Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our conference call held in connection with our interim report for 2022, which we released this morning. It's clearly been a very busy morning in hearing aids. Now it's our turn to walk you through a brief presentation, and then we'll turn it over to Q&A afterwards. The slides can also be found on our website. A s usual, we plan for this call to last no more than one hour, including the Q&A. We have President and CEO Søren Nielsen, CFO René Schneider, and the IR team, Peter Pudselykke and myself, Mathias Holten Møller, on the call today. Søren, it's all yours.
Yes. Thank you, Mathias, and welcome everybody. The agenda for today's session is key events and financial takeaways, update on hearing healthcare, update on communication, René will take us through a financial review. I'll comment on the outlook, and then we'll quickly go to Q&A. If we look at the key events here in first half of 2022, which has for sure been eventful, then we can clearly see that our hearing aid business, our diagnostic business, takes a significant market share. T hat, of course, in a weaker than expected or not, of course, but as announced in a weaker than expected hearing healthcare market, particularly US have developed a less positive than we expected, which have impacted our hearing care business in US.
We have also due to continued coronavirus effects, seen challenges in Asia Pacific. Communication saw continued weakening of the gaming market and some supply chain challenges resulting in negative growth for the period. There is global uncertainties and volatile markets, and there is also still some coronavirus-related restrictions. We have seen that mainly in Asia- Pacific. That causes a dynamic business environment and therefore a little more unpredictability than normal, and that covers both or goes for both hearing healthcare and communication, and I'll speak to that, of course, in more details during the call. We have finalized the full acquisition and important acquisition of ShengWang, the leading network of hearing aid clinics in China, more than 500.
It is a very important platform for continued growth for Demant in China. As announced earlier on in the year, we have decided to discontinue our efforts in hearing implant business area. You could say, discontinuation of the business is progressing according to plan. The only outstanding issue remains to be approval by relevant regulatory bodies, and that is still expected to take place within the second half of this year. Key financial takeaway. We have seen a group organic growth of 4% in Q1 in a weaker than expected hearing aid market, particularly in the US. This is better than expected. However, a bit more tailwind on the FX.
Hearing healthcare organic growth of 6% for the half year, but only 3% in Q2, driven by strong performance in hearing aids and diagnostics, but offset by the lower than expected growth in hearing care coming from the difference to the market development we have seen, which I'm going to speak to in a moment.
Communication negative organic growth of 14%, however, 5% growth in Q2, but again, it's very strong comparison figures in the beginning of the year and lighter in Q2, and the 5% is below expectations, and that is the continued weakness of the gaming headset market, which is consumer electronics, which I think we can all say is broadly negatively affected by many things, but clearly after COVID. OpEx is slightly below our original plans, natural consequences in communication and hearing care, but also express that we continue to invest significantly in further R&D. This is still a key growth driver for the future, so therefore continue to invest.
The EBIT for the group was DKK 1.588 billion, a decline of 5%. If we adjust for the temporary savings we had in first half last year and also the extraordinary profit coming from the French business driven by the French reform in Q1, we would have seen an EBIT around 13%, everything else equal, which is slightly below our expectations. However, based on outlook into the second half and current state of business, we adjust our outlook, so the outlook for the organic revenue growth is lower to 4%-6% from previously 5%-9%, and the EBIT from previously 3.6-3.9 billion to now 3.5-3.8 billion.
If we dive a bit more into hearing healthcare, again, 6% organic growth, strong performance in hearing aids and diagnostics, clear market share gains in both business areas. T he deviation from our original plans does fully originate from other market development than expected, more in emerging markets, less in U.S., and that hits our hearing care business.
It also to some extent has some impact on the hearing aid business because of course we do much more units at a lower ASP and therefore the overall ASP go down and put some pressure on gross margin but the nice growth rates of course works the other way and the same with the currencies. OpEx saw organic growth of 8%, of which half can be attributed to the temporary cost savings from last year. All in all, a profit close to DKK 1.7 billion, a margin just short of 19%, which is significantly down from last year.
However, had we made the adjustments I just spoke about, it would have been approximately one percentage point higher. Hearing aid market development in 2022, I think so far, I think that's a key topic today. We estimate the overall unit growth, and we only have statistics for around two-thirds to be 8%. Growth in Q1 was 12% and then down to 5% in Q2. It is not just the growth rate going down, it's also the comparisons that are slightly different, but it is a less than our expectations.
