Hello, and welcome to the Azelis half year 2023 earnings call. As usual, we are joined by Dr. Joachim Müller, who will present the highlights of the first half of the year, and Thijs Bakker, who will take us through the numbers. We will take questions after the presentation, but until then, everyone will be in listen-only mode. We will make a recording of this webcast available for replay on our website later today. As a reminder, this presentation may include forward-looking statements that may be subject to risk and uncertainty. With that, let's start. Over to you, Joachim.
Thank you, Pam. Good day, everyone. Thanks for tuning in and joining us for the presentation of our first half, 2023, first half year 2023 results. We appreciate, especially as we know some of you are just coming back from or about to go to or maybe even are in the middle of your summer holiday. As usual, I will start with an overview of the performance in H1. On to the next slide. In the first six months, our revenues increased by 6% to EUR 2.1 billion, and Adjusted EBITDA increased by almost 9% to EUR 263 million. The challenges we experienced in some of our markets have put pressure on organic revenue, which declined by 5%.
While the industry faces some headwinds, namely weaker demand in the Americas and Industrial Chemicals, it's also worth reminding that H1 last year reported revenue growth of 54%, of which 28% was organic. There's still an element of tough comps in the results for H1 2023. Nevertheless, too, we face varying degrees of challenges, some of them our markets. Overall, diversity of our portfolio allows us to mitigate the impact of the current challenges on our business. In addition, we continue to expand our footprint and invest in future growth drivers. Since the beginning of the year, we have acquired six companies across three regions. These acquisitions further strengthened our business by enforcing our lateral value chain. Worthwhile noting that these companies have combined annual revenues of over EUR 370 million in 2022.
We continue to see excellent opportunities, we intend to pursue those opportunities with the same rigor and diligence as before. A proof point of the resilience of our business model is our gross profit margin remaining stable at 24.1%, despite the volatility in some of our markets. Furthermore, the Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 29 basis points, driving 129 basis point expansion in conversion margin to 50.9. Reflecting the benefits of our asset-light cash-generated business, we achieved a 92% cash conversion ratio. Operationally, we are progressing on our innovation, digital, and sustainability agenda. We just won another innovation award for Personal Care, have rolled out 118 portals, and had our industry-leading ESG ranking confirmed in the most recent Sustainalytics and assessment cycle.
Let's go through some of the highlights of our growth drivers on the next slide. Across the three regions where we operate, the normalization from the exceptional growth in 2022 is ongoing. Our diversified footprint and the general defensiveness of our business model allowed us to mitigate the impact of the current volatility in many of our markets. Demand is generally holding up better in Life Science, cushioning the impact of the weak demand in Industrial Chemicals. In EMEA, organic growth declined 2% in H1, driven by and large by the acceleration of demand slowdown in Industrial Chemicals in Q2. Organic revenues in the Americas declined by 13%, as our performance remains under pressure from continuous weakness in CASE and in Latin America.
Although we have started to see an easing in Flavors & Fragrances, which was impacted by destocking since Q3 last year, the growth momentum is still feeble. In APAC, we achieved 7% organic revenue growth, despite much lower than expected recovery in China, thanks mainly to continued strong performance in Southeast Asia and India. In terms of industry consolidation, we completed six acquisitions in H1. In EMEA, Smoky Light and Sirius enhance our lateral value chain in the Benelux market. Lidorr gives us a stronger foothold in Israel, especially in the very attractive ag market in the region. In the Americas, we acquired the well-established Brazilian food and nutraceuticals distributor, Vogler, a significant step in our growth expansion strategy in Latin America. The acquisition of Gillco gives us a formidable entry platform in the U.S. Food & Nutrition market.
Eventually in APAC, the acquisition of Chemiplas significantly strengthens our footprint in Australia and New Zealand. Now, the following two slides will give you some idea about the type of formulations we recently developed with our customers. To stress it again, our formulation work showcases our expertise, and most importantly, the value we bring to our principals and customers as an innovation service provider. In this example on this slide, we feature work we did for a customer in the construction sector. Given the rising cost of lithium carbonate, they need help to reformulate the existing mortar product to reduce lithium carbonate content. Our lab team helped this customer by creating a formulation that not only reduces the lithium carbonate content significantly, and therefore reduces the cost base, but the customer also got a product with significantly improved sustainability characteristics.
