DocMorris AG (DOCM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Dear, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call of Zur Rose Group AG. At our customers' request, this conference will be recorded. [Operator Instructions] May I now hand you over to Walter Oberhänsli, CEO of Zur Rose, for this conference. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Zur Rose Group's 2020 Results Conference. I'm joined by Marcel, who will discuss the numbers. And as a result of the recent change in the management team, our new head, Germany, who is Walter Hess, we're really happy to introduce to you today. Walter is actually a long-standing member of the Executive Board with a proven record in the Swiss business as well as parts of the German business in the past. In his function, he has an excellent exclusion capacity, ability to form and scale partnerships in the context of platform strategies and also new business models. He has a great network in the chain and also Swiss health care system, and we are all confident that Walter is a perfect fit to lead us through the upcoming growth phase initiated by the introduction of electronic prescriptions in Germany. I'll now share with you firsthand insights on the developments around the eRx opportunity so but also brand integration and logistics capacity. I will then give an update on technology and new business before Marcel. We finish with our 2021 and midterm financial outlook. So let me now start with my personal summary of 2020. A quick word to start on the financial performance, which Marcel will explain in detail with a sales growth of 14.4% in local currency, we exceeded our target for 2020. On the earnings side, we also achieved our target with an adjusted EBITDA before growth investments of minus CHF 0.9 million. Nevertheless, EBITDA reported came in at minus CHF 17 million, largely driven by extraordinary nonrecurring effects that Marcel will explain. Important to notice that on a like-for-like basis, we achieved an operational improvement of CHF 30 million. Our focus has to remain on growth, given the opportunities in our market and it is crucial to invest now to fully capture the opportunities ahead of us. Overall, 2 main themes shape this year, which, in my opinion, has been one of the most important years in the history of Zur Rose. In the big picture, I see the preparing for the eRx opportunity and the developing and also investing in our tech capabilities, which builds the cornerstone in metamorphosis on an e-commerce to a tech company with a clear platform ecosystem focus. Out of the many highlights in 2020, I would like to discuss 3. First, the regulatory changes around the introduction of the eRx triggered by COVID-19, especially the mandatory electronic format for prescriptions already starting in 2022. I see these changes as a turning point in the history of e-commerce pharmacy, whereas in the past, the protection of brick-and-mortar was the common theme in legislation, a new regulation has to be seen as the starting of reshaping the whole industry to become digital. Finally, we had to wait a long while for these changes. The second highlight to pick out is the extension of our tech capabilities as demonstrated by the acquisition of TeleClinic, which added a new business model to the group. The combination of the digital doctor visit and our digital medication services fully enabled by eRx will also -- will allow us to offer relevant solutions along the digital patient journey. We believe that telemedicine has a bright future by its own and, furthermore, will create a lot of synergies to our base business and vice versa. Via COVID, telemedicine has also seen an accelerator in acceptance, which boosted overall telemedicine leads. Again, we invested heavily in our tech capabilities, and the results can already be seen with the multiple contributions of our subsidiary eHealth-Tec to enable the eRx backend infrastructure, then our first fully house-developed app and within the successfully launched cooperation of the joint venture CSS, Allianz and Visana as a proof of the accuracy of our efforts. I see, indeed, the third highlight within the changes in our team, Walter brings his knowledge in building platform-based networks to Germany and his track record in operational excellence will further improve our execution in everything we do. In sum, 2020 has been a very important year with cost setting key milestones in the areas of eRx, technology and our management setup to fully focus on the eRx introduction, execution and to continue on our growth trajectory. With these opening remarks, I like to hand over to Marcel, who will explain the financial development.

