Sartorius Aktiengesellschaft (SRT3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Lothar Kappich, and as Chairman of the Supervisory Board, I hereby open this year's Annual General Meeting of Sartorius AG. Behalf of this Supervisory Board and the Executive Board, I would like to -- a very warm welcome to you all. Particular I would like to welcome our shareholders and shareholder representatives. I'd also like to greet the representatives of the media. Your reporting on Sartorius had helped to keep our shareholders informed about business development and important events throughout the year. Thank you very much for your work. Sartorius has once again decided in favor of this format. Thanks to the positive experiences made with the virtual Annual General Meeting previous years. Particular, it allows us to better reach out to our international shareholder base. As in previous years, we are providing an English stream in addition to the German one. I am currently in the group premises at Sartorius at Annastr, at 29, 37075 Göttingen, Germany, is the venue for the Annual General Meeting within the meaning of the German Stock Corporation Act. We'd actually welcome the members of our Supervisory Board to all here today. The same applies to the Executive Board and I would like to welcome Dr. Joachim Kreuzburg, as Chairman; as well as Dr. René Fáber; and Dr. Alexandra Gatzemeyer. I'd also like to welcome Dr. Matthias Reinhart as notary public with this office in Göttingen and he's taking the minutes of today's meeting. The company's proxies, roles are present at the venue of the annual meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, since the day of our last Annual General Meeting, there have been several personal changes on the Executive Board. Gerry Mackay who is responsible for the Laboratory Division on the Executive Board has resigned from his position for personal reasons with effect from 15 June, 2023. He had already signaled this to us when his contract was lastly extended. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Mackay once again for his valuable work and his important contributions to the further development of our Laboratory business. We've been very pleased to have the successor for him from within the company in Dr. Alexandra Gatzemeyer. Dr. Gatzemeyer has held various management positions at Sartorius for over 18 years and has been a member of our Executive Board since 1, May 2023. She will now introduce herself to personally. Ms. Gatzemeyer, we look forward to your contribution.

Dear shareholders, dear colleagues. First of all, I'd like to extend a very warm thank you to you, Dr. Kappich for your friendly words. I must admit that I'm a little bit nervous as Russian by birth, my German is not quite perfect. And so I like to take a little help in the form of today's cards that I read of. And I promise you I'll do my very best in order to express myself clearly and understandably. My name is Alexandra Gatzemeyer. I'm 44 years old, and I live together with my husband and my daughter in the vicinity of [ Heiligenstein. ] Since June, I have been leading the Sartorius division Lab Products & Services as a member of the Board. For now more than 19 years, I've been part of the Sartorius family. And during that time, I held several leadership positions, both in Russia and in Germany. I was in product management, HR and sales. And I also was in the board of one of our subsidiaries. I hold a Doctorate in chemistry and pharmaceutics. My scientific education was done at the Chemical Pharmaceutical University in St. Petersburg, Russia. That proved to be an excellent basis for my subsequent professional development at Sartorius and have provided me with a very deep insight in the needs of our clients and the challenges of our industry. I'm very much looking forward to be able to shape the division, Lab Products & Services in the coming years at this decisive position. My team and myself would like to deliver contribution to speed up the biopharmaceutical research in order to give more and more people access to therapies they so urgently need. At this place, I'd also thank my predecessor, Mr. Gerry Mackay, very much for his excellent and outstanding word. He led the division with a lot of knowledge and great passion, and I'm very proud to be able to build on this basis further on. For conclusion, I'd like to thank you, our dear shareholders for your trust and confidence. I promise you that with all my power, I sure contribute to increasing the value of our company and to consolidate the excellent reputation of Gerry Sartorius as a leading partner in our industry. I'm looking forward to our cooperation and the exciting challenges ahead of us. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Ms. Dr. Gatzemeyer, and we wish you continued great fun and good success in your challenging work. There was also a change in the position of the Chief Financial Officer. Rainer Lehmann resigned as a member of the Executive Board with effect from 31 October, 2023. We also thank Mr. Lehmann for his many years of very successful work at Sartorius. He set up our finance organization excellently and made an important contribution to the strategic and operational development of the company. The Executive Committee and the Supervisory Board also discussed Mr. Lehmann's successor very intensively. And we are delighted that we have succeeded in appointing Dr. Florian Funck, F-U-N-C-K, as a new Chief Financial Officer with effect from 1st of April 2024. Although Mr. Funck will not have his first official working dates until next Monday. He will give you a brief overview of his career today. We recorded his introduction a few days before today's meeting, and I'd like the director to play it back to us now.