Now on the next slide, the following example you see is more tangible for consumers and hence easier to relate to. Our lab colleagues developed a formulation to address the lactose sensitivity of an increasing number of consumers. By choosing specific enzymes and combining ingredients from specific principles, our colleagues formulated a dairy product that even lactose intolerant consumers can enjoy. This example, and the one in the previous slide, demonstrate how we create value for our principals and customers by living up to our corporate tagline, "Innovation through formulation." Our efforts to contribute do not stop with our principals and customers. As you know, sustainability is utterly important to us. As you can see, we continue to make strides towards our Action 2025 agenda. Noteworthy, we are already ahead of schedule in one of our key objectives.
We already have nearly 32% of senior management positions filled by women. Obviously, we still have work left to do on our Sustainability agenda, but it's encouraging to be recognized for our ongoing efforts. In the latest assessment cycle, Sustainalytics, we further improved our score and reconfirmed our top industry rating. It's a great motivator for all of us to continue on our journey of relentless improvement. With this, I will hand over to you, Thijs.
Thank you, Joachim, and good morning, everyone. As Joachim has taken you through the business update, I would like to focus on the Group's financial performance and those of our regions for the first half of 2023. Let's start with a high-level overview of the P&L and the drivers of our performance for the second quarter of 2023 on page 11. Group revenue for the first half year of 2023 was over EUR 2.1 billion, representing a year-on-year growth of 6.1%, or at constant FX rate, 8%. This growth reflects the performance of our resilient Life Science business, which grew 9%, or at constant FX, 10.8%, and our Industrial Chemicals business, which grew 1.7% year-on-year, or at constant FX, 3.7%.
For the second quarter, revenue came in at EUR 1 billion, representing a flat year-on-year performance. Without the impact of the acquisitions, sales decreased with 8.1% versus an organic growth of 23.3% in the same quarter last year. This performance is not only in the context of a more challenging environment, but also against a very tough comparable. The revenue trends reflect ongoing softness in the Americas, as well as efforts in balancing mix and gross profit margins levels at similar levels like last year. We have been successful in executing our M&A strategy. On a pro forma basis, accounting for the full six months revenue of closed M&A in 2023, half year revenue would have been EUR 2.22 billion.
Gross profit for the first half year came in at EUR 517 million, representing a year-on-year growth of 5.8%, or at constant FX rate, 7.6%. Gross profit as a percentage of revenue ended at 24.1%, which is basically stable versus prior year. This stability reflects the outcome of excellent margin management and a favorable mix shift towards Life Sciences. In the same period last year, we expanded gross margin by 157 basis points, so we are pleased to hold ground despite the less favorable market environment, as Joachim alluded. Furthermore, we have kept our gross profit margin stable despite the first time inclusion of some M&A in emerging markets, which is performing at lower gross profit levels.
To illustrate this, gross profit as a percentage of revenue for the organic business improved from 24.2% to 24.7%, implying a step up of 49 basis points, predominantly mix driven. For the first half year of 2022, the Group generated an Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 279.2 million and an Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 263.4 million. The Adjusted EBITDA margin remains strong at 12.3%, translating to a 29 basis points margin expansion, resulting in an excellent 129 basis points expansion in conversion margin. This improvement is a reflection of all the items that we can control. We are executing on the M&A pipeline, we're executing balanced margin management, we are controlling our cost base by executing on integration and operational excellence, so controlling our cost.
In the second quarter, EBITDA margin ended at 12.3%, which is a 22 basis point step up from the previous year period. Our net profit for the first half year was EUR 109.2 million. I will discuss the drivers of net profit in detail in a later slide. On the slide on page 12, I would like to provide a breakdown of growth by region for revenue, gross profit, and EBITDA. In this table, we have broken down the 6.1% reported revenue growth and the 5.8% reported gross profit growth between organic growth and growth coming from the first time inclusion of acquisitions and FX effects. Following record performance in 2022, organic revenue levels in H1 2023 decreased with 4.8%.
This was largely driven by lower revenue levels in the Americas, where the Group has a higher mix towards Industrial Chemicals, which saw lower demand, slower recovery in the F&F segment, as well as softer performance in South America. The strong organic gross margin performance I mentioned earlier, together with the execution of cost initiatives, means that despite lower organic revenue, there is no change in organic EBITDA relative to the first half of 2022. This clearly shows the resilience of our business and our ability to leverage scale and cost initiatives in all environments, while continuing to invest for the future. The first time inclusion of acquisitions generated 12.8% of our revenue growth for the first six months, as we are executing well on our M&A pipeline, with six acquisitions closed, out of which two are platform acquisitions.
