Vimian Group AB (publ) ($VIMIAN)

Welcome to Vimian Group Q1 Report 2026 Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO, Alireza Tajbakhsh; and CFO, Carl-Johan Zetterberg Boudrie. Please go ahead.

Hello. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Vimian's First Quarter Earnings Call 2026. I'm Ali Tajbakhsh, Group CEO, and I will present the first quarter results together with our CFO, Carl-Johan Zetterberg Boudrie. Q1 is always an active period for us at Vimian with strong cadence of industry and client events. This provides an early read on customer sentiment, I get valuable feedback across our group businesses, opportunities to engage with industry peers and so on. It's encouraging to see that the strong traffic growth, high engagement and the positive feedback I get from veterinarians from these events are also reflected in the strong start to the year with positive momentum across the group. Three out of 4 of our segments, Specialty Pharma, Veterinary Services and Diagnostics all delivered double-digit growth in the quarter, well ahead of global animal health market. We completed 2 acquisitions in the quarter, a diagnostic company, I-Vet, in Italy and the innovative Danish clinic group, Favna. These 2 acquisitions will add in total around EUR 10 million in annual revenues. This morning, we also signed the acquisition of veterinary service business, Vetsave, with revenues of EUR 1.6 million. This marks the entrance into Ireland for our Veterinary Services segment. Our M&A pipeline going into 2026 is fruitful, and we have a strong position as a natural home for ambitious entrepreneurs within animal health. Operational cash conversion remained strong in the quarter, being above 70%. And on April 13, we welcomed Lotta Lundaas as Head of MedTech, adding vast experiences running entrepreneurial businesses based out of the U.S. Turning into the quarterly numbers. We report 8% revenue growth and reached EUR 116 million in revenues for the first quarter. We delivered strong organic growth of 9% ahead of the market, driven by Specialty Pharma, Veterinary Services and Diagnostics, 4% contribution from acquisitions and 5% negative impact from currency movements. Adjusted EBITA grew 3% to EUR 29.2 million or 8% adjusted for negative currency impact. Margin of 25.2%, given our planned investments to drive growth in MedTech and orthopedics and new market entries within Veterinary Services. Going into Specialty Pharma, Specialty Pharma delivered a strong quarter across the board with double-digit growth, improved profitability and strong cash generation. The organic growth of 10% was driven by double-digit growth in 3 therapeutic areas, while the strongest contribution came from Allergy and Specialized Nutrition, where growth was supported by key customer wins in the past month. We continue to execute our strategy of innovation, education and cross sales and launched 17 new products and 4 new cross-sales initiatives in the quarter. We established a direct sales force in Switzerland and Finland and started to cross-sell our compounded pharmaceutical products in Scandinavia. Adjusted EBITA grew 11% to EUR 14.4 million or 15% adjusted for negative currency impact. Margin improvement -- improved significantly from 28.8% to 30.3%, driven by operating leverage across the business. Moving on to MedTech. In MedTech, we delivered 6% organic growth, driven by double-digit growth in our dental business and in our orthopedics businesses in Europe and APAC, where all markets delivered healthy growth. Several of our European orthopedic markets delivered all-time high quarter, and we continue to strengthen our sales team and education teams in the region. In U.S. orthopedics, we onboarded our new field sales force with a lot of focus on getting them ready and training and continue to drive sequential sales improvement in a challenging market. We attended several key congresses in the quarter and continue to see our high-quality orthopedic brands enjoy a strong reputation in the global veterinary community. As previously communicated, we expect changes we have implemented in orthopedics to enable U.S. orthopedics to return to organic growth later in spring. Adjusted EBITA declined 2% to EUR 11.9 million or grew 6% adjusted for negative currency impact. The adjusted EBITA margin was 27.1%, which is a strong sequential improvement driven by very strong performance in our dental businesses in the quarter. Year-over-year margin was impacted by geographic mix and our investments in orthopedics to strengthen commercial performance in particular in the U.S., where we are seeing effects of those investments. Two weeks ago, Lotta Lundaas joined us as Head of MedTech as well, and we have already felt the energy and experience she brings into the organization from building and scaling entrepreneurial organization with strong financial track record. Overall, being close to the MedTech business up until Lotta joined us, I'm confident that we are fully on the right track to get our MedTech business and in particular, the U.S. orthopedic business, back on track, and we have the right people to continue to strengthen the commercial performance across the board. Before I move on to Veterinary Services, I would like to spend a few minutes using or highlighting the Medtech dental operation as a clear example of how we at Vimian create global opportunities, combining M&A experience or expertise with operational excellence to build global leading platform and long-term shareholder value. In October '24, as you all know, Vimian acquired iM3, making our entry into the veterinary dental niche. The companion animal dental market is both large and attractive, growing above industry average and clinicians believe that this will be the fastest-growing category at the veterinary clinics in coming years. 