Dear shareholders, dear ladies and gentlemen, my name is Florian Funck. And I'm happy to actually start as a Chief Financial Officer at Sartorius AG as of next coming Monday. Please allow me to guide you through my CV. I'm born in Duisburg, the Urban district, and I lived there by also pass my -- which was the German [indiscernible] and then I went to the University of Münster for my Business Administration studies, where I stayed on for 4 years in the industry of -- the Institute of Industrial Sciences, and I got my doctorate there. Then I joined the Haniel Group, where I had several commercial leadership positions. For example, I was for 7 years the financial -- Chief Financial Officer at the [indiscernible] subsidiary of Haniel. The past 4 years I was the CFO of the entire Haniel Group, who has more than 20,000 employees generate revenue of EUR 4 billion. I'm also experienced in supervisory board. For example TAKKT AG, CECONOMY AG, Vonovia SE. I used to be present, there are still in some cases. Over the past weeks, I had the possibility to get the Sartorius business to get a closer insight to the Sartorius business and the acting individuals there. And I'm impressed with the strength of our divisions and business models as well as the people who work there. In this respect, I'm very happy and I'm very much looking forward to have collaboration with all the Sartorius colleagues worldwide ahead of us. And of course, I'm also looking forward in exchange with you dear shareholders. And with this sense, let gets us back to our -- I wishing you a successful proceedings of today's general meeting. And thank you for your interest.

Mr. Funck, now that you have joined us today, thank you very much for your words. And we wish you a very good start at Sartorius from our side. We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Kreuzburg, who has headed the finance department on the interim basis since November 2023. Unlike the Executive Board, there have been no changes to the Supervisory Board since the last Annual General Meeting. As usual, you can read about the composition of the Supervisory Board and its committees. In the annual report, I refer you to Pages 162 through -- 262 through 264. For all the shareholders entitled to attend and the authorized representatives, the entire Annual General Meeting will be broadcast today on the password-protected Internet service, our AGM Portal. All other participants can follow the first part of the event via the Sartorius website, the address is www.sartorius.com/hauptversammlung. As in previous years, the transmission via the website will end after the speech by the Chairman of the Executive Board and the recording of this part will also be available after the meeting. Let us now move to the formalities of this Annual General Meeting. The meeting was convened in due form and due time by publications of Federal Gazette on 16 February 2024. A printout of the Federal Gazette is in the hands of the officiating notary, and will be attached to the minutes. The same applies to prove of the Europe-wide distribution of the convening notice. Since the publication of the invitation in the Federal Gazette or further information required for the Annual General Meeting can also be found on the company's website at www.sartorius.com/hauptversammlung. I hereby declare that today's Annual General Meeting has been convened in due form and time in accordance with the law and the Articles of Association. The company has not received any motions for additions to the agenda, counter-motions or nominations for elections. I will now explain how you can exercise your voting rights as shareholders at today's virtual Annual General Meeting. For the electronic exercise of rights, the company has set up the aforementioned AGM Portal in German and English. The personal access data for this portal was sent to the shareholders or the authorized representatives after fulfilling the requirements for participation. These shareholders can now follow the entire Annual General Meeting via -- live via the portal or connect to the meeting electronically. They can exercise the right to speak and in case if they hold ordinary shares, they can also exercise their voting rights. Please let me point out that voting is not only possible in the run-up to this Annual General Meeting, but can also be done now, i.e., during our meeting via the AGM portal. In particular, you can, therefore, still exercise your voting rights by the electronic portal vote and issue a power of attorney and voting instructions to the proxies or authorized other persons that submit proof of authorization. We can also change or revoke votes and instructions that have already been cast and revoke authorizations that have been granted. These options are available until the end of the respective moment. I will inform you of this point in time during our meeting. By means other than via the AGM portal, it is no longer possible to cast votes during today's meeting. For the sake of good order, it should be pointed out that ordinary shareholders or their proxies were, of course, already able to exercise their voting rights prior to the Annual General Meeting, either via the AGM Portal or by submitting the voter instructions by letter or e-mail by 6 p.m. on March 27, 2024. Forms required for this were sent to ordinary shareholders entitled to participate together with their access data for the AGM Portal and were also available for download on the company's website from the time the Annual General Meeting was convened, the corresponding voting form was then to be sent