PolyPeptide Group AG (PPGN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the PolyPeptide Full Year 2022 Results Presentation and Business Update Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Michael Staheli, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communication at PolyPeptide Group. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sandra. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our results call today. Before we start, I draw your attention to the usual disclaimer on the second page of our presentation. I'm joined by our Executive Chairman, Peter Wilden; and CFO, Jan Fuhr Miller, who will walk you through the presentation. After that, we take your questions. And you can ask the questions over the telephone or in writing through the chat function. We have planned this call to run for roughly an hour. So we kindly ask you to limit your questions to 2 so that we have time for everybody. With this short introduction, I hand over to Peter to start his presentation on Slide #5. So please, Peter, go ahead.

Thank you, Michael. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and also from my side, a warm welcome to this call, which -- well, I'm addressing you for the first time in my current role as Executive Chairman, I can reassure you that it's a real pleasure to me, but the process is on the way to move back to my recent role, which means that we are currently progressing very well on the process of the appointment of a new CEO, and we do hope to be able to give you some more insight into that process in the not-too-distant future. What I will do as part of my presentation is to highlight some of the key events that have affected our disappointing results for 2022. And highlight the current areas of focus, the areas that the operation is working on in order to fix some of the issues that we've had, and we'll also give you some indicative insight into the 2023 situation. Again, we started off in 2022, into an environment that has dramatically changed over the last couple of years. I'll just name the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, supply chain challenges, you name it, and you're all very well aware of that. What happened in the peptide and pharmaceutical markets was not necessarily a one-to-one reflection of that, but we do see some of the elements led to changes also in pharma and API manufacturing. The most important one for us is essentially a good one that is we are looking at a significant demand increase over the next couple of years. But on our side, we have been facing significant issues in 2022 and will come -- and I will talk to the nature of those now. We started off with first profit warning by midyear last year, which was triggered by 2 factors. On the one hand, the order shortening of one of our customers in active in the pandemic area that was quite a top line hit that we expected then for the whole year to persist. And secondly, we saw costs rising quite significantly as a function of inflation in the first half of the year. Unfortunately, PolyPeptide has not been able to respond to those cost changes as quickly as some others have as a result of the contractual arrangements that we had in place with most of our more significant customers. It was also not possible to change those agreements quickly that process is still ongoing and is lasting into this year. We had a second profit warning at the end of the second half of the year, and the second warning was triggered by 2 additional factors that came into play in the 2 last months of the year very much at the end of November and December. Now these are all the months that is a bit a pattern in the industry that are the months where most sales occur. Our sales are not necessarily driven by marketing and sales activities at this stage rather than operations and our ability to supply. That was impaired due to some issues that we were facing in the manufacturing area related to the processing, an increased cost base and a couple of operational issues in the plant. Also, we have to realize that the onboarding of staff, which has taken place in the second half of the year, was not complete in the sense that the staff was not trained enough as yet in order to operate at the level of excellence that we would expect. So we initiated a couple of really comprehensive measures in order to address those because our aspiration for 2023 is still positive, very much so in the second half of the year. Now what are the measures that we have taken and what are the capabilities that we are looking at, how is our positioning. Overall, the peptide market is looking at an expected tremendous growth, and I explicitly use the word tremendous and exceptional because the growth that is expected in certain segments, the GLP-1 projects, for instance, that are -- with some of the major pharma players at the moment are really very significant and very demanding, which is a tremendous prospect for the industry. Secondly, following the supply chain issues that many industries have been facing in the past, there is a strong focus of Western European as well as American pharma companies on supply and sourcing directly from Europe or the U.S. We are very well prepared to face that situation. But the growth pattern that we foresee will require a very proactive stakeholder engagement along the whole value chain, which means that it will not have -- that it will not be sufficient to address that only at the level of the API manufacturers, but it will have to be a comprehensive exercise from patients through pharma, through API manufacturing, but also through our raw material suppliers that we have for the industry. PolyPeptide can offer a multisite sourcing opportunity for customers in that environment. We have 2 bigger sites, one of them based in Torrance, in California and the other one based in Braine in Belgium. Both sites are the areas of focus for long-term and large-scale manufacturing for us, and we have invested significantly there. The ongoing preparations for growth, therefore, resulted in very significant CapEx. We have spent around EUR 160 million over the last 2 years and plan for another investment of EUR 30 million. This year, seasonal