SKAN Group AG (SKAN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SKAN Group Conference Call. I'm Mortz, the Chorus Call operator [Operator Instructions]. The conference At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to CEO, Thomas Huber. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you to the 2024 presentation of the financial figures. The agenda is structured as follows. So first, I will give you an overview of the business here, then we will talk about the strategy execution. Our CFO, Burim, will give you some more details about the financial results. Then we have a few slides about sustainability. And in the end, I will also give an outlook and the expectations what we are expecting in the future. In the end, we are happy to answer your questions. If we start with the overview, the highlights of the financial year 2024. The order intake was, again, a strong order intake with a growth of 21.8% versus the previous year. So our order intake is after, let's say, a not so strong growth in '23, now has caught up again in '24. Net sales, CHF 361 million is a little bit behind our guidance. This is mainly due to project shifts that we have seen in some projects, but I will come back to that on a later slide again. The EBITDA with CHF 57 million and the EBITDA margin with 15.8% is above our guidance, so a very strong and successful year. The investment -- reinvestment again, CHF 53.8 million, mainly into our preapproved services project, our order backlog with CHF 318 million gives us a very good visibility into 2025. The Board of Directors will propose to the General Assembly a dividend of CHF 0.40 per share, which is CHF 0.05 more per share than last year. If we look into more details about Equipment & Solutions and Services & Consumables, the 2 reporting segments that we have. So '24 was again a strong year for large filling line projects, the main products that are being handled on those lines were ADCs, antibody drug conjugates, and GLP-1 substances. We also have a good progress in our strategic initiatives and in the areas of our integrated process systems and standardization. SKAN has once again invested significant amount into development, 8.3% of the group sales revenue goes directly into R&D and is expensed directly in the year. SKAN's trading business fulfilled a major, basically, order in 2024. We thought we were able to sell 246 biosafety cabinets to one of our large Swiss pharma customers. This is a very nice order. And also guarantees, on one hand, confirms our position also in our -- in the trading business in Switzerland, but also will generate a nice service revenue stream in the future. If we look into Services & Consumables, one of the growth drivers, again is the growing installed base, which requires maintenance, which requires spare parts and which requires requalification. So that's definitely one driver. '24 was also strong in retrofit. So the retrofit business, replacing all the equipment with or upgrading all the equipment with state-of-the-art equipment is really taking off. And as you have read earlier in the year already, we have acquired now 90% of the stake of AT. So we acquired the last proportion that was still open. The last 10% will stay with the Wallonie region, the Wallonie region, one of the initial investors in this company. Currently, they have no interest to sell and they will stay on board with those 10%. If we look at the strategy execution, you know our strategy, 4 pillars that we have communicated in the last years. So Pillar 1, fortifying our current market leadership in our core segments, in our core business. Pillar 2 expands the addressable market within this market. So in other words, enlarging our -- the piece of the cake in the segment where we are. Number 3 is the whole service and consumables stream, which we want to grow and very important also, the whole digitalization with the one button release or artificial intelligence programs that we are implementing. If we look at the execution in '24 in the first pillar, decentralization, let's say growth and decentralization was definitely one of the main -- the main points that we have achieved in the first pillar. Also standardization and modularization is progressing well. We really see first impact of our standardization efforts that we are doing that we have started 2 years ago, if I'm right. And then, of course, joint development with our partners. So I would say, '24 was again a very strong year when I look at the partnerships that we have with our key drilling machine partners. In the second pillar, expand the addressable market. I think here, the initiative for flexible integrated systems is also progressing very well, which we do, on one hand, with Aseptic Technologies. And there, we have launched a new filler to the market in last year, basically a 2 robot filler for closed vials that is able to do a 100% in-process control, which is very important for those high-end, high-priced drugs that are being filled in the closed vial. And as I mentioned, the increase of the stake in AT. Services, the life cycle support is growing, supported by our SKAN Academy and basically the decentralization competencies that we bring more and more into our hubs. So when we look at that, and we will see that later in the sustainability slide, we have used less flight miles per revenue than in the previous year. So we're going to the right direction. We have 8 drugs in the closed vial, so that was -- that is, again, was a nice step forward also in 2024. And our preapproved services are also going forward. I understand or basically, we have filled the first test drugs -- or test product. So basically, the machines are working. And now currently, it's all about the validation. When we talk about digitalization, I think here, again, the one button release, which will come in combination with our preapproved services is a main driver there. But also for me, personally, very impressive was that -- or is our AI-based maintenance support. So basically, we have now the first -- for the first product, we have a test phase with a large language model that allows us to scan all the SKAN know-how and basically enables our service technicians to get to the right information very quick out there in the field. Please always remember, right, our machines are all kind of customized, most of them are already prototypes. So for service technicians, it is key to find the right information quickly. So this is a very promising new technology that we are now rolling out. If we look at the SKAN global landscape, we still have our 6 main subsidiaries. We have -- we are 1,471 employees. So we were, end of last year, we've been growing in every country also last year. Again, our headquarters here in Allschwil where about 50% of the staff is located. We have our 2 production sites in Stein and in Germany in Görlitz. We have our closed vials site in Belgium, in Gembloux, and then we have the 2 sales and service organizations in Raleigh, U.S. and in Okinawa in Japan. If we look at the next slide, we have added an additional subsidiary to our group. So we founded SKAN do Brasil in early last year. In Brazil, we have quite a strong installed base of large production equipment, and we are now at the point where it makes sense to have a local subsidiary there with mainly local service people now for us to begin with. If we look at Aseptic Technologies, right? I mentioned we have 8 drugs now approved in our vials. So this number is continuously growing. Very important also that we still have several hundred of active ingredients into different clinical stages that have the future potential to come to the market. As I mentioned, we have increased our stake to 90%, 10% stay with Wallonie Entreprendre. So the society in Belgium that -- that is partnering there together with us. If we look at preapproved services, I always mention that preapproved services will be -- we are looking at an authority approval by the end of '25 and start production in 2026. We have now, after looking into this in more detail, decided to postpone the authority approval into the first quarter of '26 -- The reason for that is that, yes, you want to be sure to succeed in the first approach and that currently, the whole software validation takes more effort than we initially planned. So currently, with an approval in the first quarter of '26 and a commercial start in the second half of '26 is a short delay, but doesn't change our target of CHF 50 million revenue with 50% margin in the upcoming years. As we always mentioned, it will take about 3 years to ramp up the facility. So after starting, yes, the final numbers are expected to be -- or is expected to come out of a fully ramped-up facility, so plus/minus in about 3 years. Okay. So after this overview, I would like to hand over to Burim, who will tell you more about the detailed figures.

