Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Capital Markets Day of GPI Group, and to be joined by the Director of Marketing Communications and Investor Relations, we are glad to welcome to this important and valuable event to share our vision, strategies, and obtain the results. Today we have a very busy agenda with Fausto Manzana, the CEO, who will have a look at the strategy overview and the results we have attained where we are focusing our activities. Then General Manager Matteo Santoro will do a deep dive into digital healthcare business opportunities we have in this industry and how this group is seizing opportunities both on the domestic and on the international market.
The Vice President Andrea Mora will then comment on the key financial data of the group to share where we have been able to achieve and what we would like to do in the near future. There will be a Q&A session. You can submit questions, and there will be a specific session at the end. Lorenzo Giollo, our Investor Relations Officer, will manage the Q&A session. I hand over to Fausto Manzana, GPI CEO.
Microphone is off. Microphone of the speaker is off. We cannot hear him. Our apologies. Okay, microphone was muted. Great. Welcome also on my side. My apologies for the technical inconvenience. It's a great pleasure for me to welcome you at this very important day for GPI 2023. It has been very important in terms of extraordinary operations and investments, so double step compared to what we had planned in our strategic plan. With the Evolucare operation, we have further strengthened our market position in 2023. We have invested the envisaged amount for 2023 and also 2024. Looking at the strategic plan from 2022 - 2024, we have completed planned key investments in 2024. In our plan, we don't envisage specific important operations, no transformative transactions as it has been the case in 2023.
So GPI is now one of the key players in European healthcare, thanks to the investments we have performed. In 2024, we will therefore consolidate our market position to consolidate the targets we have been able to attain. Based on this, we would like to proceed to continue our performance. In 2024, we have, as you see here, divestment of our Argentea. Here are used the figures, the EBITDA for the financial year. Of course, this transition will be driven by our Software and by our products. I'm here referring to blood management services, where e-Delphyn is a global solution acknowledged by customers, our product and service portfolio, and by products, I mean products that we can sell not only in Italy but also abroad, is very extensive. This is our target for 2024.
As to our present, you know that GPI is very active also in the field of artificial intelligence. We have certified our medical devices through a specific algorithm to help clinicians in diagnosis of postpartum depression, affecting 17%-18% of women after delivery. Artificial intelligence can also be used in internal processes in healthcare. The target here is to significantly reduce average conversation time. We involve, of course, our operators in these negotiation rounds and also in telephone interaction. AI can be extremely useful. Our target here is to significantly increase the care marginality through these technologies because, as of today, it's strategic to have a strong footprint in this domain, even if this approach is not providing very high margins in the present, just a few percentage points. This is our target for 2024. We want to move in the wake of continuity.
In full, we will submit our strategic plan from 2025 - 2027, and we hope to achieve our mid- to longer-term goals in this plan. We want to become a really global player, also thanks to IT healthcare solutions. Of course, we will consolidate our current perimeter, and this will certainly lead us to take a further leap forward to be globally relevant as a healthcare player. Let me just hand over to our General Manager.
Good morning, I'm Matteo Santoro, General Manager of GPI Group. I would like to echo some comments made by the CEO. Let's now look at how we are deploying sustainable growth, leveraging on what we have achieved in 2023. Healthcare improves health. There is also a social impact and a political impact, not only an economic one, arising from healthcare. We are all interconnected when it comes to health.
So healthcare has really got a global character. Players operating in this sector, therefore, are called upon to be sustainable. And we need to work also on a very broad and longer-term horizon in healthcare. We are talking about the future healthcare needs of the aging population with limited financial resources. Sustainability is extremely important when it comes to healthcare services, and there are also many cultural and social complexities. So we will have to strike a balance on this demand-supply market for healthcare services. So there have been demographic drivers over the last few years, not only in Western countries but also in emerging countries. In Western countries, we have a population aging, so more demand for healthcare services in emerging countries. There are emerging diseases like diabetes. 10% of the kids are affected by diabetes in Brazil.
