Okay. Good afternoon or good morning to everyone and welcome to El.En.'s 3rd Q 2025 Financial Results Conference call. Today's call will be recorded and there will be an opportunity for questions at the end of the call. With me on the call, Andrea Cangioli, El.En.'s CEO, and Enrico Romagnoli, El.En.'s Chief Financial Officer and Investor Relations Manager. Before we begin, please note that there are management remarks during the conference call regarding future expectations, plans, prospects, and forward-looking statements. Certain statements in this call, including those addressing the company beliefs, plans, objectives, estimates, or expectations of a possible future result or events, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known or unknown risk, including general economic and business conditions in the industry. In assumptions in which we operate, these statements may be affected if our assumptions turn out to be inaccurate.
Consequently, no forward looking statements 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 to update the contents or the forward looking statement to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date hereof. At the end of the presentation, if you need to ask a question, please book your question on the chat of Bianca or raise your virtual hand. You will have the floor in order of request, but at this time I want to give the floor to Andrea Cangioli. Please go, Andrea.
Thank you very much, Bianca, for your introduction and for hosting us. Thank you to everybody for being with us in this call. Following the release of our financial report of September 30th, 2025, Enrico Romagnoli will be on this call with me and I thank him for taking care of the details of our financial reporting that he will be sharing with you in a very short time. Our third quarter came out really strong, especially under the profitability profile, confirming the trend of this 2025. A brilliant performance in the medical sector and a softer one in the industrial business. The reported numbers say on the nine months revenues were up 4.6% in medical and just shy of 2% in industrial.
That consolidated EBIT was down 3.2% on the nine months, but up 3.8% in the quarter, marking the EBIT recovery that hints and supports our guidance for this year end. If we look a little deeper inside these numbers, we have grounds to be extremely pleased with the performance in the medical sector also on the revenue line. In fact, this 2025. In this 2025 we're facing the inorganic effect of the exit of consolidation from March 1st of the Japanese subsidiary Withus. Net of such effect, growth in medical would have been equal to 7.1% on the nine months.
Moreover, we're also facing the moving away of the historic and very significant customer Cynosure as our OEM contract for the supply of high power Alexandrite laser systems for hair removal is only formally in place after Cynosure merged with the South Korean company Lutronic that is now providing and that is going to provide to Cynosure such technology for their distribution network. By removing the negative effect of this circumstance and cumulatively with the removal of the without effect, sale growth would have exceeded 10% on the nine months. This on the revenue side, the other pleasing news of this period is that the revenue increase is achieved with the increase of revenues in higher margins bearing sales segments and products with an overall beneficial effect to consolidated gross margins and overall profitability.
Growth in system sales was mainly generated by systems for anti-aging treatments in which the innovative content of both the technology and the application is bearing higher margin on sales for us compared to the main and slowly declining revenue stream of the hair removal devices. I am talking at first place of the Onda Pro, the revisiting of our flagship body contouring device Onda based on the microwaves technology, a revisiting that expanded the intended use of the device to anti-aging face treatments. Based on this, Onda Pro is experiencing a second youth with respect to the original launch of Onda with amazing acceptance also in the most advanced markets for innovation in the aesthetic application, namely the Far East markets like the Korean market which are extremely developed and sophisticated in selecting the most innovative and effective devices.
As our group does not rely on the peak performance of single products or devices, Onda Pro was not alone in driving revenues toward the anti-aging demand. I give you just a couple more examples of other successful products and related procedures. Nano and picosecond devices like the Discovery Pico by Quanta System and the Etoro by DEKA are innovation leaders in the pigmented lesion skin toning area that is traditionally prominent for treating the fariescent aging facial skins. CO2 microablative procedure Cool Peel performed by DEKA's Tetra Pro is now the golden standard for facial rejuvenation and is encountering increasing worldwide success starting from the U.S. market. Another significant contribution to the performance was provided by the surgical business, especially in the urological application which are the treatment of stones.
Excuse me.
