Good afternoon, this is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the GVS First Quarter 2025 results web call. All participants are on listen-only mode, and after the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Massimo Scagliarini, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon and good morning to everybody, and welcome to the first quarter presentation of the GVS Group. A quick snapshot on the number: first quarter sales at EUR 107 million, + 3.2% versus the previous year. In reality, this number is definitely higher. We had an exceptional event in Monterey that delayed EUR 2 million sales, plus Boreas start only in February when we were expecting this in January. Later on, Guido and Marco will give you more detail. This + 3.2% was expected more aggressive, but we are already recovering this. Apart from this exceptional issue on the second quarter, we are definitely already on the right path. A nice growing of the EBITDA, + 6.1% versus the previous year, but I believe now you nearly use it to this.
We do our work very hard, and we keep working in the right direction. We are with the margin in the first quarter at 24.1%, so we improved 70 basis points. Of course, you know that the job is not finished here. By the end of the year, we are expecting another important step. Nice improvement in the net income also, + 21.6% versus the previous year. We reached EUR 12 million, and we bring the marginality to 11.2% from 9.5% of the last year. Again, we are working in the right way to keep improving our profit and our sales. Net financial position at EUR 275 million, and this brings our leverage at 2.5%, of course, post-merger and acquisition. Let's see now some other detail.
As you can see, Earth, Air, and Life science 6.1%, but in reality, definitely higher if we consider the exceptional condition that I just mentioned to you before. Suffering on the energy mobility, but this is the actual situation. We believe we can improve something during the year, but it is really day-by-day type of prediction. Safety, 4.9%, not the 9% that we were expecting, but again, we are back on trend on the second quarter. Definitely very confident to keep the result as we expect. EBITDA from EUR 24.3 million to EUR 25.8 million, + 61%, and a very nice 24.1% versus the previous year, 23.4%. The 70 basis points improvement. Net financial position, I believe here is very clear that we close the year with a leverage of 2.1%. We had in January the M&A of the Boreas project, and this brings us to the 2.5%.
Again, our target is to be under 2% by the end of the year, and we are definitely in the right path to reach this result. Now, I will leave the speech to Guido that will give you some more detail and insight for this first quarter.
Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone. Let's comment now on the various analysis of the sales. The 3.2% yearly growth, reported growth, is impacted, positively impacted, EUR 0.9 million by positive effects, and that resulting in a growth excluding effects of 2.3%. This is a mix between the volume, EUR 1 million of volume effect, and EUR 1.5 million of net price effect. Here it's important to stress that, as Massimo said, this number has been affected by two extraordinary events. The first one is that the Haemonetics experiment that we acquired, as we were expecting, just contributed for two out of the three months of the quarter, simply because the closing occurred in mid-January. Then we had a couple of weeks just for preparation and to put the integrated perimeter at full speed.
That resulted in a contribution on only two-thirds of the full contribution in the quarter by the hemolytic perimeter. The second is linked to a production delay that we had in our Mexican plant of Monterey. This amounted for approximately EUR 2 million of sales that we are confident to recover across the year. Now moving to the next slide, you see the contribution by division and by subdivision. This is the first time we report with the new subdivision of the Healthcare and Life Science, so the MedTech, the Transfusion Medicine, and Life Science. Just as a recap, in the MedTech subdivision includes the former business of liquid and air and gas, plus the business of the membrane that was previously included in the laboratory segment, and except the business of STT.
STT was previously included in the liquid, now is part of the Transfusion Medicine together with the newly acquired business of Haemonetics. Finally, the life science part, the remaining life science part, is equal to the former laboratory segment less the membrane that has been transferred to the MedTech. The rationale has been already commented during last call, but basically, we want to reflect what is the final channel, final end channel, sales channel of this division with the MedTech that is dedicated to the professional B2B customer, the life science that is consumable, laboratory consumable sold to more B2C type of sales, and finally, the Transfusion Medicine that will include everything that is related to blood transfusion worldwide. Now, let's comment on the performance.
