Hello and welcome to the Agfa-Gevaert Q1 2024 results call. My name is Laura, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only mode. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on the telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Pascal Juéry, CEO to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you very much, and good morning. Good morning, everyone. I'm sitting in Mortsel with my colleagues of the executive committee and Viviane Dictus, our Head of Investor Relations. I will be walking you through the results of Agfa for Q1. Actually, our CFO, Dirk De Man, is still out for medical leave, so I'll take most of the presentation today and, of course, all the questions of the analysts. So let me turn to the first slide. And indeed, we had the weak start of the year, very, very clearly. So weak start of the year, but we are also maintaining our full-year outlook, and I will explain to you why.
We knew that the first quarter and the first semester, in fact, would be weaker and that we would have a back-ended year, actually, in 2024, quite in a similar fashion to what happened last year, by the way. So if I turn quickly to give you the headlines per business, so HCIT had a very strong quarter, of course, in Q4, followed by a weak quarter in Q1, but it's not abnormal in this business. And we are going to see the similar pattern, actually, this year that we've seen this year, with most of the EBITDA generation in the second semester of the year and the strongest quarter of the year will be Q4, as usual.
I'll make more comments on HCIT, but I can tell you that today we are seeing extremely good momentum in our funnel, in our commercial funnel, in our pipeline, but I'll come back to that. I think we are going to do a good year in HCIT. DPC, also a very weak start. Here, Zirfon was really on track with what we thought. However, our digital printing is there starting a bit slower than normal, I would say, the reason being that we have launched and renewed, actually, a significant part of our product portfolio in terms of equipment, and that kind of delayed a bit some investment decisions by customers.
But again, we will deliver what's needed, and it's going to be also for once, actually, more in S2, in the second semester, and that's also the fact that the partnership with EFI will take more impact in the second half of the year. Film activities are still very difficult in terms of volume for us. Radiology had a very complex quarter. I would call it a perfect storm. Actually, we had seen volume in films decrease by 20% versus the quarter of last year. Well, the reason is destocking in a lot of geographies. The fact that we are reorganizing our go-to markets in China had a significant impact.
And normally, between regions, you have more or less, I would say, compensation of volumes. But this quarter, actually, all the regions were weak in volumes. So it's a bit of an outlier quarter. Unfortunately, at the same time, we suffered some significant quality issues in manufacturing. That means we were hit not only on the top line but also on the margin of films this quarter. It's a very weak quarter. We expect, I would say, to be back to normal as soon as Q2. This leads to a very low EBITDA for the quarter for the group at EUR 2 million.
In this context, we were able to keep working capital under control. In spite of reduced top line, we limited the normal inflow of working capital during the first quarter. Again, a weak start of the year. We knew that. Probably it was a bit weaker than what we thought originally, but we are maintaining our full-year outlook, and there are lots of timing events, actually, in these results.
So if I turn to numbers, you see the top line -7.6% in top line, -6.5% when I remove the impact of currency, which is still a bit adverse. And it's really across the board. All the businesses have seen a decrease in top line, from radiology, DPC as well, although to a lesser extent, and HCIT as well, so leading to a very weak EBITDA for the quarter, as you can see here, EUR 2 million EBITDA versus EUR 13 million last year. If I turn to the profit and loss, so top line, I think I commented already, so having a specific impact on our gross profit for the quarter with a double impact, volume impact and margin impact specifically in film due to the quality issues we suffered during the quarter. Operational expenses, I would say, under control, lower than last year.
So we are continuing to deliver productivity quarter after quarter in this area. But of course, this leads to a very negative EBIT for the quarter. If I turn to the rest of the P&L, what I would like to draw your attention to is, as explained, we are now at a time where we are still executing some transformation projects but not launching new initiatives, meaning the restructuring and non-regenerative charge is a lot less than what it used to be, and this is a trend that will continue during the year. If I look at tax, 0% for the quarter. We guided for 12% for the year, so it's not all quarters are not equal. And also, the result from discontinued operations is still an offset-related charge in our accounts for the first quarter.
If I look at the working capital, at this time last year, we were at 32% of sales. Now we are at 29% of sales. It shows that the improvement we've made during the course of last year in terms of working capital management are sustained. It's normal that at the end of the first quarter, we have a bit of an inflow of working capital, but it was a lot less than in previous years. And that, again, is a context that is unfavorable. First, indeed, the weak sales, and second, the fact that shipment routes today from Europe to Asia are delayed due to the situation in the Middle East.