We have to remove, so another significant contribution to the performance was provided by the surgical business, especially in the urological application, which are the treatment of stones and BPH, the benign hyperplasia of the prostate, a business that within the group is mainly pursued by the market leader Quanta System, but also by Jena Surgical, the brand managed by our German sub Asclepion. Revenue for laser systems in neurology was up roughly 7.5% in the nine months. The side business of consumable sterile optical fiber was also growing smoothly along with the increasing installed base, and it now accounts for more than half of our post-sales revenues of the medical business, which means roughly EUR 10 million per quarter or 10% of the overall revenues of our medical business.
Moreover, this piece of revenues is bearing gross margins that are in the upper segment of our products margin mix, and since operation expense in terms of sales and marketing and labor is less intensive than for system sales, the accretive impact on EBIT and EBIT margins is also significant, as testified by the profitability of Quanta System that is the main actor in this business for us. In terms of expenses involved in this business, there CapEx going on and coming up in Quanta System, as Quanta System is starting the construction of a new larger semi-robotized clean room at its Samarate facility dedicated to the production of sterile optical fibers to increase its production capacity for this medical device. EBIT margin for the industrial division, I am providing you an unaided—excuse me.
For the medical division I am providing you an unaudited figure is improving in 2024-2025 on 2024 and was roughly 16.9% on the nine months and around 19% in the third quarter. We were not able to achieve similar results for our industrial business. The only activity bearing margin similar to the medical business is the identification marking activity led by Lasit, which continues to perform well both in revenues and in profitability. The other businesses within our industrial world have not performed according to expectation. The expectation we had in our yearly planning, missing the revenue targets and therefore lagging also in terms of profit generation.
The most dimensionally significant business is the cutting business, which despite expensive expectations and decent order bookings has been slowing down both in revenues and in profits in each quarter this year since order bookings came quite late in the year and delivery lead times for our sophisticated and often custom designed systems are not easily compressible. As of September 30th we incurred in a major sales cutoff, meaning the inability to recognize revenues for several systems that had been physically delivered to customers but had not cleared the final testing procedure within the end of the month. To give you an idea of this adjustment which to a certain extent physiologically always takes place at the end of each quarter.
We're talking at the end of September of almost EUR 8 million versus less than EUR 1 million at the end of June, a EUR 7 million worth 22% on the quarterly business revenue and 7% on the year to date revenues as of September. I am not stating that without this adjustment everything would have been okay in this business segment as the market is very competitive and we need a great effort to maintain our competitive position and win our sales, but of course it would have looked different under several profiles.
In fact, we are continuing to invest in what we feel is strategically meaningful for the market positioning of Cutlite Penta in the sheet metal laser business, which can be summarized in three points that lead to CapEx or profit and loss outflows in 2025: the purchase of a plant to expand the versatile production capacity of Cutlite Penta that we closed in the first quarter of 2025, the P&L expenses involved in the launch of the European sales subsidiaries in order to get closer to the customers in the countries of Spain, Germany, and Poland, the profit and loss expenses involved in the loan in the managing of Nexen, the company dedicated to automation systems complementary to our laser cutting system, an addition to the product range that is highly strategical for the product offering but that for the time being is far from being EBIT accretive, though improving its EBIT result in the third quarter. For what concerns the other smaller businesses in the industrial world, the laser marking system for special applications and for large surfaces provided by Outlast and also by the industrial division of El.En., very often in combined supplies with the mid power CO2 laser sources, in these businesses the performance continued to be weak.
We are identifying new application niches to recover in a year that has been hit by the negative cycle of the fashion world customers and also hit by the down trimming of the expectation in the motors for electrical vehicle segment. Cash generation has been outstanding in the quarter as we benefited from the one time cash inflow stemming from the sale of a majority stake in Penta Laser Zhejiang which on the net financial position was worth, already factoring in the possible future price adjustments, roughly EUR 26.4 million. As I mentioned before, had we closed before, I mean in previous conference calls we held.
Had we closed the deal three months earlier, the foreign exchange level with the Chinese Yuan would have been much more favorable as it quickly deteriorated by 10% around and after the Liberation Day. Cash flows from operation amounted to roughly EUR 20 million, contributing to the EUR 47 million quarterly increase of the Net Financial Position. Under this profile, it is worth to mention that the quarter highlighted a slight decrease in the overall networking capital and accounted for roughly EUR 3 million in capital expenditure that were offset in the effect on the Net Financial Position by the release of EUR 3 million of long-term cash investment that cannot show up in the Net Financial Position.