Let's start from the Tech, that is the contributor, largest contributor for Healthcare and Science, and the decrease of 1.7% is entirely linked to this production delay I mentioned before in the Monterey. Otherwise, we would have expected a growth in the division. The Transfusion Medicine is, of course, positively impacted by the Delta perimeter due to the M&A impact. In terms of life science, please note that going forward, given the life science is a tiny business compared to the rest of the division, we will have some volatility across the quarter. However, when we're going to see it on a yearly basis, of course, this quarterly spikes we expect that will stabilize. Safety is up almost 5%. Also, in that case, Massimo mentioned that there is an order that came just across the two quarters that will be reflected in the second quarter.
In the second quarter, we see a very positive trend to this business. We expect that on the first half basis, the high single-digit growth will be confirmed, while the mobility is still suffering from the weak automotive market dynamics. I will now leave the floor to Marco.
Okay, thanks, Guido. Hello, everybody. Let's start with the EBITDA variance analysis, Q1 2025 versus last year, Q1 last year. We already said that the EBITDA margin went up by 70 basis points. I want to add that we went up by 70 basis points, notwithstanding the dilutive impact of the acquisition. The impact of the acquisition has been negative in terms of EBITDA margin by around 70 basis points, which means that if you look at the same perimeter of last year, we improved the performance by around 140 basis points. The EBITDA margin without Boreas would have been 24.8%. Let's look at the variance analysis of EBITDA in absolute terms. We are up from EUR 24.3 million to EUR 25.8 million, so more or less EUR 1.5 million, of which EUR 500,000 is coming from Boreas and EUR 1 million is coming from the old perimeter.
The dilutive impact of Boreas is shown by the 0.8% negative mixed impact. As for pricing, I want to highlight that as for pricing, we are perfectly aligned with last year's performance and with our guidance, which means that we are increasing pricing year over year by around 1.5%. Now, let's go to the next chart. I want to focus on the right side of the slide. The adjusted net income excluding the FX impact, which is mainly a non-cash item related to the US dollars to the loans in US dollars from GVS SP to the controlled companies which funded the acquisitions. You see that we are going from EUR 9.9 million to EUR 12 million, 21.6% increase, and as a percentage of revenues, we go from 9.5% to 11.2%.
The improvement is mainly related to the improvement of EBITDA, but it is also generated, a portion, around $500,000, is generated by lower interest paid to the banks. As you know, we are deleveraging, so we have a positive impact also on the financial charges. As for the adjusted net income that you look on the left side, you see the figures are impacted by the FX, which was highly positive last year in 2023, positive of EUR 4 million, and negative this year, EUR 5.7 million. If you want to have a fair approximation of the trend of the business, you should look at the right side of the slide. As I already said several times, this figure gives you a very good approximation of our ability to generate cash. More or less EUR 12 million in a quarter, it is around EUR 4 million by month. Now, cash.
Let's go to the net financial position. You see, net financial position, we closed the year with EUR 220 million, roughly EUR 219.8 million. We made the acquisition. The impact on the financial position of the acquisition is around EUR 55 million. If you make the sum of the two, of the net financial position at the end of December and of the M&A, you end up with EUR 274.5 million. This is the, let's say, the net financial position at the end of the year restated after the acquisition. It's not by chance that we end up with a net financial position at the end of the quarter, which is roughly, again, EUR 275 million, which means that our net financial position was flat during the first quarter because we generated more or less EUR 10 million-EUR 12 million from the operating business. Our stock went up by around EUR 12 million.
This is the stock, non-Boreas stock. You see Delta Network in case is mainly that stock. We generated cash. The cash was absorbed by the increase in the stock. This is something which you already saw last year and the year before. Last year, in the first quarter, our net financial position was EUR 2 million worse than the end of the previous year. We have more or less the same impact this year, which means that we are perfectly aligned as for the net financial position with our guidance. We confirm that the leverage ratio at the end of the year is going to be lower than 2, which means that we are starting to generate cash already in the second quarter. We expect more or less EUR 10 million of cash generated in the second quarter. Now back to Massimo.