So overall, a good management. Cash flow, as usual, is negative during the first quarter, but this isn't probably further amplified by the fact that we have very low EBITDA in the first quarter. Just a couple of comments. I already commented on the working capital. Yes, an inflow of working capital, but much less than in previous years. More CapEx, actually, more CapEx due to two things, the Zirfon project that goes on, and as well, we have started to capitalize a bit of R&D in HCIT. And for pension, I would say rather low quarter in terms of expenses and restructuring and non-recurring minus EUR 6 million.
Well, this is a result of past projects for which we are still spending our cash. I repeat that for the full year, the guidance is we'll be at less than 50% of last year restructuring cash expenses. Just a word on the liquidity. We are going to finance, actually, the Zirfon project through a lease.
Today, vendor financing part of our business, and especially in HCIT, North America, with our balance sheet, we will now switch to an external provider and have the opportunity also to sell a bit of receivables through this operation. Then if I turn now to business and give you more color, business by business. So really, indeed, a weak quarter. We had a few contracts that slipped over a bit in the first quarter. And again, I think now everybody is also accustomed to the seasonality of this business, which builds up during the year.
So meaning Q2 is higher than Q1, Q3 is higher than Q2, and Q4 represents a significant part of the yearly EBITDA. So on order intake, which is important, we are comparing ourselves in this last 12 months' volume with Q1 last year that was the strongest of the year, actually.
That results today in -15% in our 12 months' volume order intake. But I immediately tell you that in Q2 and at the end of Q2, we'll be ahead again. Again, for order intake, we believe we have a strong activity in terms of funnel, and we expect Q2 to be rather strong. So at the end of this first semester, we'll be in growing mode again in terms of order intake. It's just a phasing issue. And actually, if anything, I would say we have good momentum today in the market, but I'll come back to that in a minute. 13% of the total order intake is related to managed services. It's a way to indicate that it's not that it's more distributed revenue and margin during the life of the contract.
So low quarter in terms of EBITDA, but nothing but with a gross margin that is still satisfactory. So it's purely top line related and phasing related. No issue there. If you look at the P&L, again, the gross profit shortage just coming from the lower top line, the percentage of gross profit is quite okay. The operational expenses are under control. So again, we are maintaining our guidance for the full year. Why are we so confident? Well, first, we have brought some well-received new features to the market with our cloud solutions but also our streaming clients.
We have seen really an accelerated demand for cloud contracts, and we are currently have received kind of vendor of choice status on a number of cloud deals, which means some of it is not yet fully in the order book but vendor of choice, meaning we are in contract negotiation and just a few days or weeks away to put it in the order book, actually. We are winning. We are winning significant contracts. I want to insist, these are net new customers as well for us. As you know, we are continuing the acceleration of the innovation efforts. We told you we were going to have a specific effort to, I would say, improve our cloud solutions to the market. We are doing that. For the first time this quarter, we capitalize a bit of R&D related to this program. Industry recognition.
Really super happy to report that we had best-in-class awards in 2024, and especially for the first time for XERO Viewer in North America, which is quite a nice one. Recently, there was a report by KLAS related to Enterprise Imaging. Really, I think Agfa HealthCare is standing out here. We can see it in the momentum of our funnel. We have a lot more, I would say, customer opportunities, customer discussions. We are getting invited, I would say, to RFPs a lot more today than it was the case a few months ago. These awards, KLAS research is based on customer feedback. So it means we have fundamentally improved the way we are perceived in the market, and it has a very positive impact on our business. Let me turn to DPC. So DPC, again, the first quarter, it's a bit across-the-board weak.
Actually, when we say week, it's really, in fact, in specialty film and chemicals because for Zirfon, we continue to grow, and for DPS, we are very close to last year. So the sales top line shortage comes from the legacy part of the portfolio. For DPS, it's a small decrease. But as I said, we had a raft of new product initiatives right at the end of the quarter because we launched at FESPA, which is a digital printing fair that happened in the last week of March. So typically, we are phasing out older equipment and introducing new machines. So you have a bit of a gap in between. Inca, 6% growth. Well, it's good performance, but I think we are expecting the growth to accelerate in the next quarters.
