IMCD N.V. (IMCD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, hello, and welcome to the IMCD N.V. Full Year 2024 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand you over to your host, Valerie Diele-Braun, CEO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the IMCD 2024 Full Year Results Call. As usual, I'm here with my colleague, Hans Kooijmans, the CFO of IMCD, who will lead you through the financial results after my preliminary remarks. And then we are open to answer your questions. 2024 was a challenging but successful year for IMCD. The global economy continued to grow at a modest pace, whilst geopolitical tensions and economic shifts influenced customer behavior. Nevertheless, we were able to recover from a rather weak first quarter to return to gross profit and EBITA growth in all following quarters. During 2024, we recorded a gross profit of EUR 1,202 million and operating EBITA of EUR 531 million. On a constant currency basis, this is a 5% EBITA increase versus the previous year. Our net result was EUR 278 million, and our free cash flow, EUR 450 million, leading to a cash earnings per share of EUR 6.34. In 2024, we strengthened our presence across all segments and regions by completing 12 acquisitions and signing an additional two. Of these additions to our portfolio, 11 acquisitions were in life science and 3 in industrials. Our M&A pipeline is looking healthy, and we have the financial means to execute on targets in a diligent way on our strong balance sheet combined with a reasonable leverage level. Having defined our six strategic growth pillars, which we presented during our Investor Day with many of you in Milan in September, we are happy to report on our execution on them in the past few months. People, we continue to ensure an inclusive and highly professional employee base by investing in our people through excellence in recruitment and in training. Portfolio, we continue to strengthen our presence across all segments and regions through acquisitions, expansion of existing principles and addition of new principles. Commercial excellence, we added new functionalities and tools to our digital commercial infrastructure such as the SalesAssistant. This enables our sales force to further increase the number and types of products we sell to customers, and thereby, we can increase the share of wallet at our customers by selling multiple products from different suppliers. Operational excellence, we reviewed our supply chain and drove efficiencies where possible whilst focusing on growth. Digital excellence, we continue to review the utilization of AI wherever possible and beneficial, and we invested in existing tools and the development of new tools. And last but not least, sustainability, we have improved versus our 2019 baseline and are working hard to further reduce our emissions intensity. Our latest initiative here is our commitment to SBTi. For more information on what we do, I would refer to our integrated report, which we published this morning. Here you will find great stories on what we do. In terms of markets, after a poor start of the year, recovered in all subsequent quarters based on continued strong performance of our teams and strong supplier and customer collaborations. In EMEA, we were able, thereby to maintain or to grow volumes despite various negative macroeconomic factors affecting European industries. Inflation and related cost increases could not yet be fully compensated. In the Americas, we delivered a very solid second half of the year and could grow volumes whilst carefully managing our cost structure. In APAC, we had an overall very positive performance, but were impacted by China's continued weakness. In terms of our life science business versus our industrial businesses, we continue to maintain a balanced portfolio where revenue from life science was EUR 2.5 billion, and revenue in industrial was slightly above [ EUR 2.2 billion ]. In our life science segment, personal care continued to perform very nicely, and food and nutrition had a very good second half of the year. Pharma continued to be weaker due to destocking taking customers longer than expected, but we started to see a recovery at year-end. In our industrial segment, all areas have started to see better performance. We believe that this was not due to preemptive actions because of the potential tariffs as we did not experience substantial moves of volumes or preordering in a material way. In terms of general market development, we continue to see volatile months across all regions and business lines with little visibility beyond 6 weeks and movement of volumes from month to month. Inventories are probably also in pharma now at a low to normal level, but the impact of tariffs on consumer behavior, inflation and interest rates is leading to cautious behavior in parts of our customers. Whilst geopolitical and macroeconomic conditions continue to often be challenging, we are confident that our investments made, our strong commercial teams, digital and logistic infrastructure, combined with us driving operational excellence and cost control will deliver further growth and efficiencies. Our order book and M&A pipeline is healthy, and we are excited about our ongoing work with suppliers and customers. Hans will now give you an update on the numbers.

