Good afternoon to everyone, and welcome to the conference call of 2020 financial results of EL.En. Today's call will be recorded, and there will be an opportunity for questions at the end of the conference call. With me on the call, Andrea Cangioli, EL.En.'s Managing Director, and Enrico Romagnoli, EL.En.'s Chief Financial Officer and Investor Relator. Before we begin, please note that there is a remark the management makes on the conference call about the future expectations, plans , and prospects and forward-looking statements. Certain statements in this call, including those addressing the company's beliefs, plans, objectives, estimates, or expectation of possible future results or events, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known or unknown risks, including general economic and business conditions and conditions in the industry the company operates, and may be affected should the assumption turn out to be inaccurate.
Consequently, no forward-looking statement can be guaranteed, and actual future results, performance, or achievements may vary materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation about contents, nor to update the forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date hereof. At this time, I want to turn the call to Andrea Cangioli. Please go on, Andrea.
Thank you, Nicola, for the introduction. Thank you, Bianca, also for the introduction. Good afternoon, welcome , everybody, to this earnings call that we're holding after the release of the 2020 financials and the release of the guidance for fiscal year 2021. As usual, Enrico Romagnoli is joining me in the call, and in a few minutes, he will go through the financial details after my brief introduction. Once again, we are very pleased with the performance of our group. In the most challenging environment we have ever faced, overcoming the restrictions and the limitations that are still deeply impacting our businesses and our lifestyle, we managed to register a sales volume increase and a profit generation, which we deem excellent in the circumstances.
Our Q4 performance has been outstanding, beating our own forecast and the fear of the impact of the restrictions that were enforced in early November in Italy, Germany, France, among others. Testifying that, notwithstanding the general economic problems that are evident and in front of everybody, our activities are back on the path of solid growth of revenues and income that we had planned for the group. The pandemic hit us hard and forced us to deviate from that path. It slowed down our pace and cast a shadow on our performances. During this same earnings call that we held one year ago, I was reporting about the Chinese lockdowns that had forced us to close the plants in Wuhan, Wenzhou, and Linyi.
A few days later, Italy would have followed the Chinese model, and we were forced to close or abruptly slow down in Italy and France, all our activities. If I now look at the performance of this Q4 and compare it to our internal quarterly budgets as we prepared them in late 2019, I notice that we are aligned, beating them in certain segments. Finally, if I look at the momentum that our various business units have now in terms of order intake, I see a situation that is very close to where we wanted and planned to be today when we did our planning prior to the pandemic back in 2019.
I would like to spend a few words on what enabled such a strong comeback because we are, of course, happy with our latest results, but we are even more proud and happy for the grounds on which the results are and have been constructed. The brightest evidence is our vision in planning our logistics and production infrastructure. Who has been with us in the last years knows the extent of the investments that were put in place in order to expand our production capacity, both in the medical and the industrial areas, but more heavily in the laser cutting business, in Italy and in China. Of course, when I see that in Q4 2020, we doubled the number of systems delivered with respect to Q4 2019 in China, we are aware that this could not have happened without the bold strides we have taken before.
The most important factor sits in the general capabilities of our organization, capabilities that are based on a very solid construction built on human resources of inestimable quality. Not only are our people carrying with them a stratification of knowledge, know-how, and expertise that allows them and us to master all the science and technology needed to effectively develop new innovative devices, but the severe test of the pandemic brought out the resilience and the strong commitment that our people are dedicating to the company. The company played its role in setting up all the safety precautions and procedures that allowed the employees to work safely, and most important, to feel safe in their workplace. The response we had in terms of the effectiveness of the deliverables was outstanding.
No single development milestone was missed, even during the months in which we had to extensively apply payroll protection programs that reduced available hours for the company and income for the employees. I believe that for myself, as managing director, and for all of you as shareholders of the company, it is important to know how solid these base grounds of our business are. During these times where the mantra of sustainability is permeating our vision and our business approach, you have to know that the human resources leg of our long-term business sustainability infrastructure is very, very strong. The strongest traction in revenue growth is coming from the laser cutting business. We are active in this business in Italy with Cutlite Penta, based here nearby in Prato, and with our Chinese PENTA Laser company based in Wuhan, Wenzhou, and Linyi.