We had expected a clear tailwind from pent-up demand, but especially in U.S., we can see that seems to have been outbalanced by a trend of people postponing the decision to upgrade typically, which has outweighed this effect. All in all, we see the U.S. market in Q2 have grown 1% and -1% in the commercial part, but also less than anticipated in DA. Growth in Europe have mainly been driven by U.K. that naturally come from NHS now recovering. We knew that was a delayed process compared to a lot of other channels post-COVID, but also a number of other markets do well, including Germany that also have been a lagger.
France have developed at least in line with expectations, which does mean negative in Q2, but that was all anticipated, so nothing special there. It is U.S. that's the negative deviation. On the other hand, V.A. and NHS naturally grew a lot, but emerging markets have exceeded expectations. Again, we see our own unit growth being up to 16%, very high, but an ASP decline of 8%, and that all comes from a changed mix be it between geographies. If we look in the individual markets, pricing is very stable, so that purely explained by geography and channel mix. It has been more negative in the period than anticipated, again impacting gross margin in that part of the business.
We continue to expand the product portfolio, most recently with the custom products, in-ear products, and we do expect to see growth coming from that in the coming period. It's actually been a while since we last released such products, and we see very small, nice-looking devices benefiting from the latest technology. No doubt that with COVID and increased use of face masks, we have seen the trend of an otherwise declining custom market actually gain some momentum. In hearing care, below expectation, mainly driven by lower-than-expected market growth in U.S. and Pacific region. Many smaller markets have actually done very well but couldn't outbalance.
In U.S., we also have still the trend that we exit a number of managed care plans as the fitting fee does not cover our cost, and we rather try to fill the schedule with private pay clients. Of course, that been more difficult in a contracting market. Of course, these two trends work a little bit against one another. Positive contribution from acquisitions, especially U.S., Canada, and Germany. Diagnostics continue to grow way above market growth. We do see the market growth to be a little bit above the normal growth rate of 3%-5%. There has, of course, been negative effects from the slowdown in or from the lockdowns in China.
All in all, a very strong growth, 17% organic growth, and it is in many regions and many of our product segments, and also the service and calibration business. In Q2, we welcomed the company Inventis to the group, which was focused on software for audiometers and balance solutions, and Inventis will continue to be a separate brand in the group. On the communication side, things did not develop as expected. We saw a continuation of the slowdown in the gaming market longer than anticipated, and it's still there. We have also been faced with some supply chain challenges preventing the enterprise business to fully deliver to incoming orders. I think this is in line with the other players in the field.
This is a simple shortage of typically chipsets, generic chipsets, where we then have to redesign to other available models before we can get enough supplies to the market. Decline in gross margin is mix effect and supply chain cost and also negative exchange rates as the communication business basically buy everything in dollar and sell most of it in Europe, exchange rate works against them. OpEx grew by 5%. Strong growth still in R&D, but modest in admin or negative development in admin and distribution. All in all, 5% OpEx growth.
The result was due to the above negative DKK 107 million, which was below our expectations and therefore also a significant part of the changed or adjusted guidance. In second half, we expect things to develop more positively. We still expect gaming to be negatively impacted, but in enterprise, we both have new products and improved supply chain and therefore expect growth on top of the natural seasonality in the business. Over to you, René, for the financials in more detail.
Thank you, Søren. A slight repetition here on the income statement for our first half year. I just want to highlight the fact that we have restated comparison year and numbers to reflect the fact that we have decided to discontinue our efforts in the medical instruments. That's what's now built into the 2021 numbers. Apart from that, this is also a representation of the 9% growth that we have reported, of which 4% is organic, 1% is from acquisition, and we see a tailwind of 4% from the appreciated currencies, predominantly the US dollar. This provides us with a gross margin for the group of 74.6%, very much in line with reported last year.
If we decompose the operating profit for the group, we see an operating profit of just shy of DKK 1.7 billion for hearing healthcare and an operating margin of 18.9%, whereas we have seen a loss of just above DKK 100 million on our communications business, all leading up to DKK 1.588 billion for the first half year and a 16.7% operating profit. If we look a little bit more into the details of that, we have seen gross profit increase by 9% to DKK 7.1 billion and expansion of the gross margin of 0.1 percentage point, predominantly driven by business mix.