Thank you, Walter. Good afternoon. I'd like to start with the achievements of our communicated targets for 2020. As you can see, we delivered on sales and also on EBITDA. With sales growth of 14.4% year-on-year, we exceeded our target above 10% like we already communicated also in January. On the profitability side, we achieved our target of breakeven on an adjusted EBITDA level and before expenses for additional growth initiatives. This corresponds to an operational improvement compared to previous year of roughly CHF 30 million on a like-for-like basis and show that our established business models of e-pharmacy is a sustainable one. And I will explain the extraordinary items, the impact of the growth initiatives in detail later in the presentation. But let's start with group sales growth of this 14.4%. Overall, the impact of COVID-19 on our sales development was a slight tailwind in 2020, its extra demand and impact in our business models and segments. In Switzerland, we achieved a growth rate of 7.1%, which is ahead of expectations and also above-market growth. Both B2B and the B2C business performed very well, driven by higher volumes from existing customers and new customer growth as well. In our largest segment in terms of sales, Germany, we were able to grow by 16.5%. This is in local currency and includes net tax and Apotal. Main drivers of this growth were our base business despite a flat development in our paper Rx business as well as strong performance of our OTC business and the acquisition of Apotal, which is included in the numbers since the closing of the acquisition in August. Especially our core brands grew at a strong pace. The third segment drop delivered a very strong performance with sales of 73.5% in local currency. This was possible to a significant increase in the number of active customers, which now stands for above CHF 1 million. Next, I want to share the development of the KPIs of our B2C marketplace business across all segments. On the left-hand side, we see the key development in the growth of the number of active customers, 10.5 million, corresponding to a growth rate of 52%. This was driven by a strong organic increase in customers of 2.5 million, added -- and 1.1 million added via the Apotal acquisition. Due to continued higher growth in the German OTC as well the European marketplace business with typically more commoditized product and slightly smaller baskets compared to Rx and B2C in Switzerland, the average overall basket price decreased from EUR 57 to EUR 54. The same holds true also for the order frequency, which is now at 2.2x a year. Our repeat order remains at a high level at 76%, which shows the significant loyalty of our customers. The decrease was driven by the large number of new customers, especially in our Europe and Germany segment. In terms of site visits, we saw an increase from 116 million to 244 million in the 12-month period ending end of 2020. Despite sales of operational improvements, investments for growth initiatives and extraordinary effects were the key drivers in the P&L. This P&L shows the adjusted numbers without extraordinary items, but including expenses for growth initiatives. With this, we want to show the operational performance on a comparable level to previous year. One comment about the sales. We want to still continue to show both the reported sales line as well as the sales line including Medpex and Apotal, which shows the best view of our growth performance. As the focus for the next 2 years is on eRx readiness and flexibility in terms of existing capacity, we do not expect the full of inflation of the 2 brands in this time period. And therefore, the reporting structure will remain the same. The gross margin is the strong driver in 2020. We achieved an expansion from 15.4% to 17% on group level and the largest contribution came from the improvement in the German OTC gross margin. Stronger growth in business models with lower basket sizes, as you have seen in the KPI overview before, led to this increased gross margin, but also to increased variable cost ratios such as personnel expenses and distribution. Marketing expenses were slightly higher as a percentage of sales because of an increasing marketplace Europe business with a higher marketing ratio. This leads to an improvement at the adjusted EBITDA level of 0.9% or CHF 9 million to previous year. The expenses in additional growth initiatives, such as eRx, European expansion and telemedicine of roughly CHF 30 million are also included in these line items. I will explain impact on EBITDA on the next slide in more detail. Below EBITDA depreciation increased as a result of a higher base due to acquisitions and also higher spending in tech development. And finance expenses increased due to the interest rates of the bonds and convertible bond. The 2019 straight bond for the first time has a full year impact of CHF 5 million, whereas the convertible bond interest amounted year-to-date to CHF 3.6 million. let now me read through the EBITDA impact. This chart gives you a chance to compare the performance of our established business compared to last year. It therefore shows adjustments, but also investments in those initiatives where the revenue and profit returns will generate value in the future. For transparency obviously, we decided to define an adjusted EBITDA level to show the operational performance compared to previous year, irrespective of the influence of special items and one-offs. The bars on the left-hand side of each shows the reported EBITDA, which reduced from minus 13.8% in 2019 to minus 78.4% in 2020. This is not really comparable because it includes significant one-offs in each year. Starting in 2019, the most significant adjustment was the reevaluation of earn-out components, especially in connection with the acquisition of Medpex and the disposal of assets to the Medbase joint venture in Switzerland leading to an adjusted EBITDA of minus 40.2%. In 2020, on the right-hand side of this graph, share-based retention package for founders was the largest position included in the M&A bar, which leads to a total positive adjustment of 17.9% in the -- million -- sorry, CHF 17.9 million and CHF 3.5 million integration cost caused by the bundling of activities in health and at Manheim and the integration of Vitalsana. This extraordinary positions resulting out maybe a significant improvement compared to previous year. In addition to this, due to an interim ruling of ECJ as of end of last week, which was unfavorable for our VAT statement, we reassessed our risk position and increased accordingly by CHF 13.7 million. Let me give you some background on this, the legal proceeding goes back to change in the billing process with German insurance companies in 2013. Since then, DocMorris was no longer able to apply the Rx bonuses as a reduction in the tax base as it was the case previously. Other result in a higher tax burden. In our view, this represents unjustified disadvantage compared to German pharmacies. The [ lead ] proceeding is still ongoing and will now continue in Germany, but has no impact on our ongoing business. Other adjustments with CHF 12.1 million related to COVID-19 product price decreases in 2020. After these adjustments, we achieved improvement compared to previous year of CHF 9 million at adjusted EBITDA level. Our financial target for 2020 was to achieve breakeven before investments in additional growth initiatives or, in other words, by even in the performance of our established business. The growth initiatives each year significant potential of new earnings. The 3 investment categories are segment Europe, which is in a strong growth phase; eRx, where we expect first impact on sales after the Gematik launch in July; and new business, which mainly accounts for the expenses in scaling our telemedicine platform, TeleClinic. These investments amounts to CHF 30.3 million with a margin of 0.1% and an absolute number of minus CHF 0.9 million. We are in line with our profitability target for the year. This comparable figure for last year was minus CHF 30.8 million. We, therefore, achieved the operational improvement of roughly CHF 30 million. With our run rate analysis, we show what our profitability would look like, assuming full integration of acquired businesses. On the first line of the chart, you see our 2020 figures. As just explained, we see the starting points for like-for-like level at EBITDA margin of minus 0.1%. The second line shows our run rate based on the current sales. The improvements are driven by increasing gross margins, low picking costs in our efficient logistics operation, efficiency in marketing as well as from the realization of organizational synergies. This realization of the synergies leads to a run rate EBITDA margin of between 2% and 3%. With our operational full year results, we are fully in line with our path to profitability targets. Firstly, we managed to improve our gross margin. Secondly, we implemented 1 organization for the German segment and integrated service functions. And thirdly, we focused our marketing expenses, our DocMorris, Medpex and are pursuing profitable growth. The key changes in the balance sheet were driven by the launch of the convertible bond in March last year, leading to a higher cash position and higher financial liabilities, and the capital increase in July, which strengthened our equity base and also added to the cash position. On the other hand, we invested in the acquisition of TeleClinic and Apotal in the development of our common platform and in our new logistics center in Heerlen. And increase in payables, we could keep our net working capital stable, and this despite the COVID-related increase in inventories. Overall, the balance sheet with an increased equity ratio of 41.6% and CHF 300 million of cash clearly has the financial strength to invest in our strategic initiatives, especially the eRx opportunity, which Walter will now elaborate on in the next part of the presentation.