Thank you, Thomas, and hello also from my side, and welcome to this financial results 2024 for SKAN Group. Again, it was a very successful year 2024, especially when we look at the order intake. We see here a strong growth of about 22% from CHF 295 million to almost CHF 360 million. And we look in the second chart in the middle, when we look to the dynamics of the order intake and we compare the both half years '23 and '24, we clearly see that we have a strong or significant order intake in the second half year of 2024 of about 52%. The main driver -- or one of the drivers here, if I may call it like this. So we said also in the past, the announcement of the Catalent deal in March 2024, will have an impact on the order intake of -- down the road. And it takes about 6 to 12 months until the orders or the order pipeline, what we -- what increased in that period of about 20% to CHF 1.5 billion will materialize in the next 6 to 12 months. So for sure, this would -- this had an impact here in the order intake. Also, large orders for ADCs, but also GLP-1s, GLP-1 had an impact on the strong order intake. When we look at the right side, from a regional point of view, for sure, Europe and Americas remain the main market of SKAN. And we see in Europe, we have a strong growth there for about 18%. And here is also an impact, this reshoring -- reshoring trends where we see in Europe has this -- impacted this growth. And we have also a strong growth in Asia on a lower level, for sure. We increased the order intake from CHF 19 million to CHF 48.1 million, and this is driven from mainly Japan, but also single, really large orders from South -- customers in South Korea, which drove here the portion to 13.4% of the total order intake. When we look at the next slide, from a net sales point of view. We have been growing at around 13% from CHF 320 million to CHF 361 million. As mentioned, our guidance, we had a shortfall compared to our guidance, mid- to upper teens. But we're also able to grow on a constant currency rate at 13.6%, which is also a nice growth. When we see also here in the middle, the second chart, we had a stronger second half year. So we were able to generate around 28% -- 21% more net sales in the second half year. This is mainly driven from our project business where we have a lot of projects in the production-intensive phase in the second half year. Nevertheless, this is the shift of projects, as I already mentioned from Thomas, we're also impacting the net sales or the slower net sales growth in 2024. On the right side, we have our stable order backlog or, let's say, it increased slightly to CHF 318 million, which again gives us a good planning visibility for the next year. On the next slide, when we look at the cost structure and also the EBITDA, we were able also here to increase our EBITDA from CHF 50.1 million to CHF 57 million, which results in an EBITDA margin of 15.8%. The main driver here was really the product mix. Of course, we had a lot of consumables sold, a lot of growth in spare parts business. But also as mentioned before, the second half of the year was the manufacturing and assembly phase with stronger value creation in the second half year as we also clearly see on the right side, we were able to generate about 65% stronger EBITDA in the second half year, driven by this effect. On the left side, we have the cost element, and we see also here some positive impact especially when we look at the personnel expenses. We were able -- in 2023, we hired 216 new employees to be able to train them that they are, yes, that they are trained to support the further growth. So in last year, we hired only 83. And again, we see the impact on this in the personnel expenses that the ratio decreased to 45.5%. And of course, also standardization had an impact on this decrease. But yes, that's a positive impact on the margin here. Also, other operating expenses grew on a lower level compared to net sales. Here, we grew at 8%. And we see here, we have also a positive operating leverage on the cost side. When we look at the next slide, the segment, Equipment & Solutions. As mentioned, again, we had really a strong order intake growth of around 20% to CHF 255 million. Main driver here, as mentioned, ADC projects but also GLP-1 orders, which may -- or amounted to around 15% of the total order volume. In the middle, the net sales, it's also a growth of 14.3% to almost CHF 271 million, mainly driven by our project business or project intensive phases that we had in the second half year, but we also had a lot of projects shifting in 2025. The EBITDA, we were also able to improve our EBITDA from -- in absolute figures from CHF 26.8 million to CHF 30.3 million, and we're able to keep more or less stable EBITDA margin of 11.2%. Here, an impact here, as mentioned also at the beginning, we are or we were investing in our strategic initiatives and general R&D, again, strongly with 8.3%. And when we compare it with the previous year, we were up at 7%. So this has also impacting the EBITDA margin of Equipment & Solution. We