Gedeon Richter PLC (BUD:RICHTER)
12,840
+120 (0.94%)
At close: May 5, 2026
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Earnings Call: Q4 2025
Feb 26, 2026
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Gedeon Richter's conference call about fourth quarter 2025 results. My name is Róbert Réthy. I'm Head of Investor Relations at Richter, and it's my pleasure to welcome our speakers today, Gábor Orbán, our Chief Executive Officer, and László Kovács, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, let me just quickly walk you through the usual technical details. We will be following presentation slides, what we published this morning and what is downloadable at our website, gedeonrichter.com. The formal presentation will be followed by the usual Q&A session where you will have a chance to ask questions either using the raise your hand functionality of Microsoft Teams or if you put your question into the chat box. The call is recorded.
Finally, let me draw your attention to the cautionary statement on the last presentation slide. This is about the forward-looking statements which may be included in today's discussion. With that, let me hand it over to Gábor and László, who will present the details of the last three months and the full year. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining this call today. Before we dive into the details, allow me to make a few high-level remarks on 2025, which was a challenging year to live through, and it was marked by geopolitical risks throughout the year, including the prospects of tariffs and trade war generally, and the efforts of the new U.S. administration to reduce prices of innovative drugs in the United States. The dollar was also much weaker than previously, and that in conjunction with the HUF being stronger made our lives quite a bit more difficult, generally weighed on sentiment in the industry, which as you know, is long U.S. dollars, so it cannot be supported by weak dollar.
The year-end brought very significant reliefs and positive changes to all of this. To begin with, the discussions around the pricing of innovative drugs settled at a level which is manageable, which meant that our partner, AbbVie, who have continued to do a tremendous job at making this drug known and available to a wide range of individuals in the U.S. AbbVie did not adjust their long-term guidance for this drug. I think that was a major event in November. It gave us, I think it had to give you also a lot of confidence around future cash flows in the next couple of years.
Secondly, we managed to extend the exclusivity period for Vraylar by an additional 6 months, which means that we have exactly 4 more years of the exclusivity period left to go. We have hoped throughout the years that this would be possible, but there was always the risk that it, for whatever reason, it couldn't be. I think the pricing out of that risk is a significant step also for us in terms of our future projections and strategic trajectory. Also, in the latter part of the year, sentiment around hormonal therapies changed enormously, and I cannot overstate the importance of this change in sentiment, both in the lay public, but also among medical practitioners and clinicians and regulators.
This is, this was made most explicit by the FDA commissioner, Dr. Martin Makary, who's been very vocal about his conviction that the Women's Health Initiative in the early 2000s was interpreted, or the initiative itself interpreted whatever data was available at the time, in an unfortunate manner, which prevented women in need of hormonal replacement from getting the care that they need. That change of sentiment and that change of attitude is now very clearly visible everywhere, in interviews, in books that are published, in articles, in discussions, conferences all over the place. Bad news for those who've been spending their time working on non-hormonal solutions to this, which have turned out to be a very limited way of addressing the problem.
Secondly, with estrogen becoming back in fashion, so to speak, we're extremely well positioned to have our new original compound, E4, brought to the market later this year. We look forward to that very much. With that, I will conclude those high-level remarks and move on to the numbers in 2025, which we are proud to report to you today, despite all the ups and downs and the generally very jittery environment that we operated in. We ended the year with a strong finish, outperforming the underlying profitability guidance that we gave you early in the year. Also, we managed to hit the adjusted guidance, the modified guidance for revenues.
The initial range of between HUF 2.3 billion and HUF 2.4 billion, we felt that there are downsides to this, and indeed we hit the lower end of that range. In the end, we are pleased with the performance of the company in terms of advancing toward the 20% underlying profit margin, which we have set as a target for 2030. We in fact, moved up by 2.4 percentage points along that curve. Pharma revenues grew by 8.2% to HUF 2.3 billion, and clean EBIT outperformed that rate almost twofold. EBIT advanced at a bit slower rate at 12%. We have below the line items that are not as rosy, including taxes and realized FX losses.
