Evonik Industries AG (EVK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Evonik in Essen, and welcome to our first part of our Division Spotlight Series for 2021. Of course, it's a bit strange today for us to only talk into the black lens of the camera. We would have loved to have you here in Essen with us to look directly into your faces and into your eyes, but I'm sure you're sitting in front of your screens and following the event, nevertheless, very closely and very attentively. And I hope that's also the case in London, even though the pubs are often open again since yesterday. As you know, we have implemented our new divisional structure about a year ago, mid-2020. And for us, internally, this has already become like the second nature. Externally, I think the new structure has helped already in the last year to give a bit more transparency and especially to highlight the resilience of our divisions in the last year. And I think this will continue also into this year. So we thought it's now a good time to shed a bit more light on to the 3 growth divisions and then you set up the kick-off today is with Nutrition & Care. With me today is the management team of Nutrition & Care, that is Johann-Caspar Gammelin, the Head of the Division; Thomas Reiermeier, the Head of the Healthcare Business line; Emmanuel Auer, the Head of the Animal Nutrition business; and from his Home Office in France, joining Yann d'Herve for Care Solutions. The agenda for today is intentionally not a dog and pony show to go through each and every detail of the division and to break it down into all the details, whatever. We want to give you the strategy -- the long-term strategy of the division. We want to show you some of our most promising growth areas of the division. And you will see Nutrition & Care has quite a lot of them. Or to put it differently, we want to show you what the division will look like in 10 years' time from now. The agenda for today will start with on the overall division strategy. After that, we will follow-up with Johann and Thomas on the business lines, Care Solutions and Healthcare; and finally, back to Caspar for some closing remarks. That will be followed by the Q&A session afterwards. You can already post your questions in your browser in the Q&A chat of your browser, and we will obviously try to answer all your questions today. As long as time allows, we are planning to end this session here by about 4:30, so after 1.5 hours. We will also have 1 or 2 questions already in between the presentation, between the different speakers and their different parts. So already 1 to 2 questions there. Before I hand over to Caspar, let me become a bit more philosophical by saying I have a dream that one day, we have an event on Nutrition & Care without talking about methionine. And maybe this day is already today. I guess more or less all has been said over the last 8 years since Evonik is listed about methionine to nearly all investor. So in the course of today, Caspar will share his general strategic view on methionine in the course of his presentation, and Emmanuel, in the Q&A, will give you brief comments on current trading in methionine. And I guess this should give us more room to discuss all the other interesting growth areas in Nutrition & Care, if it's drug delivery, if it's active ingredients, if it's biotechnology or if it's stainable nutrition. And by the way, these -- from these areas, in about 10 years' time, we expect more sales than from methionine. So that's so far from me. And with that, I hand over to Caspar for the presentation.