80% of cats and dogs are affected by dental diseases, which makes the unmet need significant. At the same time, there's a clear structural gap. Dentistry typically receives only scarce attention in vet schools and many clinics still offer limited dental services despite strong clinical needs and revenue potential. But growth in the segment is further driven by humanization of pets and increased demand from veterinarians for continued education in dentistry. For Vimian, bringing a successful entrepreneurial and fast-growing global platform like iM3, offering a wide range of services such as equipment, imaging, consumables, home care and software allows us to create new touch points for us and gives us attractive growth opportunities. So looking at those growth opportunities or those we touched on, gives us, for example include, targeted bolt-on acquisitions such as we did with DentalFocus, deepening our U.S. imaging capabilities and our [ Sanos funnel ] to expand our geographic reach and broaden the portfolio, taking a proven and innovative dental sealant product from one market, expanding it to the rest of the world as well as in strategic M&A or strategic investments or transformational investments like the acquisition of David AI, which leverages technology to improve workflow and embedding dental education into clinical routine. The more clinics continue to expand into dental services and deepen their knowledge of dental, our average revenue per clinic also increases, given the broad range of services we offer within dental. While we currently remain in the early stages of this growth journey, I'm pleased to see the development we've had in the business post-acquisition and some of the initiatives we've done since. Since I joined, we've established a multichannel sales team. We strengthened our consumable offering and launched subscription models, driving recurring revenues at good margins. We invested in a new warehouse facility to facilitate growth and launched our first U.S.-based education center. We launched a new successful dental unit called the Evolution Range. And on the back of the David AI acquisition, we launched proprietary AI-powered imaging software systems. We are also clearly exploring cross-sales opportunities with the broader MedTech segment and have set up joint education initiatives or activities and shared facilities for orthopedics and dentistry. Since the acquisition, our dental platform has delivered double-digit revenue growth with expanding margins, and we are optimistic about the organic M&A opportunities we have ahead in this space. Continuing to Veterinary Services, our global veterinary service platform continues to show strength and again delivered double-digit organic growth, being 11% in the quarter with continued momentum in member growth and conversion into higher tier under Michael's leadership. At the end of the quarter, we reached 11,400 members across 4 continents and adjusted EBITA grew 3% to EUR 4.8 million with an adjusted EBITA margin of 27.5%, given the strategic growth investments and temporary lower margin in some of the co-owned clinics. The demand of our services from both veterinarians and partners increases every day. And with today's development of AI, we see our ability to develop new enhanced existing services to our customers at a faster pace than before. Last year, we shared that on the back of the success we had in Veterinary Services, we were also planning to do additional investments, as you've seen in the numbers this quarter, by expanding into new markets and new services. Therefore, I would like to give some more insights into some of those market expansion investments. Firstly, we have, since second half of 2025, prepared our organic expansion into 3 new markets, one being Japan, unlocking a large market for Veterinary Services following the successful MedTech launch in Japan. In Japan, probably it's around -- it's a top 10 market when it comes to animal health, depending on which numbers you look at, you could argue it's probably the fifth or sixth biggest market as well. And there's approximately 10,000 clinics in the Japanese market. And we expect to launch our Japanese operations in Q3, but we already have people on the ground as of today preparing for that launch in the market. We're also preparing to do our adjacent market expansion by going into Portugal. We've had a very successful growth and momentum in our Spanish operations. So we see Portugal as a natural add-on to our Iberian footprint, leveraging the existing team we have in the territory and adding local skill set and excellence. The Portuguese market has approximately 1,500 clinics, and we expect to launch in Q3 as well. Beyond our organic expansion, the team always looks into finding relevant companies in other markets to acquire. And we're very happy that this morning, we signed an agreement to acquire Vetsave, the leading veterinary service organization on the Irish market. The Irish market is approximately -- has approximately 700 clinics and Vetsave has approximately 150 clinics currently working together with them. This deal is expected to be completed in May. So based on the back of these 3 initiatives, combination of organic and M&A, which is how we operate, we are now taking our veterinary service platform from 11 to 14 markets globally, unlocking long-term growth and additional scale benefits. Moving on to Diagnostics. Diagnostics delivered double-digit growth of 12% in the quarter, positively impacted by disease outbreak towards the end of the quarter, mainly from the Avian influenza outbreak in the U.S. and [ meningitis] in Europe. On March 2, we consolidated the diagnostic business, I-Vet, an important milestone to strengthen our companion animal offering and onboarding a strong entrepreneur and a strong team for our diagnostics business. Adjusted EBITA grew 16% to EUR 1 million and the adjusted EBITA margin declined slightly to 13.8%, driven by product mix with higher levels of extraction sales in the U.S. Looking ahead, we're excited about the opportunities to further strengthen our position in the attractive companion animal markets. From an M&A perspective, we covered that in the segment sections, but we've made 3 acquisitions year-to-date and are advancing our M&A pipeline across the segments. We're very optimistic about looking at the pipeline we've generated and created and entered with it during 2026. And we truly feel that we are the natural home for entrepreneurial business leaders in the animal health sector. From a sustainability perspective, we continued to deliver our sustainability agenda in the quarter. On March 19, we released our first CSRD compliance report. In February, we completed our biannual employee experience survey with high participation rate and further strengthening the employee experience scores. In March, we also completed our fourth cohort of Vimian leadership development program. And in total, over 80 of our leaders have gone through one of these programs to develop and get to know colleagues across the world. In one of our largest production facilities in Italy, we installed solar panels during the quarter, covering the majority of the site's electricity needs and strengthening our resilience against grid volatility and rising energy costs. With that, that concludes the run-through of the quarter, and I will hand over to Carl-Johan for deeper insights into the financials.