By the way, the balance of such investments that are not accounted for within the Net Financial Position since they're a long term asset was around EUR 11 million at the end of the third quarter of 2025. I give the floor to Enrico and I will be back with more general remarks after his section.
Thank you Andrea. Good morning. Good morning everybody. As usual. I'm going to comment the final shots we released last week as for the year end and for the half yearly report. The quarterly report has been prepared in accordance with IFRS accounting standards excluding the consolidation line by line of Chinese activities both in 2025 and in 2024 due to the negotiation for the sale of the division in accordance with IFRS 5. The majority stake of the Chinese Companies was sold on July 15. Since July 2025 Penta Laser Zhejiang is consolidated with the equity method for the residual stake of 19.3%. In the first nine months 2025 the group recorded consolidated revenue for EUR 422 million, up 3.9% compared to the EUR 406 million and the medical sector up over 4.6%.
When the industrial up 1.9%, the gross margin was EUR 188.3 million up 6.5% compared to the EUR 177 million of September 2024 with an impact on revenue of 44.6% improving the profitability of 1% compared with last year. It should be noted that in 2024 the group recorded proceeds for insurance and government reimbursement relating to the damages of the flood of November 2023 for an amount of EUR 1.9 million, 0.5% of the revenue. The revenue in 2025 accounted EUR 1.3 million of R&D grants, 0.3 percentage point on the revenue. Excluding both of these non-recurring income, the impact of gross margin on sales would have improved more than 1% in 2025 attributable to an improvement in the sales mix. Operating expenses increased in value and in impact on sales, mainly in GNA, R&D and IT cost and sales and marketing activities.
Staff cost increased due to an increase in headcount and in salaries. EBITDA positive at EUR 65.6 million. The result is in line with last year even though the EBITDA margin in 2025 slightly decreased from 16.2%- 15.6%. Depreciation, amortization and provision amounted to EUR 10.6 million in 2025 compared to EUR 9 million in 2024. The main reason of the increase was the reversal of the provision for risk and charges in 2024 for EUR 1.6 million due to some legal disputes that were resolved more favorably than expected. Net of this amount, the overall cost aggregate is in line with the previous year. EBIT for the first nine months was EUR 55 million compared to the EUR 56.9 million for the first nine months of 2024. The margin of revenue was 13% down from the 14% with a decrease over last year of 3.3%.
Halving the delay registered on June, financial management recorded a loss of EUR 1.8 million in the first nine months. The interest income generated by liquidity was EUR 2.8 million while the interest expenses on debt was EUR 1.3 million. Exchange rate difference has the strongly negative balance equal to EUR 2.4 million.
In addition, we have a one-time exchange rate loss already recorded in Q1 for EUR 908,000 following the release of the currency conversion reserve resulting from the sale of the majority of Withus. The contribution of associated company is negative for EUR 1 million, mainly due to Withus - EUR 0.5 million and Penta Laser Zhejiang - EUR 0.6 million. In our income last year was accounted the one-time income of EUR 5 million due to the write-off of liabilities related to the earn-out to pay to former minority Chinese shareholders in case of IPO or Penta Laser Zhejiang . At the end, income before taxes showed a positive balance of EUR 52.2 million, lower than EUR 61.2 million at the end of September 2024.
In the third quarter as already mentioned by Andrea, the group had a strong performance and recording growth in both revenue and above all operating profit + 3.8% versus Q3 2024 with a strong recovery compared to June when the delay in terms of EBIT compared to the first six months 2024 was 7% in the third quarter. The main segments that performed better than last year were aesthetic in medical sector and marking in the industrial sector. Looking to the cash flow, the group net financial position on September 2025 was positive for EUR 137 million and increase by EUR 47.4 million in the third quarter from the EUR 90 million at the end of June 2025.