to the address printed in the invitation. Preference shareholders are not entitled to vote at today's Annual General Meeting. In accordance with the legal statutory provision shareholders registered for the Annual General Meeting or their authorized representatives had the right to submit statements on items on the agenda in text form via the AGM Portal prior to the Annual General Meeting. This option was available until 22nd of March 2024. And I would like to inform you that no such statements were received. Let us now turn to your options of exercising your right to speak, both ordinary and preference shareholders or the authorized representatives who are connected to the Annual General Meeting electronically, have the right to speak by means of video communication. Since the start of the Annual General Meeting, they have been able to register to speak in the AGM Portal via the virtual request to speak in table. I will go into the procedure in more detail later. Motions, election proposals or requests for information may also form part of speak. Information on company matters may be requested at today's Annual General Meeting and so far as it is necessary for the proper assessment of an item on the agenda, and there is no right to withhold information. Shareholders or their authorized representatives have the right to ask questions about all answers provided by the Executive Board in accordance with Section 131 of the German Stock Corporation Act. As Chairman of the Annual General Meeting, I hereby stipulated in accordance with Section 131 (1f) of the German Stock Corporation Act, that the right to information may only be exercised at today's AGM by means of video communication via the AGM portal. In other words, within the scope of the right, as it was just explained. As in the previous year, the company has also decided to voluntarily set up an additional opportunity to ask questions by means of electronic communication in the run-up to the AGM over and above the statutory requirements. This part of this additional opportunity to ask questions, shareholders entitled to participate or their proxies were able to submit questions on the agenda in text form via the AGM portal by 23rd of March 2024. I would like to point out that this is a voluntary additional opportunity to ask questions, does not constitute a right to ask questions or request information. The Executive Board has decided to answer the question submitted in advance during today's general debate. Shareholders connected electronically or their authorized representatives can also use the corresponding field in the AGM portal to submit a request in accordance with Section 131 (4) of the German Stock Corporation Act until the end of the general debate. Objections to one or more resolutions of the AGM can also be submitted via the corresponding fields in the AGM portal from the opening of today's Annual General Meeting until its end. And in the event of a refusal to provide information, a request for the question and the reason for the refusal to provide information to be recorded in the minutes. The declaration of the request will be sent to the notary public in each case. The list of participants will include the shareholders connected or represented electronically, including those shareholders who have authorized and extracted the company's proxies to exercise their voting rights as well as connected representatives of shareholders. At the latest before the first vote, I will announce the number of shares held by shareholders connected or represented. The number of shares represented by the proxies and the number of electronic absentee votes. The list of participants and any supplements will be made available on the AGM portal. Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to explain the procedure for requesting and giving the floor. If you would like to speak after the Board of Management has addressed the agenda, I will ask you to register your speech in the AGM portal via the virtual request to speak table. Please follow the instructions on the AGM Portal. As soon as you have registered to speak, we will contact you to check the technology. Essentially, you will need a camera and a microphone that can be accessed from your browser. If you -- we are unable to ensure the functionality of the video communication, we reserve the right to reject the speech. I will call those shareholders or authorized representatives will be then activated for a speech in due course and then have them connected to the meeting. Please note that your speech will be broadcast live via video and audio as soon as you're connected to the meeting. Of course, you can also register to speak during the debate. However, I would be grateful if you could register as early as possible so that I can estimate how many speakers we can expect. If you have declared your intention to submit a motion or election proposal when registering your speech via our AGM portal, please present it again verbally as part of your speech. I would like to point out that we want to hold the debate in the form of a general debate, meaning we will cover all items on the agenda. I would therefore ask you to address all the items on the agenda on which you wish to speak. Following our general debate, we will then conduct the votes on all agenda items collectively. In this context, please note that you still have time until the end of the votes to cast postal votes via the AGM portal or to issue amend or revoke authorizations and instructions to the company proxies. I will announce the end of voting again beforehand. Once