What is determining the sustained growth of this segment is technological innovation and subsequent application breakthroughs. The laser power available for laser cutting systems increased exponentially in these last years. A couple of years ago, we were thrilled to be able to use a 10 kW laser source. We are now installing laser systems equipped with 30 kW laser sources. At the same time, the cost of the laser sources progressively decreased, widely improving the cost effectiveness and both technical and economic productivity. As an effect, we are enjoying the opening of a new application market, which has become reachable, thanks to higher laser power. We're talking of heavy -duty applications in construction and also for the manufacturing of large technical vehicles, as an example. We're also enjoying the widening of the existing application markets due to the superior performance and affordability of the systems we currently offer.
We are enjoying this favorable phase based on our superior capability in integrating high-power lasers on our system and based on our infrastructural and distribution footprint created by the investments I was mentioning before. The trend in medical laser system sales is encouraging. We did not reach the same volumes as we did in Q4 2019 in this Q4 2020, but Q4 2019 was a record quarter. We had strong sequential growth in all the segments. Aesthetics were up in Q4, driven by the new hair removal products, which are also the backbone of our current order bookings. Driven by the sales in Japan for the products that we locally distribute.
As I mentioned before, the high volumes of sales booked for these devices, which bear a fairly small gross margin, are one of the main reasons behind the gross margin reduction that we are showing on our 2020 financials. Urology and surgery are still struggling. Still, the focus of the hospital systems is on COVID, and the new waves of hospitalization are not helping, since we will need a normalization of the situation in order to resume our growth. In urology, we did very well on the consumable side, the sales of single or multi-use optical fibers used in each surgery, where we marked a sales increase over 2019.
Key new products launched in the second half of 2020 are the new hair removal device by DEKA, called AGAIN; the new Chroma device by Quanta System, a Q-Switch platform for dermatology; and a new range of body contouring devices with the introduction of muscle stimulation by high-intensity magnetic fields and the improvements of the existing devices based on microwaves, Onda, or Super- Luminescent LED matrices. In the urological field, FiberDust, the new system based on fiber technology, is being launched, covering a range gap that our competitors were trying to leverage against us.
Finally, where we don't have exciting results in terms of sales for certain products like MonaLisa Touch or the new acne Accure Laser, I can tell you that the good news there is that our excellent performance was obtained without a material contribution of these items and that the activities aimed at the launch or relaunch of these devices will eventually allow their material contribution, which is not yet factored into our annual guidance. Prior to getting the details of the financials with Enrico, please consider one general point : in Q4 2020, we incurred a one-time non-monetary expense of EUR 2.1 million due to our shares' allocation to the managers of the Chinese entities. Net of this expense, the consolidated EBIT margin for the quarter would have been 10%, and the EBITA margin 12.2%, beating Q4 2019 in these metrics too. I'm done with the introduction.
Enrico, you can go ahead with the financial data comments.
Thank you, Andrea. As usual, I'm going to give you some details on our last financials. Thanks to the record turnover of Q4, the turnover of 2020 reached EUR 408 million, exceeding the result of the previous year by 1.8% and therefore recovering the gap that had formed in the first half of the year. The gross margin stood at EUR 141.6 million, showing a decrease of 9.2% compared to last year, and the impact of gross margin on turnover goes from 38.9% in 2019 - 34.7% as of December 2020. The decrease derives from a reduction in margins that the crisis has induced on both the medical and industrial sectors, albeit in a different way. In the industrial sector, the goal of expanding market shares was also pursued by choosing to give up some marginal point, especially when competitive pressure in China became stronger after the pandemic.
In the medical sector, the mix of products sold saw a lower impact of the higher -margin segment, such as surgery and physiotherapy. While in the aesthetics, the turnover remained at the level of 2020, also thanks to the significant increase in sales of some products, but with a lower marginality. Operating costs amounted to EUR 34 million, down compared to the EUR 43 million of 2019. The impact on turnover reduced from 11% to 8.4%. The savings derived mainly from S&M expenses due to the limitation on travel and from the cancellation of all fair and congress events. The amount of staff in 2020 was equal to EUR 66.7 million, on the same level as last year, but as already mentioned by Andrea, there was a one-time cost of EUR 2.1 million, reduced by provisioning .