Valerie, thank you for the introduction, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And as Valerie already indicated earlier today, we issued a press release summarizing our IMCD's financial results for 2024. But at the same time, we also released IMCD's Integrated 2024 report. A comprehensive about 350-page document that as a result of all reporting legislation that we have to comply with, looks like a real book. This informative and visually engaging report provides insights into IMCD's business, covering both financial and nonfinancial performance in more detail. In this call, I will take you through a summary of only the financial numbers before we move to Q&A. I'll start on Page 9 of the presentation, where you see ForEx adjusted revenue increase of 8% and a gross profit increase of 9%. And this increase in gross profit was a combination of 1% organic growth and 7% as a result of the first-time inclusion of acquisition. The year started with a relatively soft first quarter, if you remember, with negative organic growth, and this was followed by 4% organic gross profit growth in the second quarter and about 6% organic growth in the second half of the year. And the acquisition growth that we report is the balance of the full year impact of acquisitions done in 2023 and more recent acquisitions signed and closed in 2024. And for an overview of the 2024 acquisition, I would like to refer to the Pages 5 and 6 of this presentation. Then gross profit in percentage of revenue slightly increased to 25.4% in 2024. The segments EMEA and Americas both report an increase in gross profit margin. And in Asia Pacific, we report a decrease. And this decrease is mainly driven by lower than IMCD's average gross profit margin of the acquisitions that we completed in 2023 in 2024. Then for your convenience, we included a line on this slide with operating EBITDA in a people organization like IMCD with an asset-light business model with outsourced logistics and a low fixed asset base. The development of EBITDA shown in the next line seems more relevant to us. When looking at operating EBITDA, you can see it increased 5% on a constant currency basis to EUR 531 million. And this increase was a combination of an organic decline of 3% and a positive 8% impact as a result of the first-time inclusion of acquisitions. On EBITA, we saw a similar trend, as mentioned before when talking about gross profit, negative growth in the first half of the year, followed by 5% organic EBITDA growth in the second half. Operating EBITA in percentage of revenue slightly decreased to 11.2% Same for the conversion margin, which decreased to 44.2% in 2024. The full year decrease in conversion margin, this is mainly the result of gross profit growth that could not fully compensate inflation-driven on cost growth. At the 2024 on cost growth was just below 5%. Compared to 2023, the number of full-time employees, if you would normalize for the impact of acquisitions, decreased by 2%. It's further worthwhile mentioning that in the second half of 2024, the conversion margin was a bit better than in the same period of 2023. On the next slide, that's Slide 10, a few key figures from the P&Ls per operating segment. And on this slide, the main focus is on gross profit margin and the EBITDA development. And as you can see, it includes a split in organic acquisition growth and currency impacts. In the integrated report, there is much more segment information that you can find in there. Perhaps, first of all, the overall currency impact. We had a bit of headwind in 2024, resulting in a minus 1% on gross profit and a minus 2% on EBITA. And although it sounds like a low percentage in absolute numbers, we still lost about EUR 10 million of EBITA as a result of negative translation differences due to currency fluctuations. Then the EMEA column, gross profit of EMEA in the first column increased 5% ForEx adjusted, which is a combination of 2% organic and 3% acquisition growth. The gross profit increase could not fully compensate for inflation driven on cost growth in this segment. And as a consequence, there was a little negative organic EBITA growth and a lower EBITA and conversion margin in the EMEA region. In the Americas, as you will remember, we reported a weak start of the year with negative organic gross profit and EBITA growth in the first 6 months of 2024. The second half of the year was strong in the Americas. Organic EBITA increased close to 15% in this period compared to the second half of 2023. Strict cost management, combined with high single-digit organic gross profit growth were the main drivers of this double-digit organic EBITA growth. We were happy with the strong recovery in the second half of the year. Unfortunately, the second half of the year was too short to fully compensate for the soft first half. Then Asia Pacific, we report another growth year, whereby we realized 16% ForEx adjusted gross profit growth and 14% EBITA growth. And as you can see, most of this growth was the result of acquisitions done. Operating EBITA increased to EUR 170 million, whereby EBITA margin and conversion margin both slightly decreased. And then in the last column, you will find in the holding companies, all nonoperating companies, including the head office in Rotterdam and our regional support offices in Singapore and the U.S. Holding cost as a percentage of total revenue slightly increased from 0.7% in '23 to 0.8% of revenue in 2024. Then moving to the next page. And on this page, you will find a summary of all the P&L lines from EBITA to the net result for the period. Some general remarks, whereby I will summarize net finance cost and income tax expenses on separate slides. Amortization of intangible assets are noncash cost items related to the amortization of supplier relations, distribution rights and other intangibles. The increase that you see is mainly the result of the acquisitions done. Then the EUR 11 million of what I would call nonrecurring expenses. And this cost includes costs related to successful and unsuccessful acquisitions and it further includes severance costs related to one-off adjustments of the organization. And if you look at the increase compared to 2023, this increase is mainly the result of a one-off income in 2023. As you might remember, last year, in 2023, we reported a one-off income of EUR 5 million on this line as a result of the sale of a warehouse building in the U.S. Then on Slide 12, a breakdown of the 2024 net finance cost, adding up to EUR 45 million, which is about EUR 20 million more than previous year. This increase is a combination of EUR 19 million higher interest costs related to our financing structure. Then there is a positive change in deferred considerations of about EUR 7 million. I'll come back on that later, and a EUR 6 million more negative currency exchange results. The higher interest cost on the financing structure is mainly driven by, on the one hand, on average, higher debt levels combined with slightly increased interest rates. When looking at our debt position, it's fair to say that our future exposure to interest rate fluctuations further reduced during 2024. But the majority of our actual debt position consists of rated corporate bond loans and the total amount of outstanding bonds is EUR 1.6 billion with an average fixed coupon of about 3.5%. Then changes in deferred considerations. In the call last year, we spent quite some time on explaining the mechanics. And as you might remember, a part of our net