Please note, we completed 12 transactions in the course of last year, with seven in the second half of the year, which are not part of the organic definition yet. The impact from exchange rate was a negative effect of 1.9% on revenue growth. When comparing the FX rate in the first half of 2023 versus the same period in 2022, the euro has continued to strengthen against most of the major currencies in which the Group operates. Let's have a look at the regional financial performance, so please turn to slide number 13. Starting on the left with EMEA, which makes up 44% of Group revenue. Revenue increased by 33.1%, or with 6.1% at constant FX rate to EUR 944 million.
On an organic basis, revenue was 2.2% lower, predominantly driven by softer Industrial Chemicals demand, outweighing Group performance in the Middle East and Africa, and our Food & Nutrition and Pharma segments. please put this performance also in context of growth, organic growth over 30% in the first half of 2022. EMEA's gross profit increased with 12.4%, out of which 5.7% was organic, mainly driven by a shift towards Life Science and execution and balancing our commercial excellence program to optimize our lateral value chain at the customer base. EMEA successfully executed on operational improvement programs and cost control actions, such in H1, which led to an improvement in conversion margin from 53.4% to 55.5%. Turning to the Americas, which makes up 34% of the Group revenue.
Revenue decreased by 3.7% to EUR 735 million, out of which 13% was organic. Trends in Q2 were broadly similar to Q1 in the Americas, where the region's sales development was impacted by its higher mix in favor of Industrial Chemicals, slower than anticipated F&F performance, as well as softer performance in South America. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the half year ended at 13.6%, a decrease of 53 basis points. Despite the challenges in the Americas, prudent cost control and mitigating actions translated to a 195 basis step up in conversion margin to 56.7%. An excellent performance. Let's move to Asia Pacific. This region makes up 22% of Group revenue, versus 17% in 2022, as we are executing on our strategy.
Revenue increased by 36% to EUR 462 million, including solid organic growth of 7%. Organic growth was seen across the board, but particularly in Southeast Asia, which more than offset continued weakness in the Chinese market. Asia Pacific nearly doubled EBITDA to EUR 41 million and expanded its Adjusted EBITDA margin with 50 basis points to 8.9%, translating into a 399 basis points improvement in conversion margin to 46.7%. Continued execution of our M&A strategy, both in terms of new acquisitions and excellent progress on M&A integration, will continue to drive margin improvement in subsequent periods. Now, let's please turn to slide number 14, which shows the net profit of the Group. Net profit after tax came in at EUR 109.2 million, a decrease of 23%.
This is driven predominantly by higher interest costs, increasing due to higher debt levels and higher interest rates. Secondly, the Group incurred a negative impact from two non-cash related drivers. First being hyperinflation accounting in Turkey, where both balance sheet items and P&L are adjusted for inflation, and there was a negative impact from FX volatility, mainly on intercompany loans. This all led to a higher than desired effective tax rate, despite good progress with completing our structure post-IPO. Please move to slide number 15 for the cash flow performance of the Group. During the first six months of 2023, Azelis delivered excellent free cash flow with free cash flow of EUR 245.2 million, versus EUR 139.2 million in 2022, an increase of 76%.
Our cash conversion came in at 92.2, 92.2%, in line with historical trends and in line with our target range of 85%-95%. Given that working capital is one of our key drivers of our cash flow, let me take you through our working capital development in the next slide, number 16. Net working capital to revenue normalized for acquisitions remained flat at 15.4%. In my view, this does not give credit to the underlying improved performance. Since Q2 of 2022, the businesses we have acquired have added EUR 170 million of working capital. Over the same period, the Group's net working capital increased by EUR 53 million. On an organic basis, it has decreased significantly.
This demonstrates the working capital improvement we have delivered in the organic business and the opportunity we have to optimize the working capital for the acquired companies. This improvement has been broad-based, with both DSO and DPO normalizing closer to historical trends. We still see that whilst DIO has improved slightly compared to last year, it's still on the higher end, in my view, and reflects more work required here to unlock the full opportunity. Overall, we're pleased with the progress we are making, and our programs are working, as our cash flows are also help us to manage our net debt levels. Please turn to slide 17 to look at the debt profile of Azelis.