Excluding it, the reduction in labor cost is mainly due to the government payroll protection program, such as the Cassa Integrazione in Italy, used also in France and in Germany mainly in the first six months of the year. In December, the employees of the group were more than 1,600, and the new hires were mainly in China, where the factories were working at full capacity with a volume exceeding the volume of last year. EBITDA was EUR 40.8 million, down by 11.9% compared to the EUR 46.3 million of last year, and with an impact on sales of 10% compared to the 11.6% of last year. Amortization and other accruals increased by EUR 2.6 million due to the relevant investment made in 2019 and in 2020, and to the increase in provision for bad debt to represent, in the most balanced way, the possible deterioration of some credit position.
The increase can be split into EUR 1.6 million as bad debt and risk accrual and EUR 1 million as more depreciation and amortization. In 2020, the total amount of fixed costs, such as operating costs, costs, and depreciation, showed a decrease of 2%, and the impact on sales was 27% compared to the 29% of last year. Thanks to the reduction of that impact, the reduction of profitability in terms of gross margin, 11%, we can see a decrease of 4%, which was reduced to 2% on the EBIT level, and we had a positive balance of EUR 30.1 million, down from the EUR 38.2 million, with an impact on sales of 7.4% compared to the 9.5%.
Improving the profitability in the second half of the year in accordance with our last guidance. Pre-tax result was EUR 27.9 million, with a negative effect of Forex and a negative contribution of associated companies.
Net income was EUR 20.3 million, with a tax rate of 19% versus 26% last year. In 2020, there were some one-time benefits, such as the remission of the IRAP balance 2019, together with the first down payment in 2020. IRAP is an Italian income tax. The accounting of deferred tax assets on some assets is reevaluated in accordance with Italian law. The total amount of those benefits was around EUR 3 million.
In the fourth quarter, we registered a record turnover of EUR 140 million; we can mention the same explanation used for the whole year to explain the decrease in gross margin profitability in Q4 too. In the meantime, we had a recovery in profitability with an EBIT margin of 8.6%, lower than Q4 2019, the best result achieved in 2020 and higher in total value than the operating result of Q4 of last year.
The impact of negative Forex reduced the income before tax to EUR 11 million on the same level as Q4 2019. In terms of net financial position, we had a positive balance of EUR 69.2 million compared to the EUR 61.4 million of last year. About EUR 20 million-plus, EUR 5 million as a possible earn-out, was invested in the acquisition of an important minority stake in Penta Laser Wenzhou, and the amount of investment in technical fixed assets was around EUR 30 million, down from 2019. We had a strong cash generation in the quarter for EUR 19 million, thanks to the good level of activities and to a reduction in net working capital compared to the first nine months of the year.
In looking at the revenue breakdown by business, you can see that in the medical sector, which in 2020 accounted for approximately 56% of the group's turnover, the sales trend was affected by COVID and showed a decline of about 5%, slightly more accentuated in the sale of systems than in that of after-sales services and consumables, which benefited, among other things, from the growth of revenues from optical fibers for urological surgery. The resilience of the aesthetic sector is extraordinary, showing slight growth compared to 2019. Two main reasons behind this result. The first one is the launch on the market of a new system for hair removal, as already mentioned by Andrea, and for body and skin treatments, with a high degree of innovation that has found great success.
The second one is the good performance of our Japanese branch with an upgrade on the installed base and sales of an interesting volume of locally produced equipment through the same channels. On the contrary, sales in surgery, and even more markedly in physiotherapy, were affected by the COVID pandemic, as the attention of medical health structures was concentrated mainly on the treatment of COVID problems. In the industrial sector, a sales increase of 23% is the increase of the cutting. The industrial increase of 13%. A brilliant result, given the condition. In Q4, the increase was 52%, thanks to the excellent performance of the cutting segment. The cutting segment grew by 23% in 2020, thanks to the two last excellent quarters, with a growth in Q4 of 75% and Q3 of 43%.
