BICO Group AB (publ) (BICO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and a warm welcome to BICO's Capital Markets Day. I would like to welcome everyone to BICO's head office in Gothenburg as well as all of you joining us online. My name is Jacob Thordenberg, and I'm the CFO of BICO since January 2023, but joined the company in December 2021 as Head of M&A. And during this period, Biosero and Allegro 3D was acquired. With that brief introduction, I will now hand it over to my colleague, Anders Fogelberg, who joined us in June this year. He's BICO Chief Commercial Officer and will be the moderator of this event.

Thank you, Jacob. And again, welcome everyone. This is an exciting day. We will have quite a full program in the next few hours, including this online seminar, online Capital Markets Day. And this session will be divided into 3 main sections. We will start by presenting the BICO updated strategy, BICO 2.0. And also present our new business areas and comment on our financial targets. This will be followed by a deep dive into lab automation and this will be presented by our operating company Biosero, and their company customer, DeepCure, that has come here from San Diego. We have some thing with the screen that is not working and the tech guys are working on it right now. But I'll go ahead and continue with presenting the third part of the day, which will be the Q&A at the end of this Capital Markets Day. And during the Q&A, those of you who are online, you can click on the chat box below the presentation and ask questions now and throughout the event. And those of you who are here in Gothenburg, you can raise your hand and you will be able to participate, of course, here live. I think we just saw our disclaimer, and we also see now the program for today that I just presented. And with those words, I welcome, I present to you the President and CEO of BICO, Maria Forss.