Thank you, Ali, and good morning, everyone. I'll dive straight into the results for the quarter. Adjusted EBITA in the first quarter was EUR 29.2 million, an increase of 3%. In constant currency, the increase corresponds to 8%. The adjusted EBITA margin for the quarter equaled 25.2%, where the margin decrease compared to the same period last year is primarily a result of focused investment in MedTech orthopedics to strengthen our commercial platform as well as investments in new markets and services in our segment, Veterinary Services. Central costs amounted to minus EUR 2.9 million, an increase from minus EUR 2.3 million last year. The increase is mainly a result of expenses related to our long-term incentive programs, in total, EUR 0.6 million during the quarter. These are noncash IFRS expenses that will recur for the duration of the 3-year programs. We report an operating profit of EUR 21.2 million, a significant 36% increase from last year's result of EUR 15.6 million. Items affecting comparability decreased in the quarter compared to the same period last year and totaled minus EUR 1.8 million. The majority of items affecting comparability relate to MedTech. This consists of minus EUR 0.7 million in litigation costs in the U.S. indemnification dispute and EUR 0.5 million in acquisition costs. Acquisition-related costs amounted to EUR 1.1 million in total for the group. Net financial items amounted to minus EUR 3.3 million and consisted of 4 main parts: financing expenses of minus EUR 3.1 million with an average interest rate of 4.1% during the quarter; a quarterly discounting impact of minus EUR 1.3 million and positive impact of EUR 0.2 million from probability adjustments related to contingent considerations; a positive impact of EUR 0.9 million from exchange rate effects on the valuation of debt; and lastly, the quarter was also burdened by a write-down of shares and associates amounting to minus EUR 2.5 million. Income tax expense for the quarter was minus EUR 5.3 million at an effective tax rate of 35%. In the quarter, the tax expense as a percentage of pretax profit was negatively affected by the nondeductible write-down of the shares and associates together with other nondeductible expenses. In total, this results in a profit for the period of EUR 10.1 million with an earnings per share of EUR 0.02 for the quarter. Looking at the cash flow, the cash flow from operating activities amounted to EUR 23.0 million, corresponding to a cash conversion of 73% for the first quarter, cash conversion being measured as operating cash flow in relation to EBITA. Net working capital amounted to EUR 92.8 million at the end of the quarter, equal to 21% of revenue, a decrease from EUR 96.6 million at the end of the fourth quarter, which equaled 23% of revenue. The majority of the EUR 3.8 million decrease in working capital is relating to an increase in payables. Cash flow from investing activities amounted to minus EUR 33.6 million, primarily consisting of acquisitions and earn-out payments, and cash flow from financing activities of EUR 5.1 million from proceeds from borrowings. At the end of the quarter, net debt amounted to EUR 258.4 million, up from EUR 245.4 million at the end of the fourth quarter. Cash and cash equivalents amounted to EUR 50.4 million, a decrease compared to EUR 55.0 million at the end of December. External lending was EUR 230.2 million at the end of the first quarter. This resulted in a leverage at the end of the quarter equal to 2.1x, which is an increase from 2.0x at the end of the fourth quarter. We still remain well capitalized with an ability to execute on our strengthened acquisition pipeline. With this financial review, I hand the word back to Ali for concluding remarks.