Our CFO, László Kovács, will give you more details on that. This was just a bookmark here from me to explain why EPS is down on the year, so meaning from 2024 to 2025. I'm especially proud of the fact that we have been able to make strong advances in protecting the environment and limiting our environmental footprint. The best way for us to do that is to move forward with electrification. There are two reasons why this helps. 1 is that efficiency of electric equipment is significantly higher than that of equipment using fossil energy, be it steam or gasoline or gas or otherwise. Secondly, it's much easier to, in fact, it's possible to make energy green when it's electricity. Fossil energy being made green is not possible.
Electricity can be made green in the sense that it can be collected from the sun, which we are doing increasingly, and it can be purchased as green energy. This is what this award was given to us for the renewable and electricity sourcing effort that we've made. All of this has added up to a very significant 14% drop in CO2 emissions within the Scope 1 and 2 target. Our ambition is to take it from the 2021 level down by 40% by 2030, and I'm very pleased with the improvement we have made in this regard in 2025. Moving on to a more detailed breakdown of the revenue dynamics.
It's important to note that we've been able to grow the business across regions, but this time, the same cannot be said for business units. We had a glitch in Q3 for Gen Med, which, on the year suffered a slight decline, while the innovative business really pulled hard and grew double digits. In fact, Vraylar outperformed our expectations and even AB's guidance. Women's Health moved up by 15%, which is a massive growth rate from an already high base. We've not only been able to ride the wave that I described to you as the positive vibes around hormone replacement and hormone therapies, but we've also been able to grow market share in these areas.
The impact of the exchange rate changes on revenues was broadly neutral in the end, the composition is shown here, and it's quite well, it covers up a positive contribution from the ruble and a negative contribution from the U.S. dollar. I want to remind you that we're hedging half of our U.S. dollar long position. It's a relatively well predictable cash flow, we can keep close to that 50% hedge ratio. It was a very good idea. Last year, we made money on the hedge, both on the carry, even more importantly, on the FX move. The naked exposure unfortunately collected losses, it's just the consequence of the dollar being extremely weak over the course of the past year.
I want to, before we move on to this one, I want to draw your attention to the exceptionally strong dynamic in Q4. 12.5% is not the run rate, is not the steady state growth rate of the business yet. This was partly due to the fact that we made shipments in the fourth quarter that we were supposed to make in the first quarter. There are many reasons, mostly to avoid stock outs that motivated these pre-shipments, including the ERP upgrade we had to do in the first two months of this year in our Hungary warehouse.
We had anticipated a limited throughput capacity for this warehouse, and so we sent ahead to distributors, a product in order to make sure that they don't run out of inventory. This is partly why Q4 was as strong as it was. This affected Women's Health as well as Gen Med. Both of these business units, in fact all of them, had a very strong Q4 and it brought the year to a very decent result. Like I said, Vraylar outperformed the initial guidance, grew double digits after all these years. 10 years after obtaining the registration, this is a magnificent performance.
Ex Vraylar also, there was some volatility within the year, in the end, we grew a decent 6.6% adjusted by exchange rate effects. Women's Health, our pride and joy, largest business unit and the fastest growing business unit, well, after bio. Women's Health advanced in a very confident manner. Broad-based, good uptake across the board. The amphola supply issues are now behind us. That really helps. Drovelis, an original product, the uptake is massive. Ryeqo being the only specific targeted oral therapy for endometriosis sees very good demand. We've continuously upgraded our peak sales estimation for Ryeqo.
Finally, Lenzetto, well, it just to tie it back to the point I made in the, in the upfront high-level remarks, Lenzetto is a very, very much sought-after product. We can hardly manufacture enough. We can, so not to worry. It's just, it just shows how the market has really recalculated, reassessed the value of this drug and hormone replacement generally. We're investing here in order to be able to provide larger quantities going forward. We have repurchased royalty revenues that I mean, royalty liabilities that we had previously. We made a strong bet on Lenzetto and estrogen replacement generally. The non-hormonal options for estet. Sorry.
The non-hormonal solutions for menopause are limited, have side effects that make it even more limited as a therapy, and they don't really work now that the views on hormones have, seem to change. These look like, with hindsight, the wrong bet. Hormones are the future. When it comes to bio, there are many positive news to report. Most of bio's last year was spent obtaining regulatory approval. The FDA visits, denosumab marketing authorization, tocilizumab submission. We're expecting to hear from the authorities any day and it was all centered around building the portfolio and putting on the final touches and all of those were extremely successful.