Thank you, Anders. Thank you for the introduction and also welcome to all of you, also from me. This day is an important milestone for the BICO Group and it's also a day that I've been looking forward to for quite some time. And for those of you who I haven't had the opportunity to meet yet, I'm Maria Forss, and I'm the CEO and President of the BICO Group since November 2023. Our purpose with this Capital Markets Day is to present an updated strategy for BICO 2.0, where our new vision is to enable and automate the life science lab of the future. We will do this with a mission to be the first choice lab automation partner and provider of selected workflows for pharma and biotech. Before I provide more details on how we will get there, I will provide some context and also some background about BICO, the market we're operating in, and also the trends that we see. BICO has a global presence in 65 markets around the globe, where North America is the most important market followed by Europe. The group has around 820 employees working for our 12. And full year sales 2023 amounted to SEK 2.2 billion. We have more than 46,000 instruments installed around the world, and this has generated more than 12,000 publications. Jacob will later present more financial numbers in the presentation following this. For a company founded in 2016, this has been a tremendous journey through both organic growth as well as through acquisitions, the majority being made in a rapid pace during the pandemic years. Acquisitions have been made for about SEK 7 billion, which has given us a broad and differentiated product portfolio. This was done in a time when the interest rates were low and the acquisition multiples high. There was a COVID boom and also full focus was on growth as for many players in the market. When then the macro world changed, the focus instead had to be on profitable growth and the development in some of the acquired companies didn't go as forecasted and, hence, write-downs had to be made, which were technical in nature. Post COVID, there has been a downturn in the R&D. There has been CapEx restraints, biotech having a tough time with financing and academia's budgets have been negatively impacted by the development of the stock market. In the past 18 months or so, BICO has been on a transformation journey, rightsizing the organization and better utilizing the organizational synergies that the larger group entails. And a part of this journey had already started when I joined the company in November last year. And BICO has managed to perform rather well despite the recurring and restructuring and internal changes in a quite tough market. We have performed in line with or even better than some of our peers in an unpredictable market. And this is partly due to very passionate and dedicated colleagues around the world. Making a difference is a strong desire for the entire team. We know that our solutions are an integral part of research that leads to important medical innovations, and they make a difference in the lives of people. Earlier this year, we launched 4 strategic focus areas: drive commercial excellence, doing a complete strategic review, invest in people and culture, and also continue the operation excellence initiatives that were started back in 2023. We have since worked diligently within these priorities areas, and I will now present some examples of the achievements that we have made. Sales per employee was increased with 12% if you compare quarter 2 2024 and quarter 2 2023. In driving commercial excellence, our new chief commercial officer, Anders Fogelberg, has established a cross company sales skills team to even further reap sales synergies. We have also a communication skills team established to coordinate marketing efforts across the group. As the key congress SLAS in February in Boston this year, you saw on the previous slide that we had a congress attendance under the first -- for the first time under joint BICO flag to name a few examples of things that we have done. Customer centricity and customer care is essentially in our whole value chain and to guide our focus in R&D as well as in marketing, we have also generated more customer insight data during the year. In terms of strategic review, we have done a full review of all R&D projects as well as all the group portfolio and, of course, a profound strategy work involving all the different operational companies within the group and we're not yet fully ready with the portfolio optimization. Our Chief HR Officer, Catharina Nordlund, she has put a global HR organization as well as an HR strategy in place. As culture eats strategy for lunch, we have also worked a lot to form a joint culture and we recently launched our new corporate values internally for all employees. And these are trust, focus, collaboration and grit. We have also continued with operational excellence improvements such as targeted cost reduction programs and I would like to point out some key metrics in areas where we have improved. For the 5 past quarters, we have improved our working capital from a level of 33% and now deliver a range of 20% to 24% in net working capital for LTM. And this has, for instance, been driven by inventory reduction of SEK 130 million year-over-year as well as better management of cash receivables. Through consolidation, global category management and volume bundling together with our strategic suppliers, we have also achieved quite some substantial cost savings. Other projects are facility consolidation as well as logistic optimization that also have generated savings. To better govern our R&D and although other key initiatives in the group, we have also put a global project management, a PMO in place. So these are some examples of all the endeavors that we have done through the year. With all of this, BICO has now a much better foundation and position than ever to capitalize on the current trends with technologies that support the marketing shifts. We are doing all the right things. We are in a good way to create a stronger company for the next step, but there is still a lot of things to do, and there is still a down cycle in the market in R&D. We are with the updated strategy BICO 2.0, leaving one phase and with a new executive management in place, we have now entering into a new phase and it's my pleasure to present to you the BICO's executive management. Our CFO, Jacob Thordenberg that many of you know since the beginning of last year. Jacob has circa 15 years of experience in finance and M&A, both at BICO, Telia and Deloitte. Our Chief Operating Officer, Marius Balger, with 30-plus years in general business management, where of 20 years in life science and the IVD industry leading a midsized CDMO as well as being the Senior Vice President of the Partnering Business at Tecan. And now to our latest additions to our team that has strengthened our executive team further. Our Chief Commercial Officer, Anders Fogelberg, having 25 plus years in global industry experience from management positions such as Managing Director of SKF in Malaysia and Indonesia as well as being CEO for a med-tech company and now most recently Head of Sales for a start-up company in the life science industry. Catharina Nordlund, our Chief Human Officer, 25 plus years of 25-plus years of experience in HR, learning and development, but also sales and marketing in global med-tech as well as life science industries such as Cochlear, Mölnlycke Health Care, Pfizer, and Surgical Science. In mid-October, our team will be complete for our current mission. when our new General Counsel, Andreas Joersjö joins us and he has 15-plus years of experience working in international business setting, both in law firms and now most recently in an M&A-intensive environment, establishing and building a legal team, working a lot with post-acquisition governance and integration. Thank you, team. And before I share more about the BICO journey, a few words on my route to BICO. And since I joined in November, this is one of the questions that I'm being most frequently asked about. I've spent over 25 years working in the pharma and life science industries. And during these years in global roles, I have successfully worked in the whole value chain in all parts of the product life cycle, from early development to launch and relaunch, both in listed start-ups, midsized companies and also big pharma such as AstraZeneca. I've also worked with an M&A from the buyer as well as the selling side, integrating companies for successful commercialization R&D projects. The past 11 years, I've done the same journey that BICO is now on in the Swedish listed med-tech company, Vitrolife. I'm now using my vast experience of running a complex business to ensure that we will leverage and commercialize the great assets and portfolio that BICO has. And I will now shed some light on how the BICO organization has been shaped and how our products and services fit together to meet our customer needs. So if we take a step back, the BICO journey began in the field of bioprinting. The company set out on the course to democratize the up-and-coming field with accessible systems, high-margin reagents and consumables. We opened up an entire industry by enabling anyone to bioprint human tissues in the lab. The success in bioprinting catalyzed our first expansion, which looked at establishing an end-to-end solution also catering to the pre- and post-printing activities. Through speaking to customers in the bioprinting area to understand their workflows and their needs, BICO embarked on an acquisition journey to provide them with the tools that they need. We did this by bringing on technologies relevant for both pre and post printing and with complementary technologies like liquid handlers, microscopes and lab automation software, where the latter makes us a rather unique from an offering perspective. And this also opened the doors towards other spaces like next-generation sequencing and synthetic biology, expanding BICO's reach significantly. We have fantastic assets in BICO and that make some of the larger players in the industry envious, and these are assets that made me wanting to join BICO. I wanted to be part of and lead a journey when BICO takes the next steps in better commercializing our assets, scaling up our business, a journey where I, together with my experienced management team, and all other engaged colleagues can make an impact in the life science industry. BICO has a broad footprint with a diverse portfolio and extensive geographical presence. We have a market-leading position with our hardware-agnostic lab orchestrating solutions as well as in bioprinting. We also have unique offerings that you will be able to see later here today in automated shaking, heating and cooling and also single cell dispensing in cell line development. With this portfolio, we can serve customers in many different segments of the market, and we have a strong customer base in the top pharma, biotech, diagnostic as well as academia and research. And let's move into the next section where my presentation where I will do my best to present the sometimes complex market that BICO is operating in. So within the larger life science landscape, BICO is operating in the field of biotechnology. The life science landscape covers a number of scientific fields and biotechnology is enabling the adjacent fields via tools and services. The life science value chain covers 4 key areas ranging from basic research to clinical applications. And BICO, we are focusing our efforts within the preclinical domains serving many different customer segments. BICO are offering solutions predominantly in molecular biology, drug discovery and synthetic biology. And these fields contain distinct applications and workflows where BICO's portfolio of solutions is playing a role to a different extent. If we start with molecular biology, basic research and diagnostic testing are example of applications in the field of molecular biology. In basic research, next-generation sequencing is applied and in this workflow, products from DISPENDIX, CYTENA, QInstruments, and Biosero are being used. In target discovery, hit generation, lead identification are examples of applications in drug discovery and this is then done to uncover new medications where products from more or less all BICO companies are being used in target identification and assay development. Synthetic biology, that is merging biology and engineering. This means biologics, proteins and small molecules manufacturing. For gene assembly, products from DISPENDIX, CYTENA and Biosero are being used. And for cell line development, also products from SCIENION and CELLENION come into play. Let us now look at the customer needs in the fields that BICO is serving. In molecular biology with high precision tools and automation, there are needs for integration of gene editing tools and automated systems for higher efficiency and throughput. And this is evolving in the future, which is now to further needs with advanced AI integration for predictive modeling and gene editing technologies tailored to enable personalized medicine. In drug discovery, where they work with high-throughput screening and biomarkers, there are need for technologies also AI-enabled for rapid compound screening and hit to lead generation as well as detection of new biomarkers to advance personalized therapeutics and multi-omics. In the field of synthetic biology, there is a need for regulatory compliant platforms for genome synthesis and microbial engineering to produce high-value compounds. And for advanced biofabrication and computational tools, there is also a need for biologically secured and sustainable solutions to enable biofabrication of complex structures. Through the current offering, BICO operates in the market totaling at USD 121 billion, growing at 12% annually. With a BICO serviceable addressable market of USD 3 billion, averaging at the same CAGR as the overall market. And if we take a deeper look at the lab automation market, where our integrated lab automation solutions are enabled through Biosero and more companies in the BICO Group. The lab automation industry is currently evolving significantly, and there's a lot of market data reports circulating as always when there is an industry emerging and, hence, the data varies. So the lab automation market size was valued around USD 5.5 billion to USD 6.8 billion in 2023, with a growth rate indicated between 6.3% and 9.3% CAGR between 2023 and 2035. And the value for the integrated automated solutions, which BICO serves is estimated to be 20% of the total market or around USD 1 billion. And this part of the lab automation market is growing and expected to continue to grow faster than the overall market. Within the automated solutions market, we offer hardware-agnostic software solutions, key to the integration of automation technologies, plus consulting and engineering services to design, build and install automated laboratory systems at any scale. If we move on and take a look at the total addressable market for the different product segments, you can see that there's a double-digit growth in all areas and consumables holds a large share, 44%. And this is expected to grow 12% year-over-year and is, therefore, deemed to be an attractive segment for BICO to pursue. The current churn over in BICO is instruments, while 1/3 is consumables, service and software. For other companies in the industry, this is not uncommon that this split is the reverse, which is normally easier generating recurring revenues. Recurring revenues can be generated from all different revenue streams. Examples of opportunities for us are to increase software sales, linking consumables to workflows, selling more high service -- high-value service contract and also creating more standard operating procedures containing both instruments as well as consumables and one example of that is our G-Prep from DISPENDIX. We can also increase recurring revenue from pharma and biotech customers. Pharma and biotech customers have a higher ability to spend and they are also demand solutions, which are more regulatory requirements. And it's important to remember though that although pharma and biotech business is not cyclical, their R&D spend is. Supporting the life science customers in early phases of the value chain. BICO, we aspire to address this in a more holistic way through end-to-end workflows. Pharma and biotech and diagnostic companies are our strategic customers and the ambition for BICO is to increase the share of our revenue from these customer segments. To conclude on this section, I would like to summarize the key trends of importance for BICO. I believe that they highlight the opportunities that we see in the market, and we are in a good position to capture potential growth. There is a growing demand for integrated and automated workflows in labs for higher efficiency and throughput and also a need for advanced data and AI integration, as I saw before. There is also a need for technologies for rapid compound screening and hit to lead generation and also an increased focus on personalized medicine and regenerative medicine and we also see a demand for more regulatory compliant platforms. Last but not least, there's a growing adoption of in vitro testing instead of animal testing, and this is driven by, for instance, the FDA Modernization Act and other European counterparts [ threat. ] The FDA Modernization Act 3.0 requires that the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, that they establish a process that supports nonclinical testing methods for drug development that do not involve the use of animals. So combining our knowledge about the market, where our strength and competitive advantages lies with the product offering that we have. That is the basis for our choice, our strategic direction. And this is why my next section will be all about our updated strategy and what our focus will be moving forward. Our vision is to enable and automate the life science lab of the future, and we aim to be the first choice lab automation partner and provider of selective workflows to pharma and to biotech. We will continue with our strategic priorities and within these focus on certain areas. Within the domain of commercial excellence, we have 5 new focus areas: The first one is to enable lab-to-lab automation, further develop integrated data, AI and software solutions. Thirdly, ensuring regulatory compliance readiness to even better serve biotech and pharma customers and also moving away from point solutions to providing scientific workflow solutions in selected workflows and also increase recurring revenue. Our complete strategic review, moving on, will encompass a more customer-centric R&D, a gate stage process for product development and also to continually assess the strategic fit across our portfolio of assets and consider options, which are positive for shareholder value. Investing in people and culture. Moving forward, this means fostering a culture of strong leadership by implementing a leadership development program. We will plan, attract and retain talent to ensure that we can execute on this strategy. We will harmonize, we will engage and reward, for example, harmonize role levels, job architecture and global compensation policies to ensure that we get collaboration between our companies. And we will also deliver global HR operational excellence with support from global performance management as well as a global HR system. Within the area of operational excellence improvements, we also have several key initiatives moving on. And to mention a few important ones, we will establish a global sourcing organization. We will roll out a strategic contract development and manufacturing organization partnership model. We will also implement a global QA/RA organization. Furthermore, continue to streamline and reduce costs in logistics and also continue to focus on inventory reduction as well as footprint reduction for our facilities. So all in all, lab automation and selected workflows are the cornerstones in BICO's offering and this is done in key processes and acts as the main enabler of group synergies. Bioprinting holds a differentiating position in BICO's portfolio, creating opportunities for lab of the future. And these offerings are then enabled by a range of products and services. Instruments are provided as a stand-alone product or paired with other offerings. Our consumables are tactically positioned to augment the offering and also to provide relevant end-to-end solutions and achieve recurring revenue streams. The software and associated services are delivered alongside hardware to bolster customer stickiness and also being the main driver for differentiation. And the services, last but not least, that offering keeps BICO's relevant also after the hardware purchases. Let me share some more details on the offerings that we have to drive commercial excellence. The holistic workflows, they are approached using 3 levels of integration: customized automation, off-the-shelf work cells, and standard operating procedures. Starting with the customized automation. These are project-based, highly customer adapted. They are built on BICO's standardized library of integrations, but might partly contain also customer proprietary solutions. Normally, these are not reproduced in its entirety. Off-the-shelf work cells, those are whole or larger segments of scientific workflows that are contained into a single automated work cell. And one example of such is the C.Station from our company, CYTENA used in cell line development. And these work cells are developed and maintained in the BICO as a BICO offering. Standardized configurations built around predefined article numbers allowing for off-the-shelf manufacturing. Standard operating procedures are BICO maintained standard operating procedures, which are centered around BICO's instruments and consumables. They can also entail third-party partnerships and licensing to generate a holistic offering. And here, several variations can be maintained for more specific applications. Let us now look into the customized automation solutions a bit deeper. As BICO looks to support the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and other scientists around the world, a major theme is bringing new drugs and marketable discoveries to the world, and that is a resource-intensive process. It takes years and years and sometimes decades to develop these solutions, and it costs millions and even billions of dollars just to find the right compounds and prove that they deliver benefits. And this really brings us to the new major focus area for BICO, which is that we bring capabilities to accelerate scientific research through automation. We take what is challenging, slow and expensive and traditional scientific research and testing and allow major leaps in productivity and overall testing time lines. To help you understand what I mean, I will walk you through the breadth of solutions that are at work at today's lab. It starts with manual work done by human hands to pipette liquid and process samples by hand. And there's power in digitizing these standard operating procedures to keep teams operating consistently. These days, scientists are more frequently supported by different forms of semi-automation, where devices are brought in to perform certain tasks and different steps. Devices often help with reproducibility and accuracy in science, so not unique people are creating unique results. A survey published in nature some years back revealed that 70%, 7-0, had failed to reproduce other researchers' experiments and over half of the researchers couldn't reproduce their own and that highlights how reproducibility can be a challenge for scientists. Connecting these devices with industrial robotics and collaborative arms help to take the burden off of these people in the lab even more, allowing scientists to focus on what they should be focusing on, to be creative and do data analysis while the robots keep testing moving. Scientist take this type of device connectivity and robotics to the next level by automating significant proportions of their workflow. And finally, we reached the level of integrated laboratories, which is what we often are implementing for the largest labs around the world, developing systems that can take in samples, process an entire scientific workflow in an automated fashion, connecting to analyze software and ultimately keep iterating on the science within the entire design, make, test and analyze cycle. And BICO's portfolio includes many devices that are used throughout this spectrum and the key to present to you is BICO's company, Biosero, who is consulting for labs in the need of support along this entire spectrum. Biosero consult with the laboratory, taking in their workflow, their budgets and their needs to develop a purpose-built automated solution to accelerate the science within that particular lab. And the way we achieve this for labs is also driven by our software suite, which is deployed to each solution that Biosero deploys. Biosero's Green button Go software suite connects devices made by BICO and also other manufacturers to allow digitization of manual processes up to full laboratory integration at the highest level. This software is at the forefront of automation solutions because it's not just about a lab using one great device. It's about taking many great devices and weaving them into a roboticized choreography that can operate 24/7 on a schedule. And this type of integrated automation helps labs to cut their cost while increasing productivity, and it also helps to keep the quality high. One of our customers for Biosero and their lab automation solution is a big pharma company, and we are grateful for them to allowing us to share this data from their implementation of our solutions in one of their U.S. R&D sites. The automation strategy enabled by Green Button Go from Biosero, this pharma company is reducing downstream processes and assay development by up to 75%, and this is due to increased equipment run time. They're also increasing existing equipment capacity to develop biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes by up to 400% due to parallel processing and variable-driven robotic processes. Also, they are maximizing productivity of development scientists and labs by a minimum of 200%. Let me now show an example of how other products from BICO's portfolio works together in an automated workflow also utilizing Green Button Go. And this film is mainly for the benefit of you who are joining online and for those of you who are here present at BICO, you will be able to see this physically later today. [Presentation]

