Cegedim SA (C7E.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So thank you for attending this presentation, which is about the full year 2025 revenue and of course, Q4 2025 revenue, too. So the full year revenue is EUR 649.2 million, which is a growth like-for-like of 1.1% and a slight decrease of 0.8% reported. The difference between both mainly comes from the deconsolidation of In Practice System, the doctor activities in the U.K. in December 2024. Over the year, the best performers were HR's activity, cloud, e-business, health insurance and marketing, which drove the growth. The reorganization of the pharmacist activity in France during H2 has weighted on the annual growth as well as on the Q4 growth. On Q4, it's a like-for-like decrease in revenue of 1.5%, 3.2% reported. The gap is also coming from the deconsolidation of In Practice System by the end of 2024. The growth came in from international health care professional activities and in France from e-business and Cegedim Santé, unfortunately, which were offset by the pharmacy activity in France and also on the data activities outside France on Q4. However, we confirm our target for full year adjusted operating income growth of at least 15%. You can see here the bridge on growth, decomposing the reported growth on -- with the impact of structure and currency. So as I mentioned, the structure impact is mainly the deconsolidation of In Practice System on December 2024. And the currency impact is mainly due to the sterling pound. As we have mentioned in our previous calls, we would like to present to you the group through its business units in the future, even though we will still detail the results by division until the 2025 full year results. So I will sum up the main trends for each business, and I will detail a bit more when we get to the division split up later on in the presentation. In Q4, the Health and Provident insurance revenue was mainly flat, 0.7% decrease like-for-like. With the normalization of growth of its third-party payer solution on fraud detection as well as the overflow business in BPO, we will see that over the year, there have been dynamic growth contributors. Also, they had experienced very strong growth in the previous years and also in Q4 2024. In software, the growth mainly came from Activus, the solution in the U.K. with two new clients during the year that contributed to project revenues in Q4. On the Cegedim Business Services side, we have a growth of 5.3% reported, 5% like-for-like due to its HR software activity as well as a pickup, and we will see later on also in demand for its e-invoicing activity due to the coming up of the French reform that will take place for its first phase in September '26, so this year. Healthcare Professional was down 4.5% like-for-like, 11.5% reported. The gap coming from -- mainly from In Practice System. And this business unit has mainly suffered from the impact of the reorganization of our pharmacist activities in France when Cegedim Santé posted a growth of 2.5% and the doctors outside France, 14.2% during this quarter. We will elaborate a bit more when we go to the division. The same for Data & Marketing and Cloud & Support, which had a tough comparison Q4 in 2024. However, you can see that on a full year basis, especially on Data & Marketing, you can see that marketing is growing 2.9%. Even though last year, it had the benefits of the Olympic Games, and its target was to at least make the same revenue this full year. It was able to get some growth when data is flat, thanks to the French operation, which we were getting some growth when international data activities were a bit more difficult throughout the year. However, Data & Marketing has been able to post a 1.5% growth reported 1.3% like-for-like. To get back on the Health and Provident insurance, you can see on the full year, the growth is 3%, 4.4% for its software activity due to some project dynamics and also to the run from the project from 2024. Also, it's offering in fraud detection, which is in the third-party payer solution -- activity, sorry, was helped to post a 4.1% growth for this activity. And also its overflow business, even though we said there was a normalization of growth in Q4, over the year was able to contribute positively to the growth for the Health and Provident insurance. On Cegedim Business Services, you can see the growth was almost 7% over the year, thanks to its performing HR software activity. Its strategy to address not only the big accounts, but also to the smaller clients is proven successful. Also, its e-business activity is, as I mentioned earlier, benefiting from the reform coming up in France for the e-invoicing reform, sorry. Over the year, the healthcare professionals have seen a decrease of revenue of 7.7% like-for-like. The gap was reported, as I mentioned, due to the deconsolidation of In Practice System, and it's mainly due to the reorganization of pharmacist activities in France. Over the year, Cloud & Support, and I will elaborate a bit later on, has been able to post a solid growth of 2.6% despite the ending of outsourcing contract during Q2 that weighted on the growth on full year. Let's go to the division, the breakdown that you are used to. And so you can see here the bridge by division, you can see that. As in the bridge for BU, you see that 4 out of 5 were able to post a growth -- reported growth on the full