In the nine months the increase was EUR 26.8 million thanks to the cash flow generated by current activities and the proceeds received for the sale of the majority stake in Penta Laser Zhejiang for a net amount of EUR 26.4 million. The main reduction incurring in the period are dividend paid for EUR 19 million in Q2, CapEx for the nine months of EUR 13 million, increase in net working capital of EUR 20 million. Furthermore, the group invested the liquidity in insurance policy mid long term investment accounted in non current assets, so we have additional liquidity of EUR 10.7 million on September 30. What concern the revenue breakdown by business in the medical sector? In the medical sector, system showed strong growth in all major segment. In the aesthetic segment, + 4%, the very favorable trend for anti-aging and body contour application continued.
Among surgical application, + 8%, urology, ENT, and gynecology system continued to record significant growth in sales. AA's performance in physiotherapy, + 5%, was also very satisfactory thanks to the significant innovation in the range of product offered, a more effective coverage of international market together with the relaunch of sales. In Italy, sales of consumable and after sales service remained very satisfactory, driven by the sales of optical fiber for surgical application, more than 50% of the sale of the segment, which kept service revenue growth to 4% despite the loss for service contract revenue from the Japanese company Withus, whose majority stake was sold in February 2025. In the industrial sector, the cutting segment, which no longer includes Chinese Companies, maintained growth of 2% thanks to the excellent sales result of the Brazilian subsidiaries, + EUR 4 million of revenue in the first nine months.
Lasit also performed well in the market segment with the increased width of its subsidiaries. In the Q3 we had a significant recovery in sales in the segment of large surface marking applications where Outlast operates. In the laser sources segment, the slowdown was more evident and was primarily due to decline in revenues from system integrators for fashion applications and electric motor weavings. Sales for industrial service returned to show an increase of 6% as expected due to the progressive increase in the installed base. Geographically, the most positive note came from the Italian market with an extraordinary growth of 27% in medical.
In the industrial sector, Italian turnover also recovered in the quarter, up 6% in the nine months thanks to the increased confidence among manufacturing market operators, supported by the return of tax policies to support investment. The performance in the European market was very satisfactory, particularly in the German medical and professional esthetics beauty sector and in the industrial sector, thanks to the progressive consolidation of the sales subsidiaries' activities, particularly Lasit. The negative sign appearing on sales in the rest of the world has different determinants depending on the sector. What concerned the medical, Andrea already mentioned the inorganic operation that affected the sector. The result is a good result because it was achieved net of the exit of Withus in February and the loss of the supplies to Cynosure due to the M&A that brought it closer to Lutronic. Net of this departure, turnover therefore increased significantly. The situation is completely different in the industrial sector, where our order intake in the American market, the most significant in the rest of the world, was negatively impacted in the first month of the year by the image projected on the market by the potential acquisition by a Chinese Entity. Andrea, please go ahead. What concerns the guidance?
Okay, in closing my prepared remarks I would like to touch three more topics: the role of the industrial division, especially of the cutting division within the group, the use of our cash, and finally the 2024-2025 guidance. As the performance of the industrial division, markedly of the cutting division, is weaker than the one of the rest of the group, I would like to share with you the strategy, short term and midterm, of the group with respect to this business area. We are very proud of the results and the dimensions achieved by our cutting business unit, but we are also aware that its business, especially after the CO2 laser sources have been ruled out of cutting by the fiber laser sources technology, is not fully consistent anymore with the other businesses of the group. There is no market correlation and the technological correlation is very limited as well. Therefore, we are convinced that the Cutlite Penta organization, people, and business would benefit from strategically cooperating with organizations that are more consistent to Cutlite Penta's business. Along this path, we moved towards a transaction that would have placed Cutlite Penta within a larger organization developing a specific growth strategy for Cutlite Penta. I'm talking of the potential sales to the Chinese land. When we were faced by the material risk under the new organization that one of the most promising businesses of Cutlite Penta, the U.S. business, was bearing the risk of being completely jeopardized, we decided that for protecting the organization itself we would have not sold Cutlite Penta anymore. The short term strategy now that Cutlite Penta is still within our consolidation perimeter is to manage the potential of Cutlite Penta and to continue to invest in what we feel is needed for Cutlite Penta to flourish.