So to summarize, we lead the way in solving the challenges in the life science with speed, accuracy and efficiency. All in all, our customers can run their processes faster, improve the quality of the data and, ultimately, make better decisions. Speed, by reducing the time to find optimal candidates for treatment therapies by accuracy, since we support our customers in driving forward a personalized approach in treatment. In addition, and worth mentioning, is that we're also contributing to decrease the use of animals for preclinical testing and by efficiency as we develop solutions to maximize productivity of automated lab equipment as well as scientists. So BICO's vision and strategy on the page. Our new vision is to enable and automate the life science lab of the future, with a mission to be the first lab automation partner and provider of selective workflows to pharma and biotech. And we do this through commercial excellence with 5 new focus areas: enabling end-to-end lab automation solutions, further developing integrated data, AI and software solutions. We ensure that we are providing regulatory compliance and have that readiness to further support our customers in pharma and biotech. We move on through providing scientific workflow solutions rather than point solutions and also increase our incurring recurring revenues. We do this through our joint corporate values, the first one being trust, which is the foundation for everything. The next one being focus. We need to choose what to do, but also what not to do. And to reap success, we also need to collaborate both internally as well as externally. And last but not least, we need to do it with grit. And the impact that we will see from this is that our customers, they will get speed and also quality through automated technologies. They will have better efficiency in drug development, and we are also providing tools to accelerate personalized medicine and also providing alternatives to animal testing. So Anders, I hand over to you.

Thank you. Thank you, Maria, for updating us with the BICO 2.0 strategy. Next, we will look into how this strategy impacts our organization, how we organize ourselves into business areas. We will look at our financial targets. But first, we will have a break, 15 minutes, and we will be back here in 15 minutes sharp. [Break]

Welcome back. We spent the first part of the Capital Markets Day today presenting the BICO updated strategy that we call BICO 2.0. We will now look into what that means for our organization, our business areas, and we will also comment on our financial targets. And this session will be presented by our CFO, Jacob Thordenberg and supported as well by our President and CEO, Maria Forss. Jacob?

Thank you, Anders. This session will be split into 2 parts, new business areas and comments on financial targets. On this slide, you see the business area structure, which we have reported on since Q1 2022, which has been based on 3 business areas: Bioprinting, Bioscience and Bioautomation. To better reflect the updated strategy and our commercial focus, we have decided to introduce new business areas. And as you can see on this slide, our new business area structure has taken shape. As Maria mentioned earlier, our strategy is based on lab automation being one of our cornerstones and we have, therefore, decided to introduce lab automation as a new business area, which will comprise of Biosero our market-leading company within integrated lab automation. In addition to lab automation being a cornerstone in our strategy, this will also increase the transparency of BICO's financial profile as Biosero has a different business model, and financial profile compared to our instrument companies due to its project and software business. Primarily, this relates to Biosero having a percentage of completion revenue recognition model, which creates significant revenues when a project is started and when instrument for the projects typically are acquired. An example of this was the Q1 2024 growth spike in Biosciences when some of the revenues related to the $28 million order, Biosero won in December 2023, was recognized. Furthermore, Biosero also has a lower gross margin profile than our instrument companies due to the significant share of third-party hardware included in COGS, resulting in a lower gross margin than the instrument companies, but still a healthy absolute gross profit in relation to OpEx and thereby also EBITDA margin. Additionally, we will also introduce life science solutions as a new business area where we will offer instrument, selected workflows and complementing offerings. This business area will consist of CYTENA, DISPENDIX, QInstruments, SCIENION, CELLENION and Echo. Our third business area, bioprinting will be kept intact and we'll continue to include operating companies CELLINK, Advanced BioMatrix, MatTek, Visikol and Nanoscribe. We will begin to report in our new business area structure from Q3 2024 and because of this change, we will postpone our Q3 report with 2 weeks until November 26. On this slide, we are presenting our serviceable addressable market by business areas. As already mentioned by Maria, the average expected CAGR is around 12%, with the largest addressable markets in lab automation and life science solutions, followed by bioprinting. For increased visibility, I will on this slide show full year 2023 revenues showing the old structure with bioprinting, bioscience and bioautomation to the new structure with lab automation, life science solutions and bioprinting. Life science solutions will be the largest business area, followed by bioprinting and lab automation. And on this slide, we have collected 2 key metrics: sales and adjusted EBITDA for full year 2022, 2023 and the first 6 months of 2024 with the old business areas on top of the slide, followed by the new business areas underneath. Please note that when looking at the first 6 months of 2024, this is our and the industry's seasonally weakest part of the year followed by typically a seasonally stronger second half of the year due to budget releases at the end of the year. In BICO, this seasonal pattern mainly applies for business areas, life science solutions and bioprinting. Furthermore, group costs are not included in adjusted EBITDA per business area, as this is reported separately in our reports. Starting with sales. Lab automation has developed strongly during this period and recorded almost a 40% sales increase between 2023 and 2022 due to the strong underlying market growth in combination with our market-leading software and company in lab automation, Biosero. The major driver behind this growth is that the lab industry took a giant technical leap forward in connection to COVID due to the sharp increase in demand for faster and more efficient drug development, which triggered a new, much more modern and digitalized way of conducting research using automated labs. And as Maria mentioned earlier, the market is expected to have continued growth for the years to come as this modernization journey for many companies, including big pharma is still in its early phase. Life science solutions that include our instrument companies has during this period, managed to keep up sales levels fairly well in a tough market, which is still recovering from a post-pandemic slump following the COVID boom and general CapEx spending restraints in the industry. These general spending constraints has clearly been tough for life science solutions, but for BICO, this development has been offset by our offering in lab automation being the answer on how to reduce costs and be more efficient. And as previously communicated, bioprinting has had a negative trend for the past quarters, primarily related to weaker demand from a soft market in Asia as well as academia and research in general, with CELLINK being mostly impacted. And if we move on to adjusted EBITDA, lab automation has delivered good margins, which have improved over the years and for the first half of 2024, following the strong sales growth between 2023 and 2022. Life science solutions showed a significant improvement in profitability between 2022 and 2023, mainly due to the major cost-saving programs launched in 2022, but it has had a tough start of 2024 from a profitability perspective, mainly explained by the tough market, especially in the Diagnostics segment, which SCIENION is addressing. As for development in bioprinting, this is, as mentioned, related to weaker demand from research and academia with CELLINK being mostly impacted. To address this, we have a new management team in place and have launched both commercial and cost-saving measures to improve profitability. I will now let Maria present how the new business area structure affects areas of responsibility in the executive management.

