Medios AG (ILM1.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Analyst and Investors Conference Call of Medios AG. At our customers' request, this conference will be recorded. The presentation of this call can be downloaded from the Medios Investor Relations website and the recording will also be made available on the company's website. May I now hand you over to Claudia Nickolaus, Head of Investor and Public Relations at Medios, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the earnings call of Medios AG for the full year of 2020. At our customers' request, this conference will be recorded. And before we start, let me make some general remarks. First, the presentation will be recorded. And as stated by the operator, all documents can be downloaded from our Investor Relations website. And of course, as always, this presentation can be followed in parallel via the Internet link provided through the invitation. Today with me is our CEO and CFO, Matthias Gaertner. He will guide us through the presentation and will be available to answer your questions. I would now hand over to you, Matthias. Go ahead.

Okay. Thank you, Claudia. And also warm welcome from my side. Thank you for attending this call and, of course, for your interest in Medios. We had a successful financial year 2020 after the COVID-19 related decline in the second quarter, we have regained our old strengths and closed the year with a very successful fourth quarter. I will start with the highlights for the full year 2020 and the first month of this year, followed by some comments on our financials and on our outlook for 2021. I will also be referring to the slides of the presentation. Start with the highlights of our operations, financials and the recently announced management changes outlined on Slide 3. Our growth strategy is on track. Both segments reported sales growth despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic effect. In absolute terms, pharmaceutical supply is once again the main growth driver including sales for 4 months for our new indication hemophilia, which we started at the beginning of September last year, very successful. We also made significant progress in further implementing Medios' growth strategy. Most significantly, both acquisitions we carried out offer attractive growth potential. First, Kölsche Blister, will strengthen our compounding business by adding the new innovative service, blistering and second, Cranach Pharma is one of the leading specialized pharmaceutical wholesalers in Germany. There, we will be able to achieve sales up to EUR 1.2 billion for 2021. Both acquisitions also contribute to the extension of our partner network of now more than 500 specialized pharmacies. These mergers offer synergy effects mainly in purchasing and logistics and cross-selling opportunities within our extended partner network. Furthermore, we increased our product portfolio. whereof the indication hemophilia is the most important. Meanwhile, we became a leader in this attractive market of around 5,000 patients. In addition, we retained a new -- we rented a new building in Berlin within the complex where our wholesale business is already located. With this, we will be able to triple our production capacity in the midterm and realize further synergies by concentrating logistics and warehousing at one site. In December, we already started the construction work to set up our new labs. We should be able to start production in the fourth quarter of this year. We have also concentrated our administrative units at one new location in Berlin Mitte since May 2020. We advanced digitalization within Medios and our partner network by further developing mediosconnect. This is our self-developed digital platform which represents a crucial element in our growth strategy. This platform connects doctors, health insurance companies and specialized pharmacies with each other and serves as an ordering billing and settlement portal. The number of users as well as the number of ordering and billing processes carried out on mediosconnect is constantly increasing and already reached more than 12,000 transactions per month. This is partly due to the introduction of the software in other federal states in addition to Berlin. We also advanced the establishment of an e-prescript capable platform that offers added value for doctors, health insurance companies, specialized pharmacies and patients. This allows the forementioned stakeholders and Medios to benefit from the increasing digitalization in the healthcare system. Hence, the message is still the same. We are well prepared for the mandatory start of the e-prescription in January 2020 in Germany. And we successfully conducted capital measures in 2020 to be able to finance our organic and external growth. Finally, Medios is a member in the SDAX since September 21, 2020. On January 1, I succeed Manfred Schneider as CEO, while also remaining responsible for finance and accounting as CFO. Working together with my Board colleagues, Mi-Young Miehler and Christoph Prußeit as a proven and highly motivated Executive Board team, all beat now in the 3 member Board. Slide 4 provides an overview of the acquisitions of Cranach Pharma and Kölsche Blister. I will not further comment as we already provided comprehensive information on both transactions. So let's switch directly to Slide 5, an overview on the financials. Overall, our financial position remains strong. We handled the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic very well and successfully. Full year revenue grew by 21.2% to around EUR 627 million for the group. Both segments, pharmaceutical supply and patient-specific