Yes. We thought it was important to give you some update on the tariff, even if every day is changing. I would say that today everyone is less stressed by the tariffs. Nevertheless, for us, tariff, as we have mentioned many times, represents an opportunity. This is because we have a very nice consolidated production footprint in the U.S. Tariff will allow us to grow our business in the U.S. The tariff actually in place, so what is existing right now, if we do not do anything, is related just to a very small amount of product that we send from Italy to the U.S. and will account for 50 basis points on the whole year. Again, if we do not do anything, we do not increase price, we do not move machine into the U.S. Okay, and we are still at the window.
Right now, as you have seen, tariffs are already in, but our EBITDA is moving in the right direction and is improving day after day. Just to make it clear to everybody, because we received a lot of questions, Mexico is not impacted. Our type of production is not impacted by tariff for the USMCA compliant products. We are not affected by tariffs in Mexico. Guidance, fully conferred. We are moving in the right direction, mid-high single digit. Again, I know that the two exceptional events that we had in this quarter might have surprised you, but they have already been recovered in the second quarter, and this is our visibility. Adjusted EBITDA, again, improvement of 150-250 basis points, and leverage ratio below 2. I believe we have finished, so we are more than happy to move to the Q&A section.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To enter the queue for questions, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side of your screen. When announced, please click Continue on the pop-up window. If you are connected in audio only, please press star and one on your telephone. The first question is from Anna Frontani of Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. I have only one question because I think there was some lost in translation here. Can you please clarify how much of that growth, the 3.2%, is actually like for like and how much is linked to M&A? Also, please, if you can touch on the topic of the intercompany sales related to M&A techs, please.
Okay. I think I already spent a few words, but Guido, do you want to give him some more or Marco? I do not know.
Okay. Okay. Anna, thanks for the question. Calculating the like-for-like growth rate can be misleading, is misleading. I will explain to you why. You remember that last year, GVS was selling blood filters to Haemonetics. Haemonetics was buying the blood filters from GVS and making and selling the whole blood sets, which means that in order to calculate the like-for-like growth rate, I should adjust 2025 sales by doing two things. I should remove the sales to third parties generated in 2025 by the acquisition, but I should add back the intercompany sales of the blood filters.
Honestly, if you ask me and if you measure me through the like-for-like growth rate, I'm very happy about that because it means that if I'm bad at managing my working capital, which means if I increase the intercompany sales of blood filters from one division of GVS to another division, the division we have just acquired at GVS, I have a very good increase in the like-for-like growth rate. Honestly, our job is to decrease the working capital. Our job is to decrease the stock. We want to decrease the intercompany sales of blood filters. If we do that, if we decrease our working capital, if we decrease our intercompany sales, we decrease also the like-for-like growth rate. That is why Giorgio and Massimo, they were not calculating and sharing the like-for-like.
They said, "We gave you a guidance." The guidance says in terms of sales, mid-high single digit, which is more or less 7%-8%. They said, "We are aligned with that guidance. The only reason why we are not at 7%-8% in the first quarter is due to two very precise events." The fact that Boreas start in February and Boreas, each month, the incremental sales from Boreas are EUR 2.5 million, which means 2% growth. Guido Massimo said also, "We had a specific issue in a plant, in a Mexican plant, and we were not able to deliver EUR 2 million of orders, which we are going to deliver in the second quarter. EUR 2 million of orders not delivered is again 2%." It means that due to two specific events, instead of posting or reporting 7% of growth, we are reporting 3%.
Replacing that thinking, reasoning with the like-for-like growth is technically wrong. I hope I was clear, Anna. I know it's quite complicated.
Yes. Thank you very much. It was perfect.
You're welcome.
The next question is from Emanuele Gallazzi of Equita.
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for the presentation. I have, let's say, three questions. The first one is on the safety division up mid-single digit. You clearly mentioned an expected reacceleration of the business starting from the second quarter. Can you just discuss a little bit more about the first quarter dynamics and how do you see the demand evolving starting from the second quarter? The second one is just a little bit more color on the exceptional event in Monterey and just a clarification if you expect these EUR 2 million to be fully recovered in the second quarter. The third one is a very quick one. Can you just remind us the euro-dollar exchange rate embedded in your guidance? Thank you.
