Sartorius Aktiengesellschaft (SRT3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, dear ladies and gentlemen. My name is Lothar Kappich, and as the Chairperson of the supervisory body of Sartorius AG, I hereby open today's Annual Shareholders' Meeting, honorary Shareholders' Meeting of our company. Welcome in the name of our Board and our Supervisory Board. Although I cannot welcome you in person, I'm still happy that wherever you may be right now are able -- to be able to follow this session online, audio and video. You can follow this in German and in English, like in the past year, particularly cordial welcome to our shareholders and, of course, the representatives of the press, your news reporting about the company has contributed to our shareholders being able to inform themselves about the proceedings and the development of our company. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, this session today, this annual meeting is going to be conducted virtually online. Both the Executive Board and Supervisory Board have decided in the face of the underlying pandemic situations to actually avail ourselves of this possibility by you. I'm here at the Sartorius at the Otto-Brenner-Strasse 20 and for reasons of health security, we've reduced the number of people here. Dr. Kreuzburg, as the Chairman of the Board; Matthias Reinhart as a notary public in Göttingen will actually be taking the minutes today. The other members of the Board and the Supervisory Board are taking part of the Annual Shareholders' Meeting online via audio and video. The members of the Board and the Supervisory Board had the possibility if needed to communicate with the Chairman of the Board and me. Also, the representatives of the shareholders are here on location on site. Dear ladies and gentlemen, before we get started with our agenda, I'd like to inform you that since our last general shareholder meeting, there have been no personnel changes, neither in the Board nor in the Supervisory Board. The consistency of the boards and the committees can actually be seen in the annual statement. Despite the live form of today's meeting in the password protected platform, which I will call shareholders platform, our shareholders' portal, part of it will also be freely accessible on the website of the company under www.sartorius.de/hauptversammlung will be transferred there. That transfer and that streaming will end like in the previous year after the speech of the state -- Chairman of the Supervisory Board and can also be accessed later on. Now the formal things. The Federal Gazette of 17th February of this year has actually been called upon a new course. And a copy of the Federal Gazette, this is in the hands of the notary public and will be attached as an annex. And the same holds true for the pan-European distribution of the invitation. Also, let me point out that since the day of the invitation was published in the Federal Gazette, all necessary further information about the Annual Shareholders' Meeting were published and have been published on the website. And so I state that today's honorary Annual Shareholders Meeting is actually convened in due course and according to all legal requirements. We have not received any agenda for the -- agenda today nor any election proposals that need to be revised. Dear ladies and gentlemen, a few things need to be explained about today's session as a virtual Annual Shareholders' Meeting. The electronic voting so that the shareholders can vote. We have actually made an access to www.sartorius.de/hauptversammlung in German and English and all the shareholders that actually are entitled to vote, all the representatives have been sent this and it is a form that you can download on the website. Instead of being here on site, I mean you, as a shareholder or your representatives, have the possibility to go via the portal and follow the annual meeting live. The possibility of voting were actually or have been adjusted to the requirements of a virtual meeting. Even during this session, those shareholders who have a voting right or the representatives are entitled to actually cast their votes or transfer their intention to vote to their representatives. The possibility for an electronic casting the vote via letter or any changes without any repeal will actually still be open until the voting process in today's session. And I will tell you well beforehand when this actually takes place. Any other ways, other than the shareholders' portal is no longer possible. Also already in the forefront of today's session, there was actually the possibility to cast votes via electronic vote by letter or to give an order to the respective representatives. Also until 24 March 2022, 6:00 p.m., people were also -- the shareholders were also entitled to give their voting intentions to the representatives at the address of the company. And a corresponding form with the respective access data was sent out and was also available for download on the website of the company. Shareholders who own preferred stock are not entitled to vote today. According to the requirements by law, shareholders have to actually be given the right to ask. And in order to give this right to ask questions, shareholders or the representatives have the possibility or had the possibility before this session, deadline was the 23rd of March, could actually send us their questions. And the questions and the answers will take place later on in today's annual meeting. Now the company -- like in the previous year, the company has decided that during the Annual Shareholders' Meeting, over and beyond the legal requirement, open up the possibility to ask questions via electronic possibilities. And entitled shareholders or representatives shall be thus entitled to ask questions for whatever is raised in today's shareholders' meeting and especially in answering -- in asking additional questions to the answers