Thank you, Marcel, and welcome to everyone. It is a pleasure to meet you via the phone today, and I'm looking forward to future interactions with you, for example, at our Capital Markets Day, which will take place in the second quarter of this year. Let's dive right into the most exciting topic and biggest opportunity for our company, which is the future growth which will be driven by the introduction of the electronic prescriptions, which will be the mandatory model in Germany starting in 9 months from now. Just to remind you of the potential of the opportunity, you can see on this chart the size of the online market in different penetration scenarios. Today, the online Rx market is roughly EUR 600 million in size, which equals an online penetration of 1.4%. If this moves up to 5%, the online market would be a bit more than EUR 2 billion, at 10% level that has already been reached in Sweden, it would be EUR 4.3 billion and at 20%, which equals the online penetration on the OTC side in Germany, the online market would be more than EUR 8 billion. As stated in the guidance, we expect that the online penetration can reach a level of around 10% in the next 3 to 5 years. Let's take a look at the current road map of the German government and Gematik. Gematik is still targeting to launch the national eRx infrastructure in July of this year. Other important elements of the roadmap are the rollout of the eRx capabilities and the connection to the telematic infrastructure of all stakeholders involved, especially the physicians and pharmacies. Another key element is the publication of the specifications of the Gematik APIs, which will define the ways in which third-party apps can access these scripts on behalf of their users. Our expectation is that the specifications will be published in the second quarter of this year. Lastly, the handling and adoption of identification and authentication processes will play an important role in how the take-up of the different anticipated customer journeys such as paper printouts, Gematik app, third-party apps and digital insurance cards will develop. Overall, the road map leads any way to multiple implementation scenarios for which we need to prepare. That's why our core focus remains on ensuring readiness for all potential scenarios. We are mapping the journeys for all of the before-mentioned scenarios and we'll be ready for the different entry points in all of our web shops and apps. The ramp-up and scale-up of our digital health care ecosystem, as initiated with our app launch in December; the extension of the digital customer journey with telemedicine; as well as our first ecosystem partnership are key success factors, enabling us to differentiate towards the customer with a unique and valuable offering. Thanks to our involvement in the leading eRx pilot projects in the pre-Gematik phase, we have already been able to learn about which preparations are needed in the back end systems, at our locations and are on a good track to be ready when e-script volume starts to pick up. Staying with the theme of readiness, the solutions provided by our subsidiary, eHealth-Tec, are playing a major role in ensuring the implementation of electronic prescriptions in Germany. With holistic solutions ranging from modules for physician and pharmacy information systems up to server solutions, eHealth-Tec has converted its pioneer role to become a ring leader in the development of eRx technology. This also led to being selected to develop the national eRx for Gematik as a partner of IBM. The eRezept Deutschland project, led by Techniker Krankenkasse has been fully operational now since last December. With the first e-script handled via insurance apps. The scaling of eRx in the pre-Gematik phase has been limited by the lack of general reimbursement or reimbursement team, which will only be available once the Gematik infrastructure is live as of mid of this year. Overall, important building blocks for eRx, both back-end and front-end, have been created and developed by us in the pre-Gematik phase. These play an important role in the eRx ramp up, both in the creation of the national eRx infrastructure as well as in our internal readiness. We believe that our efforts in the pre-Gematik phase have significantly accelerated and enabled the implementation of electronic prescriptions in Germany. In anticipation of the big opportunity ahead of us. We are convinced that the right time to drive awareness for our brand to meet especially chronically ill people is right now. We started with a viral Christmas campaign with more than 147 million views worldwide. And as some of you might have seen on German national TV, we have initiated a big marketing campaign in February this year to up to 8 customers ahead of the eRx launch. And we already see that the response to the campaign after the first week is very promising. And the gain of new customers exceeds already our expectations up to now. The image on the chart shows the lead campaign image and the claim of the campaign, which is [Foreign Language] or the new way to healthy. At the end of last year, we launched our digital healthcare ecosystem platform with the DocMorris+ app, which has been fully developed in-house as a joint effort of our tech teams in Berlin and Barcelona. The number of downloads and partners are constantly increasing while we are expanding and improving the platform. In addition to the marketplace function, we are integrating value-add services such as telemedicine, same-day delivery and click-and-collect to ensure customer journeys from diagnosis to delivery. And of course, our road map also includes eRx readiness for all potential journeys as well as further improvements to a seamless customer experience. At the beginning of this week, the same-day delivery option went live with additional partners offering this service. At the moment, we have on-boarded roughly 20 pharmacy partners and are targeting to increase them to about 200 by end of the year in order to offer a nationwide coverage for same-day deliveries. On the DocMorris side, we have integrated the link to telemedicine and TeleClinic on the entry page as well as on more than 7,000 Rx product pages directly. And we see in the first weeks, since go live, we already see -- or in the first weeks that we go live, we already see that customers appreciate this full digital offering from diagnosis to delivery as it gives greater convenience to one of the major customer journeys. I would like now to highlight our progress in terms of brand integration and logistics capacity, 2 major success factors for our future growth. In Q4, we finalized our group-wide branding project, which confirms DocMorris as the lead brand of our group. In Segment Germany, we have already started the transition towards a streamlined brand portfolio by first introducing the new branding with the before-mentioned TV and Christmas campaigns. And the first brand integration with the discontinuation of Vitalsana in Q4 2020. We want to complete the brand integration over the next 3 to 5 years, with a clear focus on optimal customer transition metrics. On this last slide of my part of the presentation I want to highlight that we are on track with the ramp-up of our new logistics site in Heerlen. As you can see in this recent picture, the installation of the warehouse automation is well underway and will be completed in the second half of the year. The degree of automation in the new warehouse will be at roughly 70%, which will give us the potential for significant improvements of efficiency in the future. The new warehouse will add 50 million parcels in capacity per year to scale our total capacity including all sites in Germany to 48 million parcels per year. The additional capacity will be fully available in 2022, just in time for the launch of electronic prescriptions. The multi-site setup is giving us strategic advantages regarding capacity, convenience and speed. I would like to conclude that we are on good track to take full advantage of the eRx opportunity ahead of us and are looking to significantly accelerate our growth over the next years. With that, I hand it back over to Walter, and then looking forward to answering your questions in the Q&A session.