The other three main segments, marketing, source, and after-sales service, continue to suffer the effect of the pandemic and recorded a double-digit decrease without any significant improvement in the quarter. Looking to the distribution of revenue by geographical areas, the countries that have contributed most strongly to growth are those outside Europe. In the medical sector, we performed very well in Japan, where COVID had a less incisive impact and where our branch with us has set a record turnover of EUR 45 million in the year, +60% over 2019. In the U.S. market, our distributors in the medical sector performed well, despite a very adverse environmental condition for most of the year. The drops recorded in Italy and in Europe are to be considered excellent results in light of the extended lockdown periods and various restrictions suffered.
In the industrial sector in China, the activity of the cutting sector maintained a record -previous pace in the second half of the year. Cutlite Penta also showed a brilliant performance in Italian and European markets. Chinese company registered for the whole year 2020 a turnover of EUR 107 million, + 21% year-on-year, and + 106% in Q4. Cutlite Penta, too, registered a very brilliant year with a turnover of EUR 50 million, + 60% year-on-year, and 20% in Q4. Andrea, please, go ahead.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Enrico. Just to close the presentation, we close with the guidance for 2021, for which please let me comment on the pictures here. We have the before and after. Usually, we have before and after as an aesthetic effect. The before and after here is for this fresco in the Casa dei Vettii in Pompeii that we helped to clean up from the carbonate depositions, and I believe it's really turned to new life. We are enjoying a phase of positive overall momentum, notwithstanding the continued uncertainty cast by the pandemic on the economic environment and the difficulties that we continue to encounter in certain of our business segments. Our business positioning seems very promising at the beginning of 2021, and we confirm that we're looking forward to continuing our aggressive growth plan.
Under this light, we target for 2021, a revenue growth over 10%, which will lead to an increase in EBIT, and we hope, and we're going to work hard for, an increase in EBIT margin. Thank you for your attention. I believe we can go ahead with the Q&A session now.
I kindly invite investors to introduce themselves before asking the questions. Thank you.
Hi. Sorry, I don't know if I can start like that. I'm François Robillard from Intermonte speaking. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. First one is about your guidance. If you can give us some more granularity about the composition of your over 10% sales growth target, giving it by segments and, if possible, what are your expectations per business unit? Finally, as well, in terms of short-term versus long-term visibility, how much do you expect it to be achieved in the first half versus the second half, for instance? Second question is on gross margin. Can you give us a hint of your gross margin for industrial and medical activities for the full year? What kind of margins are you expecting within your new guidance? In that, can we expect some kind of return to previous years' levels, especially in the industrial segment? Final question is on fixed costs.
What kind of savings seen in 2020 do you expect to remain structural in 2021? Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, François. On the mix, we also got to consider what kind of year we are running against now. We are running against 2020, which has been quite a weak year in absolute terms. We're happy for what we were able to perform, but it has been weak, especially for medical. In this moment, our development plans continue to be bullish in the industrial business. Even though the industrial business grew in 2020, we believe that it will grow more than the medical business in 2021. Also, due to the mix of sales that we had in 2020 that we expect to be rebalanced with less contribution from the sole distribution component. From what we can see today, the model is for 10% being, let's say, with a sharper growth in industry.
For what concern long-term and short-term views, where we were going to get the gain, of course, after Q1, there will be a huge gain in industrial because Q1 is the quarter in which we had close to 0 revenue in China. In this moment, China, as I mentioned during my introduction, is running at full steam. We have the four factories running at almost a full production rate. We still have some headroom. Our plan is that we will be in need of our fifth factory coming up during the year in Linyi, in order to continue growing and to continue to be able to manufacture the increasing volume that we are being demanded.