The relatively strong performance in hearing healthcare compared to communications drive that and also supported by positive exchange rate effects. Within hearing aids, we saw an adverse mix effect from product mix, as Søren just reported on, that impacted the gross margin negatively. Supply chain headwinds continue to contribute negatively around 0.5 percentage point, primarily due to higher freight cost. Looking forward for a second half year and what is implied by our outlook given for the full year, we do expect to see an improvement in the gross margin driven predominantly by an expectation of a different mix in second half year than what we have seen in the first half year.
Looking at OpEx, we saw 8% organic growth, of which around half is attributable to the flat temporary cost savings that we saw last year of DKK 150 million-DKK 200 million. This is slightly below what we anticipated from the beginning of the year. We have seen lower OpEx in hearing care as well as in communications business to compensate partly for the shortfall in sales. At this stage, we see no inflationary pressures beyond our initial expectations. EBIT ended on the previously mentioned DKK 1.6 billion for the first half year, and an EBIT margin of 16.7%, which is a decrease compared to what we reported last year of around 5%.
In that analysis, it is important to remember what we flagged already last year, and that is the effects of the 100% Santé as well as temporary savings. If we adjust for these two elements, the growth in EBIT was 13%. Of course, here also, partly supported by exchange rates. Looking at cash flow. Cash flow from operations declined 43% in the first half year. This is driven by a significant increase in the net working capital, and you can say a normalization of trade receivables. What we saw in 2020 and 2021 was an above, very much above normal cash generation and cash conversion, significantly above the 100%.
We had anticipated already last year that we would see a normalization of working capital that we did not see. That's basically what we have seen here in the first half year, meaning that at this stage our working capital level very much resembles the level it was pre-pandemic. All in all, large increase but back to what was normal pre-pandemic level. Leading to CapEx 4% of sales, which is in line with our medium- to long-term expectations. Cash to acquisitions and divestments was just above DKK 500 million, reflecting the acquisition of the diagnostic company Inventis, as well as the initial 20% of ShengWang. As we previously announced, we acquired the final 80% just in the beginning here of second half a year. Buyback was DKK 1.3 billion. On the balance sheet, it grows 10% in total assets, of which 3% is exchange rates.
Part of this is the normalization of the net working capital. I also want to highlight the fact that now we have assets held for sale. These are the assets and also liabilities that of course relates to our medical implant business. The multiple at the end of the period is 2.4x. This leads us to the outlook for this year.
Yes. Thank you very much, René. I think the main changes are highlighted in the key assumption. It is expected that we will see some improvements in the market conditions in second half, in particular in U.S. We do believe we will see a better development towards the end of the year. It is of course our assessment, and we will have to see when we get there how it ends. I do believe that we will see an improvement in U.S. over the coming months.
ASP due to that, we'll still see strong sales in HS and in export markets, but the balance will tilt back towards higher priced margin and therefore a less negative development to the ASP. We always expect 1%-2% negative, but and it was obviously more in the first half, but less, exactly where it lands. It's so sensitive to mix effects, but less is the key message. Also supply situation, that's mainly an issue for the communication business will improve. However, the weakening of the gaming market, we also expect to carry into Q2. We don't know for how long.
If we look at the French market, this is totally in line, if not a little bit better than expectations, so nothing there. It is really down to the U.S. development all in all. We also, of course, expect the Pacific region to recover from COVID, including China. We have no expectations for significant widespread lockdowns or anything like that. In Q2 for the group, we'll continue to see market share gains in hearing healthcare. In communication, we think it's a little bit, difficult to talk about market share gains as things are so dynamic, and what is it we measure against, etc. We focus on our own development and talk about the ambition to generate double-digit organic growth.
There is, of course, very different comparison figures in the second half, but we will have to see and expect to deliver an increased growth rate. However, we cannot fully close the gap we have created in first half, so we now expect an EBIT around -$150 million for the communication part of our business due to the negative market trends in gaming and the supply chain challenges. Medium- to long-term, we have no changes to our thinking around the communication market and the positive development. Sum it up, revenue growth organically now 4%-6% instead of previously 5%-9%. And why more on the top? Obviously more come from exchange rates now.
I t is in line with what we have seen in Q2 and our expectations, updated expectations for the second half. The acquisition is around 2%-5% from FX, and all in all, leading to an EBIT guidance, previously 3.6%-3.9%, now 3.5%-3.8%. Gearing multiples, etc., tax rate, etc., share buyback, no changes. With that, over to Q&A.