Bringing Nutrition & Care to life for life and living, that's what this division of spotlight is all about. It's an exciting story. It's an exciting story about leading technology platform, a full loaded innovation pipeline and amazing sustainable solution. Together, this all of a huge growth potential. That's why Nutrition & Care is one major value driver for Evonik. We want to convince you. We want to inspire you with Nutrition & Care with our management agenda, growth, performance, people. We -- that other 3 business lines heads, that's Yann d'Herve for Personal Care; Thomas Reiermeier for Health Care; and Emmanuel Auer for Animal Nutrition. My name is Caspar Gammelin, I'm President of Nutrition & Care. I'm with Evonik almost since 30 years. My last 10 years highlights are: I had a corporate strategy contributing to refocusing Evonik towards a pure chemical play selling the utilities and real estate as Head of Performance Materials; I restructure the business and made methacrylate business ready for divestments. And since almost 2 years, I'm heading the division, Nutrition & Care. So let's have a deeper look into our new responsibility towards Nutrition & Care. The new division, Nutrition & Care was launched in July 2020, when we wanted to recognize -- reorganize this business in the new setup, Nutrition & Care has a clear focus, human life. That is in the center of everything we do. Our business is based on active ingredients, not materials. Our operating space compromise Personal Care, Cosmetics, Household Smart Cleaning Solutions. It's about active drug deliveries, pharmaceutical ingredients, medical devices and sustainable nutrition. And therefore, the group our activities along 3 business line, Care Solutions, Health Care and Animal Nutrition. Nutrition & Care today is a sizable business with around 5,000 employees, about 3 billion turnover that represents around 25% of the overall Evonik revenue. With our strong positioning in attractive and resilient markets and developed our innovation pipeline, Nutrition Care has a potential to be a strong value driver for Evonik. Bringing Nutrition & Care to life means to enable the new setup to realize its full potential, leveraging our market access, focusing on core technology platforms and bundling our innovation capabilities by shifting our portfolio even more to knowledge base, solution-driven, customer-oriented business models. And we, we have a great positioning for highly attractive growth. Why? Early on, we have identified the most significant trends in the market and build the foundation on our future growth to deliver. For us, it was clear the sustainability will shape our markets. You, we, we as a consumers, ask for more sustainable solutions. Every one of us is looking for healthier, more sustainable products in cosmetics, health care and nutrition. And we, as Evonik, today, we are asking even more by our customers to deliver. And based on our own innovations, combined with technology M&A add-ons, we are ready to deliver. We enable human well-being within boundaries. We are active in the area of biotechnology for more than 30 years and developed highly sustainable and biodrugable active ingredients. Biosurfactants are now ready to invest. And our doctors treatment acquisition 2000 systems -- 2017 with this alternative preservation systems fits perfectly and supports the need for more natural cosmetics and biodrugable cleaning solutions. We enable effective and accessible health care. For years, we have been developing our advanced drug delivery earnings with acquisition and own growth to better deliver more personalized health care solutions. Today, we are already a trusted and growing supplier of various products and services for messenger RNA-related drug delivery solutions. We enabled climate and natural positive food systems. We make antibiotics obsolete in livestock farming with our gut health solution driven by our probiotics portfolio. Our natural algae oil omega-3 assets are preventing the need of using wild-caught fish in aqua farming. That is a strong contribution against overfishing and loss of biodiversity. And this is not all. We intend to do much more and will do so leverage in our strong innovation pipeline and targeting technology acquisitions. Bringing Nutrition & Care to life for life and living, we have the plan. Our strategic management agenda for a clear and consistent implementation is simple: growth, performance, people. Growth. Profitable growth is key to meet our ambition as a leading Nutrition & Care player. We will focus on more sustainable differentiation solutions for our customers. Performance, to finance our own growth ambitions, we have to strengthen our self-financing power, portfolio adjustments, asset optimization, continuous operational excellence programs. People. In striving for knowledge-based business models is crucial to have the right people in the right place at the right time. Striving for best competencies is essential. So let's elaborate a little bit more on the strategic levers, what we have achieved already and what has to come. Let's start with people. In future, we will operate in an even more knowledge-based and innovation-driven business attracting and retaining the most talent workforce is crucial. Our global setup gives us access to these people. We operate in 9 R&D sets and 20 application labs at 38 sites around the globe. We have 70 nationalities working in Nutrition & Care. More than 70% of our people are non-germ, 30% of our management is female and 20% of our workforce is dedicated to R&D and application services. As I said, our business is built not only on excellent product performance but on knowledge. Therefore, people and talent are important for accesses. Our new, more focused organizational setup gives us the opportunity to also renovate our culture. It's not only in common markets and technologies that connect us, but also a common purpose and the values that bring our people together. As a result, cost and cash discipline are already well implemented pillars. Today, we are even much more in fostering true collaboration across all 3 business lines, bringing the people together that have barely worked together before, trying new ways of working, creating an organization that is acting more like a network, tackling the complexity of finding the best solution into Nutrition & Care markets. Utilizing our commitment to people, to sustainability, to a better life of living, giving us a peak of the best people to advance our businesses. Performance. We placed 3 initiatives under our performance level, portfolio adjustments, asset optimization and operational excellence. Portfolio adjustment. We had Nutrition & Care thrive for leading specialty portfolio. We had Nutrition & Care strive for more sustainable growth. Precise KPIs guide us. Products with superior sustainability profile. EBITDA margin above 22%. ROCE above 14%. Anything that does not meet this expectation will be handled accordingly. Fix it, sell it or close it. We will further optimize our portfolio and focus on specialty business. Asset optimization. Asset optimization means sweating our assets as well as maximizing the efficiency and the utilization rates. Whatever we do, we do it right. We have 3 examples. In our Animal Nutrition business, we optimized our global methionine asset network. We grouped our methionine production into 3 major international hubs: Singapore, Antwerp, and Mobile. Consequently, we recently terminated methionine production at the Wesseling site in Germany. The second example is our site in Slovakia. It used to be an Animal Nutrition site, but we repurposed it so that it's now a biotechnology scale up and launch platform, serving the innovation pipeline of all businesses in Nutrition & Care. The third example is the optimization of our Care Solutions production network to consolidate it and to improve the asset network will meet the future requirements for a higher share of specialties. Operational excellence. Our operational excellence programs across all business lines ensure that we are ready and prepared for future growth. This will be achieved by the specific robust continuous improvement processes like Oleo, Adjust [indiscernible]. So let's summarize the performance initiatives. All 3 performance initiatives helped us to increase the productivity, strengthen the return on investments and clear the way for further growth. They are very visible in the strong EBITDA margin improvement, mainly by fixed cost improvements last year. Consequent asset and networking capital management brought the ROCE up by 200 basis points. Also going forward, we see future significant potential across all 3 performance initiatives. We are targeting annual cost savings of approximately EUR 30 million per year that overcompensate our annual factor cost increase. As you can see, while addressing continuous improvement programs, we are moving in the right direction, but our ambition only can be reached by accelerating our profitable growth. In future, Nutrition & Care will follow an even more focused growth pass. We have a strong position in attractive markets. We operate in resilient markets closely linked to consumers and their basic needs like well-being, health and nutrition. Many of our markets are highly regulated like drug safety or food standards. Sustainability is the big driver in those markets. We have identified the most significant trends and build the foundation for new growth. And this growth is knowledge-driven, innovation-driven, and that's what our expertise make us available in these markets. Care Solutions, Healthcare and Animal Nutrition have a general market growth of around 3%, but we will shift our focus even more towards these growth wells, more attractive submarkets with above market average growth rate like skin care, drug delivery or gut health. Towards these markets, we have already a well-established access. We have long-term customer relationships built on trust. Due to our global setup, we can serve customers globally. Our marketing along the value chain offers access to multiple value pools. Because of this, we will unleash the full potential and outgrow the relevant markets by our new setup and clearly focusing on common technology focus and reaching higher-margin levels by concentrating on our system solution approach. Let's go into more detail. Nutrition & Care will focus on selected technology platforms, technology platform that I use by all 3 business lines. Strong technology platforms applicable for various applications, a low strong offer for target markets, but also allow good cost position, particularly in terms of research, development and innovation. They offer significant synergies by the exchange of competencies as well as resources between our businesses. In combination, our technology platforms differentiate us in the market and give us a competitive advantage. We will use these technology platforms and some related asset structure even more as one common base, upon which active ingredients, functional editors and high-value excipients are developed for more than one business. Our rework M&A strategy is to further complement and to expand our existing technology platforms, building on our strengths, but also leveraging them in all businesses. Our Wilshire acquisition, which is relevant both for Care Solutions and Healthcare is a very good example for this strategy. Let's pick our biotechnology platform to explain in more detail how we bring to life the technology platform concept. First, you can say, Nutrition & Care home of biotechnology at Evonik. All promising Evonik biotech projects are dedicated to Nutrition & Care. Over the last 30 years, we have built broad and differentiating competencies in wide biotechnology. Within biotechnology to areas of expertise besides many others are micro beyond modulation and the development operational optimization of biotech processes. Today, we operate 6 major sites 4 continents, where biotechnology is supplied. On a business scale with an industry-leading fermentation capacity. All 3 businesses within Nutrition & Care rely on biotechnology for established products, but even more so for new products. We talked already about our portfolio, biosurfactants, active ingredients, amino acids for pharma applications or solutions. To accelerate process and product development across all the business lines, we just consolidated our R&D activities in one competent center with about 200 researchers to better drive the development of novel solutions for our customers. For bio-based solutions, we expect sales to rise up to EUR 1 billion by 2030 later. We strive for higher-margin levels by applying system solution approach that is our second growth pillar. In our system solution approach, we bring differentiated high-margin products and even higher-margin level. And these products are excipients or active ingredients with differentiating properties already. System Solutions and multicomponent systems tailored to very unique customers needs and with proof of sustainability benefits that offers higher barriers to entry and higher EBITDA margins. In the System Solutions, we find a product with formulation application services. Sometimes, we combine them with digital services and often we develop them in a co-creation process with our customers. Tailor-made for complex systems like human skin, human body or animal gut. The system solution will serve all 3 growth fields Care Solutions, Healthcare, and sustainable nutrition. In 2020, we already achieved approximately 20% of our sales per system solutions. By 2030, we aim to expand this share to more than 50%. All of it with a margin potential above average. Examples of how we will achieve, already know for personal care application is encapsulated with our delivery technology to increase stability and bioavailability. Lipid nanoparticles for parental drug delivery systems where we offer integrated services from feasibility study to commercial production or the customer-tailored probiotics for a healthy life stock which make antibiotic growth promoters and chicken farming obsolete. At methionine, what role does methionine play in our focus on system solutions. Methionine is a highly profitable business with an approximately 5% annual volume growth. With our sharpened focus on 3 methionine production apps, Evonik is in a cost leadership position. Methionine is delivering and will deliver strong cash flows to Nutrition & Care. We are well invested, and we will spend CapEx in methionine only for 3 reasons: maintenance, smart debottlenecking and further improvements of our cost position. With our strong global customer base in more than 120 countries, methionine is the entry ticket to build up and strengthen our sustainable nutrition business. That means we will grow our methionine business with the market, run it as a cash call and reallocate our capital into others and even more attractive growth businesses within Nutrition & Care. This will automatically lead to a lower share of methionine within our portfolio over the time. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of my first part. My colleagues, Yann and Thomas will give you now some very tangible examples for our system solution approach, underlying our ambition to be a growth driver for Evonik.