Thank you. And as Jacob stated, the new business area structures also affect some areas of responsibility, especially in the executive management. I will, apart from my current responsibilities, also take on the role as responsible for the business area lab automation. Anders Fogelberg, our Chief Commercial Officer, will lead the business areas, life science solutions and bioprinting. Jacob Thordenberg, our CFO, will continue to be responsible for the finance function, which entails business control and corporate development, group accounting and internal control, business process solutions, IT, treasury and investor relations. Moving on to operations. This will continue to be the responsibility for our Chief Operating Officer, Marius Balger. He will be responsible for the operations organization, project management office, quality assurance and regulatory affairs as well as portfolio -- project management portfolio. Andreas Joersjö, who will join us mid-October as our new General Counsel, will be responsible for corporate governance and compliance. Catharina Nordlund, our Chief HR Officer, her area of responsibilities are the global HR organization as well as internal communications. All in all, a solid structure for our updated strategy, and I will now hand over back to Jacob for presenting our financial targets.

Thank you, Maria. And if we move on to the next slide. As many of you know, we introduced our current financial targets during the Capital Markets Day held in November 2022, and they have been valid since 2023 and communicated to be achieved on a midterm basis, defined as within 3 years. The 3 financial targets consist of metrics related to organic growth, EBITDA and net debt. On this slide, you can see how BICO has performed so far. We can conclude that we are still behind and have not yet achieved our growth target. This can be explained by 2023 and so far also 2024 being tough for many companies in the lab instrument industry. Operating in the same market, we are also experiencing the same trends and patterns; however, worth mentioning is that BICO has delivered in line with peers, even though we have gone through a tough restructuring and cost saving phase. With that said, we have not yet achieved the target. As for the profitability target, we have seen a positive trend in the right direction, but we have not yet achieved the target. The net debt target has so far in 2024 not been achieved, but was achieved in 2023. When looking at the financial targets and considering the tough market we are operating in, still suffering from a post-pandemic slump following the COVID boom and with spending and CapEx restraints, we believe we are taking steps in the right direction and are confident that the updated strategy long term will support us in achieving our targets. And we have, therefore, decided to reiterate our current financial targets. The rationale behind this decision is that we believe that the targets are still relevant and that we want to deliver on the existing targets before setting new ones, which we intend to define when the current targets have been achieved. Meeting the already set targets will continue to be our top priority and I will, therefore, repeat and comment on the reiterated targets. As for the growth target, the low double-digit organic growth captures and shows market growth opportunities in line with our assessment of the market, as previously communicated by both Maria and myself. The above 10% EBITDA margin less capitalized R&D target secures our focus on profitability, including total R&D spend and enables positive cash flows. And the net debt target in relation to EBITDA of less than 3x is a target we believe suitable for a company with our profile. When discussing the financial targets, including the net debt target, I will also comment on the convertible bond and refinancing. The bond is due in March 2026 and has an interest rate of 2.75 percentage points and no material covenants. Hence, the terms for the convertible bond are attractive for BICO and the existing solution serves us well. However, although the bond doesn't mature until March 2026, refinancing of the bond is an important project that we are actively working on, and we are evaluating various options, including the strategic fit of our portfolio of assets to make sure that we are maximizing shareholder value and act proactively. This was my last slide, so I will now hand it back to Anders.

Thank you, Jacob. And Maria, we have now presented the BICO updated strategy and business area and reiterated our financial targets. We will now change subject and have a deep dive into lab automation. And in addition to that, we will also look at how AI, coupled with lab automation creates additional customer value. And I'm happy to have with us the CEO of BICO's operating company, Biosero, Ryan Bernhardt from San Diego in California. And with him, we have Derrick Miyao. He is VP of Molecular Foundry at the U.S. company, DeepCure, and both of them will present, and we will start with Ryan.