The longer term strategy is to resume and pursue the design of finding a strategic partnership for Cutlite Penta, a partnership that would enhance its peculiarities, capabilities and potential, giving the best opportunity to Cutlite Penta's organization to continue to flourish or better to improve its opportunities and chances to flourish on its market that are quite competitive. What is evident from our reporting is the amount of investment involved in supporting Cutlite Penta strategy. What we can additionally tell you about the larger picture isn't much at all for the moment, but we will update you as soon as we will have something meaningful to report. For what concerns the businesses of Lasit, Outlast and the industrial division of the mother company El.En., we are planning to continue to pursue such businesses within the group.
Now the quite wide cash position we are holding today, which is beyond the ordinary operational needs of our companies. Also considering potential expensive investment activities like the one I mentioned for the optical fiber sterile optical fiber manufacturing plant. As usual, capital expenditure and operational needs for our operations are first in the list for us as we believe that interesting growth rates can be achieved by further improving the operational performance of our own business units. In order to enhance our growth rate, especially in terms of profits, we are investigating a set of small M&A opportunities that could be accretive to the development of the business units involved, especially in the medical sector, but also in this industrial sector. As we mentioned before, we could be closing soon one or more small deals along this path.
More complex deals that could fall under the label of transformational are now being more closely considered, though there is nothing for the time being to report about. The Board of Directors has not yet resolved about any one time cash distribution to the shareholders in any form. Therefore, I'm not in the position to elaborate any comment about finally the guidance. I can keep it simple here we are targeting and planning to be 2024 both in the revenues and in EBIT. As you know, we are on schedule for the revenue target. We are just a little bit behind for what concerns the EBIT target, but we are recovering and confident to be able to hit the EUR 23 million figure in EBIT in the fourth quarter of 2025. Thank you for your patience and I believe we are ready for your questions.
Andrea, the first question in our list comes from Giovanni Salvetti of Berenberg. Go on Giovanni, please.
Hello guys, can you hear me well?
Yes, hi Giovanni.
I had two, but then let's just say that the final remarks added a few extra questions, but maybe I'll jump in the Q and ask more after. These are two regarding the medical division. The first one is on Asclepion. That based on the press release seems to be doing much better in Q3. And as far as I remember, Asclepion was also mainly involved in hair removal, which was the area that was struggling the most. I was wondering what's changed exactly. Also because if I can remember, in the first half the cost of personnel was going up also in relation to Asclepion. The second one is about Quanta. If I look at your press release, you're saying that now optical fibers account for more than 50% of medical services.
If we assume, let's just say a figure around 35, that is, let's just say more than 50%. If we add to double this capacity, do you see already demand to fill it or how much should we think, you know, before the excess capacity gets filled? Maybe the last one is on the, let's just say, part of the business that again, based on what you're saying, we are talking about margins based on what the press release says strongly above last year. I was wondering what kind of margins, Lars, it is now running at. Thank you.
Okay, so starting from Asclepion, yes, there was a recovery. Yes, the recovery was also tied to a better performance in the hair removal in the third quarter. I mean this is a good line considering the removal segment. Yes, the impact of the cost of staff in Asclepion is quite significant. It was increasing a lot in the first half. Since the result for the first half, for the third quarter was extremely good in terms of revenues. Now the difference of the impact of staff cost between Asclepion and the rest of the group is smaller, more most important. What actually made turnaround in the quarter in the business of Asclepion is the increase in revenue which is due to aesthetics, but also to.
To its surgical line, which is performing very, very Quanta System and fibers. We, as of today, we do not feel we are limited or materially limited in the deliveries of fibers by our production capacity. We feel that, given the rhythm of new installation and of the absorption by the market of our optical fibers, we needed to expand the capacity in order not to incur in a sales limitation due to capacity in the future. We are progressively increasing the volumes, and we are placing this very large investment in order to improve the production, the production capacity. We do not have an impellent need. It is, I mean, a strategic, strategic programming that will allow us to continue to increase the stream of revenue over the time, smoothly, smoothly. Finally, your third question was about Lasit. Lasit actually is improving its.