Thank you, Caspar, for the first part of your presentation. We will hear you later again. Let us interrupt here a bit and start maybe with the first question that is already related to the first part of your presentation. The question is, "you talked about further portfolio adjustments. You talked about further asset optimization. What is your plan or do you have any further next steps in mind already? What is the agenda here in terms of developing the portfolio further and potentially further divestments of the portfolio?"

First of all, we have to see, I have to repeat that we -- in each and every business have to benchmark itself against our KPIs that I already mentioned during my presentation, that is mainly the EBITDA margin around 22% and ROCE about 14%. And everything that doesn't meet this expectation will be handled accordingly. Give me 2 examples, the Oleo platform, for example. Here, we bring together 2 businesses, Household Care and Personal Care. We make portfolio adjustments really concentrating more and shifting the portfolio more to the specialties. We consolidated our assets park, mainly in Europe by consolidating [indiscernible] closing plants in the U.K. and Spain. Overall, that results in savings of about EUR 30 million in the last 2 years and the loss of 130 employees. Second example is that we work heavily on our bio amino assets strategy. We run already cost improvement programs in the Americas side, in North America and South America. We stepped out on the production of L-threonine, L-tryptophan our own production. We closed the plant in Hungary. We repurposed a plant in Slovakia as a biotechnology hub, and we shifted already half of our losing capacities in leasing towards a more promising application that is the algae oil or omega-3 assets, which we jointly produce with DSM at our Blair site Veramaris. That are 2 examples in the recent years, more has to come, and we will further optimize our portfolio towards our approach, towards our growth strategy, towards our more specialized portfolio by addressing all 3 levers, portfolio optimization, asset optimization and continuous improvement growing towards specialties.

Yes. Thank you very much, Caspar, for these first insights. I guess we leave the other questions for the second part or for the main part of the Q&A after your second part of your presentation. And with that, I would like to hand over to Thomas for a deeper look into our Healthcare business.

Yes. Thank you, Tim, and also a warm welcome from my side. My name is Thomas Reiermeier. I'm a chemist by training. I've been with the company since over 20 years, served in many functions like R&D, business development, marketing, general management, mainly with a strong focus on the life science industry. The Healthcare business line is really managerial appetite. I've been with Healthcare since a decade before I then took over the lead of Healthcare about a year ago. During this time, we transformed the healthcare product line for which I was responsible from a more product-oriented business into a holistic solution provider for the pharmaceutical industry. And today, I will talk to you about some of our attractive growth opportunities within the health care business lines. In my presentation on Healthcare, you will find some similarities to Yann's presentation later on. And this is what we mean with bringing Nutrition & Care setup to life. We share important technology platforms, for example, our biotechnology platform, but also our delivery technologies. And for all 3 business lines, System Solutions is at the center of our growth strategy. And just like Care Solutions, Healthcare has demonstrated strong growth and high innovation power over the last year. This is nicely demonstrated by, on average, more than 10 product launches per year. We are a global innovation hub for the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. We are serving the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and medical device markets. And with our global infrastructure of about 14 laboratories and application centers, we are strategically positioned in key health care markets. We are close to our customers. The selected market segments we serve are characterized by both, attractive margins and high growth. The logic behind our health care portfolio is the high level of synergies between our business segments. Our teams share similar expertise, competencies, technology platforms across pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and medical device markets. Today, we would like to take a closer look at our advanced drug delivery systems, before we then deep dive into our lipid nanoparticle drug delivery technology. So what is the drug delivery system? A drug's efficacy is significantly impacted by the way in which the active pharmaceutical ingredient, the API, gets released in the body. Very often, it is the drug delivery system that enables the therapeutic effect of the API. So advanced drug delivery systems, our products and technologies for the targeted delivery and controlled release of an API. Drugs can be administered to the body via several different routes, and the most important route of administration are oral and parenteral. healthcare is an expert in both. We have over 65 years experience in this space. And today, we are a leading integrated CDMO, or contract development and manufacturing organization, for both platforms, oral and parenteral drug delivery. We support our customers with highly flexible and tailor-made system solutions along the entire value chain, design and supply to formulation development, clinical supply and eventually commercial manufacturing of the final drug product. Our advanced drug delivery solutions are commercially proven across a variety of therapeutic areas with a broad range of APIs. And I would now like to deep dive into the field of lipid nanoparticles, which is one of our parenteral drug delivery technologies. Pharmaceuticals using nanoparticles composed of lipids as a drug delivery system has been in the market for almost 2 decades and are very well established. This technology is currently of very high demand due to its application in leading mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. Evonik is one of the very few integrated development and manufacturing partners for LNP-based medicine, including cell and gene therapies. Our broad portfolio of products, services and technologies allows us to support customers at all stages of the value chain. Let's start on the left-hand side of the value chain with excipients. Lipids are the key excipients for lipid nanoparticles. We offer a broad portfolio of lipids, including our own proprietary products, and we also serve the market as a contract development and manufacturing organization for lipids. For example, as part of our strategic partnership with BioNTech, we are establishing new production lines for 2 of the critical lipids used in the COVID-19 vaccine. In addition to that, we offer a non-animal derived cholesterol under the brand name Phytocol which is also part of some of the current COVID-19 vaccines. The next step in the value chain are formulation and process development as well as clinical manufacturing. And this brings us to the beating heart of the LNP technology. LNPs are created through a complex mixing process of the lipids with, for example, of fragile mRNA. And this critical step must be scalable on the pharmaceutical quality standards. And this is exactly our expertise in Vancouver, where we can manufacture up to clinical scale. Vancouver is the center of our activities around cell and gene therapies using lipid nanoparticles. We recognized the potential of the LNP drug delivery technology very early on and made a targeted investment in this promising technology. In 2016, we acquired Transferer Nanosciences based in the Vancouver area. For manufacturing commercial quantities, including fill finish, we operate a facility for complex parental drug products in Birmingham, Alabama. So across this LNP value chain, we either has been involved or are involved in the development of leading mRNA COVID-19 vaccines or we manufacture lipids for the supply of those vaccines. And beyond vaccines, we have been involved in over 100 LNP projects with pharma and biotech companies globally. So we are very well positioned in the market, thanks to our integrated system solutions approach. Our position along the entire value chain is valuable per se and our deep understanding enables us to serve as an eye-to-eye partner to the industry and not just as an excipient supplier. We are a competent partner for our customers. We do have a deep understanding of the application, and we support them beyond usual expertise, for example, by our regulatory support. But this is only the starting point. It's our ambition to expand our leading position as an integrated development partner in cell and gene therapies further. We currently plan to strengthen our activities in Vancouver with a competent center for nucleic acid formulations and at the same time, we are evaluating to expand our commercial fill/finish capability. The success of mRNA in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating a fundamental paradigm shift in the pharmaceutical industry. The launch of the first mRNA-based vaccine in late 2020 marked a deep breakthrough for this new class of therapeutics. And currently, LNPs are the industry standard for the delivery of mRNA. This is leading the way to unlock the untapped potential of LNP-based cell and gene therapies. The market is very dynamic and is moving at unprecedented speed. And beyond vaccines against COVID-19, there are other exciting developments going on. For example, cancer immunotherapies potentially becomes the next area for mRNA therapeutics. And because, again, of our successful system solution approach, we are already taking part in some of these exciting developments. We are involved in a double-digit number of mRNA projects at various development stages from feasibility to commercial. And since 2016, we share the share of mRNA projects in our LNP technology platform has grown to 70%. We expect the pharmaceutical end market for LNP-based cell and gene therapies to be above USD 50 billion by 2026. Out of that, our accessible market will be above USD 5 billion by that time, and we aim to take a relevant share of that market, resulting in a clear triple-digit million euro sales potential over the next year. So let me summarize our strong positioning and drug development and drug delivery solutions. We are recognized by the industry as a leader and an innovation hub for the most relevant advanced drug delivery technologies along the entire value chain. We follow a clear system solution approach. Based on this, we aim to keep our double-digit growth rate going forward. We have a very clear idea of our current and future position in the market, significant market insight and a strong relationship with our customers and partners. And all this puts us in an excellent position to continue our growth in drug delivery.