Perfect, Walter. Let us come now to technology and also new business. As highlighted already before, technology has gained heavily in significance within Zur Rose. We have taken major steps on our pathway of evolving from an e-commerce player to becoming a technology company. The foundation for this is our large and growing team of tech experts located in our tech hubs in Berlin, Barcelona and Winterthur, Zurich. More than 200 employees are working highly motivated to evolve our technology with specific product focus on eRx, marketplace, telemedicine, digital health journeys and our newest business platform as a service. Here, I would like to highlight our first ecosystem partnership, which will go live as soon as end of this month. Within this partnership, we want to offer solution for patients with obesity, which is a very common, but very rarely misdiagnosed disease. Many times, obesity patients are stigmatized and do not have sufficient information about the disease itself, but also there are treatment options. This is where we start with our journey by offering information and also physician access on the landing page, which we call the Weight Management Hub. From there, patients can opt for telemedicine and speak to a physician via the TeleClinic platform. In case of an obesity diagnosis, a digital script for medication or a digital solution is issued, and the patient can decide on which pharmacy, of course, including DocMorris, he wants to send his prescription to. To maximize user experience as well as adherence, we have designed an adherence monitoring program, which includes follow-up consultations, for example, via telemedicine and/or other solutions. This is the first partnership in the ecosystem ramp up, and it gives us 3 monetization layers. First, additional volume of telemedicine treatments; second, additional product revenue; and three, partnership fees. Another solution which is already live is the DIGa portal, which we are offering at TeleClinic. DIGa meaning [Foreign Language]. Digital health apps are reimbursed for by German health insurances, which is a novel in health care. At TeleClinic, we provide information about all the DIGas available and interested patients can get access to a physician via the platform to discuss whether a specific DIGa can support their health journey. In case the physician sees a fit, he can issue a script to enable access to the digital solution for the patient. We absolutely support the usage of digital solutions to help chronic patients as a part of our ecosystem strategy and aim to further increase telemedicine visits via the TeleClinic platform. The platform as a service model for our platform was introduced as we see growing interest from third parties in our technology starting in Switzerland. The launch of the insurance corporation to create an open platform on the basis of parts of our technology as well as the mandate to create the eRx server as a partner of IBM in Germany are already 2 very concrete use cases. This also means that Zur Rose is no longer perceived just as a medication but also as a technology provider, who brings relevant solutions for the huge health care challenges of society. Our focus in this approach is to drive path with -- like insurance companies and in areas where we do not plan to operate our core business ourselves. While the contribution in 2021 will be small compared to our numbers, we do see relevant potential for scaling this very interesting business model. Our Europe segment as the tech heart of Zur Rose, in which we are rapidly scaling the marketplace model, grew at the rate of 73.5% in 2020, making it the fastest-growing segment and reached active customers of more than 1 million in the 12-month period ending at 31st of December last year. I'm really happy about this. With the rapid expansion of sellers as well as numbers of SKUs, we are well equipped to continue the growth path in this segment. We also took the first step of brand integration in the segment by introducing new logos, both in Spain and France and adding the name of DocMorris within the branding. For 2021, the focus is on scaling the business and enabling a truly European health care ecosystem with the full implementation of new branding. We are also exploring expansion opportunities, both in terms of adding additional product categories as well as geographies. I'm finishing by summarizing our key strategic priorities for 2021. The 4 priorities are growth, where we aim for 20% higher sales; the eRx opportunity, of course; and brand integration and logistics capacity; as well as our path to profitability. Our key focus remains on growth. This focus is not at all limited to the eRx opportunity but also holds true for our OTC business as well as our Europe and Switzerland segments. We are, however, of course, expecting a clear acceleration once eRx becomes mandatory. With our marketing campaign in Germany, we are going for the Taladro effect of driving a change of behavior in relation to ordering Rx pharmaceuticals. The eRx opportunity is clearly the core focus in the organization, the whole organization. There is a lot to do as well to explain, but we are ready and excited to drive change and take full advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I'm again very happy that we were able to confirm DocMorris as the umbrella brand for Europe and we now will drive transition towards a simplified brand architecture with the first steps already taken with the Vitalsana, PromoFarma and DoctiPharma transition. As you might have noticed in this presentation, we also adapted the [ methodical ] branding and corporate colors to come closer to our lead customer brand and, at the same time, use colors that stand for growth and sustainability. Capacity expansion is furthermore a key factor and our new logistics site with a significantly greater degree of automation will enable us to scale and handle the expected large increase in demand. Lastly, we are also continuing to progress on our path to profitability. Just to reiterate, our focus remains on growth and we will increase spending in marketing significantly in 2021. But nevertheless, we also work hard on further operational improvements to add to the CHF 30 million that were achieved in 2020, but also on increasing speed to customer, which will become more and more important. Lastly, new business models like platform as a service, will add revenue streams with higher profitability at our core business over time. Overall, I see Zur Rose in a great shape, ahead of a very exciting -- very, very exciting years of changing the whole industry. With that, I hand back to Marcel for the financial outlook.