The last few months, we could even make the first revenues of denosumab shipments, and we're launching this product and rolling it out all over the place. This year should be about the ramping up of production and sales of these newly acquired product market authorizations. Good news also that Q4 saw the first positive reading from Bio in terms of underlying profitability. You shouldn't extrapolate from here. It's not going to be like that in the coming quarters, but it's definitely a good sign when it comes to our target of balancing the books for Bio by 2027. Genmed deserves a bit more explanation because Q3 indeed saw a glitch. Much of this was temporary, and we are now returning to more normal operations.
There was a stock out in one of our most profitable and one of our most well-established products. I'm really glad that our cost management has been able to adjust in a flexible manner so that even Genmed, along with all the other business units, have been able to improve profitability from the previous year. Now, with that, I will turn the microphone over to László Kovács, who will explain to you costs and below-the-line items. László, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Gábor. This time there are a few points we're discussing on operating expenses and the expenses in general. On operating expenses, we saw a clear normalization in the cost base in Q4, reflecting the cumulative impact of sustained cost discipline and the first tangible impacts of multi-year efficiency programs we started before. It's worth mentioning that COGS came back to normal level around 30% after being up to 33% in Q3 2025, bringing us to a gross margin on an annual level of 69.5%, which is a slight increase compared to the previous years. Total overall expenses decreased by 2% compared to 2024, this is the first time we can see this after the COVID pandemic hit us in 2020.
This is quite remarkable. If I just focus on the Q4, you see a sharp 18% decline of costs, which is to some extent a point that had to be proven from us that 2024 Q4 figures were the odd one out of the periods, and the normal run rate is much lower than above HUF 90 billion foreign incident quarter. Let's dig into the details of R&D costs, where you can see two major factors. One is decline of Q4 figures compared to 2024 by 20%. Now, it's the easier explanation because it was completely driven by Women's Healthcare. You might remember we had the big acquisition of Mithra in 2024, hitting our R&D in the very last quarter.
Now we know much better how to run the R&D business, and it's even more important that there were no surprises during the last quarter as spending came very close to the approximately EUR 20 million figure that we communicated to you back in November during the last investors call. If you focus on the overall amount of R&D, you can acknowledge an 8% decrease in the figures that was driven by biotechnology and CNS. Biotechnology, a period of elevated R&D investment has come to an end following the successful build-up of our portfolio, which we expect to enter the market in 2026. While in CNS, first of all, we collected some reimbursement from our co-development cooperation with AbbVie, which means a decline in the figures.
The other factor is that we went through all of our own portfolio, and we just stopped some of the projects that we thought that are not worth continuing from a commercial point of view. This decline should be considered as temporary because our portfolio is very strong and we expect to have an accelerated growth together with AbbVie in 2026. R&D represented only 10% of the sales figures in 2025, and we expect this number to increase in 2026. Sales and marketing expenses increased modestly only by 2%. This is reflecting the communicated efficiency program. Our conversion rates are starting to increase, what you can evidence, especially in the Women's Healthcare business.
On the other hand, in Genmed, we saw that there will be a big chunk of revenues that are gonna be missing in Q3 and in the year overall. We just made some actions to make sure that we have strict cost controls, and we only make the spendings in Genmed which were really necessary. I'm very proud to say that G&A expenses were finally lower than the base in 2025, although the decrease is only 1%. Q4 declined sharply by 23%, if we consider the favor of FX effects and the absence of M&A transactions, which were amounted to almost HUF 2 billion in 2024.
If we move on to the clean EBIT figures, as a cumulative result of all the factors our CEO highlighted and the expenses I tried to give you some background, we could see that the clean EBIT increased sharply in Q4, rising by 37% year-on-year, from a relatively low base we had in Q4 2024. That brought us to a number of HUF 305 billion, a historic height, and this represented a 14.3% of overall increase.
It's worth noting that the milestone income played only a negligible role, it's a difficult word to say, because in 2024 we had a high almost HUF 15 billion kind of one-off milestone income, while in 2025 we only booked HUF 0.3 billion. FX turned into a headwind as Gábor explained previously. It was this the very same effect in the bottom line. All together profitably increased significantly in all of the business segments with the exception of CNS in the last quarter, but this is only due to the fact of the milestones I tried to explain to you a minute before. Divims Healthcare delivered HUF 14.7 billion of profits on in the fourth quarter only, the overall growth rate is remarkable.