Okay. Safety, again, it's not a question of sales. The order book is full, and we are moving at the same speed of last year, so we are very happy. It's just that one order for one big customer has been delivered the first of the first day of the second quarter instead of the last day of the first quarter. That is only the difference. No problem on the book, on the order book, and that's why we are so confident to recover everything in the second quarter. Monterey, I will give you more color. I don't know how much you know about mold injection, but we had two molds broken, and these two components were critical for Reynosa for the delivery to be brown. That delayed the delivery to Reynosa.
If you are missing the two components, you cannot complete the full set, and that means that you cannot deliver the final product. The mold has already been adjusted, and we are back, and we are recovering the delay. It is just a kind of a chain event that one small thing with a very low value has impacted something with a very high value. Of course, we have already launched the doubling of these specific molds so that we will not be back in this situation in the future. The last question for the effects is to you, Marco.
Yes. EBITDA guidance implies effects, euro-dollars, 1.10. As for the cash, you should anyway take into consideration that we have hedged 75% of the US dollar money we cash in. The hedge rate is 1.08. We do not expect any significant impact on the cash generated.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
The next question is from Matteo Bonizzoni of Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes, thank you. I have two questions. Can you provide a flavor on the revenue's evolution over maybe April and maybe expectation for May, if you want? Can you confirm that net of intra group collision eliminations, let's say, you should have a delta perimeter impact on terms of revenues for the full year in the range of EUR 30 million, EUR 30+ million , let's say?
Okay.
I lost the first question you were going to say?
The revenues in April and May.
A trading update for the first part of the quarter, just to understand the direction in terms of sales after this 3.2%, bridging this 3.2% to the guidance for the year now requires, as you say, an acceleration, which will be gradual, just to, if you want, to elaborate on the start of the second quarter.
April is already gone. May is nearly gone. I would not have been so optimistic in presenting you this first quarter if I am not solid that we are moving in the right direction. I do not know, Guido, if you want to add anything.
We can just say that so far we are aligned to our guidelines in terms of this first half and a half, first month and a half. Of course, there are still 45 days. Of course, a lot of work to be done, but.
The second question was about the incremental sales coming from Boreas. We said between EUR 25 million and EUR 30 million on a yearly basis, which means EUR 2.5 million per month. That is why we said before we lost one month's sale, 2%, because we lost EUR 2.5 million of Boreas sales due to the delay of the first invoice. 2.5 x 12 is 30 .
Just for avoidance of that, we have referred several times to Boreas when we talk about Haemonetics whole blood business. This is just because internally this is called Project Boreas.
You're right. You're right.
For GVS, just to create confusion. Project Boreas means Haemonetics. It's something that we do.
Apologize.
Yeah. So everyone is on the same page.
Yes.
Thank you.
The next question is from Christian Hinderaker of Goldman Sachs.
Yes. Good afternoon all, and thanks for the opportunity. My first one is maybe tackling the organic question a bit differently, and apologies if you've just covered it, but what was the Haemonetics revenue contribution in the quarter, and how do we think about that? I think you'd said EUR 37 million for the full year with an H2 weighting. I guess specifically what I'm looking for is in our M&A line, what is incremental this year that was not in place last year in terms of the perimeter? And maybe that is the Boreas, but.
The question is sales generated by the new acquisitions this year, February plus March, EUR 10 million. Okay? That's just sales of the blood cells to third parties. And this EUR 10 million is not including the intercompany sales of blood filters. So, EUR 10 million is 2025. Last year, we sold blood filters, which are now intercompany. I do not remember last year's intercompany sales of blood filters. If you want, we can give you the answer after the call.
Thank you. No, that's clear. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Isacco Brambilla of Mediobanca.
Hi. Good afternoon, everybody. Just a quick follow-up on my side. This is on second quarter. Considering all your answers above, is it fair to expect second quarter top-line growth to fall within the range of earlier guidance? Just a clarification on that. So, mid to high single-digit growth on a reported basis.
Yeah. I would say yes. Of course, we do not have full visibility where the exchange rate will go, okay? Because, as you know, in the first month, we had a negative impact of the exchange rate. Depending on the exchange, but on FX, of course, we are fully aligned with our guidance. Of course, the FX, depending on how it will evolve in the next 45 days, can change the reported, but not the.