Yes. Thank you very much, Thomas. As you can see on the order of the slides, I was so excited about our opportunities in Healthcare that I switched the 2 parts between Healthcare and Care Solutions, but I can promise you Care Solutions is not less exciting. Before we come to that, let me also -- let us also squeeze in a question for the health care business already asked in the Q&A set. Please feel free to answer any further questions already now.

In the chat, Thomas, the question is, you talked a lot about drug delivery systems in your presentation, exciting opportunity. But what other growth areas are there outside drug delivery in your Healthcare portfolio?

So there are several exciting growth opportunities within our portfolio, and we typically go into new areas by building on our competencies and also by following a clear solution system approach. I just want to highlight briefly 2 of our other growth opportunities in our portfolio, the one being medical device solutions, the other, our cell culture ingredients. So we set up a dedicated team, a dedicated business segment on the medical device solution some time back. We invested here in application areas in China, in the U.S. and in Germany. And we also set up an R&D center for medical device solutions in the United States. In addition, we added special technologies and surface modification and also complemented the material portfolio with 2 targeted technology acquisitions. So we also see pharma and medical device converging so we can really build on our competencies in both areas in pharma as well as in med device and materials to expand the business even further. And when it comes to innovation, we developed a non-animal-derived collagen based on our biotechnology platform that we brought to the market last year. We received a lot of positive feedback actually from the market. And also here, other businesses within Nutrition & Care benefits from this exciting development. Cell culture, my other example, will build more or less organically coming from our pharma amino acid business. We see a lot of growth over the last 5 years for amino assets for deep peptides for other boosters in this business and a part of this growth is driven by the growth of biopharmaceuticals. And actually, those cell culture ingredients are used for the manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals like monoclonal antibodies or other vaccines that are used to fight COVID-19. So it's not just in the drug delivery. There are also other areas where we are heavily involved fighting COVID-19. So we are investing also in our cell culture ingredients business. We're setting up application technologies. We're investing in the manufacturing. And again, we're leveraging for the manufacturing of our cell culture ingredients. But also when it comes to the application, really our biotechnology platform of Nutrition & Care. So these are just 2 examples where we build on our competencies, on our strong technology platforms, following a system solution approach to grow our business.

Yes. Thank you very much, Thomas. And now we come to Care Solutions, and we come to Yann. So we switch to France and Yann, we are looking forward to your deep dive into Care Solutions.