In the first quarter, the comparison will be tougher for the medical because the first quarter of 2020 was fairly strong in medical because the demand shortage happened right after the end of the first quarter. Of course, we plan to see a very large increase in revenue in the first two quarters, and we plan for this increase in revenue versus 2020 to progressively decrease when we are phased into Q3 and Q4 2020 that have been two good quarters, especially the fourth quarter, which has been very good. Concerning gross margin, which is tied to profitability and is also tied to our cautious guidance in terms of profitability, we are very pleased with the results that we're having with gross margins in the industrial business. We maintain the gross margins even with increasing volume. This gave us a very good leverage effect, which was evident on the bottom line.
We are cautious about the medical business because during 2020, the weight of our sales to the U.S. grew in our group. We were very happy with the achievements we made with our main distributors in the United States, which are Cynosure and Cartessa for medical aesthetic application, International Medical Lasers for surgical application, and Olympus for urology. What we need to take into consideration is that the weakness of the U.S. dollar has already harmed our marginality in medical laser system sales at the end of the year. We model our gross margin with a 1.21 foreign exchange rate for 2021, which, of course, given the fact that most of our costs are in euro, even if some of our costs are in U.S. dollars anyway, we purchase something offsetting the foreign exchange losses we get on sales.
The impact of the weakness of the U.S. dollar will limit our ability to improve our gross margin. Should we see the U.S. dollar strong again in the 1.1 or even better, 1.0506 area where it has been over 2019 and the first months of 2020, our marginality would be materially improved. In terms of fixed cost, the model that we have is a slow return. We are modeling a small increase of fixed cost. 2020, under this point of view, has been, let's say, amazing, because the savings that we had in travel, congresses, meals , and lodging have been extremely material. In a way, we hope that these savings will go away because it would be a sign of getting back to normality.
On the other side, we know that it will take a long time. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if 2021 will be enough to see life to return as it was before. I believe business travel will take a while before it will get to be normal as it was at the end of 2019. Therefore, we are not planning to maintain the same very low level of expense under this point of view, but we are modeling some increase of expense without getting to the levels we were one year ago. I believe I've answered all your questions.
Yes. Thank you very much. Just a quick follow-up. You mentioned the EUR 2.1 million impact of the Chinese manager's sale of shares. Was it done in the fourth quarter?
Yes.
Okay.
It's a share capital increase at a low price.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Other questions?
Okay.
If nobody else is going to ask any questions, I might have some more. I don't know if you can hear me well again.
Yes.
Sure. I'm hearing some echo; sorry. Just on the new product launches you've announced, can you just come back on that and how much these new products will contribute to your guidance? On working capital, in 2020, it was back down to 18% of sales. Can we expect a return to a more pre-COVID level of over 20% as soon as 2021?
New products. Yes, we have several products that will contribute to the sales growth. We are especially confident in the new hair removal products, which are the AGAIN laser system for DEKA Distribution Network and the Quanta System hair removal system that we provide on an OEM basis through our long-term partner, Cynosure. This will be one important piece in the sales growth for 2021. We have a strong expectation coming from the body -shaping devices. We now have a very wide range of body shaping devices. If you remember, we were out of the minimal -invasive and non-invasive body -shaping device markets. We entered the market with Onda Coolwaves. It was 2018. After that, other systems have flanked in this segment, Onda Coolwaves specifically.
We had the super luminescent matrices products, which are called B Star and Physiq, which, after a period of study, are now being launched in the United States. We are very hopeful to have a very good year with these products in the U.S. As for Europe, we launched the systems that apply muscle stimulation based on the high -intensity magnetic fields. Those new technologies are extremely interesting, both for their ability to generate revenue and also because they bear a fairly interesting profitability. They are one of the backbones for our expansion, both in revenue and in market. Concerning the industrial laser business, the new products are the introduction of very high-power laser systems. In Q1 2021, we had installed the first 30 kW systems. As progress never stops, I believe that in the next months, we'll start handling 40 kW laser systems.
All this running to higher powers is allowing us, as I mentioned before, to enter new market segments. The research in providing higher -power laser sources is also providing cheaper laser sources by the same manufacturers and is allowing us to reduce costs, maintaining more or less the same margin, and therefore, to enlarge the markets. Concerning the net working capital, we are very pleased with what we have been able to do in 2020. Quite weird to say, in the areas where we have not had problems, where the market maintains its size, or at least remains vital, our customers have become better payers than in the past. The other piece comes from the management of inventory. The management of inventory, of course, led to a very strong increase in working capital after the sudden fall of demand in the first and second quarters; we recovered.