I wanted to highlight once more that we are very proud to report the very first profits of biotechnology, HUF 0.5 billion. This should be a temporary. The steady state business will come by the end of 2027. Profitability in biotechnology was driven by the very strong CDMO revenues that we anticipated in Q3, and thankfully we were able to record those numbers. Looking ahead, I just wanted to highlight that clean EBIT will not be evenly distributed throughout quarters in the upcoming year, meaning 2026, because of two factors. You can see the normal seasonality in the radar business and the CDMO business and the other factor is R&D where we may see some volatility between periods.
If you go to the next slide, you can see what were the factors below the line. The story didn't change from Q3, only the numbers, but they only changed by a bit. We recorded huge FX losses, HUF 25.3 billion, and the change compared to the previous years is even larger. It's actually a HUF 38 billion of a difference because we had gains in 2024, and now we have losses in 2025. This actually eats up all of the differences that we were able to build on a clean EBIT level. That's why you could see some red numbers on the first page on the earnings per share figure. Net interest and other income are positive. This is a recognition of what we can control as a company.
Taxes are a bit higher. The good news is that non-recurring and non-cash tax items increased, namely deferred tax expenses and some tax provisions we were required to build. These two items are aggregate, are adding up 3 percentage points on an aggregated level. Going into the details of our cash flows, we still have very, very robust free cash flows, nearly at the level of HUF 250 billion. Some of the operating cash flow generations were eaten up by the increase in net working capital, which was inevitable because of the increase of sales figures in the last quarters. The other factor was the FX losses I already mentioned, but we are happy to say that CapEx are 20% lower than in the previous years.
Based on this, or from this, HUF 250 billion, we were able to pay record high dividends in 2025, and we were only able to record some minor acquisitions compared to the previous years. Cash conversion cycle improved. It's still a bit above 300 days. We expect to have some further impact on that one. I'm handing back over to Gábor.
Looking ahead to 2026, we expect to see a high single-digit growth in both revenues and clean EBIT. My interpretation of this ambition is high single-digit growth in revenues and very high single-digit growth in clean EBIT. Remember our goal is to move non-CNS profit margins up, and we will continue making those advances every year, including in 2026. We have a number of efficiency projects that have been underway whose benefits are unclear in terms of timing. Not so much in terms of size, but in terms of timing, which is why they may or may not improve profitability in 2026, more than what's indicated here or less. That's the uncertainty that we are living with and we have to accept.
By 2030, our ambition is unchanged from what we told you at the Capital Markets Day last March. In neuropsychiatry, we look forward to steady performance from AbbVie, who announced the HUF 4 billion sales number in their last communication. We are looking forward to a readout of phase II data sometime in the middle of the year, and an actual start of the phase III study for RGH-932. We'll continue working on the other four compounds or projects rather, because not the lead compound has not been selected for all four yet. Those four projects in CNS are a priority, and we are working closely with that beyond that on those. In Women's Health, we are looking at very significant growth in the key brands.
The launch of Feel Revie, the new name for E4, menopause indication. We'll start by launching the product in Hungary and the narrower region, and then move on toward northern countries in the second half of the year. Remember, Feel Revie is already licensed to Fuji in Japan, and we are continuing the search for a partner in other geographies. In biotechnology, 2026 is the year when the portfolio that we have been building for a number of years will now start delivering tangible revenues. This is true for both denosumab and tocilizumab, the initial revenues at least. Also, ustekinumab will contribute here. When it comes to R&D in bio, we continue to watch this, monitor this closely in order to converge to the targeted, balanced budget break-even in late 2027.
In General Medicines, we expect things to normalize. We have a number of novel oral anticoagulants. As Laci sometimes says, it's a blood transfusion for General Medicines. New categories will boost our freshness index to above 10% into the low double-digit territory, low teens. The last thing I want to mention in this context is just the GLP-1 effort, where the announcement you saw will be followed by efforts to build this portfolio further. That's another task ahead for General Medicines. Finally, I want to come back to you and translate all of this to Capital Markets Day language.
If László Kovács can turn the page, you'll see the advances we've made so far in pushing non-CNS profit margins higher. We will continue that effort as we move further into 2026. The reason László Kovács didn't change the page so quickly was that he expected me to make a comment on the definition of underlying profitability. This is an important point to make because we're in line with the practice seen in other companies, mid-pharma and big pharma alike. Also due to the fact that these types of costs used to be handled differently in reporting. Namely, they were treated as CapEx, and they were amortized in that way. We are separating non-recurring transformation-related restructuring costs from clean EBIT starting 2026.