Thank you, Tim, and welcome from me as well. My name is Yann d'Herve, I'm Chemist by education. I'm French and American. And for the last 25 years, I've worked in Europe, America's Evonik operations business, sales and marketing. I've been part of several business lines such as oil additives, [pharmacodynamics], health care and now Care solutions. For the past 10 years, I've had the opportunity to build a global sales and application technology team at Evonik health care in order to sell [Technical Difficulty] We have very opportunities with Care Solutions. This is a very dynamic market where clients are extremely open for developments and are looking at improving the performance and the sustainability of the products. At Care Solutions, we've built a very strong, sustainable specialty portfolio and geared towards the Personal Care and cleaning market. We build this portfolio with our own strong innovation complemented with selected acquisitions. The innovation and sustainability efforts of Evonik are recognized by our customers, not only with innovation and sustainability rewards like for our biosurfactant solution, for example, but also through increased inclusion of our system solution in our clients and formulations. Recently, our portfolio has been upgraded through targeted acquisitions, such as Wilshire and Dr. Straetmans as indicated by Caspar. Due to Dr. Straetmans, we can provide a sustainable preservation system to customer formulations, and we'll [Technical Difficulty] which complements our active system solution ability. The markets we serve are extremely attractive, but nonetheless, we have clearly outperformed market growth in 2020. Skin Care and cosmetics are extremely dynamic markets from a growth, but also from an innovation standpoint. The end consumers want products with benefits for the scheme. For this, you need to develop products with scientifically proven plans. In response, Evonik has developed and acquired competencies to better understand the skin as a complex system. And we've also developed skin models and acquire technologies such as inner health to rapidly assess the scientific benefits of ingredients. This allows Evonik to become and to develop and launch unique active ingredients with scientifically proven claims that are highly attractive for clients and consumers. Clients can be centered around anti-aging, skin defense, moisturizing, rebalancing and purifying. As a result of our strong product pipeline, we've launched more than 20 active ingredients in 2020, and we will do the trend in 2021. Caspar has explained our system solution concept to you. We, at Care Solutions, are the perfect example of creating superior customer value along all parts of the value chain. We have developed a complete offering from functional ingredients over active ingredients to active delivery systems and alternative preservation systems. Let me describe it this way. We market active ingredients with substantiated claims, and we develop and support formulation for our clients. We've developed system solutions such as ready-to-use formulations and delivery systems and make it easy for our customers to include in their final products. As you can see, there are multiple benefits and the value for our customers is enhanced. Let me now share 2 concrete examples. The first example is SK-INFLUX. This is a ready-to-use formulation containing the essential, I mean ceramide, cholesterol, a proprietary emulsion system and preservation system that increases the effectiveness of ceramides and make them easy for our clients to use. This is a very synergistic proprietary system solution that increases the value for our clients and the consumer in comparison to standard on ceramides. As you can see, there are multiple substantiated claims. Another example is our InuMax Advanced Retinol. This is an encapsulation retinol that increases stability, reduces irritation potential and enhances bioavailability to the skin. Those are just 2 examples amongst many that shows how our system solutions support our clients by ensuring they are easy to integrate in their products and are supported by substantiated claims. Our unique setup of competencies has delivered a strong growth track record, and we are determined to continue on that path. With our active ingredients and active delivery systems, we have consistently achieved double-digit growth for the last 20 years and are reaching triple-digit million euro sales. In 2020, we were able to grow the active ingredients and active delivery business organically by more than 20%, even despite the COVID-19 crisis. With our recent acquisition and own innovations, we are convinced we will deliver clear double-digit organic growth rates going forward. A lot of this growth is actually secured via contracts. With our high barriers to entry and our asset-light approach, we are also very satisfied with the development of our financial performance. Additionally, our size, our international presence and our understanding of complex systems puts us in a unique position to spot smaller but very valuable M&A targets at attractive valuations and to grow their value as part of our portfolio. Recent acquisitions such as liposome delivery system or Wilshire with Phytochol in particular, have been leveraged beyond cosmetic application and are enabling further growth in health care in mRNA delivery, as just mentioned by Thomas. Tim, back to you.

Yes. Thank you very much, Yann, and maybe also here a first question to you, which comes from Jaideep Pandya from On Field Research. What do you consider your relevant peers in Care Solutions? And also, if you compare yourself in terms of the margin profile, do you still see a gap to these peers? And how do you plan to close this gap over time?

Yes. These is a good question and the one that we have in mind for the time... [Technical Difficulty]

So we are still fighting with the challenges of this digital and virtual format. We are hoping to have Yann back. There. I can hear you, Yann. Yes. Yes, looking good. Yann, you want to go ahead? [Technical Difficulty]

We have in mind all the time, right? In cosmetics -- no. Sorry, Tim. Can you hear me now?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Okay. So again, in cosmetics, we compare ourselves to system solution providers such as Croda, Symrise, and Givaudan. Those peers have a portfolio more oriented to our system solutions than our portfolio currently, but recent acquisitions, divestments and on innovations such as biosurfactants are bringing closer every day. Our growth in active ingredients and delivery system very, very effective, right? It's certainly a benchmark for the industry at the moment as it is much higher than the market. For example, we grew by 20% last year and expect to continue in upcoming years. And we also continue to learn from our customer and what is important for them, we develop with our customers next generation solutions, and this intimacy will make us even better moving forward. So we are getting closer.

Thank you very much, Yann. And with that, we come to the final part of our presentation, the wrap-up by Caspar before we then go into the Q&A session.

Ladies and gentlemen, you can see from the 2 examples what we mean by system solutions and how we are built on technology platforms and joint capabilities and competencies. You could see the synergistic effects between Care Solutions and Healthcare. And of course, the concept also works with our third growth pillar, Nutrition & Care. In both examples, we started from a high-value product and excipients in case of Healthcare and active ingredients in the case of Care Solutions. In both examples, we refined them to a system solution with formulation know-how and our technology platform delivery systems. And on top of our business, we use the same assets them, making them even more synergistic and improving capital efficiency. The resulting system solutions are highly differentiated at even more value on our customers and the excipient or active ingredients alone, both are already high available. Our strategic management, again, growth, performance, people will result in highly attractive KPIs. We will continue to enhance our existing internationality and gender diversity, aiming for 23 -- 35 international and 23 female in our top management in midterm. In terms of sustainability, we aim at least for 50% next-generation solutions based on our sales in our portfolio. Next-generation solutions are based on a thorough portfolio sustainability assessment and stand for a superior sustainability benefit. Next-generation solutions will reduce our footprint, enlarge our handprint. Profitability comes before volume growth. Regarding our most important financial KPIs, we are targeting an EBITDA growth about 8% and EBITDA margin above 22% and ROCE above 14%. Setting targets is always the easier, but delivering in these targets is that's what drives us, that's what motivates us as a team in Nutrition & Care. And after nearly 2 years on board, the KPIs show that we are moving in the right direction, we have delivered the first proof point in 2020, even during a global pandemic situation. We increased our EBITDA by 21%. This impressive growth is driven by 2 levers of our strategy, performance and growth. Our organic EBITDA growth from both higher specialty growth in prices was more than 10%. We have reduced cost by EUR 85 million last year. Our EBITDA margin was increased by 300 basis points due to a consequent effort and cash management we were able to improve our ROCE up to 200 basis points. What do you think? Is it not only in an existing, but also in convincing story, isn't it? Nutrition & Care has a new strategic setup with a unique combination of businesses focusing on Nutrition & Care market. Sustainability is a leading business principle. Our management agenda is simple: Growth - performance - people. We focus on common technology platforms. And with the system solution approach, we strive for higher margin. Profitability and EBITDA target before sales and volume growth. We will deliver on our management agenda and on our financial targets and will provide it with very tangible frequent proof points along the way. And this will, step-by-step, making Nutrition & Care a strong value driver for Evonik, bringing Nutrition & Care to life for life and living. More than happy to answering all your questions.

Yes. Thank you very much. That was the presentation part of today. Now we come to the Q&A. We already have a couple of questions in the queue, and it seems like my dream is coming true. There are very little to no questions on methionine. So we're excited to talk about all the other parts of our portfolio. Let's start with biotechnology, very prominent in the presentation, very interesting growth area. And we have a question here or questions from Martin Roediger from Kepler Cheuvreux, and Charlie Webb from Morgan Stanley. We talk about EUR 1 billion sales target from biotechnology by 2030, what is the sales level that we have today already? And what are in terms of sales, the biggest contributor, the biggest product groups with the biggest sales potential going forward?