Change in net debt during the first half-year reflects strong operating cash flow of EUR 250 million, the EUR 200 million capital increase completed in May, and an M&A spend of approximately EUR 558 million, which includes deferred payment to acquisitions from previous years of approximately EUR 50 million. We ended H1 2023 with a leverage of 2.6x at the lower end of our stated leverage policy between 2.5x and 3x . Now, at the end of June 2023, we have a strong liquidity position of EUR 766 million, both in cash and unused credit facilities. The strength of our balance sheet, both in terms of leverage and liquidity, provides us an excellent runway to continue to execute our strategy.
In summary, we continue to make great progress on our strategic and financial objectives in the first half of 2023. This is a more difficult operating environment than we have seen in recent years, but we believe Azelis is stronger than ever and is ready to perform for our principal customers and shareholders through the rest of 2023 and beyond. Now let me give it back to Joachim for some closing remarks and the outlook.
Thank you, Thijs. Well said. We are clearly in volatile territory as our industry is normalizing after two years of exceptional growth. It needs to be stressed, the long-term fundamental drivers of the industry remains intact. While the current volatility in our markets has raised the risk of our outlook at present, the Group remains on track to achieve its medium annual revenue growth guidance of 8%-10%, subject to currency fluctuations, and is confident of delivering 10bips-15 bips Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion for the full year. With that, we are ready to take your questions. Operator, please open the line for Q&A.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star and then one on your touchtone phone or on the keypad on your screen. We'll pause a moment to assemble the queue. We will take our first question from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. A few from me, please. In Americas, the gross margin fell more than 350 basis points in Q2, and you indicated time lag in pricing as one of the reasons for the decline. Can you maybe give us some more color on that, and whether this is a one-off effect that's going to reverse in second half or whether it will continue in the second half? That's my first question, please. I'll take it one by one, if that's okay.
The gross margin decrease in the Americas was pronounced, especially, Suhasini, for on the CASE side, right, where last year, with markets being in turbulent waters in short, also prices were extremely high. We had to adjust to market environment in our formulations by giving in some of the higher prices of last year and give that back. Margin then, obviously also came down some, but we do feel, especially for the Americas, that we have reached a plateau or even slightly are moving up. That's currently the read of the market, especially on the Industrial side.
Yeah, there are two mix elements in that number, which you're seeing. One is, of course, the inclusion of ROCSA, in the M&A in South America, which is performing at a lower gross profit level. You see that becoming more dominant. They're performing at a gross margin level of around 13%-17%. Second, Vigon, which are F&F platform, which basically was performing last year quite high and basically, has declined. You see that effect in the mix as well, in addition to the comment that Joachim is making.
Thank you. My question is on the outlook. Hello?
Please go ahead. Sorry.
Hi. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, my second question is on the outlook, please, where you highlighted the higher risk this year. I appreciate that FX swings is something that nobody can predict, on an underlying basis, it's clear that Q2 growth has maybe worsened compared to 1Q, with maybe some stabilization in Americas. Can you give us your sense on what are the key parameters or factors that would result in, let's say, going slightly below the lower end of your guidance for the year? Key risks.
I said we're confident to stay in between the 8%-10% of revenue growth. That's also a result of having some of the M&A coming in. We indicated that we acquired two businesses in the Americas, generating on an annualized basis, 2022, $150 million. We closed that business in June, that will help certainly also to uplift our revenues for the second half, which again, gives us the confidence on the 8%-10% revenue guidance we gave. The second point, I'm now looking more into the markets. We do see that Asia is, it's still a mixed bag, but we see some slight recovery coming up in China, which gives us some hope that this will gain momentum.
Southeast Asia, we have some really bright, some bright spots in, in the region there, with Vietnam doing very well, but also in Thailand, we can see some good performance. This, it will also give us some momentum. As I indicated earlier, when we spoke about our results, where Americas, we think we're at the end of the third. We are seeing even some minor movement, not, not huge, but I think we have not only bottomed out, but we're, we're kind of moving up. Where we do have challenges is in EMEA, where we were leave aside that the comps in Q3 of last year, but the, what the winning growth stage was, what, still 32?
32%.
32% in Q3 last year. There beating the comps will be extremely difficult, especially as we see that the markets here are scattered. We have some which are really doing well and some where they're not doing so well. Obviously, Middle East, Africa, standing out, still doing very nicely. Here in Western Europe, it's in some countries, it's challenging, and we see it softening compared to Q1 and Q2. In a nutshell, Asia moving up slightly, Americas moving up slightly, and EMEA a little bit weaker. That's, I think, what I would say.