Thank you very much, Anders. And hello, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today, and I'm excited to have the opportunity to tell you a little more about lab automation and Biosero. And I'm honored to be joined by Derrick Miyao, who will take you through his journey of partnering with Biosero to implement automation that's been transformative to his business. As Maria touched upon earlier, one of the biggest challenges that the life science industry faces is the reality that discovering drugs, cures, therapies and diagnostics takes longer and costs more than it should. Do you know how long or how much it costs to get a drug to the market today? On average, it takes nearly 12 years and $2.3 billion to get a drug to the market. And the life science industry is looking at ways to overcome this, to cut this in half. And there's a lot of initiatives that they've given as Pharma 4.0, next-generation research, next-generation development. But the reality is that the drug discovery process historically has largely been built around the capabilities and processes that are manual. And with this comes a great deal of variability, not only in technique, but also in timing. And this is where Biosero and lab automation enter the scene. So why do labs automate? And why haven't labs automated in the past? We automate because it starts by exploring a better way to do science. With automation, we have the ability to increase the reproducibility of scientific results. As Maria touched upon earlier, one of the most difficult things to do in science is to have another lab that's able to reproduce those scientific results of another lab. In addition to that, it's also hard to have a scientist reproduce their own experimentation in their same lab. So with this, automation not only enables reproducibility by embedding the technique and the processes into the automation, but it also enhances the quality of the science that's being performed and also enhances the quality of the data that's being generated as time stamps are taken when actions happen, and we're able to capture that data in real time, not just some of the data, but all of the data. In addition to that, automation increases the productivity of laboratories. For one, robots don't need a lunch break. They don't call in sick. They don't get tired, and they don't leave the lab at 5:00 p.m. to go home for the evening. This means that automation can continue to be productive around the clock, utilizing the same finite amount of time in a day, in a week and in a year to accelerate the project time lines. In addition, lab automation also increases the efficiency of scientists within the laboratory. While automation is running scientific experiments and assays, a scientist is then freed up to focus on higher-level tasks where they tap into the power of the human mind by being able to analyze data, design experiments and focus on collaboration. And in addition to this, automation also increases the safety of science within the laboratory. We saw this firsthand during the COVID pandemic, where automation was used to run infectious samples that kept scientists safe. In addition to safety, automation also minimizes ergonomic risk and strain of having a scientist that has to do repetitive tasks over and over again now can benefit from the automation. And finally, automation also enables additional sustainability within the laboratory where automation can monitor progress and keep track of what's happening, but it can also miniaturize the experimentation and the volumes of reagents and compounds and solvents that are being used, all while minimizing the amount of waste that's generated in doing the scientific experimentation. So based upon these benefits, you may ask yourself, well, why have laboratories to date not implemented automation? And although the laboratory is a place of innovation, historically, the laboratory has been a place of conservative traditional practices. And it takes a lot of energy, effort, time and even cost to overcome some of those traditional practices due to regulation that's in the laboratory. And while this was true, all of a sudden in 2020, the COVID pandemic happened. And those traditional practices and techniques were all of a sudden challenged and overwhelmed by the reality of what was happening during the pandemic. Labs that were used to processing 15,000 samples a year were now being asked to process 15,000 samples a day in order to perform COVID testing. Those scientists that were readily available in the lab now were not available in the lab due to social distancing and productivity still had to continue to happen even while people were at home. And so we needed a way to monitor what was happening inside the lab. And with this, the processes were overwhelmed to the point where there was no choice but to begin to leverage automation for the task. And once automation was implemented, the benefits were ones where laboratories did not look back and go back to doing things the traditional way, and it catapulted the industry by over a decade and that organizational change management. And so in a post-pandemic world, the trends in lab automation today are that lab automation is needed closer to the patient and closer to the end product. A couple of decades ago, lab automation was primarily seen in early phase discovery research where it was used for compound management and high throughput screening, where it was very tough to calculate a return on investment. Today, with the rise of new modalities such as cell and gene therapy, liquid biopsy and next-generation sequencing, automation is needed closer to the patient, which means it's also needed in regulated environments. In addition to that, labs are more open to leveraging off-the-shelf automation solutions today than ever before because of the own pressures on their internal businesses. You see the pharmaceutical industries, their main goal is to get medicines to the market that are going to impact patients, not to develop a scheduling software or custom robotic systems. So these organizations are now open to leveraging businesses that focus on this as their core competency. And finally, the demographics in lab automation are evolving into a much more diverse group. 10 to 15 years ago, the lab automation community was a small cohort of scientists, which we thought of as tinkers. Today, lab automation is comprised of scientists, engineers, software developers, IT professionals and even executive leaders are interested in lab automation because of the size of the investment and the significant impact that it will have on their scientific portfolios. Maria showed this slide earlier about the breadth of automation solutions. But I wanted to reiterate a few points. And we think about this as a journey, but really, it's a continuum. And we think about this as a crawl, walk, run, sprint journey to automation, moving from manual tasks to semi-automated tasks, leveraging instrumentation to thinking about how do we transport materials from one place to another in the absence of humans to being able to automate assays and experiments all the way to fully automated lights out biofactories that are integrated into the entire ecosystem of organization's scientific portfolio. And Biosero has our Green Button Go software where we're able to partner with laboratories to enable each one of these different phases and we call it a continuum because the reality is laboratories are actually in different places, multiple places as part of their day-to-day operations. Even in the most fully automated labs, there are still aspects that have to be done in a -- aspects that have to be processed manually. And that's where the digitalization of those manual tasks becomes very important so that we can capture the data in a manual process in the same manner that, that data is being captured in a fully automated process. So what does lab automation entail? Well, when you hear automation, you may think of the large industrial robotic arms, the conveyor belt systems. But in addition to the physical robots and instrumentation of lab automation, there's also the logical aspects. And the logical aspects are comprised of the workflow, the business rules, the reagents materials that will be used, but it also encompasses the interaction points between scientists and humans as part of that overall process. And the third dimension to lab automation and maybe the most important, it's the reason we do science, is the data aspect. And this is where Biosero is uniquely positioned with our offering. Not only do we have a hardware-agnostic software called Green Button Go, but we have the ability to also orchestrate the physical flow of materials throughout that workflow process while also orchestrating the digital flow of data. And by being hardware agnostic, it allows us to partner with scientists to integrate the latest and greatest technology or that particular scientist's favorite instrumentation as part of that overall process. And so what does lab automation actually look like within the laboratory? I'm going to walk you through a common workflow that's done in laboratories all over the world to show you where we start when we think about how to automate the laboratory. And so in this case, you have a scientist that walks up to a storage unit. They are able to retrieve some dry compounds. They walk those dry compounds over to a balance at a bench where they weigh out a certain amount of dry material into barcoded vials where they're capturing the weight of the material in that barcoded vial. They then take the dry material over to a pipetting station where they'll add a certain volume of solvent to solubilize those samples at a desired concentration. And then they'll walk those solubilized vials over to a workstation where the liquid handler will transfer a certain amount of volume of those compounds into a compound plate where then that compound plate is walked over to another liquid handler, where it's met with a plate of cells that have been previously cultured on a cell culturing system. This liquid handler will dose the compounds onto the cells. It will add some reagents as part of the assay. And finally, that scientist will walk that assay plate over to some sort of an analytical equipment, where they'll do an endpoint analysis to achieve those experimental results. And so this is -- although this is showing the primary workflow of -- that the sample would take in the laboratory, what's not being shown here is all of the other manual touch points that are required to make this workflow possible. Scientists have to prepare buffer solutions, solvent blends. They need to reformat reagents and building blocks to make them amenable for each one of these steps. New consumables are needed at each step along the way and there's also waste and byproducts being generated that needs to be discarded off. So when you look at this workflow, you quickly realize there needs to be a way of managing or better yet orchestrating the laboratory. And so that's exactly what Biosero does with our Green Button Go software is, we not only orchestrate and control the instrumentation or the physical workflow of that experimental process, but we also orchestrate the digital flow of data. And when I talk about data, it's not only the upfront sample data and that endpoint experimental result, but it's also we have the ability to capture, contextualize and harmonize all of the other data that's generated as part of this end-to-end workflow. And in the age of artificial intelligence and machine learning, it's this complete data package that is so vitally important to be able to train that AI and the machine learning algorithms in order to allow laboratories to iterate and optimize on their experimental process. In addition to our Green Button Go software, Biosero has an industry-leading design and engineering team, where we partner with scientists to bring their complete automated scientific vision to life from the ground up. In this video, you're seeing our engineering team leverage third-party and BICO instrumentation to put this together into a fully automated platform that's fully automating the workflow that I just walked you through that happens in many labs around the world in a manual process. And with that, I'm now going to turn it over to Derrick Miyao to give you a snapshot of AI-driven automated chemistry.