the voting results have been determined, I will establish and announce them. As Chairman of the meeting, please allow me to add the following note. The Annual General Meeting, especially the general debate, based on free speech. We will, therefore, not be taken demographic minutes. Only the questions asked will be recorded in shorthand in order to assist the administration in answering them. Furthermore, only the freely accessible part of the AGM up to and including the speech by the management Board will be recorded. Thereafter, no further recordings will be made, and this also applies to the general debate. I ask for your understanding that you are also not permitted to make video or audio recordings of this AGM. Ladies and gentlemen, I've now received the list of participants. And I would like to give you the presence. Until 12:01, there were shareholders and shareholder representatives connected with a total of 373,526 ordinary and preference shares, which is 0.5% of our basic capital. Of this basic capital of the society of EUR 74,880,000 divided into 7,880 shares. At this point of the AGM by the proxies of the society, 32,294,036 ordinary shares with just as many those who were presented, that is 43.13% of our capital. On top of that, the electronic votes were cast for 334,652 ordinary shares. Together -- so taking everything together, at this point, 43.57% of our capital were represented either through electronic postal vote or a vote by proxy. The company currently has 3,210,572 ordinary shares and 2,633,939 preference shares, and they hold no voting rights according to Section 71b German Stock Corporation Act. The notary has received a copy of the attendance data and the list of participants. The list of participants is immediately available for inspection in the AGM portal. The supplementary list may be created to determine the respective attendance. After the change in attendance has been announced, I will also hand over the announcement text to notary, Dr. Reinhart, and a copy of the supplementary list will also be made available for inspection in the AGM portal. We now move on to the agenda. To begin, the Supervisory Board and Executive Board will present their report and in particular, explain the documents mentioned under agenda Item 1. Item 1 contains the presentation of the annual financial statements and the consolidated financial statements as well as the summarized management report and group management report of the company and the report of the Supervisory Board each for the 2023 financial year. I note in this regard that these documents have been made available on the Internet at the address www.sartorius.com/hauptversammlung since the convening of this AGM and will also be available during today's annual meeting there. I further note that the annual and consolidated financial statements prepared by the Executive Board as at 31st December 2023, and the combined management -- group management report have been audited by the auditor elected at the last AGM, KPMG AG KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft, Hanover, and have been issued with an unqualified audit opinion. Following its own review at the Supervisory Board meeting on 9th of February 2024, the Supervisory Board approved the financial statements of the Sartorius AG and the group prepared by the Executive Board as well as the combined management report and group management report. We thus followed the recommendation of the Audit Committee, which dealt in detail with the financial statement documents and the audit findings of the auditors on February 2024. The annual financial statement of Sartorius AG are thus adopted in accordance with Section 172 German Stock Corporation Act. Accordingly, we do not require a resolution on this matter. Ladies and gentlemen, before I give the floor to the Executive Board, I would like to report briefly on the 2023 financial year from the perspective of the Supervisory Board. The detailed written report of the Supervisory Board can be found on Pages 12 to 17 of the annual report. I would therefore like to focus on selected aspects in my comments. A total of 8 meetings were held in 2023 financial year in which the Supervisory Board dealt in detail with the economic situation and the strategic direction of Sartorius on the basis of written and order presentation by the Executive Board. In addition, business development and strategy topics relating to the risk situation, risk management, internal control systems, and compliance played a particularly important role in the discussions. Other key topics were the unusually volatile business development following the pandemic, which was characterized by inventory reductions by customers, particularly in the Bioprocess division. The acquisition of the French company, Polyplus and the associated financing topics. The selection and appointment of our new Executive Board members and the drafting of the corresponding Executive Board contract, the tender and selection of the new auditor that we are proposing to you at today's meeting. The company's progress into various areas of sustainability. As already mentioned, further individual topics of the Supervisory Board deliberations are explained in the original report of the Supervisory Board. Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to ask the Chairman of our Executive Board, Dr. Kreuzburg, to explain the 2023 annual financial statements. Dr. Kreuzburg will also discuss the company's development and outline the prospects for the future. Dr. Kreuzburg, I would now like to ask you to make your presentation.