What I noticed is that in these last months, we had again to increase our inventories, and I believe this is something we will need to do in the future even more because we are encountering some difficulties in our supply chain. There are certain components that are critical. Even if not very expensive, they are critical for the manufacturing of our systems. I'm talking of some electronics, some chips, and/or some other electronic components that suddenly switched to their changed lead time, changing from a typical lead time, which was between eight and 10 weeks, up to sometimes 24 or 30 weeks. Do you understand that if you have to plan an increase of production volume based on an expected increase of sales, in order not to have customers wait for months, we have to buy before?
Taking both a financial burden because we got to buy before and probably pay before and the risk because, of course, there's a market risk that the planned volume of those sales does not actually take place. Unfortunately, there's no other way we can manage the situation because in this moment, as I mentioned, we're having very solid order books. We are struggling with our production facility in order to timely deliver according to the expectation of the customers. Should we start delivering in the longer term, the customers will simply turn and go to somebody else. We need absolutely to give a certain level of service in terms of delivery to the customers, and we're ready and willing to increase the investment in working capital in order not to miss that opportunity.
It won't be easy, because as it has always happened, after periods of deep economic downturn, the entire supply chain, I wouldn't say is fully disrupted, but has certain areas in which delivery times become much longer because the production facilities are not prepared to a sudden recovery of demand.
Thank you.
Okay.
Just a quick question, if I may. Andrea. Hello, [Andrew Dodford] here, Mediobanca Research. First of all, congratulations for the results, notwithstanding what must have been a very challenging 2020. Could you give us an update on CapEx expectations for 2021, and also if you have any large investments that you're planning for the coming years? Thank you.
Yes. CapEx will be more or less, I believe, in line with what we did in 2020. We already started 2021 with the largest investment planned for 2021, Cutlite Penta. The industrial laser cutting manufacturing facility here in Prato, near Florence, bought another building in order to expand its production footprint, which was absolutely needed. It was planned, actually. The transaction was already disclosed in 2020. For accounting purposes, it took place at the beginning of 2021. It's a EUR 5 million investment in fixed assets. During the year, we will complete our second building in Linyi. Linyi is the last of our ventures, let's say, that we initiated in the region of Shandong. Shandong is a region between Beijing and Shanghai. It is a very industrialized region. It was appropriate to have a production facility in that area.
It will be an investment of about EUR 2.5 million, EUR 3 million, or more than EUR 2.5 million to EUR 3 million to be borne in 2021. We will have other investments, because as you know, in the last year, we have been investing a lot in all the infrastructure. Our business is very dynamic, and we need to remodel and refurbish also the older infrastructures. For instance, this year, we are planning a fairly large investment in a building that is on the other side of the road here in Calenzano. It's a building that was mainly used as a deposit.
During 2021, we're planning to refurbish it, to turn down the roof , and to make a new one with solar panels. It will be a green building and a sustainable building, and it could be more surface for us, for our operations, which are slowly increasing.
The bottom line is CapEx should be more or less on the same order of magnitude as 2020. We are not planning any other large investment in terms, let's say, of M&A or of internal restructuring. We did quite a lot in 2020. I remember we gained a larger share of our joint venture in China by purchasing most of the minority shares from our initial financial partner. As of today, we own about 85% of Penta Laser Wenzhou, which is the headquarter of all Chinese activities, and today we also own Cutlite Penta in Italy. We have a unique unit controlling the whole laser cutting business. We don't plan; at least we don't have today any plan to make other large financial investments in 2021.
Thank you.
Andrea, can you hear me?
Yes.
Hi, it's Trevor Fitzgerald from Mirabaud Asset Management. Yeah, thank you for a great result. I'm just intrigued about the permission to buy back stock. Could you just give us a walkthrough about the thinking there, about the buyback, the size of the buyback, and the mixture between dividends and returning cash to shareholders in this way? Thank you.