As I said, on the legacy film, offset film and chemicals, a weak quarter. So, much lower EBITDA in Q1 this year compared to last year. There is a lot of phasing issue here. And I repeat, we are absolutely maintaining our guidance for 2024. DPC will be the fastest growing, including bottom line business of the group. And I repeat, I got the question last time, "What do you mean by significant growth?" I said strong double-digit growth of profitability and DPC, and we maintain it. And it's, again, a timing issue that we are facing in Q1. If I turn to P&L here, same story, a lot of actually the impact on EBITDA coming from the top line.
Operational Expenses, the only business in which we have a bit higher operational expenses, that's on all the initiatives that we are taking in terms of digital printing and Zirfon. But at the end of the day, that explains why also we had a bit lower EBITDA. But I repeat, timing. If I look at the highlights for the gross businesses within DPC, so I said the growth of 6% in Inca, but everything, I would say, goes pretty well in this area, and we continue success with our InkSwap program for the Inca install base. As for EFI , no impact in Q1 at all. Most of the impact will be actually in Q3 and Q4. So that's also one of the reasons we know that the phasing is going to be a bit different this year.
The first SpeedSet customer should be up and running, I would say, end of June, beginning of July with our SpeedSet, or at least during the beginning of Q3, I think. And we are about it's probably a question of weeks to sign the second contract with a North American-based customer. And as explained, we have expanded, renewed, and rebranded significant parts of our Inkjet printer portfolio. We have replaced, actually, our mid-range with the Anapurna. We have introduced a new machine named the Bronco in our Jeti series.
And last but not least, that's also part of the EFI partnership. We have added to our range a new offering through the 5 meter roll-to-roll printer. But all this was done right at the end of March, actually. So no impact at all in the first quarter, but we already have a good order book for these product initiatives.
Zirfon, still going well, more than 130 customers, 30 countries. So you see that we are pretty much being present globally. We continue to ramp up the production industrially in Zirfon, and we continue to make progress in productivity. We, as you know, have now signed the full contract for the EUR 11 million subsidy. And by the way, we are going to receive the first tranche in April, about EUR 2 million. And as I told you, we are financing the project through leasing. It's not yet in place. So for the timing, you see it's not yet in place end of March, but we have a principal agreement to do that. And we expect the new capacity to be ready by the end of 2025. And that's at that time that we will receive also the balance of the subsidy when the unit will be up and running.
Last but not least, a couple of points of Zirfon that I wanted to share with you. So when we say more than 80%, actually, it's closer to 85% of volumes that are already part of the order book. So we have good visibility on this business. And although, as you know, the hydrogen development was probably a bit a lot of projects but not yet a lot of fully financed and decided projects. So when you look at the portfolio, actually, there is a gap between the number of projects that keeps increasing almost daily and the projects actually being financed and fully decided. And we've seen a slower ramp-up than what our customers thought. But for us, it was already in our prediction. We believe that volume growth this year will be 30%. So we are on this assumption.
The good news that recently was announced in the market is actually the European Hydrogen Bank has approved the first batch of projects for hydrogen with subsidies. And these are seven projects, if I'm correct, across Europe. It's a positive signal because it means this is clearly a project portfolio that should develop and have an impact, not in 2024, of course, but in the following years. So we see things moving also on Zirfon. Radiology. Radiology is probably the most complex quarter ever for radiology. So as I told you, nothing worked during the quarter.
Our China sales impacted by the fact that we are reorganizing our go-to-market and changing a bit the policy and the distribution structure in China. But all the other regions had low volume, either for destocking reason like Latin America, which is a temporary effect.
We have confirmed in all other regions, I would say, the sales volume for the year. Unfortunately, Q1 was weak due to phasing and timing issues as well. As if it were not enough, actually, we had a very poor performance at the plant where we made film that basically had a quality issue and that cannot be sold. So it's clear, it's a multi-million impact that we have to the P&L. We have solved the issue in the meantime. This is an issue that is behind us. But of course, we lost significant volume all over it. Just a word on DR.
We continue to see a similar trend as last year in DR, very dynamic in all emerging markets and more softness in Europe and North America. So it means the growth is really focused on the emerging markets for us today.
So all this has impacted tremendously the EBITDA of the year, EBITDA of the quarter, sorry, because basically, this is an outlier quarter, and we expect to be back to normal during Q2. Quality issues are over, and we already know April trading, which is more or less back to our forecast, actually. So that's a bit of an outlier quarter. Profit and loss, well, as you see, -15% top line, but actually, the film is even higher than that, actually. Gross profit impacted by the top line and the quality issues at the plant. Operational expenses are well under control.