year basis and also on like-for-like growth. Only software is on 4.9% reported and 0.8% like-for-like, as we will see on the next slide. So here, you have some more detail about the growth in Software & Services division. As I mentioned before, you can see the growth like-for-like is a slight decrease of 0.8%. On the Q4 is 0.4% like-for-like decrease. So Cegedim Santé is down 0.5% reported, 2.6% like-for-like. Remember, we talked about it at the beginning of the year. There's been a renegotiation of a data providing contract that weighed on the revenue growth. Unfortunately, it overshadows the good performance of the Maiia Suite and also the Claude Bernard database throughout the year. Without this renegotiation of contract, you would have seen here a growth both on reported and like-for-like. It's worth noting also that in Q4, Cegedim Santé benefited from the start of the Wave 2 of Ségur de la Santé for doctors that also contributed positively. In other activities in France, we mentioned earlier the good performance of HR softwares and insurance, which performed with a solid growth over the year that this good performance is offset by the pharmacist activities in France, of which the reorganization I talked about earlier happened during H2. Remember, we had a redundancy of about 1/3 of the workforce at the pharmacist activity, which led to a reorganization of the activity during H2, and that weighted on the revenue generated during the second half. On international activities, you can see a big gap between reported and like-for-like growth, which is mainly due to the deconsolidation of In Practice System. The growth -- the like-for-like growth is mainly due to Spain, the Spain activity, doctors in Spain with the project around the High Council for Sports over there and also the start of the project in the Balearic Island. In the U.K., it benefits from -- both from Activus, which I mentioned earlier, which is gaining new clients and thus some projects also in revenue and also from pharmacists in the U.K., which we're able to conquer some new clients to and contributing to growth also for these international activities in the Software & Services division. On the Flow division, there are both -- two activities, the e-business activity and the third-party payer activity. On the e-business, you can see the division is growing 6.1% reported, 6.2% like-for-like. The e-business segment was able to generate 7.6% growth this year. So as I mentioned earlier, the French reform for electronic invoicing is coming up in September for its first phase. So that we -- so we see a pickup in demand from companies for this activity. It's worth noting also that its second segment, the Healthcare Flow practice has also experienced growth throughout the year, especially thanks to its offering for hospitals that are designed to make that drug purchasing secure. So all in, the e-business is growing by more than 7%. On the third-party payer side, you can see that it's still a solid growth of more than 4% over the year, driven by its offering on fraud and long-term illness detection and that was able to drive the growth, sorry. The Data & Marketing division now, you can see that the growth is about 1.5% throughout the year. Q4 had been tough last year, to have been tough to beat because we had a very good activity in Q4 and 2024. Over the year, data is flat. And the growth in France, it experienced some growth, but the momentum in international operation was unfavorable during the year. So it led to this flattish performance in data. In marketing, I will repeat myself, but I think it's very worth noting that despite the tough comparison basis in 2024 due to the Olympic Games, especially in Q3, the marketing activity was able to generate some growth over the year, almost 3%, which is a very solid performance because we were expecting a flattish growth for this activity. On the BPO division, I already talked a bit about both. It's been -- it has experienced a growth of 1% over the year and almost the same between Insurance and Business Services BPO. The insurance BPO has been led -- its growth has been led by overflow business -- by its overflow business, which served the clients. It was launched 3 years ago and experienced last year a very strong growth. So it was a bit harder to beat this year. Still, it's able to generate growth over the year. And on the Business Services BPO side, the growth of 1.6% over the year is mainly due to its business compliance offering, especially for pharmaceutical labs. Last but not least, the Cloud & Support division, as I mentioned earlier, has grown by 2.6% over the year. It had an adverse effect in Q2 that you can see on the graph on the left-hand side due to the end of an outsourcing contract that also weighed on the rest of the year. However, it has been able to post growth and generate 2.6% over the year. On the outlook, we would like to confirm to you that we will be able to grow the adjusted operating income on the 2025 full year by at least 15%. I think it was worth telling you that. And it's pretty much on the outlook for the moment. And you can see here the next agenda. So we will announce the full year 2025 earnings on March 26, which will be the next meeting we'll have together. So now I think you may have some questions. And as usual, if so, please if you can raise your hand on your side, and I will give you the floor.