Well. Biotechnology, I think it's the leading example for a technology platform. We are in, in this biotechnology since 30-year, [indiscernible] technology. We are driven by a scientific approach. We have a deep understanding of the biological effects of complex systems like the skin, like the human body or the animal gut. Our core competences, besides others are microbiome modulation and really, the process design, the process innovation, the process optimization, especially in the downstream of the biotech processes after the fermentation, and that makes us as available partner for companies like DSM or BioNTech. That is the reason why they choose us to bring up the business together with us, in the example of Veramaris, Omega 3 assets or lipid none of articles for messenger on related drug delivery systems. Currently, we have a portfolio of around 100 products, about 15 applications, mainly driven by active ingredients in the cosmetic areas in pharma, it's cell culture. It's about CDMO play fermentation, biotech processes. We are talking about amino acids in the pharmaceutical area. And we have, of course, amino acids in the nutrition area. Regarding the current sales split, we have currently 50-50, I would say. 50% in the amino assets for nutrition application towards the applications and Care Solutions and Healthcare. As you know, that the bio amino acids and nutrition is not the strongest margin driven business, currently reshaping our focus to a higher-margin profile, I already explained it in my -- during my presentation. And the shift from the half of the [ black ] capacities towards the [ LDI ] base Omega 3 acids are very good examples on our path towards a higher value portfolio. We just concentrated or a Competence Center. We grouped all our expertise in one R&D Competence Center with more than 200 researchers to accelerate even the development of new solutions and the most promising, which has to come now, it's gut helps for nutritional application and biosurfactants which are really ready for investment where we really see a lot of potential for smart solution. Active ingredients for pharma and cosmetic solutions will be the other area where we see promising projects already. So overall, we are very confident to reach the EUR 1 billion extra sales on biotech-based products by 2030 latest.

Yes. Thank you very much. We would have a question here for Yann. We might give it another try also. I can see the connection is not very good. No. We will skip that and go ahead with, Thomas, maybe first, and try to connect to Yann later. Hopefully, it works then. So Thomas, let's take your question on the lipid nanoparticle business. What are the next steps to expand this business? And especially how much CapEx do you need for this expansion over the next like 3 years?

So well, we are not starting from 0 here. We already do have an existing infrastructure along the entire value chain, starting with the excipients, formulation development, clinical manufacturing as well as commercial manufacturing. So -- and as such, we have a focus our expansion, our further investments along our current existing infrastructure. For example, here and in Germany. We are currently investing in the expansion of the lipid production. I mentioned the strategic partnership with BioNTech in this context where we're setting up 2 dedicated production lines. We are planning to expand our Vancouver enterprise where we already invested back in 2019 into the R&D expansion. They are now planning to expand our clinical manufacturing. And I already mentioned that we're also looking into adding additional highly flexible fill/finish capabilities. So this all will be in a lower triple-digit million euro range at the end, if we execute this project. And also worth to mention, it's also typical in the industry that for a specific project, customers are willing to at least co invest. In addition to that, there may be the one or the other very targeted, very focused technology acquisition in order to complement our setup to complement our sets of capabilities and competencies.

Yes. Thank you, Thomas. And I think it's still worth to add that this, obviously, this CapEx is part of the group's CapEx plan over the next year. So that's included in the CapEx number and in the CapEx guidance for the group already. I'm looking whether we are good to go to France or whether we continue -- maybe we continue from Essen for the time being. And I think now it's time to move also to Emmanuel for the Animal Nutrition business. Obviously still, and also and even above the attractive methionine business, an attractive part of the Evonik portfolio. We already heard the question here on -- we already heard on sustainable healthy nutrition. So what is behind that? Sustainable healthy nutrition as a second leg in animal nutrition as a growth driver, how are you changing your business model here away from methionine?

Yes. Thank you for the question, Tim. Sustainable healthy nutrition is a, first and foremost, very attractive market segment that develops currently very fast, above and beyond the growth rates of the feed additives business that goes into the various essentials like amino acids and vitamins and minerals. Why is it so attractive? It addresses sustainability and health, both for animals and humans, not only for direct customers in the livestock area, but also for the end consumers along the value chain. And these growth rates are driven by pressing needs in the industries. It's not about, let's say, a kind of must have ingredients. It's really a replacement that makes animal nutrition and farming more sustainable and healthier. Our portfolio builds on sustainability. There is no product in the animal nutrition family of innovation that has no positive impact on the footprint of our value chain. It builds on broad synergies in terms of the biotech area because for this purpose, we need to understand more than just a single product effect. It is about physiology of animals. It's about immunology. It's about health. It's about digestion. It's about the life -- the entire life of an animal. And this portfolio enables growth that is beyond the numbers you see on the slide, we aim to grow with this business in a double-digit range and very fast with a good trajectory and this business builds completely on a system solution approach. There is no single bullet -- silver bullet to replace antibiotics or antibiotic growth promoters in livestock. You have to go by a portfolio solution by understanding and modeling the gut health and by finding a more -- a healthy nutrition concept in the diet. It's clear that -- and Caspar mentioned it already in his speech, it's clear that we cannot continue like we do right now with the way we feed animals. In particular, for aquaculture, the headline is no wild cod fish for aquaculture feed. And that is a driver for Veramaris, that is also a driver for our special solutions in shrimp nutrition. Yes, sustainability on the ecological side remains a challenge. And at the end of the day, protein quality will be impacted by a holistic approach towards more than just a single molecule that goes into a nutritional diet. And therefore, we believe that this attractive market segment is good for building a clear second pillar next to the amino acid portfolio of animal nutrition. And our global customer access and it was also in the speech of Caspar, our global customer access in a lot of countries with a lot of, let's say, good addresses in the industry helps to promote these solutions, clearly, in the direct contact and convincing the industry that a better solution is also the more sustainable one, not only for the animal but also for the financials.

Thank you very much, Emmanuel. A follow-up question here. What is the existing sales base in that business as of today, you're talking about clear double-digit growth rates going forward. What sales do you have already today in this sustainable healthy nutrition business?

Yes, we are going into a 3-digit million number. This is, of course, relatively small compared to the amino acid business. But as said, it's a very dynamic area. It has a lot of growth potential, and we are confident that the trajectory in the coming years will also result in the appropriate or in the expected returns.

Great. Thank you very much. So then let's take the next question here from -- for the guys in Essen from Geoff Haire from UBS. What areas -- what technology areas do you see for possible acquisitions in Nutrition & Care? I think the question goes to you, Caspar. Here, go ahead.