given to the questions submitted previously. However, let me point out that this is not right. So that means that the Board will decide duly how and in what extent these questions are actually answered. And this takes place together with the questions that the shareholders have actually submitted before today's session. Please also know that this possibility to ask is only possible for additional questions relating to the questions and the answers that have been covered here in today's sessions. In the interest of all participants, I'd like to make sure and in order to help to make sure, please, please, those shareholders who want to avail themselves to this possibility of questions, please restrict themselves to concrete additional questions to whatever was said here in the course of the session and no additional further questions. As of the moment, when the Chairman of the execution can actually be transferred by in English and in German via the portal. And please use the button submit question. And this possibility will end certain time after it was opened. And I will tell you duly when it opens and when it closes. And the company also reserves the right to restrict this possibility further. And over and beyond the legal requirement, the company has also decided to create a voluntary possibility to -- actually via the shareholders' portal again to submit video messages. And this possibility was open to entitled shareholders and the representatives through March 21, 2022. We have received 2 such video messages. One of them will be published in a shortened form because actually, the submitted video was far exceeding the requirement of the framework of 3 minutes, and we will actually publish it later. And also let me point out that from the beginning until the closure of today's annual meeting, the entitled shareholders or the representatives have the possibility to actually contradict certain decisions via the shareholders' person. Should you want to do that, please use a respective field in the shareholders' portal. Please -- in each case, please refer to the respective agenda points that you would like to contradict or repeal. So much for the formalities. Dear ladies and gentlemen, by now, I have the number of participants, and this actually tells me how many stocks and shares are here. So preferred stockholders are not covered by this list and their vote will only be entitled here. And the preferred stockholders will not be covered in this list because they have no voting right in today's annual meeting. And so the preferred stockholders cannot say their voting right to the representatives. Now from the basic capital of the 74,880 000 million of shares, we have 31,987,818 shares with the corresponding number of votes. This represents 42.72% of the registered basic capital. If you take away the preferred standard stock, you have 37,450,000 preferred stock, 31,987,818, that represents 85.48% are present here. And of those 37 and some -- so 0 preferred stock out here. So that means that -- okay, 87 million and 0 preferred stock have been received by way of voting by letter. So that represents 43.88% of the registered basic capital and the company has -- translators note, for the exact numbers, please refer to the published numbers because no guarantee can be given for the exactness of the numbers here and of note. Now also the notary public has received a precise copy of the number of participants, and you will be able to take a look at it in the shareholders' portal with the exact numbers. And if necessary, we will add shares that had not been actually being taken account of. And afterwards, I will actually give a copy to the notary public ,Dr. Reinhart and we will actually list it in the shareholders' portal. Now taking a look at the agenda. First of all, we will actually take a look at the annual data of the company and the group. First of all, agenda point one is a presentation of the annual result, the situation of the company, the report of the Executive Board and of the Supervisory Board for the fiscal year 2021. These documents have been available Internet under www.sartorius.de/hauptversammlung have been available and accessible there and are also still accessible there during today's session. I further state that the annual result by 31 December 2021 as well as the report on the situation of the company and the group has been audited by the KPMG chartered accountants of Hannover and has received an unqualified certification. Now the Supervisory Board after checking in the annual -- the last meeting of Supervisory Board of 10 February 2022 has decided to agree with the respective reports and it follows the recommendation of the Audit Committee that convened on February 8th, 2022, that actually dealt in detail and extensively with the annual statement. So this annual statement is thus stated. Now dear ladies and gentlemen, before I give the word to the Board, let me make a note on the year 2021 and provide written report of the supervisory report is included in the annual report on Pages 12 to 16. Please, therefore, allow me to focus my comments on selected aspects. A total of 8 meetings of the Supervisory Board were held in fiscal year 2021. At these meetings, the Supervisory Board dealt in detail with the economic situation and the strategic alignment of the group. The Supervisory Board was informed promptly and comprehensively by the Executive Board about all significant business transaction on all key issues relating to business development strategy, the risk situation, risk management, internal control systems and the net assets, financial position and results of operations of the company and the group. In addition, the main topics of the consultations were: the further development of the portfolio through acquisitions, various investment projects to expand capacities as well as the company's objectives in the nonfinancial area. Further individual