There is an emerging problem in HealthCare in these countries. As a group, GPI has to tackle all these challenges to meet the requirements on this very important market in Italy. The topic, therefore, relates to what we are facing, not only the technological challenges. There are society-wide phenomena we have to consider. Of course, we need to tackle that challenge, providing products and solutions that make healthcare systems more sustainable, providing also patients' equality. The response to this context has been digital health transformation, a very broad concept. This requires, of course, a long-term approach. Digital transformation of the healthcare requires huge financial resources. With the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan, we have financial resources which will be deployed in the long term. Digital transformation in healthcare in Italy requires a long-term horizon stretching over 10-20 years.
To respond to future challenges, we need to come up with solutions to make the healthcare more sustainable. We should consider the increasing disease burden, the burden for hospitals, and management of patients. This, of course, requires complex technologies entailing significant investments. We should also imagine a healthcare system with shorter waiting times. We now have many expensive healthcare facilities waiting for patients. We should change a paradigm. The healthcare in the future should become able to anticipate patients' needs, so as to have patients' and citizens' empowerment through new technologies, allowing citizens to gain awareness of their needs. We have about EUR 130 billion, EUR 70 billion of which are affected by waste. 20% are due to poor coordination of treatment. When we talk about digital transformation of healthcare, we need to develop solutions allowing to tackle these challenges for the future. Next slide.
In our group, to face the challenges, we have done our best with the companies of the group. We introduced a lot of innovation to the point that GPI is now known as a scientific company because we have understood that that's the way to go. We invested EUR 25 million in R&D, and this improves the morphology of the healthcare system. So we have higher standards as compared to the European regulations. This is a benefit for patients at all levels. So we're talking about platforms that allow us to perform operation management, which was just theory in the past. It's now reality. So we provide continuous telemonitoring by reducing costs and making people feel much more safe and taken care of. We have other opportunities coming from AR. So we are investing on increasingly smarter systems such as voice recognition. Voice is the blood of the future.
It's the only component of the human body that remains over time. We are close to perfection today with our systems. We can diagnose emotional health conditions or respiratory diseases or heart diseases. We can also diagnose whether or not a person contracted COVID or not through these systems. This allows us to improve the care process exponentially. We know that health is an ecosystem. People's health is connected with animal health and with the environment. Hence the pollution. Some time ago, I published a paper a few weeks ago, so a scientific document on this topic. We have an agent that allows us to predictively estimate some diseases that require fast interventions, especially respiratory diseases connected with pollution and weather conditions. This optimizes the management of a center. So this is an instrument that will allow us to transform our approach and respond to the current needs.
Next slide, please. Now, moving on to what happened in 2023. 2023 was a very complex year for us. It was a really transformative year because we had to handle many complex situations on the one hand. In six months from the end of 2022 to half of 2023, we carried out two important acquisitions that gave the group a much bigger size capable of navigating the global market with its own resources. We are present now in 70 countries worldwide. So it was a very important year. And also, we consolidated our leadership in our country through a concept of tender contracts. So all the investments that were allocated were funneled into the healthcare system through CONSIP. So we managed to be present in the country ecosystem with more than EUR 3 billion. And so that kind of investment was allocated to us.
This allowed us also to grow remarkably, although we have a lot of bureaucratic issues in this country, especially considering payments and the time it takes to receive payments. However, our country has a universalistic type of healthcare system, and this allows us to obtain results and invest in innovation thanks to our system. We are growing abroad remarkably. Our CEO is focusing a lot on countries outside of Italy. We have more than 50 enterprises at the moment. We may decide to reduce them. We are thinking about a very innovative integration model. We do not see ourselves as a great multinational company incorporating companies and canceling them out. Every integration was thought about in terms of the value that it represented. So we try to maintain the value that each incorporated entity provides. We perform more than 50 extraordinary transactions in the past few years.
So now we have a product portfolio that allows us to go around the world. In terms of integration, we are working on two strategic lines. We are creating countries. We have GPI France, GPI USA, and we are setting up other units. They will have a commercial function. So the factories that we have around the world are claiming this world. From a viewpoint of the factories, we are going to work on a centralized government model thereby providing industrial sustainability. So in the future, we see ourselves becoming more and more global. As the CEO said, we are not planning to perform highly complex global transactions, but we are thinking about developing potential synergies along the guidelines that we have already identified in order to become truly global. We are among the top five companies worldwide in Automation. We are managing more than 130 hospitals.