Thank you for that question. So common technology platform, one of our main growth pillars within our strategy. It's built on our common strengths, but we really want to concentrate how we can use common technology platform for all the 3 business lines. So what are our growth areas that are active ingredients excipients in health care in pharmaceutical business that is gut helps within animal nutrition, but that as well can use for skin modulation, microbiome modulation. Delivery systems is one area where we already invested, where we have strengthened our platform, what we really want to build on and, of course, particle design. I love as well some targets in the area of artificial intelligence, as we mentioned over the recent years, there is a porphyria in the nutrition precision livestock farming, where we acquired a small company in the Netherlands to really set the base for our digital solutions of digitalization of our farming and which -- where we already are selling actively licensing of really have better and a healthier life stock farming on chicken farms. The second one I want to mention is, innoHealth, very interesting innovation we did in the personal care area, I love it as well because they give us a possibility really to screen bioactive ingredients support our customers. We offer that aim as a service towards our customer to support them in their claim towards new marketing. For us, it helps us to identify the most available bioactive ingredients for cosmetic application and we support as well our customers in the new marketing areas. So that is the area where we wanted to grow and where we want to combine our competencies.

Yes. Thank you, Caspar. And I hope we are ready for the next try to go to France to Yann with the next question here from the chat. There's a couple of questions on biosurfactants and our biosurfactants exposure. We are planning to build here, the first world-scale plant. What is the status of this plant? And what kind of sales potential market, potential market size do you see from that business? And how do you differentiate against your competitors in biosurfactants or bio-based surfactants.

Thank you, Tim, and hopefully it's going to work this time. It is a good question, of course, right? Biosurfactant is very important to Evonik's strategy. We will establish the first world scale by the surfactant plant, and we're expecting to ramp up end of 2023. Our industrial biosurfactants are unique, sophorolipid and rhamnolipids, produce the fermentation and purified in a high quality allowing usage in personal care or home care application. We own the strong patent portfolio for both the production process as well as the applications, which allows us to sell this as a system solution. We say that our biosurfactants have multiple applications in cosmetics, household care as well as healthcare and animal nutrition, which shows the strength of this biotechnology platform for Nutrition & Care. We have also pre established cooperation that allows us to build high capacity, serving several markets and therefore, reaching an external cost position. In cosmetic and household care, these products represent the benchmark in combining performance, such as skin censoring and [indiscernible] as they are fully biodegradable and have a very low aquatic toxicity and avoids the use of [indiscernible] derived oil. This approach differentiates Evonik's approach and it does not use any conventional synthetic chemistry derived from oil and is therefore deemed to have a better sustainability index. Biosurfactants, I mean, this is currently a small size, but we expect to market in 10 years to reach EUR 1 billion, and Evonik will be in a leading position in this EUR 1 billion market.

Thank you very much, Yann. Very strong answer and very strong connection with France. So it's good to hear. Next question goes to -- Essen again here from Markus Mayer from Baader, on the CDMO Exclusive Synthesis business within the health care portfolio. Markus asks, or sees a consolidation in this Exclusive Synthesis CDMO market, what is Evonik's strategy in this business going forward?

So of course, we are watching and monitoring here the market developments very closely. And we are positioning ourselves along our -- again, along our competencies, technology platforms following the system solution approach. So when it comes to exclusive synthesis, we focus on areas that allow for high-margin and allow for high growth, and this is typically coming via differentiation. So it's not about the scale and not about the magnitude of the assets. It's really following an asset-light approach using a knowledge-based business model. As such, maybe talked about our biotechnology platform, for example, we have assets at a various scale, where we can support our customers really from lab development via launch platforms up to really world scale biotechnology. So there, there is some complementary competence, or some complementary assets required really to have an even better offering to the customer, we will look into it, but it's not about scale per se.

Yes. Thank you very much, Thomas. Next question from Andreas Heine from Stifel on methionine, but from a more strategic viewpoint. I think Caspar you already commented during your presentation, but the specific question is what role does methionine play going forward? And what is your strategy for methionine? Is it a growth business or run for cash? Are you planning to exit it even at some point? So what's the strategic perspective for methionine?

Thank you very much for clarification. I'll give you the possibility for clarification. Currently, we -- with our 3 hubs strategy are really in a cost leadership position, and we want to maintaining that position. We are concentrating on that 3 hubs, I explained it already. The Singapore, Antwerp and Mobile out of this sharpened focus on our 3 hubs. We will deliver and methionine will deliver as well in the future a strong cash flow. Methionine fulfill currently all the financial criteria within our portfolio management, as I elaborated on as well on growth as well on margin as well on return on capital. We will run methionine based on the current status as a cash cow. We only will invest in this business for 3 reasons: that is maintenance; that is smart debottlenecking or the necessity to improve our cost position. That is the only thing where we want to allocate the CapEx to methionine, and we will focus and reallocate even more capital the sustainable solutions approach as I work on that. We have a strong customer base. We are globally represented with methionine. Methionine is the entry ticket to build up the Nutrition & Care as a sustainable nutrition part the growth field. And we will use it to even grow in this application. I explained, gut health solutions or precision livestock farming that will enable us. For that reason, we see it still as a valuable part of our portfolio. But as I said, we will go and manage it as a pure cash cow within our portfolio. The share of the methionine business within the next 10 years will decline by approximately -- in sales part by approximately 10% of our sales.

Very clear, Caspar. Let's take the next question here from Mubasher from Citi, again, on the lipid nanoparticle business. How are we seeing -- Thomas, how are you seeing the competitive landscape? Are there other players entering this field? And what is your general probably rather future split of revenue opportunities between the pure vaccine COVID business and potentially also other vaccines or other areas and other products even beyond vaccines in this field?

So the competitive landscape, right now, especially in the context mRNA LNPs is very dynamic. It was triggered by the launch of the first COVID-19 mRNA-based vaccine in December. And of course, a lot of players are positioning themselves or are trying to enter in this space and you can cluster them. There are more chemical-driven companies entering or trying to enter. There are big CMOs, contract manufacturing organizations who play in that field. You have mixing a very complex mixing technologies, that are required, just also some tech companies. What really differentiates us and what makes it hard for others to enter in this broad context with our positioning along the entire value chain because the formulation know-how is really critical. The formulation at the end will also define what kind of excipients are you. So you also need to have this chemical competence in order to translate a formulation need into a chemical pharmaceutical excipient. And we are not a pharma company, yes. So we are a specialty chemicals company, as such, we are not in competition with our customers. And I think this makes us really unique in the industry. We have a track record here, we have years of experience. We are involved in very relevant, very significant projects. So we are very, very well positioned here as the really leading or one of the leading integrated CDMOs in this space. So when it comes to the split of the revenue, that's not an easy one, yes, because this mRNA LNP technology is evolving very, very dynamically. A year ago, the commercial value was almost 0. There was no product on the market. This changed due to, as mentioned, the COVID-19 vaccine. There are a lot of developments going on using mRNA also for other vaccines like flu, like rabies. But also new developments in cell and gene therapies like therapeutics, cancer immunization and others. So it's really too hard to say what the individual split between COVID and other vaccines will be. There's a lot of unknowns. Nobody knows how the new variants of COVID-19 will develop. So I see it really as just one big class of application -- applied technologies here, at the LNP, mRNA space, and we will have a significant triple-digit million euro revenue generated in this market.