Consider just to give you some color. In terms of the transfusion medicine for the U.S. market, we had to certify ourselves in every U.S. state before that we could start selling the product in every state. That has required time. We are mentioning that we have lost the first month of January, but even in February, we were not full speed. There are a lot of regulatory activity that, of course, are affecting the initial quarter. We are gaining speed. We have now all the certification, and we are moving in the right direction. Another aspect, I was speaking with my general manager here for Italy the other days, and we were discussing because we will need eventually to return to the seven-on-seven production here in Italy. These are all positive signals from my point of view.
Thanks.
The next question is a follow-up from Christian Hinderaker of Goldman Sachs.
Thank you for fitting in a follow-up. I thought the tariff comments were quite interesting, so I wanted to come back to those, if I may. Can I just confirm that when you say, "Assuming no remedial actions," that that implies, as it stands, you've not taken any of those actions? I appreciate it's a fluid environment. Maybe just on that point with regard to the regulatory approvals in state, should we think of that as a bit of a defensive sort of positioning for your business? I suppose in January, February time, those approvals, you might have been maybe facing less of a queue versus now if everyone's rushing to get approvals given the tariff situation.
Okay. In terms of tariffs, our actual EBITDA of the first quarter reflects exactly our situation. We have not done any type of activity. We have done price increasing as we were scheduling, but that is the normal price increasing that we do every year. This is exactly the situation. We have not done anything special. Also, because we want to see and to settle down a little bit the dust to understand what is the reality and what we are talking about. Again, we are not too stressed because it is not a big impact, and we are recovering EBITDA from other reorganization and other important points. It is not a stressing point for us in this moment. We do not see the tariffs that might affect in any way our guidance on the EBITDA. I believe I gave you the picture.
I would just stress that, of course, remedial action, we are very clear in our mind what this remedial action should be, can be as soon as there are better visibility. The two things that we mentioned here, the pricing fees on the location, I think that are, of course, in our cards. Of course, we're going to decide when to activate them as soon as we have reached full visibility on the tariff scenario.
The second question, I lost it. Can you repeat?
Sure. You mentioned a moment ago that you had a few weeks' delay with regulatory approvals state by state. Presumably, all of that was pre-tariffs. If, say, there are 100 other companies trying to seek said approvals next month all at once, might that take them longer? That was sort of how I'm thinking about it.
No, no, I do not think so. This is a very standard approval if you are a healthcare company that you need to have if you want to sell in a single U.S. state. Every U.S. company, healthcare U.S. company that is selling the U.S. market already has this state approval. For us, it was new because we were not selling finished product on the U.S. market directly. We had to go through this regulatory approval. It is even not related to the FDA. It is a very specific pharmaceutical and medical device type of approval that every state will give to you. If you are an existing healthcare company, you do not need to require this because you already have.
This is the fact linked to the fact that it was an asset deal. We were not buying a company. If you buy a company, the company you buy has already all these licenses in place. We were just buying product assets, and we needed to reapply for all these licenses. It is just an administrative type of work, but it requires some weeks of time. On the other side, the beauty and what we have already told several times is that the beauty, the positive of the asset deal is that from an operational side, it will be quicker to extracting just synergies because we are not buying a plan. We are just integrating assets. There is a flip coin that is some slowdown on the administrative side.
Just again, to give you some color, exiting from the government certification or the state certification, even an existing customer, because yes, nothing was changing because Covina was still Covina, the plant where we produce solution, exactly the same. The processes are exactly the same. The products are exactly the same. For an existing customer, we were a new company because the name had changed. They had to go through all the approval for a new supplier. Even if everything was the same as before, the name changed. We were obliged to go through all these approvals. This is what has slowed down the starting of the sales. All this is already on our back. We are moving now quickly towards our objective.
Thank you all. Appreciate the color and the clarity.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side of your screen or press star and one on your telephone. For any further questions, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side or press star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Excellent. Thank you very much. See you at the next quarter presentation.
Thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
Bye.
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