therapies contributed to the revenue and earnings. However, sales growth could have been stronger without the pandemic-related effects in 2020. Earnings were more negatively affected by COVID then revenues. The stockpiling that began in the first quarter 2020 as a result of the allocation of quotas for certain trucks was carried out at higher purchase prices and thus led to lower margins than planned. This effect peaked in the second quarter and continued at a weaker extent until the end of the year. We have adapted to the situation and are coping very well. We do not know how long this quota system will be in place. The Federal Institute declared as long as the COVID pandemic persists, the quota will remain. However, we believe that the situation may start to ease in 2021 and can be back to normal in 2022. And we already saw strong quarterly improvements as illustrated on Slide 6. I want to stress once again that the third and fourth quarters showed significant improvements in sales and earnings compared to the very weak second quarter of 2020. Consequently, we met our guidance for 2020 and could finish 2020 with a new all-time record with revenues of more than EUR 170 million in Q4. The conclusion is unchanged for us. The growth story of Medios continues, as illustrated on Slide 7. Our business model is intact. There is ongoing strong demand. Our partner network now covers around 500 specialized pharmacies. We are investing in growth. Here are some examples. As mentioned before, we started a new and attractive indication hemophilia in September of last year. Our new blistering business will give us the opportunity to further extend the share of manufacturing business within the Medios Group. The new labs in Berlin will offer the possibility to up to triple production capacities midterm. Due to further consolidation of the market, we have the potential and the financial power to grow via acquisitions and additional potential of cross-selling opportunities, especially through the extended partner network via the acquisitions of Cranach and Kölsche Blister. Before I elaborate on our financials for the full year 2020 in more detail, I'm happy to comment on our ESG strategy and what has been done so far, illustrated on Slide 8. Let me start with the following general remark. We are convinced that we can only remain successful if we behave in a sustainable manner. For the first time, we explained the work we are doing in connection with environmental, social governance in a dedicated voluntary report, the so-called nonfinancial consolidated statement. This report is included in our annual report and posted on our website as well. Furthermore, we recently joined the world's largest responsible corporate governance initiatives, the United Nations Global Compact. There we have voluntary committed to its 10 universal principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment and corruption. And at the end of 2020, we published our code of conduct. This code is binding for all Medios' employees. But we still have a lot ahead, sustainability will be an integrated part in our corporate strategy. So we have already started to develop a comprehensive ESG strategy for Medios. In addition, we will shortly implement ESG targets in our compensation system for the Executive Board that will be presented at our forthcoming AGM on June 10. We were rated by a few institutions, for example, by ISS ESG while receiving more and more requests with regards to ratings, and general ESG topics. Our conclusion, ESG is of top priority for us. We will keep you posted about major ESG developments. I will now comment on our financials for the full year 2020 and our outlook for 2021 starting with Slide 10 covering the figures for the fiscal year 2020. A full set of financial figures can be found in the annual report 2020 on our website and in the appendix of this presentation as well. If not mentioned otherwise, I will refer to the full year figures of 2020. As explained before, our figures were affected by the pandemic. However, revenue rose by 21.2% with organic sales increase in both segments, driven by our wholesale business, including Kölsche Blister for 9 months as well as hemophilia performance. Since we were faced with the procurement restrictions mentioned, revenue growth was hampered and lower than it could have been without the imposed quota. The COGS increased by several 0.6 percentage points to 94.1%. At our last earnings calls, we already explained the COVID-19 related effects and the impact on our results. Due to higher procurement prices on COGS, cost of goods sold. Earnings could not keep up with revenue and were lower than in the same period of last year. Furthermore, personnel expenses rose by around EUR 4 million due to an intentional staff increase to prepare the future growth such as running the new indication hemophilia and for the mandatory prescriptions from January 2022 onwards, not to mention the expansion of our compounding business, which I had already commented on. The increase of other expenses is due to investments in future growth. For example, M&A-related costs, including the acquisition of Kölsche Blister and already to some extent for Cranach Pharma. EBT pre decreased from EUR 16.2 million for the full year 2019 to EUR 12 million for 2020. Please be aware that the EBT pre is adjusted for the following extraordinary expenses, around EUR 1.2 million for stock options, around EUR 1.3 million for M&A and almost EUR 0.7 million for amortization of the customer base. Operating cash flow substantially decreased to almost minus EUR 38 million, mainly because of the start of the new indication