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your touchtone phone. You may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Once again, that's star one to ask a question. We will pause a moment to allow questions to queue. We'll take our first question from Maja Pataki. Your line is open.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Søren, I have a question. Can you give us some flavor and color around why you expect the U.S. market to improve in the second half? The inflation is probably not going to dramatically. Plus, we have winter with potentially, higher or stronger sales costs hitting at your patients or your consumers. I'm trying to understand why you remain optimistic. The second question is, if we look at Q2 growth in retail, the - 7% organic, could you guys give us a bit of a flavor of how much it is due to the U.S. where you're still steering away from home care patients and how much is due to France? That would be very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Maja. We of course all have our opinion about the development in U.S. Normally, you cannot postpone forever. I think we learned from COVID that the reaction is quite immediate. Then, when you get used to a new environment and unless we get a real strong recession, which we don't expect, then things will normalize at a new level, and then we will still see people solving their hearing impairment. It is an assumption that things will... There will be a new norm. There might be a positive development to energy pricing. There might be a little less on the inflation. You can see some early indicators from that.
T his is our best assessment of the dynamics of the hearing healthcare market that will improve during the second half. T hat's our estimate. Q2 growth...
Just a follow-up.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Maja, please.
I was just wondering, when you talk about people getting used to the situation and at some point in time, we're all used to certain price environments and everything. Ultimately, the dollar in the wallet remains the same. Do you anticipate that volumes are going to recover, but we might see some trading down because the US is still limited with regards to reimbursement?
No, because again, there's just so little evidence in the past that it actually is the discretionary money that determines this. Again, if you look at U.S. and savings and so on, there's also been some recovery of share prices, etc . Again, all in all, we think people will find the money if they need it. There is enough Americans that have kept their job and also got a decent salary increase, et c. We think there will be a normalization, and also the comparison, of course, go down. Part of the change from Q1 into Q2 is because Q2 last year was very strong. The net-net effect was stronger than anticipated.
You can basically, again, as I've tried to say that the anticipated release of pent-up demand, which is there, had been outbalanced by some users holding back. We can actually see this trend that new users seems to be less affected, whereas people that have an existing hearing aid, where our normal marketing effort, you could say, basically is to argue for an upgrade before the existing product is out of, is broken down. That's, of course, also part of the mechanism that I have something that I then choose to use a little longer when things are uncertain. I don't think you can totally correlate it to money in the pocket. There's no evidence for that in the past at least. Back to Q2 growth.
I cannot split out you know exactly out of this. The lower than expected is purely a U.S. phenomenon. The rest works in line with plans, meaning the French development is in line with plans. The extraordinary income we saw there is in line with what we guided for from the beginning of the year. The deviation, the lower than expected, does originate from primarily U.S. and the Pacific region.
Okay, great. Sorry, just a quick follow-up. In Q1 results, you mentioned that you were in retail underperforming the French market because competition has stepped up meaningfully with the reimbursement. Is that a trend that you've also seen in Q2, or have you been growing in line with market?
No, I think we have grown reasonably in line with the market. No major. It's so difficult to see . I think the argument we made in Q1 was that maybe we're a little surprised to see the market size being bigger than anticipated. It was not so much our own performance. That is, of course, because more people have entered the market, and that's why we saw that wholesale could deliver, let's say, stronger performance than we saw relative in the retail side of the business. That was not that we lost a share, you could say. Technically, we did that, but it's a run rate thing, and there we have delivered in line with our expectations. Take France out of the equation. There's no correlation between the French performance and the adjustment of our guidance.
Okay, brilliant. I'll go back to the queue. Thanks.
We'll take our next question from Christian Ryom with Danske Bank.
Yes, good afternoon. This is Christian Ryom from Danske Bank. Thank you for taking my question. I have two as well. My first is regarding your full year outlook for market growth, where you say that you're now expecting 4%-6% in line with the structural growth level. Which given the 8% market growth that you estimate for first half would imply a market growth rate of, say, 1%-5% roughly in the second half. Can you give us some insight into how you think about how we should see the phasing of growth for the market in Q3, Q4? Specifically whether we should see one of the quarters being significantly stronger than the other.