That's very clear. That's all for me. Thank you so much.
Thank you Suhasini.
The next question is from... Thank you. The next question is from Laurent Favre of BNP. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, all. Two questions, please. The first one is on Agri/Horti culture. It's an area where we have seen several warnings from suppliers. We haven't mentioned it as a, as a point of weakness. What are you seeing there, and, and is that an area that will weaken into H2? The second question on the guidance, you've had 30 basis points improvement in the first half against very tough comps. What are the reasons why you wouldn't be able to grow margins at the same pace in the second half, bearing in mind weaker comps? Thank you.
On the first, you take the second or?
I'll take the second.
Yeah.
Okay. On Agri/Horti, it's a mixed bag. Our Agri/Horti business in, in the U.S. is doing okay. Actually, so far, the year is not performing in EMEA. It's soft.
It's soft.
It's a soft season. well-
It's doing well in Asia.
Asia is also okay, U.S. is okay. EMEA is soft, which is the largest region, and we see signs of uptick in the summer and the weather conditions in, in Q3 from the north.
Usually for Agri here in Europe, then Q3 and Q4 are the stronger seasons. We expect this to improve in the second half of the year.
On the guidance, you are referring to gross profits, I assume?
No, guidance from EBIT margin, so straight EBIT margin.
Okay. It's very simple. Our business, you see a shift towards Life Sciences, yeah. Our mix is shifting towards the Life Science side. Second, there is, of course, a volume component from a distribution cost, yeah, with paper pallet, basically. That's also gives us a protection there. This is a very resilient business. Lastly, obviously, we're executing also operational improvement like M&A improv- integration. We made great progress with 20 companies on the platform integrated. That helps with working capital, but also operating cost leverage and integration of legal entities, those kind of things. Lastly, we're also operating efficiency programs to align basically our cost base with the top line.
As I said, we have a very variable P&L, and we're basically adjusting towards the current environment.
Sorry. In that respect. [crosstalk].
Go ahead, sorry, I didn't hear that.
The question was Sorry, my question was more, what are the reasons why that improvement wouldn't reoccur in the second half?
Are there we expect,[audio distortion] not be smaller than in the first half?
No, we expect to continue to grow our EBITA margin in the second half.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you very much. The next question is from Stijn Demeester of ING. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions, 2 from my end. First one is on China. My understanding was that in China, there is still some M&A that is not fully integrated due to COVID restraints. Can you comment on the progress you've made since travel restrictions have been lifted, and more broadly, what are you seeing in China in terms of demand recovery? Secondly, you already partly answered it in the previous question, but what to expect from contingency actions in the second half? What other levers can you draw upon to offset the revenue weakness in terms of profitability? In that respect, it maybe would also helpful to get a view on a bonus accruals phasing in the last year. These are my questions.
I'll take this too, sir. So on China, I'm saying, and you were asking on what progress we made or whether we made any progress on integrating the entities, and the clear answer is yes. We have, now that people are ready to, are allowed to travel, we have parachuted some of our managers from also Singapore in. We have made sure that we manage the business much closer than we were able to do it before. Integration from a technical point is done. Now it's about how we create value by enhancing the lateral value chain with the products we had in the rest of Azelis China before the acquisition. That's working out quite nicely. We have not yet seen a massive margin uptick, but over the last three months, it's moving in the right direction.
That said, markets in China are still not strong, and remember, these acquisitions, the one at the last one, I'm talking the bigger one, the WWRC acquisition, was geared towards industrial, and industrial is still not doing well. The China reported last month, or the last month when they reported, still that there's not a lot of expansion going on of the economy, right? Actually, they were still at 49.3, if I recall correctly. We'll see whether July has changed the picture here. On industrial activity, the outlook is still not great there. As you know, everybody speaks about the crisis on the construction sector there, business industrial will remain difficult.
I'm confident that we will be able to lift our margin profile over time, over the next couple of months, also by having people really steering the business and doing what we are doing elsewhere in the Group. On the Life Science sector, where we did some acquisitions earlier on Personal Care, which were not well integrated because of COVID, we made significant progress. The teams are now sitting together in one office, and they're also, through this, we're able now to capture more value from the strengths and lateral value chain. From this point of view, China, not economically out of the doldrums yet, but our operation is on the right track. Now over to you, Thijs. If that, Stijn, answers the first part of your question. The first question.