We are really streamlining, and we will continue to do so our operations in radiology. And by the way, not only in operational expenses but also in our manufacturing area where we are taking initiatives in this field. Just a word on the highlights of radiology.
On the DR side, our strategy is really to differentiate through the software, and we are embedding more and more AI-based solutions that we bring at the point of care. Today, we are receiving, I would say, good market feedback from this initiative. The name of the game for us is not really to differentiate through the modality itself, but through the service and software AI-powered for this. We have also achieved the full medical device regulation certification for our portfolio. We are totally compliant, and that's also a very positive way for the business. A word on ConOps. As you know, ConOps is where we provide sales service and supply to our ECO3 offset business.
On the contrary, it was a strong quarter also for, I would say, inventory management reasons, in fact, which is the reverse of what I told you on some other activities. So when you look at EBITDA of the quarter, that's not something that can be extrapolated. Just as I told you, you cannot extrapolate the first quarter performance for the rest of the business. Here is the same, but in reverse, so to speak. Outlook, unchanged. We are not changing the outlook. We've reviewed very carefully the phasing of our initiatives. We have taken also a few actions to secure the delivery, of course, of the business. But at the end of the day, we knew that we would have a back-end loaded year.
Well, it's fully confirmed, of course, now, but it's really underpinned by our vision and the pipeline of projects or an order book behind. So the outlook remains the same by division. Healthcare IT, we say we will continue to progress and at the same time continue to invest significantly in cloud and streaming. DPC, we keep our guidance in the same way. We will have a good top line growth and profitability growth during the year, still driven by our gross engines, Zirfon, and digital print solutions. And radiology, we told you it was going to be difficult.
We got a much more difficult quarter than what we thought in Q1. But for the rest of the year, we see things getting back, I would say, to normal. This being said, the fundamental trend of the business in film still remains. We will still be under pressure in this area for this year, actually. Just a word on sustainability before we turn to question.
In fact, key message is we have a plan to reduce our emissions by 62% by 2030. By the way, doing that in a smart way, it doesn't mean that by changing the energy needs, it doesn't mean that we are going to be penalized in terms of cost. Absolutely not. We'll have a situation that will give us flexibility and the ability to reach a reduction target. So it's the best of the two worlds. We are responding to the market whenever we need to in terms of net-zero targets, especially in healthcare. And for instance, the NHS in the UK has asked us to commit, and we have met this commitment of NHS.
We continue to have DEI initiatives and, I would say, gender equality initiatives as well that are broadly on track. Safety is still an area where we are working on. Our goal this year is to have a significant reduction of accidents within our plant, more than 20%. So far, we're tracking along these results. Again, we are already preparing the new CSRD compliance. We're on track to do that. This year, we got another recognition from EcoVadis. Actually, it's a bronze medal, but it means we are in the top we are actually in the top quartile of all companies reporting to EcoVadis.
We've been doing that, actually, only for a couple of years. It's a rather good result. Again, let me wrap up before I turn to your questions. Yes, very weak start of the year. Indeed, we knew that it was going to be such a phasing, but it was a little bit more pronounced than what we thought during the first quarter. However, again, we maintain the guidance for the full year, and we maintain our growth targets for DPC and HealthCare IT, as already stated. We do that based on the projects and the visibility that we have on our commercial pipeline and other initiatives. Let me now turn to the questions of the analyst operator, if we can.
Sure. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Alexander Craeymeersch of Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Pascal and team. Yeah, Kepler Cheuvreux here speaking. I was just wondering if you could explain the decrease in the order intake in HealthCare IT because mid-March, we had a call, and I think you were rather proud, I believe, on the big order that was placed in January, and you sounded rather optimistic. So I thought that the order intake should have lifted. So between mid-March and, I guess, then the end of March, something must have changed. So if you could just explain that change. And then.
No, it's just a signature of some contract that was pushed back to early April. So when you do the cutoff 31st of March, it doesn't look good. We're going to do the cutoff end of June. It's going to look good. Okay? So it's a cutoff issue, Alexander. Nothing more than that.
Okay.
We have very stringent recognition criteria for order intake, actually. And therefore, you can slip for contracts not fully signed and whatnot. But again, we are following that up every week, and the bucket is already okay. And we know that in the question in Q2 is, is it going to be good, or is it going to be great? That we don't know yet.