investments largely went into the expansion of our existing infrastructure to cope with growth. There is one selected project in there, which also maintains a significant upscaling process in manufacturing. That is the famous and 1,600 liter project that has a total budget of close to EUR 60 million that will give us a longer-term high-volume solid phase capacity at our site in Belgium. These construction works are currently ongoing, and we expect them to finalize and go into validation by the end of the year moving into next year. In parallel to that, we have to increase our workforce also to cope with the current demand that we see that has happened, as I said initially, largely in the first -- in the second half of last year. The training program for that staff was not yet final by the end of the year, and that has led to operational issues that we have witnessed at the tail end of the first half year. On the custom project side, as you see on the left side, you see that the demand is there. We see a number of projects popping up. Some new projects, we see some moves from custom projects to custom manufacturing as well. So on that side, the picture looks encouraging. What do we need to do to really meet the challenges that we are faced with at the moment because, as I said, and we don't forget about that, we're coming from a difficult situation in 2022. The first point is operational execution and excellence. That is the key point for the organization this year. I can give you a few examples also from personal visits. I visited the key sites in person, and I've discussed with the teams on site. We're talking issues like optimizing production or production scheduling, getting lead times down, reducing a change over time for process -- from process A to process B and local execution. There is enhanced focus on employee onboarding and training. We're using our internal forces in the house to train people. So we have brought people from different sites to the sites where that was needed. And secondly, we're using external consultants and parties to conduct the training and support as required. And we maintain focus on quality because that is the area of focus for PolyPeptide as a peptide supplier in general. As I mentioned, the second area of focus, our new commercial agreements with our customers that really cover the full value chain. I have had initial discussions with our customers on that some of our key customers, and they are looking very positive into that, as I also see the strong increase in demand of requiring additional sourcing. That will also include pricing, but it's not limited to that. So on the discussion on these agreements, we should not limit our focus on pricing only. It is important that inflation can be covered with pricing, but we need to be able to cover the investment levels that we perceive for the future as part of those investments as well. Another point that is very relevant for PolyPeptide is process standardization and, of course, innovation. If I look at process standardization, we are in the process of aligning the manufacturing process across our sites. I mentioned our strength and being able to offer a multisite manufacturing concept, very interesting to our pharma partners who want to have flexibility also in supplying from Europe or the U.S. whenever that is required and our preparedness to move to put change, if that should be needed. We have to strengthen our operational resilience. The issues that we have seen have been resolved or are currently worked on in the process of being resolved. Digitalization will be very important for the industry as well that is not limited to us. It will give us higher quality products because the documentation is directly integrated in the manufacturing process, and it will also reduce cost of manufacturing as we move forward and guarantee reliable and repeatable results. The final area of interest is, we, in chemistry where we have some interesting leads moving forward and preparing a greener footprint for the industry and for PolyPeptide in the future. On these words, I end with a mixed note. We are very cognizant of the disappointments that we have raised with the 2022 results. The basis though, for further growth in 2023 and '24 and the year onwards is very solid. We can make the unique offering with a multisite concept that we have with 2 major sites, complemented by 4 sites in different areas around the world. So we believe that we are in a strong position to conquer the growth challenges ahead of us. I should like to thank you for your patience right now and hand over to Jan Fuhr Miller, who will give you a deeper insight into the result development for 2022 as it occurred. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Peter, and good morning to everyone. I would like to go through the financial results for the full year of 2022, starting here, as you see on Slide #9. So this slide provides the reported full year development of our total revenue and total EBITDA during the last 3 years from 2020 up to 2022. As you can see, we generated EUR 281 million of revenue for 2022, which represents a slight decline of 0.4% and a 3% decline at constant exchange rate versus 2021. This mainly reflects the lower contribution from the COVID-19-related business and in particular impact of the technical and manufacturing process issues that we communicated earlier on in 2022. If we exclude the revenue associated with COVID-19, the revenue grew 5.2% in 2022. On the right here, you will find the full year development of our reported EBITDA, which declined to EUR 38.7 million for 2022. This reduction was primarily driven by the higher personnel costs incurred in the first half of the year to prepare PolyPeptide for growth, which did not occur due to the challenges that Peter just described. In addition, we faced inflationary pressure and unexpected operational costs in H2. This resulted in an overall 54.4% decline year-on-year. I'll get into some further details on the key drivers in a few minutes. But for now, let's move on to Slide #10. On this slide, we present the development of our business areas from 2021 to 2022. We generally saw good progress within