Well, it's a pleasure to be here and honor to be here. I came in from San Diego. It's not often that I get to experience this same weather, better weather than where I came from. But it's actually quite a pleasure to be here. With that being said, just to give you a bit of background on myself, I spent 20 years at one biotech in San Diego called Neurocrine Biosciences. I joined in 2022. Through the first 5 years, we were really hot. We had a Phase III drug that got rejected, and we went through the blood bath in 2007, and I was one of 58 to survive. But Neurocrine's valuation dropped to $100 million and it has just, a few weeks ago, hit $15 billion. I left 2 years ago when we saw a lot of success mostly because I saw a couple of big changes. I saw the AI revolution really happening, and I really wanted to be a part of it. And so I left Neurocrine to go join a start-up to be a part of something special. So just to give you a bit of background on what I'm doing now. I've been in DeepCure for 2 years. It was founded out of the MIT Media Lab by Kfir Schreiber there in the middle, who was a student of Professor Joe Jacobson. Joe Jacobson, whose claim to fame is -- and he has quite a few inventions, but Joe Jacobson invented electronic ink, which is the tool that's used in the Kindle. Last week was our sixth birthday, and it was a big year. This is a big year for us because this is the year that we selected our first IND-enabling compound where we're ready to take into human testing next year. But as you can see, we really believe in the AI as well as we have a world -- we have one of the world's most advanced chemistry platforms that Biosero has helped us build. Before I get into that though, I just want to get into one of the problems with drug discovery, especially when it comes to small molecules, and this is what I did at Neurocrine. And really, that downtime is really what motivated me to really make a difference when it comes to the chemistry piece. Chemistry is one of the last frontiers in science that is yet to be affected with modern technology. As you see, the way we did it 100 years ago is still being done the same way today. Not only is it slow and not only are the chemists highly paid and highly educated. But as you see, the average burdened headcount in the U.S. for our chemist is $350,000. In China and India, it's about $90,000, so it's significantly cheaper. But the biggest problem though is not the cost of the employees, it's the fact that the average chemist only makes 1 to 2 compounds per week. And so if you actually think about the drug discovery process, it can take a team of 10 to 20 chemists and up to 2 years just to get to that advanced lead status. It's really slow. Beyond the slowness and the cost, if we look at the image on the right, drug space is massive. We're talking 10 to the 60th power. And so when it comes to human history, we've made about 100 million molecules. There's barely a scratch on the surface. On top of that, this highly complex and manual science, over the past 40 years, this is pulled from a publication, most human chemists are only accessing 20 reactions. And the red shows a trend to the blue, which is modern times that we're doing more of the easier chemistry manually, right? And that goes to human bias where we do what we know we can do. And with each reaction type, there's more than 1,000 reaction types, but we're only using 20. And within each reaction type, you can do it more than 1,000 ways. If we look at the middle category where we look at the -- we did an -- sorry, there was an analysis done on all the small molecule drugs in the market. The average small molecule drug takes 4.8 steps of chemistry to get to from start to finish. Your highly trained chemists, when they actually have to do 5 steps of chemistry, gets there 34% of the time. So we're talking like baseball. Like if you hit a 340, you're going to be paid $20 million a year. Even on the first step of chemistry with well-established chemistry, Johnson & Johnson did a study where their own chemists fell 20% of the time out of the gate. To expand upon the issue, this is just a high-level example that DeepCure did, where if we look at the circle, these are the different properties that are required -- that we believe are required to make proper drugs. The purple space or the blue space in the middle represents billions of molecules that are virtualized by commercial companies that sell compounds in small molecules. If you look at what's actually available, it's very limited and very tight to that red circle -- to the red container around it, which is what AI is evaluating. And when AI looks at that space, there's nothing available to buy. So not only is it expensive and slow but also it's limited in chemical space and as a result, as you can see, we don't have very many good drugs. So with this and the combination of expensive AI scientists, which is what DeepCure employs, that's when they brought me on decided, "Hey, we want to change and revolutionize chemistry through automation." So this is just one small example of how Green Button Go and Biosero has really enabled what we do in the lab. This is the purification process after synthesis and what this does is it automates the analysis and the purification of our synthesis. This allows obviously us to employ less chemists and it allows us to focus on AI algorithms. But more importantly, it simply speeds up the science and it speeds up the data. And so this process is typically done one at a time. And so you can imagine while we can buy multiple machines, our biggest gain is running overnight and on the weekends. So if we look at where Green Button Go actually helps, not only does it connect to a workflow from the start of the synthesis, but actually helps us understand what we did in the next process when it comes to the analytical analysis. From that analytical analysis, we've automated the purification aspect of it, where it selects the best conditions based on the feedback that it's given from Green Button Go on our instruments, and then lastly, we can characterize it, we can weigh it, we can analyze it. I mean if we actually look at the tree of what Biosero's actually touches, not only does it control the instruments as well as our workflow but it controls all the instructions that go into our instruments and sometimes there can be 10,000 instructions and that's simply not possible for any human to perform. So Green Button Go really does enable the labs to do more with what we have. So this is how DeepCure's AI process is really laid out. We either design molecules using our AI algorithms or even have human input once the molecules are selected. All the instructions are within our platform, and we use data from our platform to make these decisions to create the instructions and how to make the molecules. Green Button Go then takes over from our internal software systems, and it creates the synthesis from start to finish. And from that start to finish, it does the synthesis, it does the purification, it does the analysis. All the meanwhile, it's communicating with our systems to say, hey, this molecule didn't work, update the algorithm, this compound did work, update it again. And we're constantly updating our algorithms, and we're improving our chemistry at the same time. And most importantly, it's allowing us to create big data that helps our algorithms become usable. So if we look at some of the highlights and opportunities out of creating systems like these, in my opinion, the most valuable piece that systems like these will provide us when they're fully integrated to our systems and the systems are fully controlled by our software. It's going to create big and standardized chemical synthesis data that enables our predictive models. Keep in mind, chemistry has been done by hand over the last 100 years. And when Maria said that 70% of papers are reproducible for the first 5 years in my career, I actually thought it was a terrible scientist because I literally can only reproduce 30% of the papers. So if we think AI, if we can't do it as humans, what makes you think AI can do it. And so that's where I think the biggest opportunity lies and the fact that we're going to have data, especially when it comes to the chemistry that no one else has that we can actually use a great AI algorithm [indiscernible] on. And more importantly, because we're not stuck with bias, we actually will have a wide variety of negative data that will help us refine our models. The other important aspect is, and I've seen this in my own career, where automating chemistry creates faster turnaround time when that design, make, test and analyze, especially when it comes to small molecules because that has always been a bottleneck in the industry. So the robotic platforms also create standardized data, which allows us to do AI and machine learning models. And beyond the drug discovery projects, which there's a lot of different AI companies that are out there on, we went to Google and asked them, hey, do you want to do a drug discovery project with us? And they said, no, we've done hundreds of those. But when we went with them with our chemistry data, we signed a partnership literally within a day because they have never seen data like that. Beyond the fact that humans only do 20 reactions, the simple fact that we can do so much more chemistry, we're actually going after hundreds of reaction types. And that enables us to access that pink space on that graph that no one else is accessing. And those in my hope, that's what drives me, is that we're going to make better drugs. And hopefully, cures instead of treatments. And then lastly, the one thing that these systems do is that it don't allow for human bias because humans are not going to interact with the system. In fact, one thing I learned is as long as I use my platform to develop the chemistry using robotics, that I don't have to fight with a human to say, hey, I need you to try different things. This machine will try as many things as I ask it to. And as such, we're going to get big data. So this is the result of this, and I know your financial analysts are going to love this slide. But we have one foundry that have 2 chemists and what we can replicate when it comes to what I believe is the right amount of compounds to truly understand a biological receptor, which is about 300 molecules, and we're talking complex molecules. We can do it for less than $10,000, which would traditionally cost about $1 million. We could do it much faster, and the speed is actually, in my opinion, more important than the cost because we can move on to the next question. But what we can do can replicate 100 chemists, and we're just at the start of it. So taking all that information, DeepCure and my team, we wanted to show what this means and what that meant was we needed to do an example. So we took Paxlovid, which is a well-known molecule for COVID. It's a $20 billion molecule, I believe, or sorry, #4 seller in 2022. It takes 10 steps of chemistry to get there. And let me remind you that I said when you have 5 steps, you get there 34% of the time. So to get to 10 steps is even much harder and less likely. We didn't just make one. We didn't just make one to say, hey, we can make one molecule and put 2 chemists on it and actually kind of [ cheap, ] right? So we made 56 analogs at the same time that required 9 to 10 steps. And the point of it was to show instead of a process that typically don't want at a time, we did it all at the same time. And doing all that data at the same time is how you explore drug space and how you understand how chemicals interact with biological receptor. And that allows us to speed up the drug discovery process that much more. We did publish this. And as such, if you want to look it up, it's in this genetic engineering and biotechnology news. And like I said, we're really just trying to disrupt the industry and really change chemistry. And as a result of our platform, as a result of our capacity, as a result of where things are at geopolitically, we think this is the right time t spin my group out and serve its own company called Inspired Chemistry. And what we're trying to do is offer more chemicals in a wider chemical space so that we get better molecules, and we're going to do it cheaper and faster. And with what you saw in the financial sheet, we can do it even cheaper than our Asian counterparts. And with that, I'll hand it back to Ryan.

Thank you so much, Derrick, for sharing that compelling story. So as you've just heard, Biosero has solutions that are able to meet the industry's greatest needs. We're able to partner with life science organizations to allow them to do more with less. For example, we can enable cost reduction while increasing their productivity and throughput. We can enable them in a global world to seamlessly transfer technology to different sites around the world. We can also enable the reproducibility of their validated scientific experiments. And in doing this, we're able to increase the quality, not only of the science, but the quality of the data and the ability to track that data in a traceable format. And finally, we're enabling sustainable solutions where we can monitor progress, we can miniaturize experimentation, and we can minimize the waste that's being generated through lab automation. And so Biosero's growth strategy over the next 5 years can be broken down into 5 strategic levers. Number one, Biosero will continue to partner with life science organizations to enable end-to-end laboratory orchestration. Secondarily, Biosero will lead with software-centric solutions where we'll work with instrument providers, DIY labs and organizations with the plan for Green Button Go to become the Microsoft Windows model of lab automation. In addition to that, we'll continue to implement solutions that are closer to the patients and the end products and are amenable for regulated laboratory environments. Fourth, we'll enable scientific workflow-centric solutions with instrument vendors, kit manufacturers and even BICO sister companies like what you've heard with CYTENA's C.Station being used for cell line development. And finally, we will generate recurring revenue by partnering with life science organizations to increase our value-added enhancements. This would include acting as a one-stop shop integrator for these large automation initiatives as well as service contracts that embed Biosero team members in our organization laboratories to ensure they're maximizing the return on investment and then we're also launching Biosero's new online marketplace, which is essentially like an app store that provides the convenience to laboratories to go in and exchange their software and add enhancements to their software package to ensure that their automation is able to evolve as their scientific portfolio evolves or as their level of automation increases to the future. In this video, what you see is the culmination of Biosero's capabilities coming together in partnership with a life science organization to enable a completely automated lights out biofactory that starts with incoming patient specimens. We're able to process those specimens into nucleic acid extraction, where we finally get results that give us genomic data that will now inform doctors and patients on the best path forward for their particular situation. We do this to accelerate research and development for life science organizations around the world through the use of software and also integration capabilities. Ultimately, Biosero partners with life science organizations to enable them to accelerate scientific innovation to the market faster and more cost-effective than ever before. And we collaborate with our sister companies at BICO, CYTENA, DISPENDIX, QInstruments, Cellenion to ensure that their instruments are automation-ready and integration-friendly because we believe that advancing science that heals people, that feeds people and that makes our better -- makes our world a better place to live is worth it. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ryan. Thank you, Derrick, for this presentation. And we will have opportunity to ask Ryan questions in the upcoming Q&A. And there will also be a demo session with lab automation for those who are here in Gothenburg. And Derrick, thank you for showing the lab of the future, what it looks like, that is here, [ already ] now. And you also won my heart when you complimented us on our famously beautiful Gothenburg weather. It is now time for a break, 10 minutes sharp, and then we will start the Q&A session. [Break]

Welcome back to the final part of the digital Capital Markets Day. Our last topic on the agenda today is the Q&A, which will be moderated by Ulrik Trattner, Equity Analyst at Carnegie. And as I said before, those of you who are online, you can post your questions any time by clicking on the chat box below the presentation. And for those of you who are here in the room, please raise your hand, and you will be handed a microphone. Please speak into the microphone so that everyone who attends online can hear your question. And with that, I hand over to you, Ulrik.