Thank you, Carl-Johan. Vimian is off to a good start to the year with double-digit growth in 3 out of 4 segments and strong cash generation. We welcomed 3 new businesses year-to-date and remain positive about the M&A opportunities throughout 2026 and beyond. All in all, we are well positioned with a robust strategy and continue to execute our organic and inorganic growth initiatives to build a global leader in attractive animal health niches. Thank you for your attention, and we'll now open up for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Adela Dashian from Jefferies.

A couple of questions from me. If we can maybe first start on the MedTech development. Do you have any more color to offer on what the growth was in U.S. orthopedics during the quarter?

Yes, the growth in U.S. orthopedics was a slight decline, given the market -- current market situation, but we see a sequential improvement from the previous quarter.

Glad to hear that. And if that is the case, I mean, with the heavy investment pace, do you feel like this is necessary to keep up? Or at what point do you feel that it's time to maybe phase it down a bit to, I guess -- once you're able to capture the market opportunities and so on?

I think the investments we're talking about in particular and what we've done is, of course, put together an outside sales team. That was in place in the beginning of the year as well. When we have a new sales team in place, it requires some training and education to get up to speed. I don't believe we have so far gotten the full effect of the capabilities of the sales team in the U.S. It's a strong team in place, and I believe that with the measures we've taken into account as of end of Q4 and going into the quarter and what we've done in Q1, we are well prepared to bring back U.S. orthopedics to organic growth later this spring.

So with that being said, we should expect a normalization of the investment pace in the coming quarters?

Yes. Just to clarify, the investment is in people. So the investment we've done will remain from an OpEx perspective. But of course, we expect the revenues to increase as we move ahead.

Sure, sure. Great. And then on Diagnostics, there were some comments around mix affecting your profitability here. Could you maybe speak a bit more of that and how you expect that to proceed for the remainder of the year?

Yes, sure. So in Diagnostics, and as you know, there is some volatility from quarter-to-quarter in the revenues as part of the business is driven by outbreaks. And depending on sort of the regional mix and the outbreak mix, that could have an impact on margins in the quarter as certain products we sell for certain outbreaks in certain regions carry a different margin profile. And that's what happened in the quarter. From a mix perspective, where we enjoyed good revenue from outbreaks, but the mix was a little bit different, which impacted margins in the quarter specifically.

Is there anything you could say about the mix effect going into the second quarter?

I would say sort of what happens with outbreaks is difficult to predict. If we look sort of -- and I would think about it as thinking sort of from a normal margin perspective for Diagnostics, excluding the outbreak effect.