hemophilia. The launch and development of this new indication with very high-priced medicines require corresponding stock piling and refinancing of our partner pharmacies with regards to so-called emergency deposits. As for the operating cash flow, inventories are driven by the start of hemophilia as well as trade receivables and trade payables. However, these investments have paid off as we are already market leader in this indication, [ mains ] in part to the acquisition of Cranach. As of today, inventories have already been reduced significantly and the cash position has also been raised accordingly. The increase of the financing cash flow is a result of the capital increase conducted in June 2020 with net proceeds of around EUR 52 million. Overall, cash and cash equivalents increased to around EUR 20 million, mainly due to the previously mentioned capital measures. Now some comments on our segments. Outlined on Slide 11. The driver of revenue growth was, again, the Pharmaceutical Supply segment reporting sales of EUR 564 million. However, earnings of the segment were still impacted by higher procurement prices, which also lasted throughout the second half of 2020. Cost of goods sold increased accordingly and the resulting ratio rose by around 0.7 percentage points, which led to a EUR 4 million impact on earnings. That is 0.7% out of EUR 564 million. Percentage-wise, the segment patient-specific therapies also grew even stronger than -- by almost 23% to EUR 62 million, including total revenue of Kölsche Blister of EUR 5.4 million for the second, third and fourth quarters together. The reported EBITDA pre margin for this segment weakened because of the internal cost allocation. Without the internal allocation of these costs, the EBITDA pre margin would have grown up to 14.2% for the full year 2020 from 13.9% in 2019. So let's switch to Slide 12, providing an overview of our currently available funds as at 31st of December 2020, which almost -- which amount to around EUR 82 million, reflecting a contract signed for a syndicated loan in March 2020 with the amount of EUR 62.5 million. Thereof, we only used EUR 1.5 million as at 31st of December to pay half of the acquisition costs for Kölsche Blister. Liquidity of around EUR 20 million as of December 2020, representing a decrease of around EUR 48 million compared to end of September, mainly due to the start of hemophilia, as already mentioned. In line with our growth strategy, we will use these funds for organic growth and potential acquisitions. Up to EUR 10 million, we'll be invested to build up additional laboratories in the already rented new building in Berlin. And we will pursue our M&A strategy looking for attractive targets, mainly in the compounding business and/or the area of digitalization. I would now like to comment on our guidance for 2021, as outlined on Slide 14. We confirm our preliminary guidance provided at the beginning of March as shown on Slide 14 and 15. In the 2021 financial year, we expect to exceed the EUR 1 billion mark, a new record and generate revenues of approximately EUR 1.15 billion to EUR 1.2 billion, corresponding to an increase of 84% to 92% compared to 2020 and an EBITDA pre of EUR 38 million to EUR 39 million, corresponding to an increase of 152% to 159% compared to 2020 and EBT pre of EUR 31 million to EUR 32 million corresponding to an increase of 158% to 166%. Percentage-wise, earnings increased proportionately. EBT margin will recover significantly up to 2.7% in 2021, it was 1.9% in 2020. And this guidance already includes ongoing uncertainties due to the corona situation, extraordinary expenses because of the mandatory implementation of the e-prescription as of January '22, as well as significant investments into the expansion of our production capacities in Berlin. We are very confident that all of these investments will pay off in '22 and the years beyond. Ladies and gentlemen, as you can see, the overall growth model of Medios is intake. We will continue where we left off at the end of 2020 and build on the successful business performance of the fourth quarter. We are very well prepared to continue our successful and sustainable growth story. We are convinced of the mid- and long-term growth potential, also driven by our acquisitions conducted in 2020 and the beginning of '21. And this, of course, at higher margins than an exceptional 2020. As stressed before, our growth strategy remains unchanged and its implementation will further advance. I have explained why we are well positioned to drive future growth, not only for '21. A brief summary is outlined on Slide 16. First, we will drive organic growth by expanding our compounding business. The new building gives us the potential to up to triple our production capacities in the future by exploiting the innovative blistering business with high future potential and synergy effect by expanding our partner network of specialized pharmacies and extending business with already existing specialized partner pharmacies by taking on new business opportunities in relation to the electronic prescription as of January '22 by further market penetration through the innovative digital platform mediosconnect and by further expanding and diversifying the indication areas. And second, we will drive growth via M&A illustrated on Slide 17, focusing on the compounding business and on digitalization. As demonstrated, Medios is well prepared and has strong financial power in a consolidating market. Ladies and gentlemen, this completes our presentation. Thank you for attending. I'm now available to answer your questions. Operator, could you please read out the instructions.