our custom projects pipeline during 2022. The revenue decline in custom projects, reflecting a shift of revenue from custom projects to our contract manufacturing business area associated with 2 commercial launches that took place in 2022. Revenue of EUR 140 million were generated in custom projects here representing a 16.1% decline versus 2021, while our contract manufacturing grew 23.6% year-on-year to EUR 110.8 million. Finally, our Generics and Cosmetics increased to EUR 30.2 million in '22, reflecting an 18.3% increase consistent with our efforts to benefit from the ongoing developments occurring in the Generic market. Now let's move to Slide #11. Our adjusted EBITDA for the year was EUR 38.7 million, down 56.2% compared to 2021. This is, again, equal to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.8% for the year. This drop in profitability reflects the cumulative effect of several factors. So starting from the left-hand side of the slide, mainly a 9.5% increase in the average number of employees with an associated impact of EUR 20.9 million, which, as mentioned earlier, was undertaken in H1 ahead of the expected growth in H2 last year. Operational and maintenance cost of an additional EUR 11.7 million related to the variations from production and delivery schedules, including the operational and technical issues occurring in the latter part of H2 last year. Moving now further to the right on the graph and impact of EUR 10.8 million reflects higher inflationary pressures related to price increases in raw materials, amplifying our input cost and wage increase indexations as well. The other costs impacting our profitability included travel, insurance and marketing expenses of EUR 3.2 million as well as EUR 3.1 million related to the adverse product mix effect compared to 2021. On Slide #12, we have the summary P&L, which shows the development of our P&L items for the years 2019 up to '22. As noted here, in 2022, our operating result declined to EUR 12.6 million equal to a margin of 4.5% of revenue. Our results for the year was EUR 7.8 million, reflecting an 83.6% decline versus the prior year. This is again equal to a margin of 2.8% and an earnings per share of EUR 0.24. The positive tax impact you see reflects a lower result combined with tax credits that we obtained in the U.S. Let's now move to Slide #13. So in line with our integrated growth strategy and as mentioned earlier by Peter, the group's main focus is preparing for future growth. We continued in '22 to invest in order to strengthen for the peptides infrastructure and support the increasing volume requirements arising from our expanding active custom projects pipeline. Capital expenditures that you see reached EUR 83 million or 29.5% of revenue for the year, representing an increase of 8.2% compared to 2021. The increase is reflecting the continuation of several key investment projects such as a large-scale solid phase synthesis capacity at our site in Braine-l Alleud in Belgium. In addition, large-scale downstream capacity is being finalized in Malmo, Sweden, an additional freeze drying capacity is becoming available at several of the other sites, including Malmo and Torrance in California. The PolyPeptide will also continue in 2022 to invest in product development and to reinforce our IT infrastructure and increased digitalization efforts, as mentioned by Peter. Moving over to the next slide, which is Slide #14, as you see here. And let's take a look at our cash flow and the cash position. Capital deployment represented the primary source of cash utilization for '22. And net cash flow from investments was minus EUR 78.8 million in alignment with the sustained and accelerated capital investments in PPE, but also in intangible assets. The net cash flow from operating activities amounted to EUR 30.2 million for 2022 and the net cash flow from the changes in net working capital was minus EUR 24.7 million. Here, mainly driven by the higher inventory to support growth aspirations and higher safety stocks. Overall, this resulted in a free cash flow of minus EUR 73.3 million and a cash balance of EUR 37.5 million at the end of last year. This is also inclusive of the aggregated impact from the purchase of treasury shares of 13.9 million and dividend payment of EUR 9.7 million in the form of cash distribution that took place in May last year. Now let's move on to Slide #15. I will now talk a bit more about our 2023 guidance and dividend. So this year, as Peter described earlier, we are highly focused on strengthening our workforce capabilities and restoring our delivery performance, therefore, really persisting PolyPeptide to capture the structural growth opportunities that we see in the peptide market. Over time, this will allow us to take full advantage of our operating leverage. The internal changes we discussed, of course, requires time, requires time to deliver results. And coupled with our higher fixed cost base, the group expects revenue for the first half of 2023 to be comparable with the previous year but with profitability significantly lower. We then expect a pronounced recovery of revenue and in profitability during the second half of this year. So for the full year of 2023, we are guiding to a high single-digit percentage revenue growth versus 2022 and adjusted EBITDA in the mid-teens. Capital expenditures are expected and planned to be around 10% of revenue, lower compared to 2022, reflecting here the planned completion of the accelerated capital deployment program for growth that we launched back in 2021. With a significant drop in profitability last year and the efforts described needed to restore revenue growth and profitability, we, therefore, refrain from proposing a dividend to the forthcoming AGM. In terms of our midterm outlook, we expect to update you on the announcement of our half year results on August 15. So now this concludes our full year 2022 results presentation. It's now time for Q&A. And again, just a quick reminder, each person should limit themselves to 2 questions as described by Michael. So I will now hand back to the operator. Thank you so much.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Laura Pfeifer from Octavian.