My second question is to the diagnostics business and how you expect that will develop, given the current macro backdrop. My understanding is that a fairly large part of the diagnostics business is instruments and therefore CapEx investments among customers. Do you see any risk of a slowdown here? Any comments on that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you, Christian. You're right that the global, you could say, market outlook is less than in first half, but this is the comparison and the strong growth from VA, NHS, and the emerging markets. It does represent an improvement basically of the commercial business and primarily in U.S. T hat's a bout this very strong and high growth rates in the first half. The three biggest laggards we have left for Corona, and therefore it still represents a relatively good development in the second half and also a good or better ASP development than we have seen as an actual consequence in the first half. T he value growth is still good and strong.
It comes from another, you could say, geography and channel mix than we have seen in first half. The growth rates in NHS VA, even though they're actually also not at the expected level, they are still not up to a full capacity level, you could say. Or not capacity, or probably a capacity level, but up to what it should have grown to and no sign of pent-up demand being released. They have grown 30%- 40% very high, and that will of course not repeat itself in the second half. The phasing is stronger towards the end. We will come into the window where we saw new Corona restrictions and, again, customers holding back. That was starting in November, December-ish. A natural improvement during the s econd half of the year, sorry.
Thank you.
Diagnostics, we see no... It is very different. It's not consumer sentiment driven. We have seen very little, if any, impact from demand going down, and we see the market growing above the normal 3%-5%. Nothing there.
Okay. Great. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
Our next question comes from Veronika Dubajova with Citi. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I will keep it to two, please. One, I just want to follow up and challenge you, Søren, if that's all right, on some of the expectations for the second half. I'm struck y our ASP was worse than you had expected. Volume growth was softer than expected. You assume pretty significant acceleration as you're moving into the second half. Are you seeing that on the ground today? If you look at your run rates in July and August, have you seen an improvement either in volume or mix? Related to that, I've noticed that you've also very explicitly stated your expectation is you will keep gaining market share in the second half. We know there is a new platform coming from Sonova very shortly.
Your local competitor announced the platform launch today. I think you're getting to the tail end of what you have from a platform perspective. J ust curious what underpins that and how much confidence you have in those two things. Then, I will have a follow-up after that, but maybe we can tackle those first.
Okay. Thank you, Veronika. I think it's important to stress that in the first half of the year, we have seen a strong unit growth development of 8%. The units have been strong and good in the global market, and we have seen 16% for ourselves. That's strong. The ASP is really just a mix effect. M aybe units will be a little less dramatic in the second half, but the ASP will come as a natural consequence.
Yes, as said to the previous questions, we do expect an improvement of the growth rate in the US market, which will further fuel that development, that ASP will go up and, net-net, the volume is likely, but you can quickly get another good round on these export orders. That's very difficult to predict. That's not a run rate business. That's an occasional business . I'm comfortable on that. It's not a dramatically different picture than we have seen and are seeing. It's also again, a natural consequence of less growth in NHS because they start to hit where they got up, VA, et c. That I'm all good for.
Of course, we are always sensitive to a competitive environment. There is also a core strength in what we have released. We have also a very complete portfolio now completing it with in-ear products, all price points, all form factors. Typically, when these platforms come out, they can be a little thin on the scope and the width. That is the ammunition we have is proven very strong performance. Maybe somebody closed some of that gap, but then also a very wide portfolio. There is a number of markets where some of the later releases still hold a significant potential for growth. That's our assessment. Of course, we don't fully know what we're up against, but we think we can make it for the year with the things we have now released.
Okay. Very clear. Then if I can, just a quick one on communications, and would love to get your thoughts on whether you still believe you can hit a breakeven or a positive EBIT next year. Obviously, pretty significant ramp versus what you just guided for 2022. I wonder what your degree of confidence in that is. Thank you.
Yes, of course, the situation is different than we assumed it was. There is of course a likelihood that we will have to revisit that, but we will refrain from that until we have better clarity on market development. We obviously need to see the gaming market accelerate in growth instead of what we see right now, and not just in growth rates, but in actual positive run rate growth. It's extremely much down post-COVID. That's one thing. Of course, we also need to see the enterprise market pick up, not the least in video and some of the newer areas for collaborative equipment.
We are not that far off, but again, supply chain challenges and so on has definitely also muted that part of the market a bit. Normalization of supply chain and further growth in the gaming market then this can quickly go the other way as well, and then profitability will be there. We follow our original plans or less on the cost side and therefore, if we get back up to the original expectation on the top line, which can again happen relatively quickly then yes, we will also improve profitability quite fast and dramatically.