These types of expenses are expected to add up to around HUF 100 million in the period ahead until 2030. Most of them have to do with cloud-based software solutions, ERP upgrades, SAP to be very specific. They will not show up in clean EBIT going forward because they are not expected to last beyond 2030, because they will not be recorded as capital expenditure, and because this will bring us closer in line with other companies. Like I said, everybody treats these transformation-related costs similarly. That was it for future guidance, the floor is open to questions.
Yes, thank you very much, Gábor and László. Now we are open to answer questions. Please, if you have any questions to ask, then indicate your interest to raise your hand functions or.
Put your question into the chat box. I think the first question is going to come from Darius. Please go ahead.
Hi, Darius Saftoiu from Jefferies. Thank you for taking my questions. First question on the women's healthcare, which had a Q4 significant growth rate, and I was wondering if you could provide some color on the phasing effect there and the impact in 2026 from the pull forward.
Yes. The phasing effect, you could see a strong double-digit growth as Gábor highlighted that there are two brands, Ryeqo and Lenzetto growing by 75% in 2025. What we highlighted during the Capital Markets Day and before that, the three therapeutic sub areas, namely menopause, fertility, and endometriosis, we still believe that they are gonna grow double digit and contraception will be mid or low single digit growth altogether. That is what we expect from women's healthcare going forward.
Yeah. Thank you. A follow-up on GenMed. I've seen like you mentioned the recovery into Q4, and I was wondering what is your view on, like, the timing for the full recovery and expectations of tailwinds and headwinds into 2026 for GenMed?
Right. Full recovery will take time. It will be a protracted period, which will last most of this year. The fact that you see Q4 bouncing back to numbers recorded in Q1 and 2 is a bit misleading because of what I said about early shipments to anticipate Q1 technical difficulties and in order to avoid stock-outs. This should not lead you to believe that GenMed was able to bounce back so quickly and the entire problem is behind us. Most of it is, but some will take time to heal. A mid-single-digit growth for GenMed over the year is possible, but it will definitely not be Q1 going up and staying there. It will be more like returning to normal gradually.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. I don't see anyone else having any questions, so I would strongly encourage you to use this opportunity. There we come. Róbert, go ahead with your question.
Good morning, everyone. Congratulations on a very strong bounce back and, you know, great result for the year. Again, you've given some color. How do you want us to think about the progression of 2026? Anything you'd like to share with the market at this point in terms of the key divisions?
I think I gave you a lot of context, and thanks for your question, Robert. Good to see you. I gave you a lot of context around women's health. I wouldn't repeat what I said there. In bio, and affordable generally, the situation is more complicated because competition, especially from Asia, which includes India, but also South Korea, is heavy. The discounts potentially on some of these brands or compounds can be quite heavy. We have no way of forecasting what those will be. It's clear that the market has not really found steady state yet in terms of an equilibrium where the price and the willingness to supply are well aligned. There's a bit of uncertainty around this. That said, demand is clearly out there.
I mean, the highest impact in terms of elevating, or providing value to the healthcare system comes from biological drugs becoming available to a much broader share of the population. This is broadly the big picture. When it comes to CNS, I mean, it's much simpler, we have a very low market share still, AbbVie's got a very good, solid track record, we don't really worry about anything in CNS. I hope that gives you a bit further color.
Okay.
Brian
... that's very helpful. My second question is.
Mm
just tell us how you'd like shareholders to think about the M&A optionality on your balance sheet? Give us a bit of a headline. What are you looking for? What's out there?
Yeah.
What have been the results over the past couple of years, maybe in the context of what you've done so far?
Yeah, yeah, very good. Very good point, Róbert. Thanks for raising it. In fact, this chimes with what's written in the chat box about dividends, et cetera.
Mm
... because indeed, this is a topic we are looking at very closely. Laci explained to you cash generation and cash accumulation. Indeed, last year, even though we pursued several sizable opportunities, in the end we couldn't execute on any of the projects that we were working on. For the simple reason that the seller in the end pulled the offer. It's not like someone else took it or we couldn't agree on the terms. The seller decided to pull. There are targets out there where there's clear synergies and we have well analyzed and well-established transactions that we could pull the trigger on, and we couldn't last year.