topics of the Supervisory Board's deliberations in the past fiscal year are listed in the written report of the Supervisory Board. I would like to refer to this report. I would now like to briefly explain some upcoming changes in the composition of the Supervisory Board. The current term of office of the Supervisory Board and at the close of this Annual General Meeting, this affects both the employee and the shareholder representatives for whom new elections will therefore be held today under agenda Item 8. On the employee side, whose elections have already been completed in accordance with the requirements of the German Codetermination Act, all existing members of the Supervisory Board, with the exception of Mrs. Karoline Kleinschmidt, who did not run again for a term of office will remain on the Supervisory Board for a further term of office. Ms. Sabrina Has been elected as a new member of the Supervisory Board in place of Mrs. Kleinschmidt. On the shareholder side, Professor, Dr. Thomas Scheper will not be standing for reelection. In addition to the members known to you, Professor Ebsworth, Dr. Favoccia, Ms. Panzer, Professor Trützschler; and myself, the Supervisory Board proposes, Mr. Frank Riemensperger for election. The candidate standing for election will introduce themselves to you in a short video when we discuss Item 8 of today's agenda. I will then also say a few words about myself. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to Mrs. Kleinschmidt and Professor Scheper for their work over the past 10 years on our committee. Both have made significant contribution to the work of the Supervisory Board during their 2 terms of office, and with the expertise, commitment and experience have provided our company with the safe guidance on its successful path during this time. I wish both Mrs. Kleinschmidt and Professor Scheper, all the best professionally and privately and much success in all their future endeavors. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now ask the Chairman of our Executive Board, Dr. Kreuzburg to explain the 2021 financial statements. Dr. Kreuzburg will also address the development of the group as a whole and outline the prospects for the future. He will also provide the oral explanation required by law on agenda Item 9 of today's Annual General Meeting, which deals with an adjustment to existing profit and loss transfer agreements with subsidiaries. First of all I would like to point out that the aforementioned option to ask questions about the management's explanation by the shareholder portal has now been activated. Dr. Kreuzburg, I would now like to ask you to give you a presentation.

Thank you very much, Dr. Kappich. Dear shareholders, dear ladies and gentlemen. I would now like to welcome you to our today's General Annual Meeting. And like to report on the past business year 2021 and also to report on what kind of perspectives we will have for the future for the Sartorius Group and how we want to implement that. But before I will start with my report and all further explanations. I have to point out that one of the statements being made in my presentation will refer to the future and are based on certain expectations and calculations, which underlines certain risks, and therefore, we cannot give any guarantee for the statements to be made and it's not to be intended to update these statements on an ongoing basis. I would like to start with my report, and I think the business year 2021 can be summarized by saying, this was an extremely intensive year and also an extremely successful year. We had a leap in increase in turnover and return. We had a very strong increase in number of personnel. In a very extensive way we invested particularly in production capacities, and at the same time, with all the difficulties that you are aware of, we made -- or concluded 2 acquisitions, one in early 2022, but I will tell you about that a little more. And ever since September, we are part of the extended DAX 40. And for 2022, we have trending goals in terms of gross profitability as well as sustainability. And I would like to use this opportunity to thank all employees of Sartorius and to thank all customers of the Sartorius and business partners that we could achieve that together and that this was possible. Now I would like to begin by taking a look at the group all over. Let me take a look at the second block from the left-hand side, turnover. We had a growth of almost 50% to EUR 3.4 billion. This is an increase by more than EUR 1 billion over 2020, which was a great increase already. That was almost doubling the turnover in almost 2 years. And with the order intake, even with increased basis, it was 52% to EUR 4.3 billion. So in absolute figures, it's EUR 1.4 billion. We have an over proportional increase of the EBITDA. We achieved that to EUR 1.2 million -- almost EUR 1.2 billion. That's an increase by almost 70%. The margin will increased by 4.5% to almost 34% And even stronger was the result of the shareholders' value to 8.08 and 8.09 for the preferred stocks. The different factors on the turnover side as well as the return side, I would like to mention that later on. But let's look at the 2 different segments. First, about the regions. And in all the 3 major geographies, the growth was almost identical from the left to the right, in the Americas that the complete American continent, 45% to EUR 1.1 billion to EUR 1.4 billion in Europe. So we call it EMEA. That also includes Middle East and Africa to a little more than 50% growth in constant currencies and a growth of EUR 900 million, so we're close to EUR 1 billion in the Asia Pacific region. So the increase was a little more than 52%. So this is very similar to the rate -- the growth rate. So we have a very good balance in the different regions. As you can see on the right-hand side, so the ratio is almost the same. So let me say something about Europe, where you