directly expense these costs. On the next slide, we have our Service & Consumables business. Again, on the left side, we see a really strong growth of around 28% to CHF 104.5 million. The main driver here was really the Aseptic Technologies Consumables business, but also we booked also some large spare parts orders and also retrofit projects in 2024. From a net sales point of view, or if I may add here, from an order intake point of view, we had also, in 2024, long-term maintenance contract, that means that we got the order in 2024, but for 2 to 3 years maintenance, to execute these maintenance contracts in the next 2 to 3 years. So this has also impacted this really strong growth in order intake. From a net sales point of view, as the orders we recognized, yes, we have -- we received these orders a little bit delayed and therefore, the execution of these orders will be done in 2025. And we clearly see here due to this effect that the orders have been delayed a little bit, the order backlog increased to substantially to -- substantially of 59%. And this is, on one hand, yes, we have a lower net sales, but with 59% increase in order backlog, gives us, again, a very good visibility for 2025 in this segment. What is also positive here, we were able to increase the EBITDA margin again from 28.1% to almost 30% and the drivers, as mentioned before, we have strong consumables from Aseptic Technologies, but also the spare parts orders. And in general, if I may say it like this, the product mix in Service & Consumables increased also the margin in this segment. When we look at the next slide, the cash flow development. Our cash situation decreased from CHF 85 million to CHF 53.7 million, so around CHF 31 million. But positive is here of the operating cash flow, we improved the operating cash flow from CHF 8.7 million last year to CHF 46.7 million this year, really strong increase or strong cash generation here, mainly driven by the increased profitability of last year. But also, we were able to reduce our inventory levels, where -- during COVID, we increased our inventory to ensure the possibility to deliver our equipment. And now we are consequently reducing the inventory. We were also very successful or effective in management of the trade receivables and this drove really the improvement of the operating cash flow to almost CHF 47 million. The investment cash flow, you see we had a really investment-intensive year with CHF 61 million. The main driver here was were the investments in preapproved services, but also the increase of our stake in Aseptic Technologies from 85% to 90% share. Further investment, we also did some expansion in SKAN offices to have enough space for the future growth, but also production capacity in Görlitz in Germany and also in Belgium to increase the capacity. Nevertheless, when we look at the right side, we were able to improve our return on capital margin from 19.7% to 21.5% despite the significant investments, as mentioned before, as we did in 2024. On the next slide, when we look at our balance sheet or the finance structure, it's still a very strong finance structure, a very strong balance sheet. We have a net cash position of CHF 43.1 million. Further, we have also a fixed term deposit of about CHF 8.1 million. So the total cash and cash equivalents would -- considering this fixed term deposit, it would be around CHF 51 million. The equity ratio also here, another improvement and on a very strong level here at around 53%, which gives us really a stable situation for future growth. The next slide. As mentioned at the beginning, the dividend, our Board of Directors is -- has made a proposal of a 14% higher dividend compared to the previous year. We see a very nice development over the last years where we're paying out dividends. So again, last year, CHF 0.35, now CHF 0.4. And we see also the earnings per share development, very nice development here driven by the profitability. When we look at the distribution of the dividend, 50% will be from capital contribution, which is tax-free, and 50% will be paid out from retained earnings. The distribution would be about CHF 9 million, and the payout ratio is about 23%. Again, the improvement of earnings per share of around 48% is mainly driven by the strong profitability increase in 2024. For the -- on the next slide, a short summary. Again, very strong or a successful 2024 financial year with a strong growth, 13.6% growth here on the constant exchange rate. We have a very good visibility with a strong order backlog. We improved our EBITDA margin despite significant investments in R&D, as mentioned before. Our installed base is also continuing to grow, which ensure also the upcoming or recurring high-margin revenues in services and consumables. We have a very robust return on capital employed despite the significant growth investment. And again, as mentioned before, very, very solid finance structure to support also or to have the flexibility for our future growth. Yes. I would like to hand over again to Thomas for the next slide.