So 2 questions. The first one is, if you please could update also on the progress you have made so far with the process and the yield issues you encountered in November, December with a few of new product. So have they all been resolved in the meantime and also have new batches already been produced with the required deals? And then the second question is on the CapEx guidance, which for this year, I understand it's just for EUR 30 million, 10% of sales. So how should we interpret this? I mean are you scaling back your growth investments near term? And should we expect a rebound maybe starting next year? And also, could this change if you've been -- if you win a bigger new contract? I guess, here, the question relates mainly to capacity utilization and your future growth plans.

Laura, many thanks for your questions. I will start with the process and yield issues that are currently being worked on. I have been on site last week, myself and discussed the issues with the team. The yield issues have been addressed. We have had some technical problems on the equipment center failures, [ etc. ] That is being resolved. We are still working and that is a process that is a continuum in our industry. We are, of course, working on optimizing manufacturing scheduling in the light of the orders that we have for the respective plant. But that area has been tackled. And what is being addressed at the moment is a comprehensive GMP training for those people that have come on site in the second half of the year. That training was not completed as yet, and it's ongoing. So I do expect some of the effects that we saw in the second half of last year to spill over into the first half of this year. But in the meantime, we have now planned for sufficient time on training. On the CapEx guidance, we have invested significantly, as you've seen into the sites over the last 2 to 3 years. So the basis for growth has delayed and that's why we are slowing down slightly for this year. We are in discussions with our customers on looking into new possibilities for investments in the future in a collaborative mode, which covers the area of the full value chain that needs to be covered.

The next question comes from Tanya Hansalik from Credit Suisse.

Yes. Good morning. I have 2 questions. One is on the new large-scale facility that you've invested in, in Belgium. Maybe talking a bit more about 2024 and when you expect operations to start and how long does the ramp-up take to full utilization for this? I guess my question is kind of also relating to the midterm guidance that you didn't reiterate. Shouldn't the base business actually be growing much stronger than the low teens that you had? Or are there other risks you see here for the midterm in terms of revenues? And then I guess this kind of a third question. Relating to the cash on hand, given the negative free cash flows, and the EUR 38 million you have at the end of last year, are you planning -- or what are your plans for financing of future growth?