would presume that the growth would be a little less than in the other 2 geographies. Indeed, it was the case that during the last business year, we had a very high rate of vaccination production, and that also applied to the corona vaccines. Now let me talk about the perspective about the 2 segments. I would like to start with Bioprocess Solutions. All in all, you can say that both segments developed very well. And Bioprocess Solutions, we had a growth of turnover, almost 55% to EUR 2.7 billion. So you have an increase of EUR 950 million increase in one business year. And here, it applies again what I said before, so that was a doubling within 2 years. So order intake grew a bit more even with the high basis from the previous year, but the ratio between turnover or from order intake and turnover was quite expressive. So '20 to '21 and I will soon talk about that in more detail. So we have an additional trigger by the corona vaccine production. You see the combination of the growth. Here, you can see that these effects contribute about 20 percentage points. So about 5 percentage points through acquisitions. So that means that the organic growth and the basic business was about 30 percentage points. And here, you have to say that is stressing the market growth in general because you had certain round effect. And so we commented that during the last business year that here, we have a different ordering situation. So that the customers had higher stock keeping or placed orders a bit earlier than usual. These are effects that you see in the supply chains but that will normalize some time. That is a trend that we also realized during the second half of the last business year, so that the order intakes were starting to normalize during the last year, and we will also have the same effect in the year 2022. Stressed supply chain is also a topic I would like to talk about in the segment Bioprocess Solutions. So we noticed that during the last business year, we also noticed that during this business year, talking about plastics semiconductors, which are more difficult to source and also at higher prices. And now about the profit, clearly out of proportion increased 70%, the EBITDA up to 70%, the margin to 36.2%. Besides the economies of scales that are part of our business model, so that some costs rose belatedly. So we hired personnel because during phases of lockdown, this is hardly to be done. But also, we didn't hardly have any business trips. So I have a margin development that was, yes, taking the future already into account. So we had some margin that were usually taking place during 4 years. We made very good progress with our production capacities extensions, and I will talk about that a little later. When talking about the other segment, Lab Products & Services, very great results, an increase by turnover and order intake by 1/3, 32% in concrete terms to almost 800 million order intake. So we have 32.6% increase. A very clear organic growth, you can see that down here in the bullet point here, 6% by acquisitions, another 6% pandemic induced. So it wasn't the vaccines, but rather the test systems. So when we deliver diagnostic membranes and similar items. So here, we have about 20% organic growth and the basic business. So these are not effect that I talked about before, but rather what played a role is that the previous basis was a bit lower of the -- due to the difficult second quarter in 2020 when the pandemic really hit home. In terms of profitability, the same comment as before about Bioprocess Solutions, strong business system, imminent economies of scale. So you know that from us over the last couple of years. So here, we made really a leap with 5 percentage points to 26% EBITDA, almost EUR 200 million in absolute figures. Now I would briefly like to talk about the investments, which I mentioned before. We invested about EUR 400 million last year. And the left-hand upper corner, you see the graphics the year 2020 after 12% investment rate, we have about 14% this year. So we are talking about EUR 550 million roundabout. So in 2 years, we will have almost EUR 1 billion in production capacity. So that is across all geographies worldwide. I don't want to focus on all different countries. You see that in Europe, mainly in Germany and in France as well as in the Americas as in Asia. Across the entire product portfolio, in fact, I mean due to the size and the growth particularly strong in the respective product segments of Bioprocess division, but also in the Laboratory division and you can see in bioanalytics, which grows particularly right now and has contributed to the growth in the Lab division and that we invest there and expand our capacities. We also invested in the past year in acquisitions. I mentioned that a minute ago. And I'd like to start on the right-hand side because these are really the investments that we actually completed last year, and we started the consolidations. These are investments in cell culture media or components of cell culture media. These were the 2 investments of CellGenix and cell in Freiburg and Bielefeld, both of them in Germany, i.e., which due in the particular strengths for cell and gene therapies have actually a very great footprint in these segments at a very strong growth and very pioneering and oriented towards the future. And I will actually come back to the strategic things later today. Then at the beginning of 2022, we were able to actually finish 2 acquisitions. In the downstream processing area, that's an acquisition that we had agreed upon a while ago, but that was still pending the antitrust authorities in the United States. And finally, we reached the agreement at the end of 2021, and we were able to do the closing in February 2022. And also quite early in 2022 in January, we were able to actually have bioanalytics acquisition, where we could actually strengthen our footprint in the bioanalytics area by