Sure. Thank you for the question. The buyback of shares is no big deal. We always had it ready for any circumstances. We also have some contracts with certain managers, which provide that we pay them in shares. We need a provision for buying shares in order to be able to give shares to the managers. Rather than pay them in cash, we have this kind of arrangement. For other reasons, in this moment, there's no real impelling need. As we did in the past, the last time we had done it was, I believe, two years ago. We keep this tool open if and when the circumstances will need us to use it.
Thanks very much.
Any other questions, please?
Hi, good afternoon to everybody. It's Andrea Bonfà for Banca Akros. If I may, I would like to ask a few questions. Is that okay, Bianca?
Sure.
Yes, of course. Sure.
Okay. Good afternoon to everybody. Very quickly, Andrea, I would like to know if the mix for medical aesthetics will improve, because, let's say, Japan would be more, you say, your own product sale than the third -party products. Well, this is my first question. The second one is, let's say, the shares are given to the Chinese manager. Is this something that can be repeated also in 2021, or is that a one-shot item? The third one, if I'm going by heart, your 2020 tax rate was pretty low. Is that sustainable or not? In terms of, let's say, a new product, if you can just remind us very quickly again, I know you mentioned it before, what are the new products that, let's say, you are going to launch this year, which were not present last year, in 2020? Thank you. Or which didn't contribute. Thank you.
Andrea, I didn't get your very first question. What did you ask me about the medical sector?
Yeah. If I'm correct, in Japan this year, sales were very good because you distributed third-party products. If this year, Japan's mix will be more EL.En. products than third-party ones. If, let's say, the mix for medical aesthetics will improve because of that, at the end of the day.
Exactly. Yes. The answer is yes. The model we have for now is that as much as this kind of sale helped the sales volume in 2020, we are modeling a decrease of that kind of sale in 2021. Since we're modeling a faster growth of sales of all the other systems, we will see a very interesting growth in sales in medical in 2021. For the mix balance reason, we will also see a margin increase. The only issue with margins, in the medical system where we have a better mix and we have new products bearing higher margins, is that a large part of our sales is directed to the U.S. In the U.S., we have contracts in U.S. dollars on which we cannot change the prices, or at least it is not appropriate for us to change the prices.
Marginally, we'll suffer a little bit from the weak US dollar. The new products we are counting on for 2021 that have not been great contributors in 2020 are these body -shaping systems that I was mentioning before, which we're starting to sell in big volumes at the beginning of 2021. The hair removal devices, the new hair removal devices I mentioned before, AGAIN and Elite, have been entered in standard production and decent volume production only at the end of the year. They hit our financials in Q4 only, while we're expecting their contribution to be constant and material throughout all 2021. I don't remember were there other questions, Andrea?
There is a question on the tax rate. If you want, I can ask.
Yes. Tax rate, Enrico? please go ahead, Enrico.
The tax rate of 2020 benefited from some one-time benefit, as I mentioned during the presentation. It's not recurring. Indeed, the tax rate of 2020 is 19%; last year it was 26%. If you need to project this tax rate in the future, you can stay in the 25%-28% range, more or less.
What about the shares to the Chinese management? Is that a one-off, or is that something?
It's a plan that has two pieces. I believe this first batch is about three or four times larger than the second batch. There will be a second batch, but I won't say that it's negligible, but it is much smaller. I hope it will be negligible in the face of the increased revenue and profits.
Okay. If I may, as a last question, is it possible for you to just remind us more or less what your U.S. sales are for 2020?
Yes. Roughly, it's just below EUR 50 million.
Okay. In euro-wise.
That's euro-wise or $50 million?
Okay. Thank you very much, Andrea and Enrico.
No worry.
Some more questions? Diana, if there are no more questions, we finish this conference, Andrea.
Excellent. Thank you for being with us. I believe I will be seeing most of you next week at the STAR Conference. With some of you, I know I will also be talking soon. Anyway, thank you for being with us, and have a nice night. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Thank you for attending this conference. Bye.
Bye. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye. Bye. Thank you.