Thank you very much, Tanya. I will try to focus on these 3 points. First, the large-scale facility that is currently under construction in Braine. We expect that construction process to finish in the second half of the year, towards the end of the second half of the year, and you need qualification of course, and validation runs for the equipment to be online. So we expect it to be up and running in next year. So far, so good, everything is working smoothly, but we should also be aware, and that's why I'm always a bit cautious in that arena that an upscaling process in chemistry is not a linear process, and there might always be a few issues that pop up, but we are absolutely confident that we can handle those and expect the equipment to be online fully in the second half of 2024, which will then support our growth in 2024 as well as the years to come. On the cash position, if you see the 2 drivers that brought the cash position down over the last 2 years, it's been largely investments with, again, around EUR 160 million in investments, the basis for growth has been late with an upgrade of the facilities and additional capacity coming online. And the second factor that we saw last year was net working capital. That was a result of the factors that we saw in the world around us. We did observe increased stock levels, and we had to adjust to that situation ourselves. But there's a comprehensive working capital program that's ongoing. We are convinced that our operating income is more than sufficient to deal with our cash needs for the year. We should also not forget in that context that we are coming from a very solid base from a balance sheet perspective. We have no indebtedness by the end of last year. And we are currently looking into 3 sources for funding for larger projects and that is in line with the industry contributions from our clients, bank financing and our own cash flow. Maybe Jan Fuhr might want to add a few comments to this question.

Yes. So absolutely. Just to reiterate what Peter said, so in terms of the free cash flow that we expect for 2023. So we do expect some substantial improvements in there, really generated, first of all, as we have at the program that we have put in place now in operations. So cash flow generated from operations, we see a significant improvement there. Net working capital as well. So I also mentioned that the inventory is the key contributor there. It is impacted by the growth aspirations also impacted there again by the current state of the supply chain, and then, of course, the CapEx. So I think that pretty much sums it up.

Next question.

Next question comes from James Quigley from Morgan Stanley.

So my first one is on the path to margin expansion over the midterm. So looking at the guidance, obviously, first half is going to be challenging versus the second half of next year. But should we think about effectively the reverse situation of this year, so 20% margin in the second half. Then how does that -- how should we think about it going into 2024? So you mentioned it's going to take some time to pass on the inflationary pressures. Should they be almost fully passed on through 2023. Obviously, it depends where inflation ends. But how are you guiding against that for 2024? And similarly, with employee costs, is there going to be a similar step up next year? Or are you at your target level with respect to number of FTEs. The second question is on visibility. Obviously, we've had a number of profit warnings through last year. And you gave guidance in December, and the numbers still came a little bit below that guidance. So how are you thinking about visibility for the next couple of years in terms of the revenue projections. Peter, you mentioned the strong growth in the GLP-1 market. There's also some positive data for oral peptides recently as well. But from a visibility perspective, how would you characterize that from a revenue base and also from a raw materials base, which could lead to further issues down the line?

Thank you very much. That was quite a list of comprehensive question but they cover very relevant areas. And they might deal with some questions because some of your colleagues would also have. I will start with the first half and second half issue. What we see at the moment, it's really important to understand that our sales at the moment, our revenue line is driven by execution in the plan. And we have seen that pattern of delivery in the past. Usually, we're looking at a somewhat weaker first half and a stronger second half of the year. Secondly, even within those patterns, there is an accumulation of revenue and deliveries to the tail end of the respective period. That is an issue that is currently being addressed as part of the scheduling exercise that I talked to you about. I'm careful on H1 because I know that some of the issues we're having at the moment of spilling over into this year. I mentioned the training program for new staff coming in at the operator and at the lab level. On inflation, yes, the contracts that were in place at a term that lasted into mid this year, but in the new discussions we are having with our clients, I definitely see openness and opening. Those discussions -- it's not only about pricing, definitely pricing is an important factor, but it's on the whole value chain and the risk that is associated with this. We have been encouraged by some of our customers to invest into even larger manufacturing equipment. We would do that only as others would do in collaboration with our clients in order to be able to cope with the risk that is associated with that. Should the product not be a success or should there be manufacturing issues. At the employee level, we see some creeping up such as the major chunk for this year has already been done, this with the staff that was onboarded in the second half of last year, that is currently on site, and they should be able to handle the demand that we see for the year. Visibility, I fully understand your disappointment here. And actually, what happened here in December, after 2 profit warnings, again, we just had a spillover of 1 specific manufacturing batch -- order batch from December into January, and that stood for EUR 4 million in sales with a quite significant margin, we would have been very close to guidance. But we are not and that is as well being worked on in a discussion between finance as well as manufacturing at the moment. Jan, would you want to add some color to this?