So we believe that we are well equipped to govern sustainable growth, becoming truly a leading company on a global level. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Matteo, for your presentation. I hand over to the Vice President for his contribution. So next slide. So over to you, Andrea Mora.
Good morning. I'm Executive Vice President of the company. It's a great pleasure for me to show you the figures. The CEO, the GM, illustrated the strategies. Now it's time for figures. We are always looking far ahead, also in terms of investments. I'm going to present the pro forma financial data because we performed important transactions in terms of acquisitions with the acquisition of Evolucare in 2023 and in 2022, and also the dismissal of Argentea in 2024. So the data that you can see today are really satisfactory.
We have a total revenue amount of EUR 480 million that's pro forma, including Evolucare entirely and Argentea Evolucare, which leads to almost EUR 97 million of EBITDA with a percentage of 20.3%. As you know, in 2022, Tesi Group contributed only for a year in our financial statements. This is consolidated for 12 months for a total of EUR 30 million and EUR 8.7 million of EBITDA. In 2023, we have Evolucare that was accounted for consolidated entirely EUR 51 million and more than EUR 80 million in terms of EBITDA. So it was an exceptionally good year that allowed us to reach results in our strategic business plan. We're projected to 2024. Next slide. As mandatory in compliance with the international financial principles since it was listed on the stock exchange, the financial statements are to be approved.
It requires the separation of everything that was then sold, especially Argentea.
So the data that you will see, which are highlighted in yellow, if you can see the slides. So these are the data of the actual financial statements consolidating the results of Argentea. As you can see, the results of Argentea accounting for EUR 16.3 million in terms of revenues and more than EUR 6.9 million of EBITDA that leads us to have an 18.4% of EBITDA margin. Whereas considering the bigger part of Evolucare, we reached 19.5% with EUR 90 million EBITDA. So our companies this year eliminating Argentea, as you will see it in the financial statements, would have a financial statement of EUR 463 million of pro forma results with EUR 90.2 million of EBITDA. This is very good because all the EBITDA is reported by SOP.
Next slide. So the data that you will see now are the actual data of the financial statements with the establishment of Argentea.
So we have a total turnover of EUR 433 million in terms of revenues versus EUR 347 million of financial year 2022, which was adjusted for a correct evaluation. So here again, we separated Argentea. Please notice the major growth in revenues in terms of percentage, more than 25% of which more than 11.4% was organic growth. So we are well above the average of the market, any average of the market. The growth is mainly due to the extension of Software ASA, which grew by 61.8%. We have the full impact of Tesi. In 2023, it has had an impact of 12 months and a five-month of Evolucare. For the care, we see a slight decrease in the revenues, which was to be expected because a number of tenders and interventions due to the pandemic came to an end.
And also because some of the tenders, we decided not to proceed. The other ASA, which are only the two minor ASAs, ICT and automation, they are performing, although only +12% in terms of revenues. So double-digit increase. EBITDA grows by 54% with an EBITDA margin of 19.5%. It's adjusted. Every year, we have to adjust the EBITDA. Let me remind you because it includes R&D, where you just have costs to be accounted for. Then software is dominating here because it reaches a 29.6% EBITDA margin as compared to care, which is an ASA with a minor profitability of 4.3%, whereas other ASAs continue to grow with 15.6%. Throughout the year, we are proud to say that we invested in R&D more than EUR 52 million. So it was invested with an increase of EUR 24 million versus the previous year.
The year is also impacted by taxes, higher taxes compared to the previous year, and interest payable, more than EUR 10 million of interest due to increasing debt that we entered into for the transfers of units. But also, this is due to the increase in tax rates. The board of directors decided to follow continuity and to distribute 0.50% also this year per share. Now, let us look at the breakdown for the individual strategic areas. You see that software that started from 40% of incidents increased to 55%. So the revenues from software have become the number one ASA, whereas care increased to 35% and minor ASAs increased to 10%. So we have SBA software, which is strongly impacted by the contribution of Evolucare, EUR 51 million, and Tesi, more than EUR 23 million from the beginning and also from the persecution of consequentials.