debt that we report refers to deferred purchase price considerations of acquisitions done and the related potential earn-out obligations. At the end of 2024, we reported deferred consideration of EUR 99 million as a net debt item. And this reported deferred consideration is based on estimated conditional payments to former owners. Changes in these estimates lead to adjustments, and these adjustments could end up either direct in equity or flow through the interest line of the P&L. This year, we had similar to last year, a combination of pluses and minuses based on the changes in these estimates with an on balance positive impact, the impact that you see here on the P&L. In 2024, this positive impact mainly relates to Sanrise and Megasetia leading to a noncash income. So if I would be honest, when making your financial model, I could imagine to adjust for these noncash IFRS-related adjustments. Then on the next page, a summary of our tax expenses. On the regular income tax expenses, we report a decrease of EUR 5 million. And the tax credits related to amortization, that is a noncash tax component increased in line with the amortization that you saw earlier. And then as a guidance for our tax cost, we always indicated to expect a blended tax rate in the range of 24% to 28% of result before tax. And then this result before tax, we always calculated as EBITA minus finance and nonrecurring costs. On the bottom of this page, you could read that the IMCD's blended regular tax rate in 2024 was 24.2%, and this is slightly below the 2023 level and still at the low end of our guidance. In the integrated report, there is a lot more details about the way we calculate tax, our tax position, our tax policy, and I would like to refer to this report if you want to do a deep dive on taxes. Then on the next page, the calculation of cash earnings per share and our dividend proposal. And as you can see on this slide, we report EUR 6.34 cash earnings per share in 2024. And at the AGM in April, we will propose a dividend of EUR 2.15 in cash per share, which means a small 4% decrease compared to last year. The company has a dividend policy, whereby with an annual target dividend in the range of 25% to 35% of adjusted net income. And this dividend proposal leads to a payout ratio of 35%, which is like last year at the top of the range that we set ourselves in this policy. Then a few words on IMCD's balance sheet on the next slide. Property, plant and equipment slightly increased and is as a result of the asset-light business model still relatively low compared to the size of our business. The right-of-use assets is a result of the application of IFRS 16. So this EUR 103 million reflects capitalized operational leases and the related lease liabilities of about EUR 109 million is included in our net debt position that you will see later. The increase in intangible assets and related deferred tax liabilities are mainly the result of the acquisitions done. Then working capital, I will come back on that in a minute. And then you see a solid equity position of close to EUR 2.2 billion covering 63% of capital employed. And the increase in 2024 is, amongst others, the result of the -- you can imagine the addition of the net profit for the year of EUR 278 million. Then there is positive other comprehensive income of EUR 43 million, a minus, of course, for the dividend payment in cash of EUR 128 million. And further, it includes the net proceeds from the issuance of the new share capital, which contributed close to EUR 300 million. For working capital and net debt, let's go to the summary on the next page of page -- I think it's Page 16, you will find a summary of the absolute amount of the various working capital components, and these absolute amounts translated in days of revenue. The absolute amount of working capital increased with EUR 143 million, and this increase includes EUR 41 million additional working capital related to 2024 acquisitions. Then the majority of the remaining increase, so about EUR 100 million is the result of higher level of business activities in 2024 compared with last year. And this increase of business activities, combined with additional stock to cater for a strong order book for the start of 2024 was one of the main reasons of the increase that you see. When looking at the days in the bottom of this slide, the stock days increase is the result of what I said earlier, the increased business activities combined with that strong order book. And the other factor that we always see and we spoke about it in previous calls is that we often see at quarter end that customers push their orders or part of their open orders into the next month or next quarter, and that is also something that happened at year-end. And then, of course, I will call it this, it still needs to take care of the stock position of these orders. Then the receivables, when we report this, we always report this as a combination of trade and other receivables. If you break it into the trade receivable days end of 2024 were 55 days compared to the 54 end of last year. So the increase in receivable days that we report is mainly driven by other receivables. Other receivables include positions like prepaid taxes, prepaid social security charges, where we increased in total a bit more than 2 days. I think it makes sense in future reporting that we will split our trade receivables to give you a bit of a better insight in the actual development of our debtor days. On Page 17, a summary of our net debt position. At the end of 2024, we report EUR 1.3 billion of net debt. And as mentioned before, this net debt position includes the EUR 1.6 billion of corporate bonds. And one of the bonds in there, a EUR 300 million bond is due for repayment in Q1 this year, and this due date is one of the reasons of the substantial cash position that you also see on the balance sheet. Further net debt includes EUR 109 million of the operational lease liabilities, IFRS 16 and about EUR 98 million of deferred consideration. And on the same page, an overview of the maturity profile of our debt structure as per the end of 2024. With the new bond and the extended term of the revolver, we created a nice maturity profile in our debt portfolio. The EUR 600 million revolver facility bar that you see on the right-hand side reflects the maximum amount we can use as per today. Then reported leverage at the end of 2024 was 2.2x EBITDA, and this leverage ratio or the leverage ratio based on the definitions used in the IMCD loan documentation was slightly lower at 2.1x EBITDA, and that is well below the required maximum as set in the loan documentation. Then I would like to finish the financial summary with the cash flow overview on Page 18. As you can see, the absolute amount of free cash flow was EUR 450 million, which results in a cash conversion ratio of 83%. The change in conversion ratio versus last year is a combination of higher operating EBITDA combined with higher working capital investment compared to last year. And then on the last slide of the presentation, you will find the outlook in which we, amongst others, indicate that we remain confident that we will continue to contribute value to our stakeholders and to sustain our growth trajectory. So far, our summary of the figures, and Valerie and myself are happy to answer your questions. So let's go back to then the operator. The floor is yours.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Suhasini Varanasi calling from Goldman Sachs.