No, I think you summed it up really well. I would say on the third part of your question there, James, on the [ results ] we see pretty much a relatively stable cost base of this year compared to the end of last year. We do not see any significant increase in employees that have targeted, new employees in there, but the focus is really to ensure that our current workforce is at the right areas are at a really, really solid level, as Peter also alluded to. Visibility, again. I think generally, we see good visibility in there, and we also have good visibility for this year. We have a starting good visibility also for next year. So it's not a question really of the visibility there, James. It is really, as Peter also alluded to in the beginning, it's a question of really operational execution here.

Next question comes from Vasiliki Kotlida from Berenberg.

My first question is about the COVID revenues. Why did you mention that there will be no COVID revenue in 2023. And my second question is about the agreement that you are about to [ shine ]. What's the demand from clients? What -- could you give some color on that, please, instead of just mentioning GLP-1 projects.

Thank you very much for that question. There has been a lot of focus on the COVID or pandemic related revenue in the past. That situation, as you can see yourselves, in the marketplace has changed dramatically, at a time that we were working with to adjust their forecasting quite significantly and we are not counting on any pandemic-related business as we announce the vaccine production, we're only producing vaccine -- fragments for a specific product here. We don't see a lot of demand in that arena moving forward, and we're not counting it, which is a good signal as we are focusing on our core business and our core area of competence, which is peptide manufacturing. On the agreements frontline, I must say, and that is an important message for you also to understand that the collaboration with our clients works very well. Some questions have been put forward to me as well by the end of the year, how do clients react to postponement of deliveries. We are in the process of upscaling. They understand these processes very well. And we have customer teams on site that collaborate with our team in order to prepare ourselves for the future. The GLP-1 project is currently being discussed not only for PolyPeptide, but overall in the market. There is a tremendous market [ foreseen ] at the moment. I've seen ranges going into the EUR 100 million market expectations. We will see where that takes us. In reality, there's also some questions around that in relation to treatment patterns, potential side effects at high-dose treatment. But there are other fields in peptide development that have become very interesting, and we are in discussions with clients on those and you will see contracts being disclosed at that level in the not-too-distant future. So overall, we've had a great collaboration and good understanding from our clients on issues that have popped up, and they are supporting our teams in resolving the issues as well.

The next question comes from Charles Weston from RBC.

My first one is just on the structure of long-term demand contracts. You announced the contract last year for EUR 100 million a year. And I just wondered if you could help us understand maybe not for this specific contract, but in general, how long there is -- how long they are revenues committed versus how long they are revenues expected that potentially could get canceled? Should there be some [ pull ] related issue? And the second question is on net working capital. Revenue was flat-ish but net working capital investments were up. Will this reverse next year or this year or slowdown?

Let me respond first to the nature of the contract. The EUR 100 million announcement is related to 1 particular client, and that contract will sort of come into force and start deliver -- we will start delivering on that contract during next year, and we expect to have that volume then available on a regular basis with a solid manufacturing process behind that. On the net working capital, I think, Jan would be the better person to respond to that. We mentioned the program that is ongoing, but he can shed some more light to that if he wish to. Jan, would you...

Absolutely. So thanks, Charles. So I think your assumption you alluded to is correct. That's what we see based on the programs that we have put in place right now. The net working capital that we saw last year was really driven by the aspirations on the sales front, and therefore, the inventory was the key one that was increasing, what we would see and what we anticipate for the net working capital for 2023 is as a percentage of revenue, a slowdown there. So you would see as we would work towards more of a net working capital improvement for this year.