Okay. Understood. Thanks, Søren.
Our next question comes from David Adlington with JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Most if not all have been asked, but maybe just circling back on the guidance. I think from what my take on it is you missed in the first half by about DKK 100 million of EBIT, which is how much you've taken down the full year guidance. It doesn't look like your expectations for the second half have really materially changed. Is that a fair assessment? I'll just leave it there, actually.
If I get you right, you say that we basically are DKK 100 million below expectation in the first half, and that's basically the adjusted guidance. I wouldn't fully say. We have some in first half below expectation, but we also have something significantly above expectations, not the least the diagnostic business, but also a good strong performance in hearing aids. No, it is just as much an assessment of the second half that have led to this adjustment.
Okay, thanks.
Our next question comes from Niels Granholm-Leth with Carnegie. Your line is open.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. A question about your FX exposure. In order to understand the FX effects on your profitability going into next year, could you briefly talk about how much your FX hedges will dent your profitability this year? I guess this will be eliminated for next year, provided that the US dollar stays at this level. My second question would be about the market growth in July and August. Could you briefly touch upon that? Thank you.
Yes.
I'll cover the first one, Niels. Hedging, a headwind was around DKK 100 million in the first half year, and then increasing to around DKK 130 million in the second half year, given the current exchange rates. Rightly so, it will, you can say predominantly be reversed, or you can say be a tailwind next year, for the most part of it.
On market growth, I think we only have basically a U.S. to look into for July, and that was not a change to the situation. That was also not a strong month, b ut for the rest of the world, we don't have statistics yet. It's not possible to comment on that so far.
All right. Okay, great. Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Oliver Metzger with Oddo BHF. Your line is open.
Yes. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I have two questions. The first on the reduction in the EBIT guide. The range goes down by DKK 100 million. If I just look into the segments, at the end it means that it's purely impacted by the more negative DKK 150 million you factor in now for communication versus slightly negative before. Does it mean on the profit side that the underlying profitability for the hearing healthcare business is even higher than previously assumed? Or could you elaborate what the potential cost savings or the dynamics, why intrinsically, the hearing aid business is even more profitable than before? My second question is on communication. It's again, good to see that the business was growing in Q2.
Could you tell us a little bit more about this, how the supply situation for the enterprise business has improved in Q2 versus Q1? Are there some rays of hope?
Oliver, I'm sorry the line is really bad. It's very difficult to understand, especially your second question. If I understood your first one correctly, you were speaking to the downward adjustment of DKK 100 million seems to be highly related to communication. As hearing care is performing less, are the other two really delivering much better? The question is, y es, that's the case, that there is strong scalability in the diagnostic business and have seen solid improvement of margins and EBIT. On the hearing aid side, the unit growth is, of course, driving up some cost of goods sold, but on the other hand, the scalability and such a big volume is also there. All in all, good.
It is on the hearing care that things are pulled the other way, but together, the deviation on the hearing healthcare business is not big. It is a lot coming from our changed situation in the communication business. Your second question, I simply couldn't hear the details.
I will repeat. It's good to see that communication has turned around in Q2. Can you elaborate about the supply situation, how that has changed between Q2 and Q1, particular for enterprise business, please?
Then I misunderstood your first part. I did not confirm that the situation was different in Q2 than Q1 in communication. That's basically a continuation. The big change there is the comparison, where there was very high comparison in Q1, therefore negative organic growth.
We basically carried in a lot of supplies in 2021 or orders in 2021. The sales last year declined significantly into Q2. That's what drives the growth to the 5% organic. The run rate in the business is still not where we want it to be, and it is predominantly gaming and then secondly lack of ability to supply to orders. Supplying to orders will improve during second half, and from the beginning here of third quarter, we start to be able to release some products that we have been short on for a while. Ramping up the volume just takes time. They are redesigned to now work with the chipsets that are generally available. T hen I mistook your question. We have no t seen a significant improvement of the performance in communication from Q1 into Q2. That's more or less purely a comparison.
Yes. Okay, great. Thanks for clarifying and also thanks for the first answer.
We'll take our next question from Martin Parkhøi with SEB. Your line is open.