Thank you, Burim. Looking at sustainability, SKAN has -- we have defined and approved a sustainability strategy for the upcoming years last year, I think. So from that point of view, ESG is, for us, is still a very important part and is now also defined in the strategy. We have defined also 2 people in charge for the execution -- basically for this strategy. On one hand, it's our Vice President, Cornelia Gehrig; and on the operative side myself. Basically, we are reporting according to GRI standards, which, I mean, we do since 2021. We have also completed our TCFD disclosures basically in 2024. And we also did our CSRD sustainability reporting directive. So we collected data in '24 to understand where we are and where the goal should be. The goals about the -- let's say, climate goals are published in our business report. And on the next slide, you can see some highlights. I think on one hand, it's still important to understand our isolators provide, let's say, a safe environment for production of medication, and they basically helped to -- help to have a healthier population in the world. In the Western world, about every 1/3 vaccine is being filled on SKAN isolator, just to give you an idea of our market presence. On the social component, right, last year, we have been certified as Great Place to Work. Great Place to Work is an independent company that assesses companies and assesses how happy employees are in the company. We've been certified all around the globe on the first goal. So we have been told by this company that normally, it would take 1 or 2 years to really comply with those standards and meet the certificate we have, yes, we matched that in the very first approach, which is very nice. The next number, I think, is very important, also shows a little bit the cost of our growth. Last year, we have spent 78,000 hours on training. If you consider that those hours, if those people would have been trained already, could have been sold to our customers, you can get a feeling of how much the growth actually costs on top of the profitability that we are showing. We are a very diverse company with 50-plus nationalities. We have a very inclusive hiring, including social positions, which actually, I think, is a very healthy combination and is one of the reasons of the success of SKAN. Also, good right? We've always said we want to prevent rather than compensate. So we'd want to rather prevent flying in an airplane to a customer rather than compensate the CO2 that has been generated. We have now also seen that over the past years, in relation with the revenue, the air travel has been reduced. This is definitely one of the outputs or the positive outputs of our decentralization efforts. If you look at our technology or let's say, the CO2 part of it, right, the isolators uses about 20% less energy than a classic cleanroom, mainly because the classic cleanroom has much bigger surface, needs more air that has to be treated than in an isolator. That's positive, right? We have generated 450,000 kilowatt hours of solar energy, 90% more than in the previous year. And basically 15% of our vehicles are driven by the solar power that we produce on our own roofs. But just to give you an overview where we are, obviously, the goal is also to be CO2-neutral in the upcoming years based on the different stages that we have to achieve. Okay. If we now try to look, our outlook and see what is expecting us. Market developing -- development, we still believe that our market has a strong structural growth that drives this market. Basically injectables are still on the growing side of the business. And on top of that, we are still replacing conventional cleanroom installations with isolated technology. So that's also the reason why we expect that we will continue to grow at a higher pace than our customers. Reshoring is still helping us. So still, we see that a few installations are actually happening in China, for example, from the Western point of view that most of those installations are happening either in Europe or in North America. As a consequence, we expect that our Equipment and Service & Consumables will continue to grow, and looking at our backlog and our filled order pipeline, we are very positive looking into the future. If we look at the business development side, due to the nature of our project business and due to the fact that still the majority of our business is related to projects, we expect still a certain lumpiness of our business. Based on the project shifts that we have seen in the past few months, that, on one hand, also led to the fact that we did not meet our guidance on the growth side last year. And we expect that those project shifts will also have an impact in the first half of 2025. And so therefore, we are a little bit more conservative with the expectations of growth in '25. I think very important to understand that we have seen the order intake actually taking up again very strongly in the last quarter of last year, and also continuing in the first months of this year. Those projects are new projects that are coming and that will -- most of them will have a major impact on the sales side only in '26. So we are looking very positive into the future and a little bit more conservative into '25. And this leads me to the next slide, our guidance. So we're guiding for this year a growth in net sales of mid-teens. So we expect that in all our group will grow in the mid-teens range. On the other hand, we are increasing our guidance on the profitability by 1% to 14% to 16%. Midterm, as soon as the services, the new services kick in and as soon as continued growth of our closed vials also will have a bigger impact. We expect that growth targets will be substantially larger, and that will also basically have a positive impact on the margin. That was the outlook. I hope we could give you an overview. I think we are proud of the results that we currently have. And we are happy to answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Victoria Lambert from Berenberg.