I have a few, please. Maybe can you discuss for a start how Q4 trends have evolved? It looks like organic growth may be slowed in this quarter compared to previous quarters. Did you see any movement in orders between December and January? And also second question is on the order book. I think in the press release, you pointed to a strong order book for the start of 2025. Does that mean maybe the trends in 1Q are looking a little bit better than the 4Q levels? And maybe just a last one. Now that you've seen 3 consecutive quarters of positive organic GP growth, do you feel like you've now reached an inflection point on growth? Or is there still some uncertainty on demand from customers?

I would suggest that Hans takes the first and I take the other two questions.

Suhasini, thanks for the question. The first one related to the strong order book at year-end and the trend that we saw. I think when we looked at the second half of the year, we saw basically a continuation, a bit of a further improvement compared to the second quarter. So we saw organic growth in second quarter and then further improved in the second half of the year in general across all segments. I think it's fair to say that the Americas showed the strongest performance and that EMEA had the more tougher business environment. And the other thing that we see, and that's something we explained earlier is that we still live in an environment that people little visibility not only on their orders, but that also creates lower visibility on our side. And we often see at the end of a month or even more at the end of a quarter that if there is a possibility for customers to push their order into the next month that they do. And that is also something that happened this year that creates that part of creating that strong order book. And I think Valerie, you could say something about the more general market dynamics there.

Yes. And I think you asked about the inflection point there also. I mean, in general, after 3 quarters, continuous growth and a strong January and not such a bad-looking February, I think one could say normal -- under normal circumstances, this is looking like the trend is reversing. However, there is geopolitically at the moment, so much happening in terms of tariffs and changes on a daily basis that a lot of customers at the moment are quite confused in terms of the orders. And we see also at month end still a lot of going into the next month, which makes it very difficult for us to predict and which is why we stay with our 6 weeks' visibility. And even there, something might go from one quarter to another. So I wouldn't talk about inflection point until we see that things are stabilizing in terms of geopolitics.

And just a quick follow-up. Given you mentioned tariffs, is that something that could affect the ability to source products for you? Or is your sourcing mostly local to local?

We have a lot of local to local. Clearly, we are reviewing all our -- the situation where the plans of our principals are. And in a lot of cases, they have plans in multiple geographies, which really helps. We also have seen no major movements so far. I mean I made that statement in the document or in the -- what I talked about in the call. So for the moment, history has shown that IMCD has been pretty resilient. Currently, no major moves happening and our principals are preparing themselves as well.

The next question comes from the line of Alex Stewart calling from Barclays.

I wonder for the avoidance of doubt, whether you could clarify what the group organic gross profit growth and group organic EBITA growth was in the fourth quarter specifically? And related to that, would you consider on a consistent basis, providing the market with quarterly growth figures because you round the full year and 9-month numbers. And so it's very difficult for us to calculate what the numbers are for each individual quarter. So is that something you would consider doing in future?

Alex, thanks for the question. I think it's a bit similar as the discussion that we had last year and then we -- because we prefer always not to talk too much about the quarter because before you start discussing what did this quarter include Easter and last year not and so on and so forth. And therefore, we always try to talk about what is the trend in a year. And at the same time, I understand your request, and that is why we started including always the year-to-date organic growth figures per segment, per region and so on and so forth, allowing people to, if they plug it in the spreadsheet that it automatically calculates themselves. If it would be helpful for you to put it in an annex or so, we can do. But we prefer as a company to always talk a bit longer term and also because especially when you talk about segments, kind of what I would call minor details could have an impact on a percentage or a rounding difference and before people translate that into trends. But if it would be helpful for you, we can give you a bit of additional information from this year onwards.

Would you mind giving us the figures for the fourth quarter of this year?

On a group level, we had organic top line growth, and I need to do that out of the top of my head, around about 2%, 3%. On EBITA, I think it was similar as in the third quarter, so around about 5% organic. And on margin, I think also close to slightly below perhaps the third quarter. So I think 5%, 6%. But again, the fact that I don't know it out of the top of my head already indicates this is not something that we look -- for sure we look at it on a monthly basis. But for us, the underlying trend is more important than to look at exceptions or slight small changes because of rounding differences and number of working days.

The next question comes from the line of Annelies Vermeulen calling from Morgan Stanley.

Three questions, please. So just firstly, could you talk a little bit about pricing and the pricing dynamics, particularly into year-end and year-to-date and whether some of that volatility that we saw through 2024 has started to abate? And secondly, just on China, the data points continue to be quite mixed coming out of China. So I'm curious as to what you're seeing. I recall Personal Care have been quite weak in China last year. So any improvement there or anything else you're seeing on the ground? And lastly, just on M&A, there's been clearly a focus on food and pharma deals in 2024. Do you expect that to continue in 2025 based on your pipeline? Or are you seeing interesting opportunities on the industrial side as well?

So I think on this one, I will take all questions, but Hans, please add if I forget something. So pricing, I mean, I think we talked in the calls before that pricing did have an effect on food products. And during the year, we saw several business groups having lower pricing. However, I would say it has stabilized. And at this point in time, we don't see that there is a major pressure. Some prices are being increased. Some but few are decreased depending on some competitiveness in some specific markets. But if you look at product mix and regions and countries, across the board, I would say nothing that is material overall in a major way. China, mixed data points, I think that's a good statement. There is not a lot of positivity, I think, in the Chinese market across. There are, again, segments in which the performance is starting to improve. But the consumer sentiment, I think, is still relatively negative. I think all data also shows that the savings, they are still saving money. Clearly, they are not spending it on consumables. So China, for the moment, I would still say that we consider it weak. And on M&A, we have always said we are interested in industrials and life science. And wherever there are interesting opportunities, we will go for them. And there are some interesting ones also industrial. So whilst we did much more in life science last year, that was also a question of the right opportunity coming at the right time. And therefore, that is not a change of strategy. We will continue to build both segments. Anything I forgot? Okay.