ALS, automated lab solutions, and the handling and the isolation of cells. And in all areas, these are acquisitions, you go to strategically. Clearly, the finance fees is, if I take a look at the right-hand side, a while ago, we acquired an Israel plant with Novasep in downstream, we have actually closed the fourth acquisition here before we had WaterSep and from Danaher a chromatography business. And in Bioanalytics, before ALS, we actually got the -- opted business by Danaher and IntelliCyt. We are strengthening clearly defined strategic areas with our acquisitions. Despite the intense acquisitions into our investments and the acquisitions, thanks to our very strong cash flow, and I should also maybe say another despite, despite the fact that we have managed our stock, so risk averse, meaning with a special regard to being able to actually have slower lead times, we actually ramped up our stocks. We actually strengthens our KPIs here, which is actually here the net debt and the dynamic debt and we were able to decrease it by a whole percentage point and from 2.6 to 1.5, and that gives us a whole lot of potential for further future-oriented risks. Another thing is the headcount and a number of employees has been the source of joy for us in the past year, it has increased by 30% or 3,200 until to reach nearly 14,000 staff that's in net view. And like I said, already over the past years, that wasn't quite as pronounced, but always very remarkable still, yes. You see the temporary development over 5 years, at least 1,500 or 1,600 net headcount plus per year. That's a big challenge for our HR division, but also for all parts of our companies to grow continuously when it comes to head count, to onboard the new staff, to break them in, to show them the task. And in the middle, 4,400 new hirings had actually joined the group companies in all by new hirings and 137 by the mergers and acquisition, so that adds up to about 4,500 new employees. It also means that the mix of experience and fresh ideas, seniority, i.e., moves a little bit towards those who have been with the company of less than 5 years. I mean that's the time line we take a look at up to 5 years, between 5 and 15 and more than 15 years. So 60% are already less than 5 years. And by looking at the numbers on the left side, we can see that half of them have joined the company about a year ago. So that doesn't mean that they don't have any experience. So on the contrary, many of new hires have long track record in the industry, but that also means that when it comes to the cultural dynamics, we have to keep on developing all the time. And it's very exciting, and I think also a very positive effect. Structurally, looking at the development here, you can actually conclude that internationally, we're getting more international, younger and more female. So international, we have 110 nations here. I'm not going to read out all of them, but I'd like to say that we have a headquarters here in -- headquarters here in Germany and strong activity here in Germany. We have still 71% non-German managers. And so we are really well positioned internationally. And we've done that very consciously because in the different companies in Asia, in America and in Europe, we have local management and very good anchoring and robust growth possibilities in those respective countries. You can see that the cohort, the age group of 30 to 40 has grown a lot with new hires alone, yes. And we are getting younger as a company. I mean, individually, we don't do that. But as a company, yes, our average age is 39. That's pretty young for a company of our long history. The present proportion of women has risen further and is intended to rise further still. In the first 2 management levels below the Executive Board, we have 31% of women and we had actually wanted to reach 30% for both levels. We haven't managed in both tiers and it's difficult because the law of small numbers means that, I mean, little changes can actually result in being able to do it in one tier, not in the other, as is written great detail in our annual statement. And I'm confident that we will achieve even a higher values and proportions in the near future, and we will publish it correspondingly. Let's now take a look at the development of the share price, and we will be having questions on this, and the answers will be answered. Now as you can see from the graph, the development has become much more volatile in the stock markets, both in the entire stock market but also for Sartorius. We've seen a clear outperformance of both stocks compared to the DAX or the MSCI Europe even in the preferred stock of about 73% and the standard stock of 44%; DAX 15.8%; MSCI Europe, 9.9%. And you see one that is hard to interpret is actually to see -- see at the third quarter, you see actually that the ordinary shares are outpacing the preferred stock. And at the beginning of this year, the situation has changed at the stock market in general and also at the Sartorius stock. So inflation expectation, expectation of interest rate development is, of course, very strong impacting growth titles, of course, and an overall economic uncertainty. Let me now refer to actually agenda point number 2, our proposal to pay out dividends. We propose to actually pay out the dividend for ordinary shares to EUR 1.25 to EUR 1.26 compared to EUR 0.70 or EUR 0.71 in the past years. So that means an increase to about EUR 86 million and the dividend ratio -- payout ratio would be nearly at the same value of 15.6%, referred to the group net profit. And if you related to sales, it's about higher. And like Dr. Kappich announced it a minute ago, I'd like to say something on agenda point #9. So the -- actually, the profit and loss agreements to actually complement them to secure the relationship between the Sartorius AG and to 100% affiliate companies here in Göttingen and that's a rather simple formality. And