Okay. That's good for Q2. But just if you say that Q2 order intake will be higher, is that then higher year-on-year, or is it higher quarter-on-quarter?
No, we say, well, we guide on 12 months rolling. So at the end of June, I'm saying it's going to be higher than the last year 12 months rolling. Now, if you take on quarter, Q1 was quite below last year, which was the highest order intake quarter of the year. Q2 will be much above Q1.
Okay.
Remember, this is a lumpy business in terms of order intake because a significant contract can tilt the numbers pretty clear. So order intake is not a steady flow in healthcare IT. It's lumpy. So we do quite an okay quarter in the first quarter because we did about 30 million order intake. But Q2 will be much higher. And Q1 last year was much higher than Q1 this year, and it was the highest quarter of but again, it's lumpy. But what is more important to me is to see what we have in the pipe, to see the number of opportunities, to see where we are because before we sign a contract, there are a few milestones. And do I feel good? The answer is yes. I feel very good for Q2.
Okay. Then maybe if you could just give us the direct and indirect impact from the one-off that you are discussing in radiology, please, because you've talked about lots of sales, but I guess there's also a direct cost related to that. Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah. In radiology, if you look at the shortfall versus last year, I would say 60% is volume-related, 40% is manufacturing quality-related.
Okay.
I hope this does answer your question. Again, these quality issues are now solved. They are behind us. We took the full charge. We see what we can do. If we can recover part of it, I don't have a lot of hope, but we took the full charge.
Great. Thank you. I'll leave the floor to my colleagues. Thank you, Pascal.
Thank you, Alexander.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Kris Kippers of Degroof Petercam. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Kris, you might want to unmute your audio, please.
Yes. Good morning. Can you hear me now?
Kris, we can hear you now. Thanks.
Sorry. Yes, indeed, double mute. No, just thank you, Pascal, for the explanation. I've got one main question, actually. If you look at the press release, of course, there's a hiccup in the organic sales evolution. That's well explained, and the working capital is well managed. But if you look at the debt position, it's going up. And at the same time, you actually now communicate that you will be leasing your production facility of Zirfon, and you will be selling also your receivables in the U.S. So could we link both actions, or how should we see it? Are you a bit worried about the cash generation in the coming quarters, or why does Agfa not provide any debt line, for example? Or what's the reason for those actions? Thank you.
No, well, for Zirfon, I mean, it's a significant CapEx project, and we had the opportunity to finance it, and we took it. Just as simple as that. And regarding what I told you about vendor financing, we have been doing that at Agfa for many, many years and using our own resources to do it. But we believe that going forward, it's not the best way to do. It's not the best use of our resources. And we are looking, indeed, at externalizing vendor financing through a third party. I mean, we are not a bank, so to speak, and don't read anything more than that. Okay? In it, we are always looking at managing financially and doing things that can make sense, so to speak.
Yeah. Okay. And there's no linkage at all to any cash requirements for the pensions in 2024?
No, not at all. Not at all, Kris. We also have an RCF. No, no, no. Absolutely not related. Not related.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Guy Sips of KBC Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you. Yes, Pascal, a few questions on Zirfon first. There was recently a Bloomberg research indicating that there are too many fish in a tiny pond, that the electrolyzer manufacturing market could be a little bit under pressure. So could you give some color on the situation at your client's side? How do you see that evolving?
Well, it's a bit delicate for me to comment on my customer's business, but what we are seeing today is, in fact, first, remember that all the customers we have are busy building capacity as well to be prepared for the projects. Is there right now a glut or a surplus of capacity in electrolyzer? I think it's too early to say. Today, I don't think it is the case, personally. But anyway, I would say for us, we are pretty neutral about it because basically, we are a supplier to this market. And we are, how can I say, agnostic. We play with all players.
So for the time being, you've got strong players with a strong business in this field. We are happy to have them as customers. I'm happy to say that when I look at the projects approved by the European Hydrogen Bank, a good number of these projects actually will be. I've named the electrolyzer producer actors that we know very well and that we play that we are a supplier. So we seem to be okay. We're okay for this.
Just to give us some color, on these seven projects in Europe that will be subsidized by the European Commission, out of these seven projects, in how many will Zirfon be included, or do you hope Zirfon to be included?
Vincent, you have an answer to this? How many do we hope out of the seven? Seven?
No, no, no. Thank you.
Not seven.