Great. That was pretty close. Martin Parkhøi, SEB. A couple of questions. Firstly, Søren, now you have for some time complained about or at least talked about the negative impact from the managed care in U.S. Should we perceive you as being a structural underperformer, not just this year, but going forward in your U.S. hearing care business solely due to the managed care superior growth compared to the underlying market? Secondly, I think that is true for René.
Firstly, René, with the 4%-3% decline in cash flow from operations in the first half, and you have mentioned, of course, the lower EBIT as well as the trade receivables. Can you maybe, if you take the midpoint of the EBIT guidance for the full year, where are we ballpark landing for the full year on this point? Then secondly, René, can you maybe just walk me through the half year development in the cost items on each of your two divisions?
On each of what? Sorry.
Of the two divisions.
Martin, I think short- term, you could say you're right. We have chosen to step out of not all plans, but a number of plans where we basically as a group only get a fitting fee because we fit competitive products. The fitting fees , in some plans, ended up being very low and basically loss-making. We have decided to step out of these plans, you could say also a little bit politically and tactically, and expected to be able to fill the schedule with private pay. That has not fully happened to the extent we planned, obviously not in an easy market to do it. You could say a little bit timing challenges there.
Of course, in the long run, we do work intensively to make sure we can get, one way or the other, our share of that pie. Exactly how to do that is, of course, still something we are working on. We have good ideas about how we can do that in the long run b ecause it is a growing segment and of course, we have to join, as we have done all around the world in all channels and segments. We just have to find a profitable way of doing so.
Yes. On the cash flow, i t is seemingly, you can say, a relatively dramatic change in net working capital that we have seen in the half year. I just think it's important to remind, if you go back to pre-pandemic level and look at what is days of sales outstanding, what is days of payable outstanding, what is days on inventory, and look at those KPIs, what we have seen is a normalization of the cash flow or of the net working capital during the first half year. We anticipated last year that we would see some of these effects, but for various reasons, we did not see it come through.
We have then seen it this year, meaning that now then we enter second half year, many of those KPIs are on what we would consider the same level as what they were in 2017, 2018, 2019 if you go back and look at it. Meaning that from here on into the second half year, we would see, let's say, the tie up of working capital be more normal. What normal means for a full year typically is DKK 500-DKK 600 million net working capital charge. Half of that for the second half year would be a rough estimate of what would be considered normal. Then , if you reverse from there, you will see a significant improvement in cash flow from operations in the second half year.
That's what we are assuming and working towards as a reasonable, we think, expectation for how the business will go. Just to finalize the analysis on that, which of course means that the free cash flow for the full year, given the first half year, will be you can say lower than last year. Given the fact that we have now fully completed the acquisition of ShengWang, the leverage ratio end of year will be slightly higher than the range of 2-2.5, and this still includes the fact or the assumption that we will close the medical acquisition end of this year. I think that's the full divestment, sorry, end of this year.
I think that's the full analysis on that. On the operating expenses, if we look at the communications first, it is a growth of 5%, and it is solely driven by our continued investments in R&D, among others in video solutions, but basically all over the product portfolio, whereas we see a reduction in both the distribution and admin as a consequence of the sales shortfall and our efforts to recover that on cost savings. If you look at hearing healthcare, the reported growth is of course high. The organic part of that, however, is only 8%. On top of that you have a small contribution from acquisitions. Then as on top line, you have a significant currency element.
If we decompose the 8% organic growth, half of that, DKK 175 million or DKK 150 million-DKK 200 million is from the abnormally low cost levels that we already highlighted last year. Organically, what we consider underlying organic growth is these 4%, you can say more or less equally driven or equally distributed across R&D, distribution and admin costs. You were looking for something else, Martin, but please.
Yes, I was looking for, the Q2 2022 versus Q1 2022.
Yes. To give some flavor on that, you can say if we assume that the underlying organic growth in first half year was 4%, our implied organic growth for the group in second half year, just mathematically, is 4%-8%. You could assume an organic growth rate that would resemble that a lot. Of course, you can also deduct that from our outlook. You can add 3% from acquisitions and 6% from currency, from pure math.
Thank you.
It appears we have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to our presenters for any additional or closing comments.
Yes, thanks very much. That's it for today from us. Thanks very much for joining us, and let us know in case of any questions. We look forward to meeting many of you on the road, in the coming weeks and months. Have a great day. Thanks.