Thank you very much, Anders, and thank you very much, BICO, for allowing me to host this Q&A session. And potentially also for you guys in the room who would like to ask a question, please state your name and the firm that you're representing. So that is clear for everyone in the audience. But since I'm in control of the microphone, I'll start off with a few questions. And given that we have the pleasure to have you here, Ryan representing Biosero, I think we'll start off there. And you joined BICO and you joined Biosero and you came from heading lab automation out of Eli Lilly. So first question would be to on an industry side, the other side, the customer side, your experience in lab automation where we're at today and if there's any hurdles on the customer side in adopting an automated workflow.

Thank you for the question. Again, it's a pleasure to be here. I think I had the privilege of being on both sides of the aisle from being a technology provider to also being a user and customer of automation in order to do science during my time at Lilly and also elsewhere in my career journey. One of the greatest mechanisms to accelerate scientific research is through being able to extend the hours of productivity and do more with less. And that was exactly what we faced, the challenges we faced during my time at Lilly. I'm proud of the fact that we were very much a pioneer in enabling automation and actually making some very bold large investments in automation, one of the first to automate the design, make, test, analyze cycle that really broke down some of those internal historical silos of different technologies and groups coming together to accelerate that. I think some of the biggest challenges we face today in the laboratory is access to the data. It's that data that is needed to make those better decisions and having not only the access to the full data, but having it in a quick amount of time where we can move the needle forward. And so that's a big aspect of what we're enabling at Biosero is we have a concept of no data left behind. And it's through the ability to control the instruments and orchestrate the workflow that we then have access to that data and being able to make that data available back to the organization to continue down the project portfolio is a big aspect. And it's one of the biggest challenges that the industry faces.

And could you talk a little bit about how in your experience, both on the customer side as well as on the Biosero's side, how customers adopt a lab automated software or workflow? Do they go lab by lab or they go by therapeutic area, just to get a sense on how it's implemented?

Great question. We often say one of our best sales reps is a happy customer. And this is true in the world of lab automation. It's actually a very small community. And most organizations have automation focal points or groups within the organization that partner with scientists and stakeholders that will help them implement automation for their particular science. It's those -- that focus group or cohort with inside that company that typically will move from one lab or one area of the business to then automating -- helping another area automate. So for example, if an oncology group brings in lab automation for the first time, and it's a Biosero-enabled system, when they have a good experience there and successfully implement, that same group will likely go on to endocrinology, neuroscience, other therapeutic areas where they're able to take those learnings and success story there to further implement. So there's definitely kind of a spiderweb like approach to the way it's implemented within many organizations. Not all are set up like that, but very many are.

And do you dare to give a guesstimate on sort of percentage of penetration? And if we were to single out big pharma, otherwise, the space would get potentially too wide. Where do you think we're at today? And where do you think we would be in the next 5 years?

So although the industry is greatly evolving and there's a very high demand, I believe we've only scratched the surface for the potential of lab automation in pharma, in biotech, agroscience, diagnostics as well. So I think we're in very, very early stages. And I definitely think that this is a necessity as we move forward. One of the things that happens as well is in academia, we still have a lot of scientific students that are learning the traditional ways. And it's not until they get into industry that they may, for the first time, encounter the use of automation technology to do science. And I think there's a real potential there to get automation and sophisticated instrumentation earlier as part of that learning or training that will also help to catalyze this even further.

And to add to that, maybe we can have Slide 31 and just reiterate the data that this emerging market. And as I said in my presentation, there are -- in this infant industry, there's a lot of different reports floating around and those are showing that there is a value of the market in the range between USD 5.5 billion and USD 6.8 billion last year with a growth rate of -- between 6.3% and 9.3% between 2023 and '35. And out of this, Biosero are addressing a market which the orchestrated solutions that Ryan presented before, which is what we estimate to be 20% of that overall market. And with the growth that we see, that is estimated to be growing faster than the overall lab automation market.

And feel free to ask questions, don't be shy. I assure you that it will be harmless. We have a question here from Rickard.

Rickard Anderkrans from Handelsbanken. Starting off with margins of Biosero was a little bit lower in 2022 and '23 compared to time of acquisition as the company has grown quite significantly. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the margin development, explaining the moves and also a little bit about the scalability in that business, how we should see rapid growth versus rising margins, et cetera, in the business. Just get a sense of how it scales as you grow because there's quite a bit of consultancy or implementation from a manual side as well.

Sure. It's a very good question, Rick. And as we saw, we had significant growth between 2023 and 2022. But that had an impact on margins. But on the other hand, we grew with 40%. And in retrospect, maybe we grew a little bit too fast in 2023 because we had lots of demands from the market that we wanted to meet. Going into 2024, we are much more picky in which projects that we take on, which we actually decided that we will do. And we are also adding lots of resources in Biosero when it comes to operational planning and how we sort of structure ourselves in order to be able to scale Biosero, keeping high margins.

And maybe just a quick follow-up, if I can. How should we think about the larger deals? You announced last year, $28 million order, I guess you will be looking to get additional orders of equal magnitude in the coming years. How should we think about the margin profile of larger deals? Are they pushing Biosero on profitability as the deals go bigger? Or maybe you can help explain the dynamics of size of the deal?

Sure. I can do that. But I won't go into too much specifics of sort of the margins of larger deals, but the larger deals are in line with the overall margin of Biosero.

Great. And can we talk about the competitive profile of Biosero? You're up against solutions from Tecan, Thermo Fisher, Hamilton, Beckman Coulter. What is sort of the key aspect? Why do the customers end up going to Biosero? And what would you regard the barrier of entry being?

Great question. So Biosero was uniquely positioned that we have a scheduling software that would typically be used to control instrumentation and processes at the integrated work cell level, but we also have an orchestration software that actually goes beyond any one integrated work. So you can think of this as the orchestration of an entire laboratory where it controls multiple work cells, the ability to integrate stand-alone instruments in the lab and also the transportation of materials as well as the capture and harmonization of that data. That is a very unique position to be in for Biosero on the market as we're one of the only that has both of those aspects. The other aspect that we have is that we are hardware agnostic, and that is a unique position to be in. And also, many of the other providers of integrated automation actually are hardware-centric in nature. So meaning they started with a hardware component, be a liquid handler or a high-content imager. And then out of that, they tried to build an integrated software solution. But at the foundation, the software solution was originally made to pipette volume from one vessel to another on an automated liquid handler. We've come at it from a very different angle, where it's a software-centric solution that focuses on automating the process as opposed to the hardware. This allows us to leverage the latest and greatest technology out there or a customer's favorite hardware. And it puts us in a unique position as well, where we see most instrument vendors as partners and we work together to enable their instrumentation to be used in an automated setting. So I think that's a very unique value proposition that Biosero was in. We also have a great deal of experience from consulting. On the consulting side of the business, Biosero -- anywhere that there's a laboratory doing research and development, Biosero is applicable. And this means that we span a lot of different markets and a lot of different scientific applications, and we can bring all of that experience and knowledge in being able to partner with customers, whether they're in an agriscience laboratory or a pharmaceutical laboratory and different therapeutic areas as well.

I think some might wonder about, well, the software, how sticky is it? But you talk about the experience, right? I think it would be helpful also for the audience as well as the viewers online. If you just speak a bit about the [ over ] 400 drivers and how they come into play.

Yes, very good point. So one of the aspects that we consider the crown jewels of a scheduling software is the device or instrument drivers. This is essentially the piece of code that allows us to control and communicate with different scientific instruments. Biosero today has over 400 instrument drivers that we've spent many, many years developing, working alongside customers, working alongside instrument providers to develop these and iterate upon these and such that we have robust, reliable communication and air handling capabilities and that really becomes a key foundation of any good scheduling or orchestration software. Today, on the orchestration side, we're also doing something similar as it comes to being able to connect and integrate with informatics and software packages such as LIMS systems, ELNs, inventory management systems as we look to move and connect data from system to system.

And you mentioned it's hardware agnostic. And then it would turn to you, Maria, with the rest of the portfolio of system that you beautifully showcased here, how are you to drive synergies and leveraging the Biosero platform with the rest of your portfolio? And where should we expect to see the synergies?