The next question comes from the line of Chetan Udeshi calling from JPMorgan.

I was just curious, if I look at your working capital, and you pointed that out as well in your release, it's up 19% at the end of '24 versus end of '23. I think if I look at second half versus first half, again, it's a pretty good jump. I'm just curious, you're talking about working capital, which is up double digit at the year-end versus prior year. How should we read that into your sort of your confidence in your Q1 numbers? I mean, can we extrapolate that as double-digit growth organically for your top line and bottom line? Or is that a bit too far in terms of trends at this point that you see? The second question was, you raised EUR 300 million equity in December. And maybe I don't know if this is a shift in terms of strategy with Valerie on. But historically, Hans, whenever you've raised equity, you've typically announced a deal at the same time and you use equity as a way to fund those deals. And I remember Signet acquisition, which has been a fantastic one. I'm just curious what was the reason to that equity raise? Because it didn't feel like the balance sheet was anything that you would typically be worried about given your business profile.

I'll take this one, [indiscernible]. On the working capital, I would love to say that a double-digit increase in working capital because of double-digit sales growth that I would -- if I could sign somewhere for that as a guarantee for the future, I would certainly do. But what you see there is always the correlation between top line growth you see on working capital numbers if you keep your days more or less equal. And if you look at the drivers of the increase, for sure, it's partly M&A related. There's more than EUR 40 million in my working capital position that is M&A. Currencies play a role. If currencies move, that has an impact on working capital amounts. My debtor days, so when normalizing for the other receivables are pretty stable at around about is it 50-something number. And stock is the one that where we see most of the fluctuations. And that stock position is partly financed with creditors. As you have seen in the deck that we also ended the year with slightly higher creditor days because of the additional stock that we had to buy. And the stock is -- the debtors are the big moving parts related to the top line. And I hope to report a healthy increase on the absolute numbers and keep the days more or less similar because a healthy increase would indicate a healthy top line growth. Then on the capital raise, when looking at the M&A pipeline, and that is also what we mentioned after the capital raise, then we knew that based on all the potential transactions in the pipeline that at a certain moment, we would hit the, what I would call the leverage threshold that we set ourselves. And the reason of issuing the share capital just before year-end was mainly related to the fact that we felt in a very uncertain market with a lot of volatility, it's better to take -- make use of the opportunity at that moment in time than to bet on a future opportunity at the moment that you are pushed to go to the market. In hindsight, I'm happy that we did it at the moment that we did it. And I can also confirm that we have a pipeline that by this capital call was really needed. And let's wait for the announcements to come, I would say. And I'm happy then to explain why something took a bit longer than expected.

The next question comes from the line of Eric Wilmer calling from Kempen.

First question is on your personal care business, which I believe is around 10% of sales. I think over the weekend, a number of European personal care brand owners highlighted to expect slower growth this year combined with margin pressure, fueled by inflation triggered by U.S. tariffs and resulting in softer customer confidence. I was wondering to what extent this is visible in your current personal care order book? And I was also wondering whether the cut in dividend, it seems to reflect a payout ratio that's slightly below 35%. Should we read from this, this is also a way to basically keep your flexibility regarding the balance sheet. I realize it's only marginal, but it's still notable. And finally, a question on EMEA. I think EBITA was flat year-on-year despite M&A and arguably easier comps. I was wondering what the main mix effects were the drivers there.

Valerie, I'll take the first on the dividend, and then you take the other topic.

Perfect.

Eric, the -- if you look at the absolute amount of dividend that we pay out is more or less similar as last year. And the decrease is mainly driven by the fact that we issued about 3% of share capital. And I think another important thing is that at the start of our listing, we set ourselves a dividend policy and that we will pay out between 25% and 35% of the net result and always calculated on the same basis. So I don't want to normalize for all kind of one-off type of things there. And basically, we would like to be predictable in what we do and stick to the dividend policy that we communicated. And in that dividend policy, there is a maximum of 35%. If we feel at a certain moment that there is not an opportunities to invest in growth, either M&A or organic, and then we could review the dividend policy, but we are far away from that moment.

Perfect. In terms of personal care, I mean, I think it's fair to say that the start of the year has been slow. At the same time, one cannot always read into that our results because, of course, we also have movements in terms of principles, additions, expansion, geographic, maybe different products that we launch. So I think we continue to be very confident about our personal care segment because we still have way to grow in many regions. And in terms of margin pressure, I don't think we see really that there are major moves at this point in time, but still to be seen also. I mean, the year is still relatively fresh. In terms of EMEA and the drivers for the growth or not for the flatness, I mean, EMEA is growing at the moment in the chemical market, definitely through a lot of change and particularly Germany and France are affected markets. I think if we look at the overall picture, I think we have shown quite some resilience based on, again, the product portfolio, product mix, compensating in many markets. So it is a very mixed picture in terms of EMEA with some markets having very, very nice growth numbers and some that are down. And investment packages and those kind of things definitely will be welcomed, I think, for everybody. Does that answer your question?

Yes.

The next question comes from the line of Carl Raynsford calling from Berenberg.