We continue to want to keep the gunpowder dry for those if and when they become available and come back to the market. Now, most of these are in Women's Health. The question is, how does this affect our thinking on dividend? I think here we have to simply go back to what we told you on Capital Markets Day about the dividend framework. When cash accumulation reaches a certain threshold, we feel obliged to reflect that in the level of dividend proposed to the general meeting. We haven't made that proposal to the board yet, so it's a bit early to discuss this, but the general approach is what we told you last March. Indeed, the our failure to pull through on those transactions last year has these consequences.
Okay. That's very helpful and actually very, very shareholder friendly. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Robert. I mean, let's go first Bram, and then we answer the questions in the chat box. Bram, please go ahead.
Sorry, difficulties unmuting. Regarding one of the previous questions, you were talking about discounts on some APIs, and the discounts have been high, but the market's following an equilibrium. Should I interpret that as to mean that the risk of API costs is rather on the upside at this point? That's the first question.
Thank you, Bram. I'm sorry if I gave you a confusing description of the market. I didn't mean API.
No
I meant especially biosimilar pricing.
Ah
is highly volatile. Tenders are unpredictable. There's a lot of uncertainty around what pricing the market will eventually end up with. Consequently, what opportunities will be there, profitable opportunities will be there for us to take market share and provide patients with biologicals. This is what I meant.
That makes a lot more sense then. Thank you. The second question is regarding the OpEx, which you've already discussed, but I wanted to try and sum it up. You know, you talked about returning to normality in terms of the sales and marketing costs. Will, you know, 2025 be a good benchmark for sales and marketing costs for 2026? Similarly, on the admin costs, you've talked about initiatives that are going. You said there's uncertainty over when they're going to be delivered. I interpret what you were saying as more like that they may not appear already in 2026, but rather later on. Are these correct understandings?
Thanks for bringing that up, Bram, because returning to normality in one sense is, reasonable way to talk about what happened. In a different sense, I don't think our admin costs were normal in 2024 or 2023. They were not normal.
Oh, yes. Okay.
They were full. They were higher than they should have been, and it's addressing those admin costs are one way of improving profitability at the non-CNS level. Yes, Laci mentioned that in 2024 we had one-offs that are not showing up now, and in that sense, we are returning to normality.
Okay
... but the general idea and the broader context is that we are making a tremendous effort here to reap the benefits of the efficiency projects we're making across the board, and that includes COGS by rightsizing the infrastructure. It includes COGS by sourcing cheaper API, improving technologies. It includes the sales and marketing effort, yes. Not returning to normalcy, but converging to a sustainable way of operating. Admin, same thing. We are making extra effort to not to return anywhere, but to get to where we want to be in 2030, which is a better place, so that after the royalty stream stops coming, we have a sustainable and profitable and successful company.
Return to normal, it would be maybe something to forget entirely. Focus that on the comments of László Kovács when it comes to one-offs in 2024 that have to do with the Mithra acquisition. For example, admin costs related to that acquisition. R&D costs that fell in Q4. Fell in meaning that accrued in Q4, that were recorded in Q4, which were clearly a one-off, that were not going to be repeated quarter after quarter, but rather be more spread out and become more manageable.
Mm-hmm.
Does that make sense?
It, it does, certainly with the one-off costs that you were talking about. Okay, let's put it this way. I'm seeing the, you know, the OpEx costs in Q4 as unusually low, is how I'm thinking about it right now. You've framed the sales very sharply in the second half of the year. You know, I just want some comfort that, well, some clarity whether, you know, they really can, is the trend in the second half of the year in terms of, let's say sales cost, for example, really sustainable, or was that something you put in place given the difficulties that you were facing?
Mm
... General Medicine in particular?
Yeah. Fair point. Indeed, some of the cost component came from brute force response to the shortfall in General Medicine revenues. It would be foolish to deny it because no, this is the way we manage the sales and marketing ratio, and indeed, it had a contribution from this side. My firm conviction is that the improvements in our cost level are sustainable, and are for real, and they reflect a fundamental improvement in the capabilities, the control systems, and the knowledge level generally of the company.
Mm.
We'll continue working on that further because that's one way of getting to our 2030 targets. Another way is by fixing biotechnology.