Thank you. As we just stated, our clear focus remains on growth, both in 2021 and the coming years. For 2021, we expect sales growth of around 20%, including Medpex and Apotal. First, eRx scales are expected after the launch of Gematik infrastructure currently targeted for July 2021 and to accelerate with the mandatory introduction in 2022. A large marketing push to drive awareness of our European lead brand, DocMorris, was initiated in February, which will result in increased marketing spending in 2021. The breakeven on EBITDA is therefore targeted within 12 to 18 months after 2021. In the midterm, which for us is the time horizon from 2024 to 2026, the growth is obviously also driven by this unprecedented momentum of the introduction of electronic prescriptions in Germany. We believe that online penetration of Rx can reach a level of around 10% with further potential beyond this time period. Towards the beginning of the guidance period, management expects to grow revenue to above CHF 4 billion. And the midterm EBITDA margin target is confirmed at around 8%. As Walter just mentioned, the implementation of the health care ecosystem is creating meaningful potential for additional revenue and profit upside. I want to finish the presentation with our path to profitability slide. Starting at the run rate margin explained earlier, we see the additional increase in profitability to come from scale effects and especially the rising share of eRx in our business mix. Prescription orders have the highest contribution margins after arrival cost with a margin of 10% in the paper world with the potential to us towards 15% driven by discontinuation of Rx bonus and streamlined digital processes. This will translate to an increase in gross margin and once we reach a larger scale also to a reduction in the marketing cost ratio. With that, I would like to conclude the presentation and open the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question we received is from Volker Bosse of Baader Bank.

I would like to start with your earnings guidance. You say an EBITDA breakeven in 12 to 18 months after '21. Just for clarification, '21 plus 12 to 18 months means we are in 2023. So you expect breakeven to be in 2023? And if you speak about EBITDA, do you speak about reported EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA or EBITDA before expenses and growth initiatives? And also regarding your guidance, in this guidance for '23, what does it mean for '21? Obviously, of course, EBITDA will be negative in 2021, but where do we stand in 2021 versus 2020? Is it an improvement to be expected? Or perhaps the kind of range on that front for 2020 would be helpful. And another one on your midterm outlook. From my point of view, you increased the midterm sales guidance from CHF 3 billion to CHF 4 billion. So far, you spoke about CHF 3 billion to sales, now CHF 4 billion. Is that right? Can you confirm this increase? And what drove your decision to upgrade the midterm guidance from CHF 3 billion to CHF 4 billion? And just for clarification, you said in 3 to 5 years in '24 to '26, yes, that's what you said. In '24, CHF 4 billion, if it is earlier end of the midterm? And what does it mean for EBITDA margin reported 8%? Is it also then '24 or more than back-end loaded to 2026 then? Sorry for all that question, but it would be helpful to get a bit more granularity. Also regard what means EBITDA margin 8%, is it an adjusted EBITDA or reported EBITDA? And first, finally, CapEx guidance for '21, excluding any potential acquisition would be also helpful. That's it. Sorry, for the questions.