I have 3, please. So I know I asked you in December, but what are your thoughts on the U.S. tariff situation if the EU gets a 25% tariff placed on it? What impact does that have on you guys? And then the second part of the question is, if you're seeing any benefits in equipment orders from onshoring in the U.S. because companies are needing to now manufacture locally? We've seen some of the South Korean, by some of the players have started to say this is their strategy to address the tariffs. And then the third question is just the timeline on your own local U.S. production. I don't think you've provided this before.

Okay. Thank you for your questions. First, about the tariffs. Obviously, things are changing very quickly, but the current view is that we have to -- or basically our -- let's say, from a legal point of view, right, we are shipping delivery into Incoterm DAP which means custom tariffs are on our customers' side. So it's not that we legally would certainly be -- yes, would be covered or would be confronted with high tariffs. The impact for our customers, obviously, is an impact, right? Now on one hand, since we don't have local competition in the U.S., all the competitors are actually coming from Europe, we don't expect an immediate effect there as well. So from that side, we feel pretty comfortable. Now when we look at the tariffs, right? Currently, the tariffs are on stainless steel and aluminum. Obviously, our machines are made out of steel. So -- but the tariff only applies on the steel. Now the steel costs on a total machine is about 4% to 5% of the total machine value. So actually a 25% tariff only has a 1% impact on the total sales price on the customer side. So currently, I think we are pretty much on the -- we are still on the safe side, right? Of course, we have to prove that all the other materials are not coming from those 4 unlucky countries that the U.S. like China, Russia, Canada and Mexico. Now this will be a challenge to confirm that because many of our sub-suppliers are not really prepared to provide all the tax information needed. But this is definitely something that will add some administration on our side in the coming weeks and months. But so far, we quite -- we are quite relaxed about that respect. The other question about our agenda of our factory in the U.S. We are -- I mean, we have been planning to expand into the U.S. also prior to the whole tariff discussion, and we still think it's the right way to go because the U.S. is still a significant market to us. And in line with our decentralization strategy, we want to be closer to the customer. So the goal is to build a factory that will go live in '27, '28, somewhere there. We have actually, let's say, compared to last year, we are maybe a little bit delayed because we have looked at a piece of land that finally, just, I mean, after all the due diligence was basically contaminated with [ PCB. ] So we had to basically step back from that step, and we are continuing to look into other opportunities. There are many, so I'm not very much concerned about that aspect. The goal is not to have a full-fledged isolator facility in the U.S. on day 1. We will start with final assembly of machinery in the U.S. and then slowly transfer the know-how. Currently, we also don't have a lack of capacity in steel work since in our 2 fabrication sites in Germany and Stein, we are currently working only in one shift and could literally double the output without any growth in investments, I mean, mainly hiring new people. So from that point of view, I think we are pretty well positioned at the moment. I hope that answers your question.

So it seems there are currently no more questions on the phone line.