It is not improving its sales volume over the nine months, especially due to a slow behavior of the Italian market, while we're doing very well, especially in Europe where the subsidiaries that Lasit set up on the territory are now starting to be really accretive to the business. I recall we have subsidiaries in Poland, the oldest one, in Spain, Germany, U.K., and France, the last one. We have five subsidiaries, and quarter after quarter they're becoming accretive to revenues and especially to profitability. In terms of profitability, we had an EBIT margin just shy of 8% after the first nine months of 2024. After the first nine months of 2025, we are exceeding 11% EBIT margins. Those are unaudited financial results referring to the consolidated financial results of Lasit and its subsidiaries.
Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll jump in the queue and then I may have some questions.
The second question comes from Andrea Bonfà of Banca Akros. Go on Andrea, please.
Hi, good afternoon to everybody. Hope you can hear me very quickly. I mean, connecting to your last statement on M& A, potential M& A. If I understood correctly, transformational deal are, might be considered but unlikely for the time being, but some bolt-on acquisition are definitely more possible. Is that possible for you to comment on which sector, niches, technologies are you looking for?
No.
Or in which geographies eventually.
I'm sorry, I said all I can say.
Okay, okay.
I mean it's nothing, the answer wouldn't change. I mean we have several things on our pipeline related, as I said, both to medical and to industrial, and they are both on the European territory and in the rest of the world. I mean, in answering by this means, I cannot give you any more details, wouldn't be fair. I can only tell you that we are extending several situations.
Okay, thank you, Andrea. If I may, as far as the industrial business is concerned, within now, let's say, the recent input that you just mentioned, is the U.S. still a potential important market or now with the duties and your, let's say, smaller size, is it less so? The third one is on the U.S. duties. How is the trading environment in the U.S. now with these new duties? If it's possible, also in relative terms, because I mean maybe there are other, other countries now less competitive than Europe?
First of all, the U.S. market for our industrial cutting systems is still very interesting and still the main international market for all systems. We have suffered, as Enrico said explicitly and as I confirm, the image that was projected during the negotiation with the YOC for the sale of the company. We spent quite a lot of time convincing our U.S. customers that we were not becoming Chinese. Also, after the deal that was going to have Cutlite Penta fall under Chinese control was canceled, we still have a hard time discussing with the U.S. partners, and I mean partners, because we have distribution partners, and making them fully comfortable that we will be able to provide.
Them.
On the midterm, sound and price attractive and technologically attractive Italian made product. This is, by the way, they are visiting us on Wednesday in order to clarify again this situation because based on this, we have had some sort of fluctuation in order bookings from the United States notwithstanding. Notwithstanding our efforts, which include a massive deployment of technical service people in order to serve at top quality, with top quality our systems installed in the United States and also strong investment in terms of fairs. We participated to the Fabtech, which is one of the most expensive fairs that you can approach on the industrial systems market. After this long speech, I would say that yes, the U.S. market, it is still an opportunity. It is still an important opportunity and it is not an issue of duties.
Duties are impacting us in the industrial sector, but it's not duties that today caused a slowdown in sales to the United States in the industrial business. For what concerns the duty question on the medical system? Of course duties are there and they are quite impactive. We have seen increasing interest in the last months from our US customers in our products. This speaks about the fact that even though each and every of our customers in the United States will try to negotiate a deal in order to have us participate to the quoted undue extra cost driven by duties, they are still looking for us because we are able to provide them the innovative content of products that allows them to make margin notwithstanding the extra cost.
Basically in this moment we are, I mean, at least for the first 10 months of the year, we are very pleased with what we have done in terms of revenues and what we have done also in terms of order bookings. Of course we will have to see how the hottest seasons on the U.S. market, which is the month of December, will roll out for our distributors to have a final judgment on the total effect of duties on our U.S. business. So far we have. We can notice an overall positive reaction of the U.S. market on the duty situation.
Thank you, Andrea.
Welcome.
Next. Next question comes from Carlo Maritano of Intermonte. Go on, Carlo, please.
Can you hear me?
Yes, perfectly. Carlo. Hi.