you'll find very comprehensive and detailed written documentation about that on our Internet website and also in the invitation to today's session. Let me now talk about one topic, that over the past years and for good reason, has moved into the focus of societal discussion, but also entrepreneurial activity, and that is sustainability and the different aspects of sustainability. And then what follows here, I'd like to give you a short overview about our positioning there and our concrete measures and activities and the focusing that we will be taking on there. But at the beginning, please let me emphasize that sustainability is not as it is in certain other business models. It is a question of repairing certain situations, where we have to deal, first and foremost, with how to compensate certain things and deal with the things that we're doing in our business activities. In our case, it's different because the core of our activities, our purpose of our company addresses completely one sustainability goal. Our mission is, we empower scientists and engineers to simplify and accelerate progress in life science and bioprocessing, enabling the development of new and better therapies and more affordable medicine for more patients, and that is contributing 100% of the third sustainability goal of the United Nations, i.e., the good health and well-being, and that is the focus of our entire business activities. And so it's important to see that for us, it's not predominantly our business purpose that needs changing, but rather to think about how we can reduce our ecological footprint in what we do, for example, or how we can get even better in other areas as well. And of course, sustainability aspects. If you take a holistic view on that, regard the entire activities -- the corporate activities, here, you see in the ring, it's ethical, governance, labor conditions, but also environmental topics. And for a number of years already, we have actually been taking part in ratings. And we are getting good results and increasingly better results and will continue to become better there. And as you can see that on the right-hand side, I'd like to focus on one thing that we have been developing very intensively in the past fiscal year, and that is the topic of climate protection from the CEO of environmental topics. And that means, in particular, emissions of carbon, carbon and carbon equivalent emissions, the greenhouse gases as it were. And our goal is to reduce those emissions 10% per year related to sales. And that's what we call the emission intensity that we want to reduce by 10% per year. Now where are we? In 2019, that is our year of referral because there we have the most comprehensive and complete databases. We had an emission of about 450,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. And that means about 250 grams of carbon dioxide per euro of sales. You see that on the left bar -- on the left-hand column, in 2019 where we started. So a reduction by 10% per year in order to make a tangible means of reduction, but nearly half i.e., to 133-gram per euro in 2025 and reduction by nearly 70% to below 80 grams per euro by the year 2030. Let me tell you a few words about how these emissions are comprised because to make it clear that this is a very ambitious goal. Of these, 450,000 tonnes of emissions or 250 grams per euro were 10% in Scope 1 and 2, which are those was about which reduction are being happening in -- within the company and within the company processes. So connected and plus the energy that you purchased, Scope 1 and 2, that is 10% of the overall -- 90% of emissions are in Scope 3. These are the different processes and at less than 50% are on the supplier side. And in particular, a little more than half of the 90 percentage points on the other side. So that what happens to -- on the side of the customers and in disposal. So if you want to increase your goal by 10%, so your efforts have to be quite intensive, not just in regard to what happens in your own factories, but that you have to cooperate with customers and suppliers. So this is a very highly demanding goal. On the right-hand side, you see that without me reading the text, why we did that. On the one hand, it is clear as a highly growing company, it is impossible to absolutely reduce the emission values. So you have to focus on emission intensity. And here, it says that in the third bullet point, we refer to the gross reduction. So not looking at compensations that we will look at later on because our -- this is important that you reduce ecological footprint, that you try to minimize that. And how do you compare those 10% per year? If you calculate that with a fit for 55 goal that the European Union set a couple of months ago then that would translate into 8.5% per year. 8.5% and 10% is not that much of a difference but that accumulates to 15% all over in the year 2030. So therefore, we have a high -- a much more demanding goal as compared to the other goal. And of course, that costs also some money. So with the ongoing business, we calculate with 0.5 percentage point for the additional investments necessary and the year 2025 and perhaps also earlier, almost 1% with regard to the turnover. And the last point, as you can see here, when we explained the remuneration system for the Board, we really take it seriously that this goal is part of the remuneration system for the Board. What are we planning for 2022 in terms of growth and profitability? In the group, we intend to grow by 15% to 19% and 2% to be due to acquisitions. This is what we had last year and also earlier this year that I just presented. In Bioprocess Solutions, we are talking about 17% to 21% and 2% due to acquisitions. And the Laboratory segment, 6% to 10% and 1% from -- based on acquisitions. With regard to profitability, we want to keep the very high level that we reached last year. That is the plan. And please look at this