Just three from me, please. The first is high level around really trends in life science and industrial on the latter in particular, [indiscernible] have started to report above 50. It's obviously a bit more confidence there. So I'm just wondering if that's a likely driver through 2025 if confidence does remain a bit higher? Or does that not necessarily translate into sort of sales into the consumer market in your view? And the second is just a follow-up on Annelies's pricing question. Would you have to call out -- I know you kind of alluded to this, but call out big movers by end market and really it's case, I'm thinking about in particular because you were calling that out as a negative, I think, in the last quarter. So it would be good to know if that's stabilizing or not. And the last question on interest costs. I guess sort of a double question, really, sorry. But on deferred consideration, Hans, are you able to guide how we should model that for 2025, please? Because I know in the past, you said to neutralize it, but it's been pretty consistent over the last couple of years. So just some further clarification going forward would be useful. And the other side is just the bond maturing in 2025, and you may have mentioned this, sorry if I missed it, but would you be able to give us any color on the refinancing of that one, please?

Do you want to take the last two? And do you want to start with?

That's good. I'll start with the last one, the bond, the refinancing. We issued a bond last year in September, and that is basically part of the proceeds will be used to repay the bond that is due in this quarter. And that is one of the reasons that we have quite some cash on the balance sheet at year-end. Then on the deferred considerations, what you might have seen in my balance sheet is that over the years, the amount of deferred considerations came down. We have now what is about EUR 99 million still left, mainly linked to acquisitions where we will buy the minority share in this year. And I doubt for modeling purposes, if you should include any major changes as release or additional costs related to deferred consideration for this year. So the 2 years that we have seen behind us. And perhaps to explain why these 2 years were so extreme that on both sides, you might have seen last year that we had about EUR 50 million top-up on the Signet payout that was routed through the equity position based on IFRS. And you might have seen a couple of releases also last year. But what we need to do with these deferred considerations under IFRS is at the moment that we acquire these businesses, then we pay for the profitability at that moment in time. So if we buy 70% of the business, we pay 70% on the basis of that year's profitability. And then owners present a hockey stick to us how their profit will grow in the future. And we don't want to pay for that hockey stick. But we make then an arrangement that if they really make that hockey stick, we will pay for that. But under IFRS, then the funny thing happens that I need to accrue for the payout on the basis of that hockey stick. And if then the reality is different than what they predict at the moment they sell the majority share to us, then I need to adjust the deferred consideration and that either flows through the P&L, that is what you see this year or last year or through equity if it is a last moment adjustment. So it has nothing to do with the performance of the business. We buy the profitability that was there at that moment in time. It is more about what is told to us about future growth and how does that reflect in my IFRS reporting. Did that answer your question? It was a bit of a long answer to your question, Carl, sorry for that.

It's easy to remind it, Hans. Thank you.

Coming back on the question that you asked on trends in life science and industrials. I mean, I think if you're looking at industrials, I'm super proud of the team that in a market that was definitely not a market of tailwinds, they have done extremely well in the last year and recovering in the second half of the year, particularly in terms of volumes, in terms of ensuring that the pricing was the optimal one to keep the volumes and at the same time, also have within the mix, a pretty stable margin. So I would say that gives me great confidence in terms of the team that they will deal with also what is coming. Now I don't think we are talking about tailwinds right now in the Industrial segment. If we are looking at the fact that we will see tariffs in the U.S. We will see probably rising interest costs. And with that, less home moves, which basically lead in the U.S. at least to a lot of investment in people painting their houses and so on. At the same time, we have dealt with that in the past, and we're dealing with it. And we have so many different product groups within also our industrial side from lubricants to the coating to construction, textiles, lots of different ones that we see that we can compensate with this agile model for a lot of things that in some areas might be affected and might go down. Versus life science, I would also say in life science, personal care China, for example, we mentioned that in the past, it's a big business, and that wasn't very good last year. And nevertheless, in the end, we recovered. So I would say also there, the trend is a positive one in terms of our agility to react to things that are happening in the market. And the markets in parts are positive and in other parts, they are -- there's clouds on the horizon, let's say.

Okay. Maybe one just follow-up, if you don't mind. Sorry, just a really quick one. On [ case ] in terms of the end market there, specifically sort of non-resi versus resi. Is that something we should consider? Or is that a split you're able to give some color on, if so?

Could you explain that to me? I don't know.

No, in terms of sort of people moving houses, painting, et cetera, that's sort of a residential side, but is there exposure to the nonresidential side as well?

Absolute. We absolutely have also a big exposure. And that's why I say we are trying to then compensate in another area with what we are -- what might be affected in one. And it's still to be seen because we don't know how long the tariffs will really last. So.

The next question comes from the line of Stefano Toffano calling from ABN AMRO ODDO.

So I have three questions left. One is actually based upon the previous answer. Maybe a little bit more specifics into the Americas. Obviously, very strong development over H2, but also Q4 on the operating EBITDA despite a slowing organic growth on the top line and gross profit. So perhaps a little bit more detail what is going on there in terms of operations, but also the mix. Then the second on APAC and M&A. Can we expect M&A in the region to be strong as we have seen over the past few years. And I'm asking this, obviously, because if I'm not mistaken, operating EBITDA on APAC is for the first time last year higher than the Americas. So obviously, if growth continues to be relatively elevated, this will continue to be increasingly a bigger part of the mix in the growth. So that will be interesting. And the last one for Hans, and this is related to a question that Alex asked before, and I apologize if this is an annoying question. But just adding one decimal number to the details that you say help us a long way for us analysts. Specifically, for example, if you mentioned organic growth, minus 1%, if it's minus 1.4% or minus -- that helps us a long way.