Thank you, Dr. Lothar Kappich. Dear shareholders, welcome also from my part from this year's Annual General Meeting in our tried and tested interactive virtual format. The business year 2023 has been a total challenge for the entire Life Science Industry and Sartorius was part of it and we noticed it ourselves. The underlying basic trends for our industry, the long-term basic positive trends are much more important than any short-term negative trends. And it used to be quite different in the past years, not only in 2023, but also prior to that. In 2023, in concrete terms, the demand normalization after the pandemic affected sales, revenue, and profitability. So it meant that profit was decreasing and profitability accordingly. Most important driver, as we noticed, was reducing inventory at our clients. We had expected it, but it turned out to be a little bit more intense and more longer lasting than we had anticipated. The turnover for the entire year was EUR 3.4 billion. The underlying EBITDA, EUR 963 million, and the EBITDA margin was 28.3%. On the right-hand side, you see the reductions in revenues and EBITDA. They are noticeable. Nevertheless, we have reached a robust and stable profitability, which is important for the evaluation of our business model. On the right-hand side, the larger perspective. So where exactly was the performance like across the entire pandemic? We can see that from 2019 to 2023, Sartorius growth has reached 87% and the EBITDA growth has been 94%, meaning that they have risen across the entire pandemic time. In this regard, the time perspective, relativizes the short-term view. If you take a more detailed look at that for the entire period from 2019 through 2023, and you see the bars represent the quarter -- quarterly turnover. And the color coding shows which sales, partitions were COVID-related, and you see the order intake. Then you will notice at once, how large and how pronounced the volatility was. And that's especially true when you see the bandwidth of the order intake. The fluctuation of the order intake has moved from the first quarter of 2021 from plus 90%. That was the highest rise, but other increases were similar. And the biggest decrease was about 1/3, minus 34% in the second quarter '22 through -- compared to -- '23 compared to '22. And that came with very pronounced challenges. And let me please, let me point out as well that after third quarter 2022, so rather on the left-hand side when the yellow curve started its high-flying course, we said at the time already that the reason for this is a not sustainable order behavior on the side of our clients, and that would actually lead to a counter leaning trend later on as it has happened. And as of quarter -- the third quarter 2023, we see a certain recuperation. What's also important, the decrease in inventory was, for sure, the most -- the destocking was the most important factor. But it was by no means the only one. We had a series of factors that are interconnected and interinfluencing. And we've shown you 10 factors here. Some are more specific for individual clients, other had ramifications in the entire industry. And we also had very strong macro trends. And last but not least, geopolitical trends. And also the decoupling tendencies that we can observe on a global basis have been a driver, most notably for this weak market in China. And please let me point out the Chinese business in 2023 has declined considerably, not only for Sartorius, but for the entire industry. And it still is pretty weak, especially when we're talking about the equipment business that actually has to suffer from this. The effects that I just outlined had an impact on both divisions. On the Bioprocess Solutions division, we reached about nearly EUR 2.7 billion sales revenue. The underlying EBITDA was EUR 782 million, and that actually is the underlying EBITDA margin of 29.2%. With Lab Products & Services, it is sales revenue of EUR 718 million, order intake of EUR 663 million, underlying EBITDA EUR 180 million, and a margin of 25.1%. I already said it's been a very challenging year, and I'd like to extend my heartfelt thanks to our global teams for the work that they have achieved. The reductions that you see there are noticeable or remarkable, but they comprise all the effects, including COVID. The COVID business has basically fallen away as has Russian business. And all in all, we can say that in the industry competition, we've achieved a very reasonable position here compared to the industry and compared in the competition. The high volatility has also had its impact on the headcount. So especially during the increase phase during COVID, we tried to organize it by hiring many new people, but we had to reduce in 2023. So a net reduction from 22% to 23%. However, from 2019 to 2023, we built up 5,600 new jobs, which means that many of our new colleagues have not been long in the company. 