with the backdrop of the cost effect that I just talked about. The year 2022 is a year with high uncertainties, as you can say today, and that relates to a number of factors that also supplies to supply chains. And I mentioned that before that in the year 2021, we noticed that already, particularly with regard to plastics, also to a certain extent to semiconductors for a number of products during contain trips, then we also have logistics and freight that play a role and an additional subject that also has an effect on the economic development. That is a topic of inflation, less a topic of interest development. And the interest rate development also has a major effect and also the development of the corona pandemic. So it's more or less clear that this is an endemic situation by now, but let me make it clear. We are not that far yet. It's unclear how it will continue there with the different vaccination campaigns on a worldwide scale. So pandemic business, we presume the identical level for 2022 as we had in 2021. This is the basis for our prognosis. This is part of what our customers say, and they also made their orders already, but everything is underway. The margin goal is considering 0.5% for our sustainability goals already. The investment growth about 14%, as I mentioned before. And in terms of the dynamic debt ratio, that would be a further reduction to 1.1, always with the idea that we don't have any further acquisitions, which are, of course, possible. But in a model, it has to be based on certain ideas. Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to talk about our strategic position and the focus that we will have and also about how we want to go about our midterm goals for 2025. The strategic focus of Sartorius is very clear. And both segments work hand in hand, Life Science as well as biopharmaceutical. The Laboratory segment refers to the early phase of the medicine development and also the cell line development and Bioprocess Solutions segment focuses on cell lines and process development. And there are synergies between the 2 segments. And they are very strong in the production phase upstream as well as downstream. And we reported on that already. If you look at how the market developed in these areas, they offer quite good possibilities for growth, very clear, very stable megatrends. The world population grows and it's getting older, and that can be easily be forecasting. Good figure here is that the older population being people being 60 years and older. There is a strong correlation between the age of the people and the need for medication. That during the next 3 decades will almost double. And within the pharmaceuticals segment because that refers to the growth of the pharmaceutical sector that there will be a move towards biopharmaceuticals. So from '21 to '26, this is -- you see a prognosis how it will develop. And on the next chart, you can see the figures, that the pipeline has gone further in the direction of biopharmaceuticals. So that will go beyond the figure of 37%. All in all, the expectation worldwide is of the corresponding forecasts that you will have a growth rate of an average of 10% in the biopharmaceutical market. And let me stress that at an average, excluding disruptive effects such as corona where you have other impulses having their influence. But if you zoom into this market of the Life Science and biopharmaceuticals market, and if you look at what happened there concretely, then we have to say that it will become more diverse, that the range and the dynamics of the development activities increases more and more that the speed is getting more and more. So in the pipeline of pharmaceutical companies, we have 43%. So more than the 37% that are expected for 2026. And so there's a perspective for more than the next 5 years in the direction of biotech. But if you look at it a bit more closely then you will find something like biopharmaceutical 2.0. The first phase was dominated by medications on the basis of proteins and mononuclear antibodies. So you have therapy cases with viral vectors and advanced therapies. Well, you also have some cell therapies. And if you look at how these segments grow, you have 10% growth of biopharmaceutical in general advanced therapies, an average growth of 40% per year. And this is an enormous value, particularly because the segment is not really that small, but by -- with 15% is quite relevant for us. And biosimilars, these are generally mononuclear antibodies. These are products that are no longer having patent protection and will grow dramatically because you can target larger patient groups, and we talked about that in other annual meetings before. And if you see how these dynamics work and how it will increase in the direction of innovative therapeutics, that you can imagine that our customers need innovative solutions in order to develop such innovative products. We're highly focused on technologies and products and to supply such solutions to support such steps. I said that before with our mission, this is what drives us on a daily basis. How can we help our customers to become more efficient and to become faster and why is this relevant? As you can see on the left-hand side that the development of medication cost at an average EUR 2 billion. And at the same time, it's bearing a very high risk. Even if you reach the clinical Phase I, only 10% of these products are finally getting the okay. So when you start in the laboratories, when you have the study phase, then it's 1% of 1%, so 1 out of 10,000. The overall phase takes more than 10 years before it's finalized. This is a factor that is enormous -- economically enormous, but when you are thinking of patients, then this is very long. And let me give you one example for a very innovative therapeutic product. USD 2.1 million for 1 gene therapy Zolgensma. So by increasing the efficiency, you can create values, economic values, but