As for the Care unit, we've already said that it's slightly decreasing, declining as compared to the other areas due to COVID and to the other effects. As to Automation, here we have a 20% increase, and also ICT is growing by 5.2%. If these figures, as you see them, are reported on a pro forma Care, including Evolucare, we would have EUR 463 million of revenues, a lot of which is due to software SBA. Next slide, please. As far as EBITDA is concerned, here again, we can see the same effect. So a major increase in the pro forma figures, which always include Evolucare. And in all the slides that you will see, this one and the previous one included Argentea is not included in order to be compliant with IFRS 5 principles.
You see that EBITDA margin is increased remarkably from 14% of 2022 -1 9.5% of 2023 on a pro forma basis. As a result of Evolucare, you see Tase is reported for completely, which indicates that the efforts and investments made in order to become more and more a software company and consolidate our position on a European level is leading us to achieve major margins that are perfectly online aligned to the market. As far as the financial situation is concerned, we can say that we had a major increase in investment due to the acquisition of Evolucare, but also linked to R&D. Our net working capital is affected by the acquisitions that we carried out, acquiring companies with major revenues like Evolucare and Tase. We certainly have an impact due to their position in terms of net working capital, a slight increase of equity and reduction of payments in general.
Distribution of dividends, an impact of EUR 14.4 million. Also, here, we consider that the acquisition of the minority shares of Argentea. Argentea held us up to 90%. The financial debt, as I said before, suffers from the investment of the group and the exits. In 2024, we had a cash-in of EUR 99 million resulting from the acquisition of Argentea that certainly contributed to the improvement of the financial situation of the group and allows us to look at 2024 with a positive view. Now, the net debt bridge is represented here on this slide. It's mainly affected by EBITDA, approximately EUR 80 million. These are the data derived from the financial statements. EUR 80 million of tangible CapEx, a weight of EUR 84 million of the net working capital.
If we consider that we had more than EUR 90 million increase in revenues, we can say that we are perfectly happy due to dividends, interest payable of EUR 13.2 million, and then a major acquisition of Evolucare accounting for EUR 72 million. Our net financial position reaches EUR 365 million approximately, of which EUR 274 million are due to banks, which has had a positive impact of things to the collection from Argentea. So we can say that the net financial position, if we had collected Argentea within the 31st of December, would have led us to EUR 366 million with an important incident on the covenant, which would have led us to reach a 2.3 of index between EBITDA and net financial position in terms of ratio.
Whereas we are now at 3.2% on pro forma EBITDA because, as you know, we consider Evolucare for the whole year, which means that we are largely below our level of compliance with the covenant, which is 3.50%-3.75%. We are now at 2.3% in terms of ratio, considering the collection from Argentea. Next slide. So today, we can say that the transformative effect of the transformation due to Evolucare, as the GM showed, are visible and will be even more impactful in 2024. The dismissal of the sale of Argentea, which was certainly profitable as an area, allowed us to have major results and EUR 99 million of cash-in of the EUR 93 million. So we have capital gain that will be reported in our financial statements as of 2024. So we have a major organic growth reported here.
The target that we predicted in 2022 indicated that total revenues of about EUR 500 million, an EBITDA margin of 17%, and financial covenant compliance. As far as revenues are concerned, we are already at EUR 463 million considering Tesi and Evolucare and excluding Argentea. As the CEO said, we will be a lot far above EUR 500 million in 2024. As to EBITDA margin, we are 19.45%. We are at EUR 90 million. So this will certainly be confirmed. And especially, it will be confirmed by a major contribution by other software, by the software unit. The covenants are already complied with, and they will be even more so due to the relation from Argentea. So the company, I would say, is completely healthy.
And so you see the data in a nutshell. Today, we have a company with EUR 463 million revenues, more than EUR 90 million EBITDA.
Since 2019 until 2023, we have invested over EUR 300 million in M&A. Our net financial position is very close to EUR 266 million thanks to Argentea cash-in. Solid growth in both revenue and EBITDA and EBITDA margin. We have a very strong strategy, which has restated how our industry sees us as protagonists. Protagonists not only in Italy, but also in Europe. Then, as already mentioned, we are a reference player both in Italy and also in Europe. Thank you very much, indeed. Back to the previous slide. Then I hand over to our Investor Relations manager for the Q&A.