Let me start with the first question we received via the webcast. [Operator Instructions] First question comes from [indiscernible], who is wondering that given there was some pushback from revenues in the second half of 2024 to the first half of this year, do we still expect the first half 2025 to be weaker than the second half of last year?

Yes. That's a very good question, and I'm happy to answer it. Basically, yes, we had some shifts of revenue from '24 -- or end of '24 now into 2025. But unfortunately, that's not only one project. Currently, we have about 30 projects that are late or are delayed. Some of those projects are -- a few of them are -- it's also our mistake, I'm not saying we are 100% perfect, but the big majority of those projects are delayed on the customer side because the customers are not ready to accept them. We see the effect there that those machines that are currently being installed are actually the COVID machines, right? Those machines that have been acquired after this COVID hype. And we also see that it is very -- it needs a lot of effort to install such a machine. Typically, our customers, they have commissioning teams that can do that, but they don't have 3 teams at the same time. Some of them might have now also a little bit less pressure on getting those lines to the market. So those lines are, rather than being done in parallel, they are done one by one. And this is maybe one of the effects. So we expect that this effect will actually continue also in the upcoming months and will not be just a 1 month effect. So therefore, we are a bit more conservative also on the growth on half year 1, and from that point of view, on the total year 2025, Specifically, since the new orders that we are collecting and that are really coming in since Q4 last year will only come into the revenue, I would say, strong phase in '26. So from that point of view, I think that's the reason why we are a little bit more conservative at the moment.

Then we have received the second question from [indiscernible] who is asking how confident you are to get the regulatory approval in Q1 2026 for a preapproved services facility and what is the probability of huge -- further delays in the regulatory approval?

Okay. I mean how confident are we. I think currently, the progress is about 85%. So the chance that something goes wrong is fairly small. The reason why we delayed now the approach, the authorities was after some internal assessment with some experts, we came to the conclusion that we want to be on the safe side since for SKAN, it would be the first time to approach the authorities and you don't want to fail this first impression. So actually, we are going here more on the safe side to be sure that we don't fail this first one, and that's why we added these extra month. So from that point of view, we feel very sure that this is possible. Now is it 100% guarantee? No, of course, not. There are still 15% to go, and there are still potential delays that could pop up. But today, we don't think that this will happen.

Then maybe second question from -- also from Thomas from Mirabaud. Do you expect book-to-bill ratio of above 1.0 for the full year 2025? So better about the feeling about the ongoing order dynamics?

I think from today's point of view, it is possible, yes, that we will have more order intake in '25 than we have sales revenue and that our order backlog will continue to grow again. Yes.

Then we have a question from [indiscernible] who is asking -- to get an update on the competitive position in the market and an explanation who are the main competitors of SKAN?

So basically, the situation, I think, is unchanged. Our market position is still the same. Our -- we still assume that we have somewhere between 30% and 40% market share. Our competitors are still the same. The main competitor is the Optima Group, #2 would be the company [indiscernible] that has been acquired by the [indiscernible] Group lately. So that situation is unchanged. How do we see the overstocking post COVID? I mean as I mentioned, the overstocking post COVID, basically, there will be -- let's say, there are some vaccine lines that are maybe not as in a hurry as they have been 2, 3 years ago. On the other hand, we see currently '24, the main driver was ADCs. ADCs, again, is a sterile, but also toxic drug. So a classic vaccine line that is only for product protection, would not be suitable for those drugs. So currently, we don't really see that we have a real slowdown there. You also have to see that after COVID, we had the typical vaccine players that placed a lot of orders. Now those players are maybe a little bit quiet on the order intake side. On the other hand, we have now those customers that have not participated in the COVID race that are now being ordering. So from that point of view, we feel the situation feels pretty balanced. To your last question, the EBITDA margin, what is achievable as we guide, we assume that a higher EBITDA margin will be possible once those additional services kick in. We do not -- to be very frank, we do not expect that our machine business will be much, much more profitable. On the other hand, as you have seen, we are still investing heavily into R&D, that is directly charged to the year. And we're also spending a lot in education that also comes with a high price tag. So obviously, if we would slow down growth, there would be potential there. If we would slow down innovation, there would be potential there, which both of which I don't think would be a good idea. So mainly, the main driver will be the additional services that we are very confident that will kick in as of next year and then the coming years. The last point was, do you consider M&A. That's also a question that we hear quite often. Our M&A strategy is -- we don't have -- let's say, it's opportunistic. We are looking into different possibilities and there are definitely interesting possibilities out there about M&A. They should match SKAN. They should be on the services side. They should be highly profitable and not dilute our figures. But from that point of view, there are options out there we are looking at. But again, we are not doing M&A for the sake of growth. So it has to match. And if something goes through, then we will let you know.