The next question comes from Adrian Elmlund from Nordea.

I think I have 3 questions. So you mentioned here that you're going into Japan, right, through organic growth. It looks like it's a market of total 10,000 clinics, so it's quite a lot. What costs are we talking about here when going into this market? I presume that it will take a time before you reach sort of segment average margins. How long do you think that can take? What kind of expectations do you have on the growth rates and also in the competition? Because I assume that Japan is a bit of a tricky country, right, to -- at least for a lot of companies I've spoken to previously, but -- if I'm not mistaken. Do you have any comments regarding Japan?

Yes. So I think Japan is an interesting market. It's a market we looked into for a long period of time. There are obvious differences in the Japanese market versus Europe and so forth. So we have invested in a local Japanese team that will operate and run the business in the market. It's a market we know well, given the work we've done. And actually, the reason we chose Japan as a site is that we have received a lot of inbound from both clinics and our partners that the model we offer and the value we bring is very relevant and would we consider entering that market. So I think it's a good opportunity for us and there is a demand, but the model we offer is new to the market. So it's something we will, if we call it, educate the market together with our partners. In terms of upcoming growth perspective, I think what we can say is we're going to launch in Q3. As always, we put a local team on the ground supported by a strong team based out of Stockholm. So it will take some time both to get the contract and the services in place and as well build up the member base going forward. Normally, I would say it takes approximately a year to 1.5 years for us to break even out.

Did you say break even? Or did I miss that?

Yes.

Okay. Perfect. Similarly, are there any comments you can give on the acquisition here entering Ireland regarding its growth rates or margin contribution, et cetera?

So the Irish business have a higher margin profile than the veterinary service average. It's a strong platform where the entrepreneur will stay on and continue to journey together with us. And we believe that the local -- the strong local positioning Michael and his team has in Ireland, together with the experience and all the value-added services we can bring to the market, is a very good match going forward.

Right. If the group margins -- or if the margins in Ireland is higher than the kind of segment margins, does that mean that the growth rates are slower than the average as well?

No, I wouldn't think about it in that way. And of course, the business in Ireland, we think it's a great platform for Ireland. It's a good combination to what we do, and we see that we can bring our -- as Ali said, our knowledge, our experience, our service portfolio to the Irish market to drive continued revenue growth. The business in Ireland's currently -- from a site perspective, it's a good market for us, but it's not a huge market comparison to that family in total -- of veterinary services in total. But yes, we do see good growth momentum and opportunities to continue in Ireland. And as Ali said, there is a margin profile that is higher than the rest of Veterinary Services. But given its size, it's not going to have, you can say, a significant impact on Veterinary Services margins going forward.

Right. Okay. Very good. Last question here, sorry for being kind of long. Regarding the U.S. orthopedics recovery here in the spring, could you give us any guidance with regards to the growth rates here as well? Are we speaking like low single-digit growth rates? Or are you expecting kind of a big push here in the spring?

I think there's 2 components. One, I think the team in place and the new leadership will continue to build momentum, but then there is a dependency on market dynamics as well. So the combination of the 2 of them would end up in the number. Given the current market, it's still fairly flat from Q1, if you look at April in particular. So we're expecting low single digits. As we communicated also in the first quarter, we do see that we will get back to organic growth during later spring this year. And we see that we'll start to get back to single-digit organic growth. For us to get back to double-digit organic growth, that is our ambition, we need to start to see a market that is -- go back to growth trajectory again.

The next question comes from Kavya Deshpande from UBS.

I have one on Spec Pharma and then one on MedTech, please. So on Spec Pharma, would you be able to explain what drove the strength in the allergy and compounding businesses, please? I think I heard you say it was key customer wins from [ PAX ] and allergy, but it would be great to get some color on the compounding business. And then related to that, would you be able to say what the one therapeutic area that didn't grow double digits, what that was and if there's anything to flag there? And then just on MedTech, so I was wondering if you could give us a bit more detail on this -- in the investment in the field sales force. So you have more people on the ground. Is the next step now more about training new GPs to perform these CCL implants? Is it about converting customers from your competitors? Or is the key approach about increasing utilization with your current customer base? And then related to that, are you looking to deploy price as a key tool? And is the increase in inventories this quarter, was that related to the strategic transformation or something else?