Stefano, the question is well noted. I'm happy that Tosca, our new Head of Investor Relations, joined us recently. And she also convinced me that it would make sense. So that I will do my best there.

Thank you, Tosca.

Then on the -- your M&A question, EMEA -- sorry, APAC M&A, you're right, EBITDA is slightly higher than the Americas at the moment. And I think that is good for internal competition more than anything else. So we need to push the Americans that they should overtake again the Asian Pacific region. If I look at the M&A pipeline, we have active projects in both regions. But for me, it's important that they also both grow organically. And competition is all.

Yes. And we had a very nice acquisition with Blumos in Americas, I would say. I mean, I think that was a really important one in Chile for foods. Americas, I mean, in terms of performance of Americas, overall, we can say that basically in all markets, we did better. And in terms of investment in digital, I think it is a market where they have gone a very long way on utilizing the tools in a very beneficial way. So I think -- does that answer your question?

Yes, maybe a little bit more into that because I'm surprised just by the discrepancy of the growth in EBITDA being so big compared to what we have seen on the organic part, at least on the top line and gross profit. So maybe that's me, but I'm just wondering about that.

Perhaps it's also a bit, I think, more fundamental in that market. If you look back at the situation around COVID, also in those years, the swings in the Americas were much more intense than in other parts of the world. I'm not sure if that's partly business mix. I think North America is still a bit more industrial oriented for us than Life Science. So there we have quite some white spots to fill still. I think the region did quite a good job. They gained some new supplier relationships that contributed to the growth that is more fundamental.

Cost efficiency was great.

Yes. Cost efficiency was great. It is -- I think we have a good team in the region. That also helps. Not that we have bad teams in other parts of the world, the combination of all these things coming together. I think we benefited also from -- if you add new countries to your structure and you are in a position to then transfer existing suppliers in those new countries that also helps to grow organically a bit quicker. So all these type of factors helped to grow quicker than perhaps what you would have expected.

And maybe that's why they did a little bit less M&A.

Yes. Well, we did quite a bit in the past.

Exactly. So that does answer you now.

The next question comes from Luuk Van Beek calling from Degroof Petercam.

I have one left. Can you comment on customer buying patterns? In the past, we heard about customers buying small frequent orders. Is that now normalizing? Or are they still quite nervous? Can you comment on that?

I wouldn't say that we are back to the levels that we have seen pre change of order patterns and unclarity in terms of the market. So whilst we are seeing some bigger orders now in industrial, I would say it is still not at the old levels.

The next question comes from the line of Dominic Edridge calling from Deutsche Bank.

Just two quick questions from myself. Firstly, on working capital, just to clarify, Hans, in terms of the inventories, that's very much just down to the level of orders. There's no changes there. I suppose the question would be, has anything changed in terms of customers may be looking at payment terms or alternatively, any of the M&A that you've done has been a little bit more stock intensive as it were, just to clarify on that. And then the second question was just on staff. I see the turnover levels have gone up slightly. I think they're 19% last year versus 18%. Can you just maybe discuss the labor market pressures, if you're still seeing any out there? And then a more general question, what sort of cost inflation do you see on your own OpEx for 2025?

Dominic, on the stock side. Yes, for sure, M&A plays a bit of a role, especially in the first 1 or 2 years, if we acquire a business, we bring them on our IT platforms and then if we create more visibility and better process, we can typically bring stock levels down after an acquisition that we did. The increase that you have seen at year-end is mainly order related. So orders pushed from December into January, combined with a very strong order book already for the start of January.

Yes. I think in terms of staff, I will answer that. I mean, for us, it always depends also a little bit in terms of are we closing warehouses that we get with, for example, an acquisition because that is a large number of people that then will go to an outsourced partner. So I wouldn't read something into the numbers in terms of higher or lower. We have been at a relatively high level for various factors. And yes, one of them is synergies and one of them is the warehousing situation often.

And just more generally about sort of OpEx inflation, what sort of categories -- are you still seeing significant inflation in certain categories at the moment?

Dominic, that depends a bit per country. You can imagine that we have countries like, for instance, Turkey, where 30%, 40%, 50% is pretty normal these days. But we also have countries that are lower single-digit numbers. I think the blended mix that I would expect for this year in the current market conditions will be more or less similar as what we reported last year.

The next question comes from the line of Quirijn Mulder calling from ING.

A couple of things from my side. First of all, on the deferred considerations, changes in that. If I remember, Megasetia was taken over in 2021. I think there were already some, let me say, extra benefits on the IFRS taken. Can you give me an idea about how the developments are there and also with regard to Sanrise? That's my first question. And then Valerie made a remark about pharma, where you see some bottoming out, as I understand. Maybe you can elaborate on that. And maybe somewhat more on the Latin America, how the organic growth is developing in that area? That were my three questions.