We've just seen that there are further questions now in teleconference. Please, operator?

Yes. We have one question coming from Manuel Peter from Helvetische Bank.

I got 2 questions. One is on the installed base. your presentation, you referred several times to your installed base. So I was wondering if you could provide us with an update and with certain numbers, for example, how did the install developed in 2024? How many isolators do you now have in place and how many closed vial filling systems? And the second question is on Service & Consumables growth in 2024. I appreciate that growth was slowed down by the maintenance orders that were delayed, but I was wondering how have -- how would growth look like excluding the services part? So only the consumable side of this equation in 2024.

So maybe I can answer the first question about the installed base. So we have about more than 1,100 isolator systems out there. And the numbers were increasing or we are kind of closing between 71 -- 70 to 100 projects each year last year 2024. As we had, again, as we mentioned during the presentation, we had shifts on the projects, on the completion of the project, not -- or the main reason for the shifts were driven by our customer. And out of 295 existing projects that we are working on, about 30% are on this phase, which will be completed in the next or, let's say, in the next -- in 2025 and also shifting maybe also in 2026. So the installed base is increasing. Last year, it was around 50-50 equipment that we were or systems that we were able to complete or to deliver to our customers. And installed base and then for Aseptic Technologies. We have around @ M1 fillers in the market and about, if I recall it correctly, it's about 60 bigger machines from Aseptic Technologies. So also there, it's a quite high number on installed base, which ensures us also future growth in the recurring service business.

So does that answer your first question?

Yes. Thank you very much.

I mean the second question, right, how would growth look like, excluding services. On the services side, as you have seen, we are growing -- we have been growing 20-plus percent, right, on the machine side, the growth is more like teens, I would say, growth rate. So if we, black-and-white, would look at this, that maybe that would also be for the future.

Sorry, I was more wondering like in the Service & Consumables segment. I mean services was probably slowing down the growth in this segment due to the delay of the maintenance order, right? So I was wondering how much did Consumables grow in 2024?

Well, to be very frank, so we do not disclose in more detail the service within the segment, but we can for sure say, as I mentioned, the order intake of retrofit business was also [ PM ] contracts on a later stage. Of course, it impacted the growth. As we have seen, we are growing about 9%. And the main driver, as also mentioned, was the really Consumer business of the Aseptic Technologies, spare parts business. But we do not consider really consumables, we say it's spare part, but in the same segment, these were nice growth drivers here. And again, we -- if we compare it, consumables grow on a much faster pace here. But as I mentioned also during the presentation, it's not that we will not grow in the future. We have an increase of order backlog of about 59% of all these maintenance contracts of retrofit business, which will kick in into 2025. So the growth will be, again, I would say, would catch up in 2025 as we have the strong order backlog.

So it seems there are no more further questions at this time. So I would like to hand back over to Thomas Huber.

One more question from the webcast from [indiscernible]. He's asking about the backlog in the Equipment business, currently being at CHF 283 million. Won't this make it hard to grow the Equipment business at high rates in 2025, given that in 2024, Equipment revenue was already CHF 271 million.

Yes, it's a very good question. But we also have to understand that we never have 100% orders booked on January 1 for the following year. So typically, we are about at 60%, and we still have orders that generate revenue in the year where they come basically. The orders that we will get from January 1 until about midyear, will still have an impact -- will make an impact on the year. So it's not huge, the largest one, obviously. But therefore -- I mean your thoughts are absolutely right, but please remember that we also -- all the, let's say, the laboratory isolators where we have a few months lead time are actually projects that are not -- that are quicker and therefore, the calculation still works.

Okay. This was the last question from the webcast. And also, there are no more questions in the teleconference. So please, Thomas.

Okay. Then I would like to thank you for attending the call. I would like to remind you that on May 15, we have our first investors -- how do you say, Capital Markets Day, sorry. We would be happy to see you there. We will also, during the Capital Markets Day, with not only Burim and myself presenting, you will also meet some other people from SKAN and especially, we will make a tour through our preapproved services factory to give you an idea where all this big investment money is going into. Okay. Thank you very much, and I hope to see you soon again.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.