Thank you very much for the question. So let's try to -- so starting with the EBITDA margin 12 to 18 months after 2021. Your understanding is correct that that means end of 2022, first half 2023. And the reason is that this is based on 2 layers. One is the new distribution center in Heerlen, which will generate the synergies during 2022 when we increase volume in this automated warehouse. And the second one, of course, is the accelerated growth of electronic prescription with higher growth margins, which will be -- take place in 2022 after the mandatory e-script. Then to the second question of the EBITDA, which can be expected in 2021. The reason why we did not give you an exact number, we want to keep our flexibility in order to spend more marketing in 2021 when we see that scaling is possible. Compared to 2020, the starting point is the adjusted EBITDA level minus CHF 30 million. And on top, we have the marketing spending, but also we'll generate some operational savings and economies of scale. So we see a slight better EBITDA 2021 on the reported level. You had also the question about adjusted and reported EBITDA. We do not plan to have adjustments, so we do not see a big difference. Nevertheless, if there are some extraordinary topics and one-off will appear, then we will have the adjusted EBITDA here. Then the third question was about sales, our sales guidance in the midterm. And it's not just roll forward. It's also an increase in the CHF 4 billion. And as you mentioned is targeted at the beginning of the period, meaning 2024 and also the online penetration of electronic prescription we see this potential of 10% in the previous guidance with CHF 3 billion, we had the 5% online penetration. For the EBITDA margin on the 8% area, this is not specified in the midterm between 3 and 5 years there. And depends also on the sales growth, and it will be in this period. Then the last question was about CapEx in 2021. And here, we see the maintenance levels, which we already had in 2020. And of course, we are still investing in the new distribution center, which also was the case in 2020, and the investments are divided into these 2 areas.

The figures in Capex, I'm sorry, on percentage of sales?

On percentage of sales, it's about 2%.

The next question received is from Alexander Thiel of Jefferies.

Three questions from my side, please. The first one is for Marcel. How should we account for the EBITDA ramp-up in the future as you push back your breakeven to the end of 2022? I mean that was the previous question. But at the same time, the logistic integration should also be completed by 2022 providing the operating leverage. So is it fair to assume that we can see a ramp-up from the breakeven to around 8% in around 2 years, assuming we see a certain shift in Rx sales mix?

So the distribution will be at the end of 2021, and we will put volume into it in 2022. And so this breakeven is possible for the second half of 2022. And then we see an acceleration of EBITDA margin towards this 8% due to economies of scale and also due to the scaling of electronic prescription. So after this implementation, we see more or less a linear development to this 8% target.

Okay. Very clear. Second question for the new Walter on the call. First of all, welcome. I've seen you update your customer-facing app today with the same-day delivery function. At what point in time could we expect to be in its full power functionality going forward?

Yes. Thank you for the question. So we constantly add new partners, pharmacy partners. And I would say towards the fourth quarter in this year, we will see the full coverage and also the full readiness of all the functionalities.

Okay. Very clear. The last question for Walter. You're basically a pioneer in the online pharmacy space in Europe, right? I've been following your company almost since the IPO. I think the overall story derisk significantly, but what kind of political decisions are still outstanding from your perspective that could impact the business in a positive or negative way?

So from our point of view, all the regulatory projects are done so far, and we do not expect any others to come. So it stays with the conclusion that regulation is in favor to our business model, and we do not expect negative ones to come.

The next question is from Michael Heider of Warburg Research.

I have 3 actually. The first one is on Rx bonus, which isn't allowed anymore in Germany since the beginning of this year. Do you see any impact of this new regulation on your Rx business in Germany at the moment? And what do you expect the impact to be on the full year? Do you actually expect before the e-prescripts are kicking in that the Rx business will be declining this year? That's the first question. The second question, do you still expect the Gematik to be on time so that the introduction will be starting in the second half of this year? And if that would not be the case, is it -- is there still any possibility that you could start earlier with your, let's say, the Techniker Krankenkasse, the TK project so that you can already start even before the actual launch of the Gematik app? And then the third question is on your active customers, let's say, on your DocMorris+ marketplace app, can you give us -- because you said you see increasing numbers of downloads and so on, but can you give us an indication on how many of your 10 million active customers are already using the new marketplace app?

Okay. Maybe the first question about the Rx bonus, we do not see an impact so far and it remains stable. And we also assume throughout the year that there won't be the impact on our business. The second question about Gematik possible delay and do we have chances in the pre-Gematik phase whenever Gematik starts, yes, we do. As we are in this eRx pilot project with TK deeply evolved, and we see an increase now of the business there. And also of the e-prescriptions. Of course, it's still in the starting phase. But nevertheless, we are partner there, and we think it is still an opportunity also ahead of Gematik start. And then with regard to the active customer base. As I said, we launched in December. And it's still at, of course, at a low level, but it will increase also constantly, and we will see a real impact once the electronic prescription will be mandatory. And for that moment, we think will be the reboost of it.