55% of our employees have been less than 5 years in the company, which translates itself into increased training effort. And of course, we're trying to actually fill our leadership possibilities from our internal sources. So we have a very dynamic internal job market of at least 70%. Staff is very international. Both in the staff and the leadership positions, we have a very healthy average age of 40 years and a very healthy structure across all the age cohorts, and we also have a good gender structure, especially women in our first and second leadership levels are very close to target, and we will probably achieve it in the coming year. Regarding the share price, I mean, we see declining stock prices, especially during the second quarter and during the third quarter. But throughout in 2019 through 2023, there's a very strong outperformance of the market. And we can see that Sartorius like other times as well had, had a very, very high end in pricing, we had a certain correction, of course, had to take place as it did. Now the dividend development is here our -- the dividend that we propose is actually to leave the quota at around 15%. And hence, we propose for ordinary shares in the amount of EUR 0.73 and for preference shares, EUR 0.74. Ladies and gentlemen, I move now over to the current topics that are important for our business. Now the normalization I just mentioned has -- is already well advanced. However, it's not really over. But currently, we are, of course, placing a different focus than we did during the high course of COVID. At the time, our focus, one on deliverability. We ramped up our capacities very quickly and actually very consciously decided to have high inventories. And during the time, we also concluded significant acquisitions. Now our focus now after the pandemic is more on efficiency and innovation. Innovation very much on the basis of our own organic core competencies, if you want, organic developments are in the foreground always, of course, along the needs of our clients talking about efficient production. And so then efficiency measures and digitization. Often also efficiency, thanks to digitization. We've reached a lot there, but we still have potential ahead of us, especially if you take a look at how many innovations actually offer themselves that can be used in to the company. And we have, of course, a deleveraging and working capital reduction and completed by integrating continued integration of our preceding acquisitions. From a strategic perspective, one of the most important rooms in -- at this moment are cell and gene therapy -- therapies. They have become increasingly relevant as we can see in our pipelines. About 30% of the pipeline is focusing on CGT, i.e., cell and gene therapeuticals, about 6,000 candidates are in development, somewhat more over 6,000 even. And there is an increasing number of cell and gene therapeutics in approvals. This has quintupled. I mean multiplied by 5 in the last years. So that translates into an above average growth of about 20% compared to biopharma and all 10%. As was mentioned, Polyplus acquisition has been a very important milestone. We acquired the company last year, and our goal is to actually compose a relevant portfolio for our clients that contains critical components for the CGT strategies. Polyplus is headquartered in Strasbourg in France. There's about 270 employees, has a very attractive growth and profitability profile. And you have to say that the purchasing price is a result of companies that are very successful in that area, and it is derived from the multiples of the profitability. The portfolio of Polyplus also comprises transaction reagents, plasmids, and other reagents. It is very highly specified to a high share in the CGTs, that is fully in development already and some of them are already in the approval stage. It is seemingly complementary to the Sartorius portfolio that we've actually built up in that area as we will see in a minute. And we are intensely working to be able to offer our clients synergies through cross-selling and enable our clients and customers to be actually leading the role [indiscernible] Financing. For the first time, financing such an acquisition, we issued bonds. It's a first-time bond issuance. We got a rating in August 2023 of a BBB rating with a stable outlook. And then in September 2023, there's a bond issuance of EUR 3 billion in 3 slices as it were, 3 tranches, but we had actually a high oversubscription of this issuance. And so we can really say that we were able to place this very profitably at very beneficial conditions. Coming back to the strategic perspectives of these acquisitions, building up our technology platform for this specific area, the Cell and Gene Therapies is fairly far advanced. In the past years, we acquired Biological Industries, CellGenix and Cell. And Polyplus is really an important building block that enables us to be able to present to our customers a highly competitive product portfolio, complemented by cell production lines and cell line development plus our up and downstream solutions that are important for