So let's start with the Specialty Pharma question. Positive from a Specialty Pharma overall perspective, we saw double-digit growth in 3 out of 4 therapeutical areas. So both Allergy, U.S. Specialized Nutrition and Specialty Pharmaceuticals showed double-digit growth in the first quarter. And for all those 3 therapeutical areas, you can say that the contributor driving double-digit growth was solid customer wins in late of last year, beginning of this year that contributed to good growth in the first quarter. And as I said, that goes across all 3 therapeutical areas that I mentioned. The one therapeutical area where we didn't see double-digit growth was dermatology, but we did see high single-digit growth in dermatology. So I would say it's still solid growth in our dermatology business. And the main reason, I would say, for slight difference also is you can say the geographical mix a little bit in the different therapeutical areas. But again, all in all, good performance in all therapeutical areas and double digit in 3 out of 4 therapeutical areas. Moving on to MedTech in terms of the sales team, I think what we -- as we spoke about it in the last quarter, we are moving from an inside sales team to an outside sales team, meaning we put people in territory and we're strengthening the sales team by adding more people to have a strong presence across the U.S. The reason we're doing that, of course, is to be much closer to our customers, being able to support them on a daily basis and also be able to pick up feedback from them, what they need and how we can support and drive the business going forward. Clearly, with this transition being implemented in the quarter, there is a ramp-up, but I do believe we have a strong sales team in place. And as they learn our product, as some of them bring it to the industry as well with more customers and build relationships with them over time, I believe sales will pick up on the back of that. The ambition, of course, is to do kind of all of the things you mentioned in terms of gaining market share, protecting and developing the businesses we have, but also get more GPs and more veterinarians understanding our product and moving to that space and recommending our procedures. Apologies, just to make sure I get the question and answer it -- so I could answer it, could you repeat your question regarding inventory?

Of course, just the increase in inventories, is that related in any way to the transformation? Or is that something else?

No, I wouldn't say the increase in inventory is relating to the transformation. If we look at the transformation, and I think if -- to look at MedTech, and we have 2 different areas within MedTech, being dental and being orthopedics. Dental is performing very well and to cater for continued good growth, we're making sure that we have sort of necessary inventory to drive the continued growth. For the orthopedics business, I think our work will continue to make sure that we optimize inventory levels within MedTech. And as we discussed last quarter, we did continue part of the product portfolio as well so that optimization of MedTech portfolio in the MedTech business within orthopedics continues.

The next question comes from Sten Gustafsson from ABG Sundal Collier.

So first of all, going back to vet services, would it be possible -- I mean, looking at these new markets in Japan, in particular, with the 10,000 potential new customers, given that you have over the 11,400 today, would it be possible to give us some sort of revenue potential for the new markets you're entering, I mean, midterm, not short term? But what kind of penetration rate should we think about there? And then secondly, going back to the MedTech division, if you could remind me of how much of the total revenue for, let's say, 2025 is related to U.S. orthopedic today?

So I can start with vet services. I think it's a bit early to kind of give a revenue projection. I think that the demand is there. We get positive response from the clinics. Key is, of course, [ not ] to have as many members as possible. We want to have engaging and member compliance rates being high to support what we do. So it is still early stage. As we said, we're going to launch in Q3, but we're happy with the team we have in place. And normally, we don't need to capture the full market to drive revenue growth and profitability. So key for us initially is, of course, on the back of some key contracts, together with our partners and the experience we have in building an independent vet community, to explain the model to onboard members and start working together with them to enhance the daily operations into the clinic. But I think it would be a bit premature to indicate our revenue at this stage, although, of course, we do our math before we go into the market.

And then, Sten, your question regarding MedTech and orthopedics was the size of U.S. orthopedics in the MedTech segment. So as you know, orthopedics is the larger part of MedTech compared to dental and U.S. orthopedics is the largest region within the orthopedic space for us. In the quarter, roughly 50% of the orthopedics business related to North America and that in total is roughly 40% of the business for MedTech.