Can I maybe clarify on the Rx bonus because you said that you don't expect any impact on your business but I would assume that your Rx business has been growing quite strongly also in 2020. Do you -- would you -- so that means if you say there's no impact, so you expect that the Rx business would still grow double digit in 2021?

No, it was in 2020, the Rx business was quite stable. I see a continuation of the capability.

The next question is from Olivier Calvet of Kepler Cheuvreux.

Yes. Just a follow-up on Rx, first of all, what -- can you quantify the current Rx sales that you see in Germany compared to the last time you published data in 2018, please? How much higher are you today? Are you higher, would be the first question.

Just due to the fact that we stopped the marketing on the paper prescription process already years ago, we could keep this sales level very stable over the last couple of years. So it's mainly the same number as it was 2 years ago on the prescription drugs business in Germany.

Okay. But you understand that looking at 2021, we don't have any comparison basis in 2020 right now to judge whether you accelerate or keep the business stable, right?

Yes. It's the same level, and we keep it stable. And we will provide the information as soon as electronic prescription is available that you can see our growth rates on this level. And we will find the right KPIs to show you the development.

Okay. Fair enough. Another question would be on the gross margins. You were saying, just to confirm, that you were seeing Rx gross margins go from 10% to 15% with the Rx bonus plan. Is that correct?

No. That's not the gross margin. That's the contribution margin after variable costs because the potential on a digital process to increase to 15%. Not the cost margin.

Okay. Fair enough. That makes more sense. Then I was just wondering on your Medpex and Apotal and your warehouse footprint. If I understand correctly, you're not going to do a full integration of the 2 brands in the coming 2 years and you are keeping the German warehouses. Can you come back on the integration plan of the front-end and the back-end, please, how will this work from a timing perspective, please?

Yes. As we have shown, we see on the front-end side, on the brand side, time line of 3 to 5 years, which we have defined for ourselves. And it will also be dependent on the growth rate, of course, of this prescription. And on the back-end, we think capacity is really one of the key success factors in the future. And therefore, we think having the multi-sites ready and also connected to the eRx server, this is an important part for the future to handle growth and to come to the profitable part.

Okay. Fair enough. And then I was just wondering on the marketplace. What share of Rx do you expect to come to you through the marketplace in the midterm?

It's difficult to say as marketplace in that form, as at the moment, not really exist. So it's a new development. And we think we -- at the moment, we definitely are ahead of the market and we will stay ahead. But it's difficult to say already now to what percentages we will be.

Okay. And I guess the same answer for the OTC business?

Yes.

Okay. And just to kind of clarify the midterm picture here. When you talk of CHF 4 billion target, is this including the marketplace business or excluding the marketplace business?

That's including the marketplace business, but not on the GMV level of our internal sales and -- yes.

Okay. Yes. I mean marketplace sales are booked by the pharmacy, right? But would that -- how would that work for you?

Yes, the sales will be at the pharmacies and not in our books. And this pharmacy sales of brick and mortar is not included in our CHF 4 billion target.

The next question is from Sebastian Vogel of UBS.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Perfect. I've got 3 questions, I will place them one by one. The first one, there was an expert opinion last year that was put together by -- for the German Ministry of Health. And in there, I read that the Netherlands and the Danish market, they see a market share of 1% for online pharmacies on the local Rx market, also eRx is there like market share of like 100%. I was wondering what makes the German market so different from, for example, the Dutch and Danish market that you say that in Germany there will be a far higher market share as possible?

So actually, we cannot compare Germany to the Netherlands and Denmark because there is a completely different system. In the Netherlands, you have the steering wire -- the physicians. And so we cannot compare -- again, we cannot compare to Germany. But we are definitely sure that we can compare the Swedish model to the German one because it's very similar that the customer has the choice of where he gets the pharmaceutical form. And as you know, in Sweden, we have a presentation of already 10% after a really short period of time. And so we think we have good reasons to expect this 10% for Germany, also given the fact that on an OTC basis, we already have 20% in Germany, which numbers we do not see neither in the Netherlands nor in Denmark.

Understood. Quickly, a second question that directly actually leads into that one. With regard to Sweden, in your earlier presentations, when you were referring to Sweden, if I'm not mistaken, you were using a blended number, i.e., 10% coming from OTC and eRx. I don't know the 10% you were alluding to in your presentation today. Is that an eRx only number? Or is it a blended number as well?

It is still a blended number. There is no new number so far. But nevertheless, as we have discussions with Apotal, we are pretty sure that this number is correct.

Understood. And so the last question. With regard to the slide on Page 14 when you were showing the market penetration levels and the implication in terms of revenues on the market. I was wondering, that is including VAT, right, while your net sales are excluding VAT, just to be on the safe side there.

Yes, you're right, it's including.

The next question received is from Alvira Rao of Barclays.