the customers in this area. Important to note is, this is a long-lasting strategic effort although it is already very relevant today. You see this in the numbers on the lower right hand going on, BPS sales has -- to the order of a little bit above 10% has been done there. And over the past 5 years, it is clearly above 35%. When I mentioned organic relevance a minute ago, I can actually give you examples of the year. You will see certain product examples from both divisions that can be allocated there. It continues to be flexible, single-use technology process intensification with our clients is an important topic. Increasing speed, thanks to automation. Speed, for example, when it comes to development in pharmaceuticals and of course, the increased deployment of data analytics. Also, we have strong solutions, competitive solutions in our offer, which means that we increase the relevance of analytical results in research, but also about process optimization in the production of pharmaceuticals. Strong in the sense of our own core competencies, but also like we presented to you in the previous years, always in cooperation with globally leading persons, institutions and companies. We are cooperative with globally leading scientists and globally leading companies in a very targeted fashion and the individual areas. And all the products you see and the areas you see are clearly addressing the needs of our customers. And what we promise our clients is and our customers is higher speed, faster results, and fewer emissions in our customers' rooms. An increasingly important topic is being able to use products that can be used in the circular economy. So it is important to see the use of raw plastics, and it's always about recyclability, material optimization and also packaging and transport. For example, on the left-hand side, we use for the first time a plastic film that is based on recyclable standard processes. In other areas, we see strongly renewed use of plastics, be it in the product used itself, but also in the packaging for the respective product. In times of geopolitical tensions and decoupling, as I mentioned, capacities and the premises need to be looked at in a totally different way than it was the case 5 years ago. Today, we have to look at much more than before at resiliency, region setups, capacities, and operational excellence, and, of course, the customer proximity. And so we've invested into our capacities more than [ EUR 560 million ] -- about [ EUR 560 million. ] Our reflection of that and those also include our investments of activated development efforts and R&D activities. But the leading ones were quickly described. Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, producing products bioanalytics; Songdo in South Korea, it's a location with the largest installed capacity for cell cultures. And here, we are developing our location for Asia very broadly across our BPS portfolio. We have Freiburg in Germany, growth products and further products as we're expanding it, and that's a very important building block in the cell and gene therapies. Göttingen, the strong emphasis on membranes and filters and also ramping up our capacities. Aubagne, France, are the main location for fluid management technologies. And in the past year -- or this year, actually, excuse me, in February 2024, with the aim at creating additional strategic flexibility and reducing our debt as we actually conducted 2 capital market measures. On the one hand, we place treasury prevent shares of Sartorius AG and actually had EUR 326 million subscription -- EUR 360 subscription price, and we had net proceeds of EUR 200 million and the capital increase of our subsidiaries is Sartorius Stedim Biotech, resulting in EUR 800 million net proceeds. We live in a time of greater volatility while still being in a phase of lasting disruptions after the pandemic. So 2024 will continue to show a mixed picture. A mixed picture in the sense of the different geographical markets but also in the different customer segments and also in the combination of the respective different product groups and especially with regard to the quarters. Our outlook is that we will be reaching a profitable growth throughout the year, but based on a more moderate first half year and moderate first 2 quarters as well. For BPS, we are expecting mid- to high single-digit percentage rate and an underlying EBITDA margin above 31% for Lab Products & Solutions. We -- of our low single-digit percentage range and EBITDA approximately like on the prior year. And for the group, a mid- to high single-digit percentage and EBITDA margin of slightly more than 30%. Now coming to the end of the second section, I'd like to give you a few explanations about the two agenda points 7 and 8 of today's agenda, where it is about the ability to acquire and use treasury shares with the option of excluding subscription rights. The acquisition and the use for the year 2024 in this year but also purchasing companies and participations limited to