Sorry, could I just follow up on the first point, please. On the EUR 100 million a year, I appreciate that you're expecting that to start in 2024. But more generally, when you sign a EUR 100 million a year contract or some other contract, what's the typical period where customer will actually contract for revenue with perhaps some sort of take-or-pay type of agreement versus just an expectation that may or may not be met in the future?

Well, this is, in principle, it's a confirmed order that will translate into a -- typically translates into purchase orders that reach out for the next 1.5 years. So there's [indiscernible] contract, and the purchase orders are in our current structure usually cover a period of 1.5 years, and there wouldn't be changes to that.

The next question comes from Markus Mayer from Baader-Helvea.

Only 1 question remaining. It's basically on your large-scale investment. I think we're hearing a lot of on the efficiency gains that come with [indiscernible] projects under construction. My question is, do you also see significant efficiency improvement from your large-scale investment in Braine compared to your existing infrastructure?

In short, yes, we do. That process will have, by definition, some inefficiencies when you start off with it. But once these issues have been tackled, and that is part of, I would say a process that takes us about half a year next year. We expect a very significant efficiency gains as this is very much a volume gain.

We have some questions in chat function. Some of which have been answered, but some others have been answered -- are not yet answered or only in part. So I start with one related to pricing. Can you talk some more on the price increases, why they are taking so long and when we can expect them.

On the pricing, I mentioned that earlier. The point on the pricing is that we have existing agreements in place. They lasted well into this year, the last terminate about midyear, so end of June, which is one of the reasons why we have been rather careful in looking at the first half year expectations for this year. But of course, we are currently already in discussions, and these discussions are not on pricing only, but on pricing as well and cover then the whole package that comes with a large volume peptide manufacturing.

Thank you. Next question is on free cash flow. Is it expected to be positive in 2023. Probably a question for Jan.

Yes. So I would say what we're doing right now is we are really assessing the situation. I would say, as I mentioned earlier on, so we should see an improvement in the free cash flow compared to what we saw in 2022, so the minus EUR 73 million. So you should expect an improvement in the free cash flow.

And next question in the chat about the CEO search. This is for Peter. Can you please elaborate on the progress being made in the CEO search and appointment.

Yes. That process is going very well at the moment. It is handled in a very professional manner. We have hired a professional search firm and candidates have already been interviewed. So the assessment is going on. And we -- as I said, we do expect to be able to finalize that process within the foreseeable future.

Then there is a final question in the chat, which is a more general one. Can you comment on the latest outsourcing trends in GLP-1?

Well, again, we come to this huge market expectation in GLP-1 that will require an effort of the whole industry. And as I mentioned already in my introductory, it really will have to go from pharma via API manufacturing to our raw material suppliers because also at that level, we will need much higher volumes than we have seen in the past, and we have to make sure that, that market can be served in the future with the volume projections I see at the moment. And they are really -- they are high. These markets are considered highly attractive at the moment. Also from a patient perspective, obesity has become one of the biggest health issues in the world today. On the other hand, there are, of course, risks associated with these assessments, pricing. I can imagine, even in the U.S. environment, for drugs, that nature can be difficult. I know that, that is being handled at the -- as we speak, by pharma with a well-structured approach. The other point there are some questions and question mark around the safety of high-dose peptide treatments over a very long period of time. And also the question of patient behavior in the long term, one of the most important factors to consider is that you should adjust your diet, live a somewhat healthier lifestyle. If that now turns into a one syringe a month, and I live the way I lived before there will be other areas of your body that will be affected by just this unhealthy diet. So it has to be a comprehensive package of measures that you take as a patient. But it will also raise the question of patient health and raise the issue in the public discussion. So I think that is a very interesting and positive trend to follow.

[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, so far, there are no more questions on the phone.

Thank you. So I think if there are no further questions on the phone and also in the chat function, I think we have covered the questions. And I think we can close that call. Thank you for your participation, and thank you, Peter, and Jan, for answering the questions. I wish you a good rest of the day. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.