I think we'll start with Amira. Please, the floor is yours.

I have a few questions. The first one is, can you give us more color on the decline in third-party payment activity in Q4? Second one is about the outlook of 2026. What will be the growth dynamic for next year? Should we expect continued stable activity? And can we expect also an improvement in the current operating margin in 2026 also? What will be the impact of the restructuring plan for the Pharmacy division in France and the sale of [ INPS ] on profitability on the bottom line of -- yes. That's it for me.

Okay. So maybe the first one on the third-party payer on the fourth quarter, it's worth noting that last year was a very strong growth. It experienced almost 18% growth last year as we had launched it. So it was a very tough comparison basis. So when I said that the growth is normalizing, it's also that the comparison effect was tough to beat. However, we still experienced growth in this -- for this solution on fraud and long-term illness detection. So we won't have 18% growth like we had last year. It's still performing quite well. So then your next question was regarding growth in 2026. I don't know, Pierre, if you want to answer or I will. So for the moment, and we'll -- maybe we'll refine later on, but we expect in 2026 growth in a range between 2% and 4%. There are a few trends which are positive, especially, as I mentioned, at Cegedim Business Services on the reform for the e-invoicing that will help the growth. We expect also -- we believe that Cegedim Santé could be able also to achieve some growth. So we believe we will be in the range between 2% and 4% in 2026.

Maybe I can add something.

Sure.

We may have a decrease in the revenue for the BPO insurance part. The reason for that is that we have three very big contracts with big insurance firm. And in those contracts, which are long-term contracts, during the negotiation, we have agreed to lower the revenue because what we have sold to the client is that we are going to improve our efficiency. So somehow, we may have next year a decrease in the BPO revenue because this is written in the contract, but this will not have negative impact on the EBIT in the sense that we are just giving back to the client the positive effect of the increase of our efficiency. And that's the reason why we feel that the growth globally for the group will be between 2% and 4%. In terms of EBIT for next year, we will have an improvement due to the fact that we have reduced staff in our pharmacist business for France by 100 people. And at least, we expect, of course, more than just this effect, meaning that we should have also at least 15% growth on the EBIT as we will have for the year 2025. That's the target.

I think your last question, Amira, was on the impact of the deconsolidation of In Practice System. We had mentioned that the deconsolidation could improve the adjusted operating income by around EUR 5 million. And I think there was also your question on the impact on the pharmacist plan, the collective plan that we announced. Remember that all the provisions were passed on the first half. So I don't know if this answers your question.

Yes.

Are there some other questions? Yes, [ Johannes ]. The floor is yours.

A short question concerning the BPO contract with Allianz. Did I understand it right that this is now on a profitable basis? And what can we expect here as profitability for 2026?

2026 will be the year where we will be breakeven. We know that we are going -- in our business plan, profits are coming after the third year of contract. So next year, it will not generate a high EBIT.

Okay. And are there other contracts as well that improve to profitability?

Well, we have two other contracts, which looks like the Allianz contract. It's the Klesia contract and it's the BCAC contract. BCAC, it's the insurance company which insure the people who are working in insurance company in fact. And Klesia, it's a big insurance company, and they are providing services to a lot of pharmacists, a lot of restaurants. Those contracts, they are profitable. But those two contracts, we will have a decrease in terms of revenue for the reason I said previously, we have negotiated a reduction in terms of revenue because we improve the profits on those contracts by being more efficient. Roughly, those contracts, they can generate between 3% and 5% EBIT.

And the total improvement of all these BPO activities, what will be the EBIT difference to 2025 approximately?

No, no. We won't have any growth. It will be roughly the same amount, same figure.

The same EBIT?

Yes, same EBIT in percentage, 5%, something like that with a small reduction of the revenue. So roughly, it will be the same amount.

Okay. So no improvement from the BPO side?

No, no. The improvement will come from the software for pharmacies business because the reduction of people will generate between EUR 5 million and EUR 6 million EBIT and the improvement of Cegedim Santé, the Maiia suite because it is growing. We are gaining clients. The renegotiation of the data providing contract to IQVIA is behind us. This has had a very negative impact on the year 2025, but will have no impact on 2026 compared to 2025. But the fact that we are growing in terms of market share, and we will receive some subsidies from the Ségur plan, we will have an improvement of profit there, too.

Okay. And the profitability with Maiia, what can we expect from there in absolute figures?

In fact, we don't compute the profitability of Maiia. We compute the profitability of the business unit, Cegedim software for healthcare professionals because Maiia is now a part of all our offers. So I don't think I have the figures. Probably for 2025, we will be breakeven, Damien?

Yes.

And we should make something like EUR 2 million to EUR 3 million more in 2026. Those figures, I'm not sure of that because first of all, the figures -- the annual figures are not finished. And I should have looked, but this is what we have in our heads.

Are there any other questions? Well, so I believe that I don't see any other questions either written or by any reason. So thank you for attending the presentation. As I mentioned, our next meeting will be by the end of March, on March 26 for the annual results of the group. So thank you very much for attending the presentation, and have a good evening. Thank you, and bye-bye.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.