also to create benefit for the patients. On the right-hand side, you see some of our products, some bioanalytical products out of those 8 products. Then you see in the lower line, you see product from Bioprocess segment. And what applies here is that for all products, we can tell you in quite some detail how it will give the benefit to our customers and patients. Now I would like to focus on how we go about this innovation and give you some overview. We base our innovation activities on 3 parts. On the one hand, in certain areas, we have a core competence. We are leading from our perspective, in that position, we invest in that on an ongoing basis. We have our own very specialized production development activities, particularly with membrane-based products but also with some other products. Then we cooperate with a number of external partners that are leading on a worldwide scale and experts that could be academic partners, could be start-ups, could be regular companies. And finally, we look at complementary additions to our portfolio. And with all acquisitions that we made during the last 10, 15 years, we can say that they were all innovations. We didn't look for creating further turnover, but rather getting more innovation that make us stronger and helped us to differentiate us from the competition to be more relevant for our customers. But when you look at what we concentrate on with the very innovative partners and feels when we work with partners. Let me give you some examples for analytic technology. So how can you understand even better how particular working mechanisms are of pharmaceuticals and where new approaches for therapeutical solutions could be found that's analytics. That's always a question of how you can actually deal with the mass of derived data. So data analytics, artificial intelligence plays a role there, new cells systems will become more and more relevant. It's not always over the cells, but also other cells that we will be dealing with in the future, intensifying Bioprocesses. How can we be more effective and efficient. And some of the acquisitions have been going in this direction. And then, of course, we're also thinking about advanced materials, for example, recyclability and topics like that. And you've seen a minute ago, what kind of sustainability topics we are tackling. So all in all, we are spending nearly EUR 200 million as research and development and the footnotes including the activated development investments. Now to finish the strategic perspective, I'd like to look on how our regional focus will be like. Like I already said, nothing will be changing much. We're focusing on the United States and on Asian markets. The United States is still the most innovative market globally in life sciences and the biotech. And despite our market share increases, we still have potential. So we win over additional market shares. And so it's obvious that we will be continuing investment in this market. In Asia, I'd like to emphasize China and Korea, but we have also other markets that are very interesting, and we have a high growth of markets in all these areas. And in China, specifically, after the role it has worked on to develop in similar production, they are increasingly also launching innovative products. So these are markets we will invest in more and more. We've done -- we did so in the last year, and we will continue to do so in the coming year, this year and the future, and also how we can be their presence and have our application presence, our service know-how service presence and increase that also application labs, for example, what we are doing in all these countries, intensity. And that also means a regionalization and sometimes localizations of added value including, of course, production and logistics. And that's a topic that we have on our agenda for the simple reason that we're getting all closer to our clients in the relevant markets, thus, having shorter delivery times, shorter lead times and many more. But we also see that in certain areas in the world in connection with the developments of the recent times, this may well become relevant for other reasons as well. Now to finish, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to give you a view towards the year 2025. A year ago, we actually increased our sales goal clearly to EUR 5 billion before it was EUR 4 billion for 2025, and we've raised that forecast for the entire group. You see how this develops over time. We want to double our sales over 5 years. So that represents about 15% growth per year. Currently, we're even a little bit above that. So between 2015 and 2021, we nearly made on sales refold but that is in part also due to corona. And we've raised our profitability goal. You see how the EUR 5 million is split into 3.8 BPS and 1.2 LPS that has remained the same, but our profitability goal has been raised to 34%, 2 percentage points more than before, BPS 36%, 2 percentage points more than before; and LPS 28%, 3% -- 2% -- no 3 percentage points more than before. No additional net sales. This is not a prophecy. It is just an assumption. We do not know exactly how it's going to look like in 2025, but we will assume that corona will decrease, maybe also be combined with flu vaccines. And so we think that corona will not play a role in 2025 anymore. And this is just a reminder of what we said. We think that 1% of our sales in 2025 will be caused for our sustainability and carbon reduction goals. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for listening, and I'm looking forward to our discussion round in a minute and I'm looking forward to your positive reactions to our activities. Thank you. Kappich?

Thank you, Dr. Kreuzburg, for your explanations on the financial statement of the financial year 2021 and on the future and the strategic concept of our group of companies. Now this ends... [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]