up to 10% of the share capital, it would be authorized for 5 years. And it would mean that acquisitions were also possible by derivatives, for example, being able to be in accordance with the guidelines of shareholders, associations and proxy advisers. So the proposals for resolution are in line with the market practice and the guidelines. So it's about to create possibilities and options to become active on the market, although we don't have any concrete plans for this. Dear shareholders, I'd like to sketch out now the midterm development. The temporary special effects that I mentioned that kept us busy for the past years will no longer be relevant with the exception of the changes that the Chinese market underwent and has undergone. But from that, you can say that the other sustainable basic trends are still relevant and intact. Which ones are these? The first one is health. Health is and will remain one of the most relevant global topics. We are talking about an increased global population and the people are getting more and more older. For 2015, we're expecting 9.5 billion people, and we're expecting the doubling in the number of people over 65 years to reach more than EUR 1.6 billion, resulting in a higher demand for medicine. Biologics are gaining an importance, because they are needed in order to fight the increasing thicknesses, ailments, and maladies that would actually be associated with that. So overall, it is a very attractive market pursue. The second market trend is an increased dynamics, innovation dynamics on the part of our clients. You see a time line here for our clients is what these days you call Biologics or therapy solutions in this sense. Today, we have therapeutical possibilities who were unthinkable only a short while ago. And there is well-founded hope that over the coming years, more indications that cannot be treated today will be able to be treated, talking about Alzheimer's as a case in point. In biotechnology and biopharmaceutical therapy forms will be a decisive answer to that. And the third driver finally is that for this, you need technological innovations. Tools provider, as we are called, are crucially important in order to get these innovations and these therapies to the patients. Today, we are in the situation that these really beneficial forms of therapy can only be rolled out to a very small number of patients who might need it simply because the costs are too high. And the reason for this is that we are right at the very beginning of developing productivities to where they could be developed into it. And as you can see it in the case of antibodies. Antibody production has resulted in 15x increase in productivity in the past 3 to 7 years. And we are very positive that this also holds true in principle for cell therapies. Ladies and gentlemen, as a matter of principle, we are a sustainability company because we are in line with one of the sustainability goals by providing better health to more people. But still, we are also looking how can we be more relevant for sustainability, for example, in terms of reducing our CO2 footprint, carbon footprint. And here, you see actually our demanding goals, and I also mentioned the use of materials that we also have very high ambitions and also with employee satisfaction. So by the way, carbon emission and employee satisfaction are also reflected in our remuneration scheme. In front of the backroom of our growth drivers, we have defined midterm goals to reach by 2028. Those contain a low to mid-teen growth for the Bioprocess Solutions, underlying EBITDA margin for 2028 is 36% LPS, mid- to high single-digit percentage range and underlying margin of 28%. And for the entire group, this results in the low teens percentage range and an underlying EBITDA margin for 2028 of around 34%. You see in the footnotes, by the way, that acquisitions are forecast to contribute about 1/5 of sales revenue growth for both divisions of the group. And this also is connected to the CO2 emission density of around 1% of sales, meaning we want to grow faster, more profitably and more resilient than the market. Ladies and gentlemen, Sartorius is following a clear strategy. We have a highly competitive product portfolio well accepted with our clients. We are addressing ambitious ESG agenda. We have an ambitious team with a strong customer focus. We have a powerful and resilient production with R&D infrastructure. And last but not least, like I said, we have ambitious ESG agenda. And for the future, Sartorius is well positioned. And thank you very much for your interest.

Thank you very much, Dr. Kreuzburg, for your presentation and the detailed explanations of past, current, and future developments of our company. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the freely accessible broadcast of our AGM on the Internet. Thank you very much for your interest in our company. For shareholders who have registered via the AGM Portal and the authorized representatives, we will continue with the general debate.