Sure
... and this was all spelled out at Capital Markets Day, and that's exactly what we're doing in 2024. Q4 in 2025, sorry, in 2025, in Q4 2025 and onwards. Laci.
If you finally add another angle.
Okay
to sales and marketing costs.
Mm
just take a look at Women's Healthcare. We grew over 10%, close to 15% this year, it meant that our conversion rates from our sales and marketing spending became much better.
Mm
brute force there at all. It's, it's a combination. I wouldn't just.
Okay
... pick one specific quarter, rather I think the entire year gives a much better indication altogether on the rates what we are really focusing on. Maybe referring back to the Capital Markets Day, it's our aim, it's our goal, it's our obligation to make sure that the ex-CNS rates are improving, and that's one way to do that, to improve all these figures, the G&A, R&D, and sales and marketing. Nevertheless, R&D will be a key focus, so we will be put some bets on original research in women's healthcare.
Sure
... helps a bit to how to put together your model for next year. Okay, can take this discussion offline. Okay. One last question very briefly. You said that the delivery of clean EBIT is going to be choppy through the year. I would interpret that to mean a weaker first quarter, because of the ship-outs that you had from the Hungarian warehouses in the first quarter, and because of seasonality in CNS, but improving as we go through the year, especially with the new launches. Is this a fair way to think?
It's a fair summary, yes. Costs are not the driver in this volatility. Revenues are, and just like you said.
Okay. Fair enough. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Bram. Now let's try to address.
Please, yeah.
questions in the chat box before we move back to Darius. First one I think we covered, that was on dividends. The second is on Feel Revie, whether what kind of revenues we expect this year and next. I don't think this year is gonna be meaningful, as we just explained.
If we get the marketing authorization, which is still a decision from the European Commission to be made in the coming months, then we plan to launch it in relatively small countries in Q3, probably. We think revenues this year will be small, but then growing rapidly as we will be rolling out the launch to larger European markets towards the end of the year and next year. At this point, we don't wanna give a numerical guidance for such a near term.
We believe the longer term or sort of peak sales potential is a much more meaningful question and discussion which we think we're gonna address later on during the year as we plan to have a Women's Health specific investor call down the road. The third one is on R&D. I think that also to some extent answered already because we put into the presentation that we expect R&D to sales ratio to move up to 11% from 10%. Top line, it will be growing high single digits, so I think a good analyst can easily calculate the rough number for R&D charge in 2026. Definitely higher as László also explained.
I mean, we don't give a segmental breakdown here, but clearly what is driving R&D higher, that's the clinical projects in CNS with AbbVie and Women's Health, where we are building the pipeline, the original research pipeline. Finally the last question, I think that's.
Yeah, I'm happy to.
About the restructuring.
Yeah, I'm happy to take that. First of all, it's restructuring. It's not just IT, but some IT systems. It's not gonna be CapEx, it's gonna be OpEx because IFRS standards no longer allow us to capitalize these expenses because they are cloud-based solutions. It's not our own, it's someone else's, we need to account for that as they occur. That's why we will just separate them from the expense base. Once again, it's IT systems and other type of restructuring. We laid out a clear roadmap to approximately double CNS margins by 2030. We identified the key levers, in order to get those levers, some of them were related to sales and marketing, G&A, and also to ERP systems.
We need to make sure that this money is well spent for the sake of making the transformation.
Before we turn it over to Darius, I want to note that when I said we may hear from the authorities any day about tocilizumab, I'm happy to report that that day is today. If you go to the CHMP site, you'll find that there's a positive opinion on this submission. I'm really proud of our team. Congratulations also from here to the entire regulatory and biotechnology team for this second monoclonal antibody positive opinion. It's fantastic news. I'm really excited to be able to share this with you right now in this call. Anyhow, Darius, back to you.
Thank you. I wanted to ask on the restructuring costs over the midterm period. I was wondering if we should assume more cost-intensive parts in the first period and benefits coming to the second part of the midterm, or a more even distribution of costs and benefits over the midterm.
It's gonna be more even distribution. For 2026, I think it's gonna be between EUR 10 million-EUR 20 million. That's our current estimation.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. I think time is running out. Thank you very much for all the questions, for your interest. If there is anything else we can help you with, please don't hesitate to reach out to investor relations as always. Otherwise, we're gonna see you in 3 months' time with the first quarter numbers. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Bye-bye.
Goodbye.