The next question comes from Jonathon Unwin from Barclays.

I just want to come back to MedTech and think about whether you need to see a market recovery later in the spring to get to that low single-digit percentage growth, or whether you think you can get to that number just from the investments that you've made in the field service organization, i.e., by starting to take a bit of share? And if you need to see an improvement in the market to get any growth in U.S. orthopedics, what gives you the confidence that the market is going to improve, given it's been flat for the last 2 quarters? That's my first question. And then my second question is on EBITA growth. You grew 3% in the quarter, 8% constant currency. Do you expect that growth rate to improve throughout the year? And if so, what are the key building blocks to see higher EBITA growth through Q2 to Q4? And maybe if you could give some context around the contribution you expect from M&A versus organic on your expectations there?

I'll start with MedTech. So we believe that on the back of our operational initiatives initiated that we can bring the business back to low single organic growth later this spring, assuming the market remains where it is today, which is soft and fairly flat. If the market improves, I think that would accelerate our effort. If the market would substantially decline, well, of course, that could have an impact on the business as well. But we don't -- when we say we believe that U.S. orthopedics will return into organic growth in spring is on the back of the organic initiatives we have implemented and are [indiscernible].

And on the sort of profitability growth, looking at -- looking ahead and looking a little bit at the full year, so we are doing, as I said, conscious decisions or conscious investments, I should say, we've done in MedTech, in orthopedics and also in Veterinary Services, as we've discussed. They've had some impact on the margins, both looking at Q4 last year and Q1 this year. As we start to see some of the effects of these investments that we've made in terms of higher revenue, to Ali's point, we'll see sort of a gradual improvement or gradual ramp-up of revenues, both in MedTech orthopedics and Veterinary Services. We believe that we will start to see, call it, margin normalize in those 2 segments, meaning that overall, we'll start to see margins or the relation between revenue growth and adjusted EBITA growth being more correlating for the rest of the year. Having that said, and as we communicated earlier, given the investments that we've done now in the first quarter, we do not see that we will show any sort of significant margin improvement for the full year.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Arvid Necander from DNB Carnegie.

So the first one on Spec Pharma. I was just wondering if you're able to clarify based on the current momentum and market environment that you're seeing, do you still believe you're on track to deliver double-digit organic growth for the full year? And then sort of on the overall market sentiment, the consensus seems to be that the animal health market will grow with about mid-single digits for the full year. But during the pandemic, dog ownership, of course, saw a significant uplift and some of your industry peers have now started to talk about the tailwind from this. So I was just wondering, do you expect that to be the case for your core franchises as well? And where do you expect to see the most meaningful impact over the next 1 to 3 years? I'll stop there.

I can start with the Specialty Pharma. We see a good momentum in the business. As we discussed, we've seen in the first quarter that we delivered double-digit growth in 3 out of the 4 therapeutical areas, high single-digit growth in the four therapeutical area. We've seen in Specialty Pharma also that we delivered high single-digit or double-digit growth for a long period of time. We don't have any indications that the good momentum that we've seen in Specialty Pharma will change for sort of looking ahead for the rest of the year.

Yes. And on the second question, I think we -- the services we offer and the products we have are well positioned to capture that potential growth. The trend is generally positive for us across all our segments since many of the things we offer are typically -- or they become relevant later in a dog's life, for example, like orthopedic issues or allergies are often detected somewhat -- sometime into the pet's life. Same goes with dental problems, which tend to increase as the dog gets older and so forth. So from a general sentiment, the COVID dog effect, when it happens and if it happens, will have a positive effect on our business as well, given the products and services we offer.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you all for listening in. I want to reiterate how I started. Vimian is off to a good start of the year with double-digit growth in 3 out of 4 segments. We have strong cash generation. And as you see, our M&A pipeline is becoming more fruitful. We're super happy onboarding the 3 acquisitions year-to-date. And we look forward to continue growing and developing business -- the Vimian business in [ phase ] animal health. Thank you very much.