Not 7. But we do know, and we cannot be much more specific than that because final choices have not been made. But we do know that for actually all the large ones in those lists, let's say that our bigger customers have been supporting those projects. So do we hope to get the majority of those projects? We're not counting on that, but it's even an eventuality. But we should for sure get some. But to be clear, I don't think this will actually bring volumes to us this year, but it should bring actually volumes for next year.
Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. No, this year, it's pretty much done, I would say.
A question on the situation with Aurelius. How is that evolving? When can we expect the cash to come in? Any news on this one?
Yeah, yeah. Sure. Good question. Indeed. Well, to make a long story short, I think I expect the cash rather in the beginning of Q3 than Q2 because the timing right now seems to be a bit tight. We are in the process of still appointing the expert, and the expert has 30 days to give his judgment. But these are business days. And then Aurelius has a bit of time to pay. So I would expect this to happen in the beginning of Q3. This is the best timing I can give you today.
But you still stand behind your previous statement that it's just a timing issue, not?
Yeah. Yeah. I stand behind it. It's a timing issue. We feel good about what we have, and we always guided for about EUR 30 million, a little bit less, actually, EUR 28 million, we said. We still send.
And then the statement of the press release is, "The weak start of the year, full year outlook maintained." And if you then look at and I'm just looking at your website, the consensus of the analysts for 2024, EUR 1.18 billion sales, and adjusted EBIT consensus is EUR 35 million. Are you still sitting on your chair, or how do you feel?
I feel good in my chair. I'm sitting comfortably in my chair.
Even after reading these numbers?
Sorry?
Even after hearing these numbers?
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. I heard the numbers loud and clear.
Thank you. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Maxime Stranart of ING Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Hope you can all hear me well. Two questions on my end. First of all, if we look at adjusted EBITDA, excluding ConOps, basically end up with a minus EUR 2 million adjusted EBITDA. Could you elaborate a bit on what was the capitalized R&D in that just to see the underlying adjusted EBITDA performance there? Secondly, you mentioned Radiology back to normal. If we look back over the last four years now, adjusted EBITDA dropped by 20% per annum. So just wanted to make sure on what normal is for the time being. That would be all for me. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. So on the capitalized R&D, it's EUR 1.7 million. But again, let me insist. We have not moved charges from the P&L to CapEx. It's a specific program on top of that for which we are doing capitalization. So don't believe that we have switched EUR 1.7 million from expenses to CapEx. No, we have spent EUR 1.7 million more on a specific capitalized program, just on the first point.
On the second point, yes, I mean, in my guidance, I take into account that indeed, radiology will continue to decrease year-over-year due to the film evolution. Indeed, that's part of our outlook. That's always the case, actually. So I'm not commenting on the percentage of decline per year, but indeed, we have in our outlook a decline for the film and for radiology. It's taken into account, I mean, from the start.
Okay. And if I may add one, then obviously, DPC, you mentioned that you expect a double-digit growth on profitability. I asked the question last time already, but basically, on what metric? Because obviously, looking at the adjusted EBIT of last year was EUR 2.6 million. Even a double-digit growth on that would move the needle. So just wanted to make sure we understand things correctly there.
I'm not sure I totally got your question. We said, "Okay. Last year, basically, EBITDA for DPC was about EUR 19 million." Okay? And what we are saying this year is indeed, DPC will continue its profitability growth. And I said very strong double-digit. I'm not talking 10% or 20%. I'm talking more, to be clear. It's a.
Yeah. And to be clear, that guidance is related on adjusted EBITDA and not something else?
EBITDA.
Clear. Thank you.
Oh, but EBITDA, EBIT will be the same anyway. Yeah. Absolutely. Guidance to EBITDA. Okay?
Thank you. There are no further questions in queue. I will now hand it back to Pascal for closing remarks. Thank you.
No, thanks very much. And again, thanks for attending the call. Again, I repeat, a weak quarter and definitely a weaker quarter than expected, but it doesn't change the overall message. It doesn't change what we told you regarding the growth engine. It's just a question of phasing. Again, there is some seasonality in our business. We discussed it also a few months back and some timing impacts here. And I can tell you, on Healthcare IT and DPC and all the growth engines, we have not changed our view at all on these activities. More difficult than forecasted start of the year for film, but again, we are back to a situation that will normalize in Q2. So this being said, thanks a lot for attending, and have a good day. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. Stay safe. You may now disconnect.