then a question from Charles Weston, RBC. When might you negotiate a customer A contract extension? Your peer announced an extension this morning from their large customer.
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesContract negotiations will happen in time for us to renew the contract. And as long as there is nothing signed, we will not comment on any ongoing negotiations.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesThank you. Some more questions here in the room, yes, in the front, please.
Unknown Analyst
Analysts[indiscernible]. I would have an understanding question. You mentioned the rising complexity as such. Could you maybe allude a bit on that in terms of competitive advantages, Bachem having existed for 52 years, having the brightest brains basically on those developments. How should we expect market shares to develop over the next 5, 10 years?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesYes, it's absolutely correct that Bachem probably has the longest experience in the market and also historically has always had this very strong focus on innovation and being able to manufacture very complex molecules. And so in that area, we certainly have very distinct competitive advantage where customers come to us and we are able to manufacture product that other companies in that area have not been successful with.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsSo is it fair to assume that the -- what is it, 40% market share currently is rather to be expected to be stable or increasing again in your favor due to maybe geopolitics as well?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesI think we need to be a bit careful to distinguish the number of projects where I think, yes, we have that advantage, and we may see more projects with more complex molecules. But when you look at market share in terms of sales, it's obviously primarily very large volume projects driving that. And some of these more complex molecules are in large indications, but some of them are also in very small niche indications.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesAny other questions here in the room, Daniel? -- in the front.
Unknown Analyst
AnalystsJust one on the EBITDA margin target for this year. When I do the bridge calculation, let's say, starting basis adjusted 28.5%. You say low 30s, so let's say, 32. I guess ForEx will shift away 100 bps or so, 150, then you end up with a 200 bps underlying margin improvement, which is, in my view, quite substantial. What makes you so confident? I mean you have all the ramp-up effects. Okay, you have the first customer in Building K, which is up and running. So I guess the extra costs there are out, but you will have the extra cost for the next customer beginning commercial scale up in '27 and so on and so on. So just to understand the dilutive effects where they are overcompensated it's quite a significant step-up.
Alain Schaffter
ExecutivesI mean I think there are 2 points. One is the COGS area where we mentioned and we also saw it here now where the gross profit is slightly diluted because we have costs, but we also build costs in for the ramp-up in the budget, which is the base for the guidance, of course. So there is something can happen. But the main positive contributor then is if we keep G&A marketing sales, the R&D stable, there will be like this year in '25, a positive contribution. And with that, just for mathematical reason, the margin should go up because if we keep those under proportional, we will not grow marketing and sales and G&A by 40%, hopefully. So there is a positive impact on the margin just from this big jump in the sales.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesAnd somewhat related question online from Peter [indiscernible] . Is there any phasing for the utilization of Bubendorf's existing capacity as Building K is ramped? Will there be underutilization in phases of the years as products are transferred and new products ramped up?
Anne-Kathrin Stoller
ExecutivesI would not expect that to be the case. So while we then transfer projects over to Building K, we saw we have a very healthy pipeline that is also maturing to later-stage development projects. So that means we expect the capacity that we will free up in our existing manufacturing buildings to be filled by those projects.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesOkay. Thank you. Any other questions here from the audience? Then a last question from Zain Ebrahim, JPMorgan. How should we think about the margin development from here in '27 and beyond? And what is your exposure to energy costs? And are these fully passed through to customers?
Alain Schaffter
ExecutivesOn the margin side, we see over the next few years, a slight increase every year with the growth, let's say, economy of scale. So we see going up every year slightly. So the base we said 30% that really should be a base, but it should go above in the next few years constantly every year. On the energy cost, it's, I would say, mid-single-digit millions. So it's an amount. It's not substantial in the overall cost and some or many of the contracts allow us to pass such costs through to the customer.
Barbora Blaha
ExecutivesOkay. Thank you. There are no other questions online. Last chance to ask questions here in the room, which is not the case. So before we close this event, let me briefly mention our upcoming events, which is the Annual General Meeting on April 29, our half year results on July 30 and Capital Markets Day, as already mentioned, on November 26 and also our mandatory legal disclaimer. And with that, I would like to thank everyone for your interest and your time, and wish you a great day. Thank you.
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