I have got 3 so the first one is on your DocMorris+ marketplace app. Can you talk a little bit more around who manages the delivery there and what the unit economics of that might look like for you? Just trying to understand what the margin profile for that might be compared to your core business. Second, and apologies if I missed this, but how much do you expect CapEx to be in 2021? And how should we think about it beyond that? And last, are there any further stock-based payouts expected in 2021 in relation to any prior M&A?

Yes. To the first question. Well, to understand say that the marketplace and the DocMorris+ is now -- is the front-end of our digital health ecosystem, which includes, on one hand, the marketplace functionality, but it also includes all other services, which will be added along the customer journeys. So we have to see it in the whole picture as it is just a part of it. But if it comes to the marketplace itself, we have 2 measures for ourselves. On one hand, we have a fee, which already also have been published of roughly EUR 400 per month per partner and on the OTC and B2C side, a provision at 10%. This is one part. And the other part is then the KPIs of gaining new customers, thanks to the marketplace function, with share of wallet increasing and also the higher retention rate that we expect on the overall customer base.

And on the CapEx question, we plan about 2% of sales. And in 2021, the distribution center of the Netherlands will still be on top of this number.

So how much do you expect the Netherlands DC spend to be on top of the 2.2% or the 2%, sorry?

That's about CHF 15 million. It's half of the investment in the distribution center, which we communicated, the CHF 30 million, that's still the case.

Great. And that last question, just around whether there are any further stock-based payouts expected in 2021 from prior M&A.

There are still some, but not in this dimension as 2020, it's about half the size for 2021.

And the last question for today is from [ Peter Miller ], a private's investor. Please go ahead.

This is [ Peter Miller ]. I have 4 questions. The first one would be on your revenue increase of 14.4% on Page 1. How much of that is from Medpex and Apotal? The second question is a 50% increase in active customers, how much of these 50% do come from M&A activities? The third question would be on the significant employee increase. How much of these additional employees come from M&A? And the last questions refer to sustainability and brand. First of all, what are the reasons for not rolling out the brand architecture in Switzerland? And the last question would be how relevant is the sustainability as a topic for you? And how far beyond reporting do you intend to take the initiatives that you have running currently?

So maybe I start with the sales growth of 14.4%. And the question, how much of this is out of the acquisitions or out of Medpex or Apotal. As we see the business in total and steering it by KPIs and return on investments, so we do not disclose the sales of the single brands, but maybe one number for Apotal, we communicated that they had sales of CHF 157 million in 2019. So you will have an idea about the development in 2020. And Apotal is included in our 14.4% growth since mid of August, which was the closing date of the acquisition. And the second question was about active customers and the 50% increase. Out of this 50% increase, CHF 2.5 million came out of organic growth and CHF 1.1 million out of acquisition of Apotal. And third question, I have to come back on this one. I do not have the number of employees in my head right now.

Maybe one additional question here. What is your hiring strategy before becoming profitable in that context?

So actually, we do not have an explicit hiring strategy actually, but we do what is necessary in order to fulfill on our growth strategy. And of course, as we already discussed before, the integration and the synergies coming from there are a very important topic. And so this is another topic, which we have to consider in this -- in the increase of employee number. Does that answer your question?

Yes.

And to continue with the reason for not taking the brand DocMorris in Switzerland. So as the brand Zur Rose is that much established in Switzerland, especially within the doctors business, we are sure that it would not make any sense to change the brand. Actually in Switzerland, we have a big -- a huge number of customers coming from the doctor side. And here, we can't see any value added with changing the brand. And then this question about sustainability. We decided to invest here and to see sustainability as more an important topic also in context of our business model, where we see that sustainability is very much connected to the business model itself, so far as the footprint is much better with our business model than with the other one. Does that answer your questions?

Yes. I just would like to see if you have any initiatives specifically in mind to support the importance of it.

Actually, it's all over the place. So especially in logistics, we see a huge potential for increasing the sustainability topic and it's really all over.

So I can add that the number of employees, to your question before. Out of this 1,900, about 100 are coming from Apotal, from the Apotal acquisition.

The very last question for today is a follow-up of Olivier Calvet of Kepler Cheuvreux.

Sorry for the additional questions, but I just was wondering, maybe on the Rx bonus plan, can you tell us perhaps where you stand in terms of using legal options versus the bonus plan? And are you being sued at the moment on that topic, whether you comply -- I mean, I see -- what I see so far is that you comply on the website, but I just want to check what the legal situation is so far.

What I can say is that, again, it will need a case at the European court. And yes, there is no visible case at the moment. And on the other side, we are compliant. We stopped giving Rx bonus. Yes, so that's the situation at the moment.

Okay. Great. And then just a final one. Can you perhaps talk a little bit about the development of your Swiss margins? I mean if we look at your segment reporting, you have this sort of 7% margin before allocating other operating costs. Maybe some color would be appreciated there.

So the development in Switzerland is very sustainable. We had this growth rate of 7% last year, which was over market. And in terms of margin, yes, it's very sustainable and a good development, but it's not this big steps like we see or like we expect in other markets.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hand back to Mr. Oberhänsli for closing remarks.

Okay. So I conclude this conference. And thank you very much for your attendance and also for your questions. Thanks a lot.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.