Okay. Hi everyone. I just have a couple of questions. The first one is on the European performance in the industrial cutting business in the third quarter. I see that there is a decline compared to last year. I was wondering if it is related to the EUR 9 million of revenue that shifted from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. The second one is again on the industrial business, in this case on Italy. Recently the government changed again the incentives related to Transizione 4.0. I was wondering if you expect any kind of impact on your clients from this change or if the order book remains healthy and you do not expect any kind of disruption.
Thank you for these two questions. About the first one, the decline in the European revenues in industrial. You see it in the third quarter. It's something which is, let's say, local, is not related to the cutoff, which is mainly an Italian issue. It's mainly an Italian issue because we don't. It's tied to the means of delivery we have. We have in Italy and what we could say, it has been driven by a softer activity in Europe and by the slower activity of the subsidiaries. We should be able to overcome the situation over the rest of the year. For what concern the Italian laws, the Italian, I mean, funding situation. I didn't want to go in this detail, but of course we are examining the effects of the cutoff that the Italian government put on Industry 5.0 and this might have some effect.
I'm not able to quantify. It shouldn't be determinant, but it could be. It could be material. The good news is that looks like that the new law for 2026 could be interesting for the investors and suffer a marginal correction. I mean, we have an order book, a book of orders, but some of them may not convert in sales due to the change in the approach by the Italian government as the monies for Industry 5.0 is finished, but we should be supported hopefully without the hesitation that took place in 2025, also in 2026 for certain level of investments.
Thank you.
Andrea. We have one more question from Emmanuel de Figueiredo. I will read for him for problem of connection. The question is why was medical so strong in Italy versus other markets?
Of course this stands out. It stands out. Because we did extremely well and because I believe we performed exceptionally well in the distribution of DEKA Renaissance in Italy, which is going to hit a record target, a record amount. We also had some sales in the professional beauty that increases volume smoothly and we are still experiencing very, very strong demand. Why is this happening? I believe the team that we have in Italy now provides to our end customers an unparalleled level of services. We have, I believe, eight product managers which are traveling all the time around Italy if they are not stable in a region because of course the main regions have product specialists which are always providing support to our customers.
We not only, as we mentioned before, limit our activity in providing the laser box to our customers, but we are providing continuous training. We are providing very, very, I would not say cheap, but affordable service in order for them to take the maximum benefit of the lasers that we have sold them. Since they are happy, since they make money with the lasers, they come back and buy. This 2025 is going to be a record year for Italy and this is the only explanation I have on this point.
Thank you, Andrea. We have one more question from Andrea Bonfà from Bank Across. Go on, Andrea, please, please.
I am sorry, thanks again for taking my, my question. Andrea, very quickly, in the, the numbers that you provide at the beginning of the conference call, the like-for-like figure, 7.9% without the Japanese subsidiary and more than 10% without, sorry, 7.9% without the Japanese subsidiary and over 10% without signature, is related to the medical division only or to the group
Medical division.
Thanks.
What I was saying is that we are hitting in stable situation the 10% revenue increase target after nine months. This was the message I wanted to. For the medical business, this is the message I wanted to give with these comments.
Thank you very much again.
We have no more questions registered in this moment.
Giovanni Salvetti has said he wanted to ask more questions. Maybe we answered already, but I don't know. He said he wanted.
Yeah, I mean.
Go on.
Part of it was already answered. Yeah, I mean, they did that. Let's just put it this way. I don't want to ask too much information on M A. Right. Also because you cannot give much. It was more about whether the companies are more, let's just say, technological company that will add technology or company with actual sales. Right. It's more about whether you're investing in technology or in market share. I'm not sure if you can answer that. So it's.
We have everything in our basket. In our potential basket there's something of any flavor. You've got both. I don't know what. If we will close again, don't have too wide expectation on this. We're talking of small transaction, but we have both technological and sales solutions and sales opportunities.
Okay, thank you. Thank you.
You're welcome.
At this time we have no more question. I would like to ask once again if there are any further question from investors still connected. No more questions then. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. If you have any inquiries in the future, please do not hesitate to contact Enrico Romagnoli, who will be happy to assist you. Thank you for attending this conference, for your participation and we hope to have you all again next time. Goodbye, everybody.
Bye bye. Thank you, Bianca. Thank you. Bye bye.
The recording has stopped.