Thank you very much, Thomas, very clear. Next question is on our financial targets from Martin Evans from HSBC. And here, specifically on the ROCE target of more than 14%. Question is, ROCE at the moment is rather low at 8%. What are the drivers going forward to improve the ROCE and to bring it to the 14% or even above 14% target in the midterm?

Yes. On the ROCE, you're absolutely right. We still have to do our homework. We are currently in the range of 7.7%. It's above-average group, but not enough for earning the cost of capital and not targeting our ambition 14%. So the good news is that our major investments are already capitalized. The big ones like Me6 that we have done in Singapore and all our growth areas, which we mentioned during our presentation where we want to grow with our solutions, namely active ingredients, gut health solutions, drug delivery systems are less capital intensive. We have the approach of one technology platform concept. So we use our assets to even for more than one business and that we already practicized than using our asset structure for -- and filling it up for different applications. We improved already our capital asset structure with these things, much more has to come. One lever is, of course, the ROCE for higher-margin business, as I explained, and we are very, very confident that we will deliver on this growth stories, especially driven in cosmetics by active ingredient or delivery systems in health care. And the other pillar, don't forget it, that is a constant cost and cash management. We are committed to overcompensate our normal cost effect or cost compensation by achieving more than EUR 30 million of annual cost savings. So both discipline in our CapEx structure in more solutions-driven growth yields and cost and cash discipline that will lead us to reach our ambition, and we are targeting a ROCE in our target area within the next 3 to 5 years.

Thank you, Caspar. Next question goes again to Yann, on the active ingredients business. And on the typical contracts -- contract structure in that business and as we say on the slide, the majority -- some kind of a majority of the future growth and future sales is even now contracted and secured. How does that work exactly? How is -- how have you already secured this growth going forward?

Good question as well. Thanks, Tim. I mean, the clients want to secure -- there are growth prospects and the access to our system solutions in particular. This is true for today and for tomorrow. So as such, we sign mid- to long-term supply agreements that have, in general, also some strategic elements for future development as well of the next-generation of system solutions. That's normally how we handle the situation. I mean, for sake of confidentiality, I won't say more at the moment.

Thank you very much. Nevertheless, I think, very clear. And we are approaching more or less the 4:30 deadline. We still have a couple of more questions. So I think we will take 1 or 2 more. One other question comes from Chetan Udeshi from JPMorgan on the impact of plant-based meat on our animal nutrition business and on the growth prospects in our animal nutrition business, Emmanuel to you.

Yes. It's a topic that we can talk about more than just a minute. Clearly speaking, yes, it's undisputed that the growth of protein in the next 30 years will be by 30%, 35%, and the value of a single piece of protein will also increase. What we see now is that, of course, plant-based meat and alternatives to animal protein will find its place in the world and in the preferences of end consumers going more towards flexitarian diets. So I believe this will be a relevant part in future. On the other side, we have always very broad projections how big this portion will be, but I believe it is a contribution for the existing animal-derived protein industry to faster and focus more on sustainable solutions. I think this impact is clear, and it will also drive, I think, the development of sustainable and long-lasting positive elements to a healthier nutrition for poultry and aquaculture meat, which is, of course, also a relevant part for very round and sound human diet. So all in all, yes, there will be a clear place. I don't think that it will remove the animal-derived proteins at all. On the other side, we have a challenge ahead of us. The global mankind will grow beyond 10 billion people. And I think this is a clear imperative, not only to look on the existing pathways that we all know, but also taking into consideration that alternatives also increase the innovation power for the existing and for the new ones. And therefore, I believe the place will be there, but it will be also a positive momentum on the existing industry to improve and to show the value of animal-derived protein for, I would say, holistic and sound human diets.

Yes. Thank you, Emmanuel, and let's take a last question, a last modeling question from Thomas Swoboda on the profitability difference of the 3 business lines in Nutrition & Care. What's today the difference between Animal Nutrition, Healthcare and Care Solutions in terms of margin and how might that develop going forward?

Yes. The published our division last year was around 18.7% and then Animal Nutrition, as [ public ] communicated as well as above 20%. So that means that the Plaza business are below that 20% and still have a way to go. What I can tell you that we really haven't built on a consistent track record. We elaborated already on the Care Solutions that we really bring together the 2 business line areas that we shifted the portfolio to a higher active ingredients business that we're bringing our assets to sweating that we make some nice acquisition and growing nicely with active ingredients. Overall, working on our cost structure by reducing it more than EUR 30 million, reducing the staff by more than 130, that makes and counts for 400 basis points improvement in EBITDA margin over the last 4 years. And I'm pretty sure that the business line will build on this track as well this year and will further improve till end of '21. The same applies to Healthcare. If I look now to Healthcare, we'll make some recent acquisitions, especially in the high-margin drug delivery systems area, where we now are building on this growth area. We make a lot of progress and Exclusive Synthesis by doing an adequate portfolio management, like Thomas already explained to higher-margin, high CDMO plays, high potency APIs, lipid nanoparticles as just some examples as well with a consistent cost saving approach as well improved here the EBITDA margin by nearly 400 basis points, and we are quite confident that we might reach even EBITDA margin around 20% by this year. So you will see slowly but surely, we are moving that portfolio in that direction already described towards and higher-margin with addressing all 3 levers of our management agenda: growth, performance and people, and that brings Nutrition & Care to life.

Great closing remarks. Thank you very much, Caspar, for that. And that brings us to the end of our first Division Spotlight Series on Nutrition & Care for today. Thank you very much for joining. Thank you very much here to all of you to sharing your vision and your growth strategy on the division with us. And we hope to see you end of June, beginning of July for Part 2 and Part 3 of our Division Spotlight Series on Smart Materials and on Specialty Additives. I guess it's getting at least as exciting as today for Nutrition & Care. Thank you very much for joining for dialing in for all of your questions, and I'm sure we'll be in touch soon.