Can I take the deferred consideration? Quirijn, I think Megasetia and Sanrise, both similar transactions acquired in the time when the market was booming and everybody showed fantastic results. In both cases, we bought 70% of the shares of these companies. And in both cases, the owners presented to us fantastic future growth numbers. That's the basis that they wanted to use for the valuation. And with both owners, we agreed that we will pay for the profitability at that moment in time. And if the growth would materialize that we will pay an additional purchase price for the remaining 30% on the basis of that higher growth number. I think in both cases, we saw that extraordinary growth did not materialize that Sanrise personal care China, that is a market already described. And I'm happy that we structured it the way we structured it because now we paid a reasonable multiple for the transaction. And the same applies for Megasetia, whereby that is also a company where we acquired 70%. This year, we will buy the remaining 30%, we will fully integrate it in our structure. We will then realize quite some synergies on the cost side, on the balance sheet side. And I think we are happy with both acquisitions and happy the way we structured it because if we would have acquired 100% on the basis of their forecast, then I'm sure that we should have paid much more at that moment in time, and I'm happy that we didn't do that. The only thing I'm a bit unhappy about is the IFRS treatment of these releases because the funny thing that you do is that at the moment that you book the deferred consideration on the debit side, you need to book goodwill. And if you release the deferred consideration, it ends up in your P&L, which is, to my opinion, weird. That is the way IFRS wants us to report on this.

And I take the question on pharma and on LatAm growth. I mean pharma last year, as we always said, had an inventory issue, not a market share issue or anything additional. But we see that the inventories are going to normal levels. We, therefore, have the expectation that things should normalize. We saw that starting in the Q4. We also are doing very heavy investment in pharma. It's a very important pillar for us. So pharma, I think, has been always an important pillar and should continue to be so going forward. LatAm growth, last year, particularly beginning of the year, I think we can say that was a very weak market for us, a weak region. We see now light at the horizon. And again, I think inflection point is always difficult to say because there are movements also in the LatAm market. But overall, I think we are very happy with the team there. We are very happy with the performance. And yes, therefore, LatAm is a great region. Does that answer your question?

Yes. Thanks, Valerie.

The next question comes from the line of Matthew Yates calling from Bank of America.

Just a couple of questions, please. First one around kind of the conversion margin and driving bottom line growth. When you look into 2025, how much volume growth do you think you need in order to offset OpEx inflation, whether that's wages or whether that's investments in digital or anything else? Is that -- you need volume growth of sort of 5% plus before you can actually drive EBITA growth? And then the second question, going back to the event you did last year in Milan and the digital rollout, can you just remind me sort of how that is staggered through 2025 and how you're thinking about the incremental revenue contribution you might get as you have more customer engagement across these kind of omni platforms?

Shall I take the first one, Valerie, that because that is a difficult question, Matthew, as you might understand, because you talk about volume growth and then it depends on what is the margin that you make on volume. So what is the pricing doing for that additional growth. And on the cost side, there is always a bit of flexibility in your cost structure where you can move. It also depends, do you grow in a segment where, for instance, if you have five food suppliers in Germany and you add number six, seven, and eight, I don't need additional people. And then I have volume growth that automatically goes to the bottom line. And if I start a venture in food in Mexico, where I don't have a food business yet, then it's less value accretive. But in general, I need less top line growth to compensate the additional inflation-driven cost growth. So if I would grow both, if I would grow my margin with 5% and my cost with 5%, by nature, my bottom line will grow quicker.

So I would say the second question is also rather difficult because in terms of the revenue contribution through digital tools. I think we have not calculated that, to be honest, Matthew, because for us, the key thing right now is to roll it out, and we have rolled it out in three of the business groups, and we're going to roll it out across all this year. And we're also going to open it up towards the end of the year in certain markets on certain things for customers to have a look at the SalesAssistant, which is one of the fundamental tools and which we see super beneficial for the business, no question, because it allows basically for us to sell the full portfolio in a guided way. But to dare put numbers in, I think at this point in time, as we're in the rollout phase would be too early.

And the last question comes from the line of Matthias Maenhaut calling from Kepler Cheuvreux.

I'll keep it short, two smaller ones. Hans, I understood that the deferred consideration of EUR 94 million is entirely due in 2025. Could you maybe give us a little bit of flavor on how the phasing is between H1 and H2? And then the second one is actually on translation impact. Looking at 2025, how should we think about translation based on present spot rates? And would it be possible next to, I would say, the detail on the organic growth, also give a little bit of more information on the relevant importance of the countries in the different regions, please?

First, the phasing of the deferred consideration. The process with owners typically is that you -- that it's based on full year numbers that need to be audited, that need to be approved by both bodies and then you -- there is a mechanics how to do the payments. So I would expect that the two payments will be done in the first half of this year that. We finalize that process in the first 6 months of this year. With respect to translation impacts, that is a very difficult question because it's basically asking, can we predict a bit the exchange rate developments. What we do in our integrated report, there is in the notes to the financial part of the report. So that means somewhere around Page 280 or so. There is a table in there that indicates the volatility and the impact of a 10% change per local currency and what it does to our revenue results. I think that could give you a bit of a guidance where there is volatility. But other than that, this is what I would call translation differences. But perhaps even more important for us is what happens in the underlying business with respect to currencies. You can imagine that if I buy a product in the U.S. in dollars and I sell it in the European market, and I'm not talking tariffs, but just talking currencies, that a stronger of a weaker dollar could have an impact on the margin percentage that I can make depending on with whom I compete in that market and also in the other way around. So for me, currencies, it's not only what I would call the translation risk, but also what does it do on underlying business transactions. And that is for us, at least as equally important as the translation part.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions. So I will hand you back to your host to conclude today's conference. Thank you.

It was a pleasure talking with you, and we are looking forward to a call in the not-too-distant future for Q1. Thank you.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.