Thanks, Andrea. I hand over to Lorenzo Giollo, who will manage the Q&A session. Next slide will be used as a background during the Q&A session.
Good morning. Welcome also on my side. I have received some questions.
I would like to remind all attendants that it's possible to submit questions until the end of the event using the tab that you find in the lower part of your screen. First question to Executive Vice President Mora. Investment plan, EUR 500 million revenues with EUR 85 million EBITDA. Can you confirm that you want to reach EUR 100 million of EBITDA in 2024? You have already partly answered to that question. But maybe, Andrea, you can add some details.
As already mentioned, we will exceed EUR 500 million euro EBITDA. With the current EBITDA margin at 19.5%, we are confident we will exceed EUR 100 million euro EBITDA.
Okay. We can keep the microphone open for the next answer. We are talking about economics. What about ASA Care? Is it still going to decrease? Maybe we should ask about that to Matteo Santoro. So minus 3% ASA Care.
Is it still going to continue ASA plus the 61.9% this year? Is software still going to increase in 2024? What are the targets and the guidelines for growth here?
First of all, considering software, we have recorded plus 61%. For sure, there will be more growth, as the CEO and Vice President said. Software, as a strategic business area, is central. We have had Argentea sale. We have now focused on software for care. We don't expect it to decrease in the future thanks to the technologies, which allow us to reduce conversation times in a sector where labor cost is crucial. So conversation time will be reduced, and this will have a benefit on profitability. Okay. Is there another question?
Yes. This is a question to the Vice President. Can you provide further details about the CapEx in the next few years?
CapEx, as already said, are all focused on software development in e-medicine, AI. And we want to maintain the same level of CapEx we have today, focusing on technology and software.
Great. Thanks, Andrea. Next question to you. Is there an estimate that cash collection time can improve and hence favor cash generation?
Yes, for sure. Payment terms abroad are shorter than they are in Italy. We have a large volume of revenues and EBITDA abroad. And this reflects how the path we have started some years ago will be further brought forward.
Thanks. Now, a question to the CEO. Debt is now more contained. Do you have M&A operations in your time horizon, or are you just focusing on integration and commercial growth? Fausto.
As already mentioned earlier in our plan, we don't envisage important M&As. It's obvious that we will do something.
There will be transactions to complete the overall plan. There might be some product-specific takeovers, but we don't have significant M&As or extraordinary transactions in our plan. The topic we see is leveraging on the system, leveraging on our organization to provide always better services and products with the idea of marketing solutions through worldwide networks. This is what we have started to do, and we deem it can start to give its results this year and even more in the next few years. This is our guidance.
There's one more question about the tenders. I submitted it to our general manager. Are new tenders envisaged based on the Italian recovery and resilience plan? And what about the backlog? So what are the amounts of the agreements that you are going to execute in the next few years? Matteo Santoro, General Manager.
When we talk about the Italian Resiliency and Recovery Plan , we talk about large tenders that are managed through the central procurement entity concept. Resources have already been allocated. Some tenders are already in execution. Most of all in the field of e-patients record for the backlog. I don't have this figure with me right now. We have agreements in the pipeline, revenues for EUR 80 million-EUR 90 million end of 2023. I don't have real-time data, but we can let you have it.
Okay. There's one more question, which has already been answered. It's a breakdown for 2024 over the various strategic business areas. If there are no further questions, we just wait for a couple of minutes, and then we close this presentation.
There's one question to the Vice President about cash generation in 2024. The question has to be framed in the context of a concept of public tenders.
Andrea, can you expand on concept tenders and what the GPI are doing?
As to concept tenders, as already explained, so there is a time lag between provided services and the time when our company can issue invoices. There will be an improvement in cash generation during 2024 anyway.
Okay. There seem to be no further questions. Then we close the meeting by thanking everybody for attending GPI Capital Markets Days with presentation of the financial year 2023 results. You can contact the investor relation manager if you want to have additional details. There will also be communications about the next few days, the next meeting with investors. The day after tomorrow, we have a meeting with Akros. Thank you very much, indeed, for taking part, and have a nice day.