I believe Ryan touched upon part of this very relevant question in his presentation. And with -- so good relationship and customer insight working with all the top pharma players in the life science world. That means that the team in Biosero gets a lot of our customer insights, which we can deploy to also the other companies within the group. So hence, we know what needs do we need to serve. And when it comes to how we are addressing this, I think probably maybe we should show Slide 43, just to reiterate how everything connects. So I mean, in essence, we have the lab automation but also selected workflows. And as we have decided to work with 6 selected workflows, then we address the different needs for our customers to ensure that for cell line development, next-generation sequencing, we can then make sure that we have the 3 different levels, either fully customized automated solutions by Biosero, where I believe that many of your customers, they are asking for products from Cellenion, from CYTENA, from DISPENDIX, et cetera, as part of the fully automated workflows. But these projects can take a year or sometimes 2. Since there is such a need for automated workflows, we can also identify more standardized workflows. And then we have products such as our C.Station from CYTENA where it's more an off-the-shelf workflow, utilizing the insights and then having something which we can then deliver in 6 months. And also to connect instruments and consumables, we also have standard operating procedures, such as the G-prep from DISPENDIX or then facilitate the next-generation sequencing part by having a protocol that our customers can follow from A to Z and then also -- so that's another way of automating. So from joining and having a group of companies that were like isolated islands, we have a group now with 12 companies that communicate with each other that all know and have been part of this development of this strategy. So we have identified which touch points are there, what collaboration opportunities do we have to ensure that we address rather than point solutions. We address this in holistic end-to-end workflows and then utilizing the fact that we are a larger group, not just 12 individual companies. Jacob, do you want to add anything?

I think it's fairly summarized on Slide 45. And I think, as you say, Maria, it's the selected workflows in combination with the fact that we can combine these selected workflows with the Green Button software, which our competitors cannot.

And if I may add, we also are collaborating with our sister companies to ensure that they're designing their instrumentation with robust APIs for that digital communication as well as automation-friendly access for robotic arms, mobile robots, that sort of thing. And then the CYTENA C.Station is a great example of a collaboration that was between Biosero and CYTENA, where it was originally Biosero's integration and engineering team that worked alongside CYTENA to take their workflow and design what would become a standard solution that then would be part of the CYTENA portfolio, but it was through a collaboration that began with the design, the engineering services and ultimately, Biosero powering that solution. But because it's a standardized offering, it's now part of the CYTENA's portfolio.

And as I mentioned, when talking about the standard operating procedure, sometimes we also partner with other companies to provide this holistic end-to-end workflows. And maybe, Ryan, a couple of words what we do together with Sartorius and Biosero.

Yes. So we're working with Sartorius on a similar thing to what we've done with other sister companies, and that is to ensure that we have automation solutions for several of their instruments and devices. We also develop automation solutions in coordination with them that, again, are at a smaller scale, what we call a reader feeder, where it's basically a robotic arm that's allowing multiple plates to be interacted with. But then we also look at how can we integrate those instruments in a much larger end-to-end workflow process. And we're working together as SLAS, which is the big conference for lab automation comes up, we'll be showcasing some of that work together with Sartorius and other organizations at that conference in January.

And is that something that is part of your strategic agenda going forward? I know you touched upon it throughout the presentation to explore and elaborate more on partnerships, how should we view this going forward? Should we see that as you collaborating on certain projects? Or would you be willing to go more on a distributor route via these companies? Or what is the best way going forward?

I think there are many different levels to that question. And I mean you can identify in these 6 addressed workflows where we have the majority of our portfolio covered. Some of -- in some of these workflows, we have gaps. And then we can choose to either develop something on our own in R&D or we can partner with someone that has a reagent or consumable or an instrument that fills that gap. So I think it needs to be on an individual basis to [ see ] what is suited for that purpose. And to see is it best to collaborate with someone, is it best to innovate it ourselves or acquire something. So -- and in terms of partnerships, that is what our Chief Commercial Officer, Anders Fogelberg, is responsible for, and he is also the main responsible person for our Sartorius collaboration, where we, apart from what Ryan described, also have other development projects, primarily within organoids, bioprinting as well as digitalization. So apart from the Biosero ones, we also have collaboration in terms of 3D models with our tissue model company, MatTek, and also a 3D printing project for biopharma. So the recently launched initiatives that we are doing together with Sartorius are especially within digital applications and lab automations, which is then aligning with the BICO strategy 2.0.

And from the web, I received several questions regarding the convertible debt. So if we can switch focus on your strategic plan on how to refinance this. It's due in March '26, as you mentioned, what is the plan?

Well, the plan first off, as I mentioned, I mean, the current solution serves us very well, and the bond is not due until March 2026. But we are looking into various options on how to refinance the bond. One of the options and sort of the main target is, of course, that we continue to do operational excellence activities. We focus on our strategic priorities. We will execute on the updated strategy. But in addition to that, we are also, of course, exploring different options, including then the strategic fit of our assets in the portfolio.

And would you be -- should we interpret that as you've been willing to sell off certain assets in order to refinance?

You should interpret it as that we will do everything we can to maximize shareholder value. And as a part of that, we're also, of course, exploring the value of our portfolio of assets.

Great. And I see that you did not change your financial targets. They -- as you mentioned, you are below your financial targets. It is a challenging environment. Lower CapEx for pharma and some hurdles on the public financing healthcare side. How should we view the financial targets in the short term as well as in the medium term? And I also note that you didn't change your net debt-to-EBITDA target, which then would imply that we should see operational leverage until the financing -- refinancing of the convertible.

Well, it depends on how you see it because we also have cash levers, as I'm alluding to in our portfolio of assets. So that's also, of course, a solution. But the target should be viewed as on midterm. As we have said many times now, we are indeed operating in a tough market. We do see capital restraints. CapEx sort of holdbacks. So we do near term see a quite tough market or have seen a tough market.

And one of your focus points in this presentation is to focus the organization to really do what's enhancing for the business and for shareholder values. And one point is obviously R&D in your organization. So how should we view R&D spend going forward? And would you say that your current operations are future proof?

I think it's fair, given that we have been quite -- or invested quite a substantial part of our turnover in the past years in R&D from 22% 3 years ago, 16% 2 years ago and 12% last year, I believe. And I think one shouldn't see it to be an amount of spend. We have a fantastic portfolio given that those investments. But what is important moving forward is that we focus it on the right investments. And I mentioned in terms of what we have achieved that we have done a full R&D portfolio review and also of our product offerings. I also mentioned quickly that we are not fully ready yet. And the reason for that is that we did this review last spring, we were finished in May. And by that time, our new and updated strategy wasn't in place. So it's impossible to steer new R&D investments before we have an updated strategy in place. So now with new eyes and glasses, our operational companies are reviewing their R&D pipelines moving forward and what we invest in moving forward should be focused and also drive towards the new updated strategy. And we will do that based on customer insights, and we will have a customer-centric R&D, which should also follow a gate-staged process to ensure that we fulfill business cases that we should have. And when I say focused, it's also not choosing what to do but also what not to do. And I'd rather have -- and I'm making this fictious number up now, I'd rather have 4 projects that go full steam ahead than having 8 that is on half speed and then takes twice the time. So that's what we mean with focus. And the optimization will come after we implement the updated strategy towards our R&D pipeline.

Great. Unfortunately, the Q&A time is up. Again, thank you, BICO, for allowing me to host this Q&A. And I'll hand over the word to you, Anders.

Thank you. Thank you, Ulrik, for moderating this Q&A. And this leads to the end of today's online Capital Markets Day. But before we finalize, let's have a few final words by Maria. Thank you, Ulrik.

Thank you for joining us today, both here in Gothenburg as well as online. We appreciate your time and also your attention as we unveiled our updated strategy and shared our in-depth look at how lab automation and holistic workflow offerings should be made in the future for BICO. I also want to take the opportunity to thank all talented BICO employees around the world for their dedication as well as express my gratitude to our customers and business partners who continuously put their trust in BICO, especially appreciate in the tough market we're in when capital is more scarce and the R&D investments often are on hold. As we move forward, our commitment remains steadfast in creating sustainable, profitable growth and maximizing shareholder value. This will not be a quick fix. There's still much work to do as we continue to work diligently to become the first choice lab automation partner and provider of selected workflows to pharma and biotech. And your continued support and trust in our vision is important, especially in this tough market as we embark on the next chapter on the BICO journey, starting today, where we will enable and automate the lab of the future and it's now the true work begins. And by that, I will hand over to Anders for some final words.

Thank you, Maria. The presentation deck that you saw today is already available on our website, bico.com, and the live sessions from today will also be posted on our website as of tomorrow. It will be an on-demand version, you can register and get access. And with that being said, I thank everyone who has been joining us online and everyone here in Gothenburg. And by that, we finalized the first part of today's Capital Markets Day. Thank you.