Yes.
Okay.
A couple of things on your, on the other levers we can pull. Basically, we, we, and I communicate this to the market, usually two budget rounds. One is a normal budget round, second is a completion budget round. The plan has been commenced in the first quarter. It's a, it's a whole array of programs. We're not going to communicate widely on a, on a big cost restructuring or those kind of things. That's not the case. That's just normal practice within Azelis. Second thing, you also need to take into account costly recalls or distribution costs, with roughly 2.8% for on, on a revenue line. You see an immediate gain flow there, that's the variable part. Regarding M&A integration, we're gaining pace there.
We integrated 20 acquisitions, as I already indicated to you. They're on the platform fully, and there is a potential uplift, of course, as we are accelerating our efforts in there. Your last question regarding bonus is just one of the sources of the uplift. To give you a bit of an indication, the impact, because we are still running quite well, as you can see from our EBITDA point of view versus prior year. There will be an effect of, we estimate, around EUR 20 million for the full year. You can estimate from phasing around 50/50.
Okay, helpful. Thanks.
Thank you, Stijn.
Thank you very much. The next question is from Nicole Manion of UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to ask about the breakdown of your kind of organic gross profit growth in terms of the volume and the sort of pricing components. I know you don't always like to speak about it in that way, but assuming that most of this weakness is still, for now, volume driven, just in light of the very strong conversion margin performance, including in Americas, could you speak to maybe how you expect that to evolve, as prices develop from here? I know you said they actually might have found some support in Americas, but just across the board, the Group, what you would expect? Thank you.
... Now let me take the comment on the volume. We don't-- normally, we can, we do not make statements on volume because I always say you cannot compare grams in Pharma and tons in Coatings. This is a very differentiated portfolio, so therefore we split this up in Industrial Chemicals and in Life Sciences. The Industrial Chemicals can be characterized as more macroeconomic related. They are basically the activity, to call it like that, is basically much more linked to the macroeconomic activity. The Life Science business is much more resilient. It's much more formulation driven, where we incorporate services to customers, and they really need us on the production line, and that's the lateral value chain concept where we are really working harder, hard on to basically help our customer base.
What happens when we're basically going a little bit in a, in a, in a, in a more challenging environment, you can see that the Industrial Chemicals from a volume point of view and an activity point of view goes down, and the Life Science side remains relatively stable. That gives a margin uplift. There's about 200 basis point differential between Life Sciences and Industrial Chemicals, and that has then an impact, basically, that your gross profit remains relatively stable. Please note that we also have outliers in our portfolio, where we, for instance, in the F&F side, where the margin profile is higher. Also, please take into account, as I said, in the own slot, that also we hold quite some M&A at much lower margin levels.
Basically it's the game to get that up to average levels by working on the lateral value chain, by putting more principles in the mix and offering a wider formulation. What we then also do in such an environment, and why that conversion margin is going up, basically, we also activate cost control. Our P&L has a variable component. Like I mentioned to, to Stijn just now, a distribution cost is, for instance, a component that we put in, but also our, our bonuses, of course, are variable related to gross margin and of course, the volume effects in a way as well. Then we take basically cost saving measurements out, and we're quite disciplined in that aspect, and therefore you see this conversion margin uptick.
The conversion margin uptick, for instance, take the contingency plans what I'm referring to, we activated that in the first quarter. That doesn't happen overnight, you will see the effect in the second half of the year, the full effect of these measures, you see that coming in. Please note, we also keep investing in our business in the areas of sustainability, labs, innovation to formulation, and also digital. We're not stopping with those kind of investments because we feel quite confident on where we are right now.
Great. Thank you. It's very helpful.
Thank you very much. The next question is from Chetan Udeshi of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, thanks. I have two questions. I think if I look at the, you know, Americas, Americas was already weak in Q1, also Q4, so it sort of continued that trend. I think one region which seems to have weakened through Q2 actually is EMEA. I think especially given when we spoke last time on the call and what we've seen actually in the numbers, it, it seems maybe it was the, the worsening might have happened more towards the end of the second quarter, compared to the beginning. So I'm just curious, as you think about the, just the absolute numbers, I know the year-on-year growth is driven a lot by the, you know, swings in, you know, comms and in M&A and stuff.
I'm just curious, as we think about the absolute earnings EBITDA for Q3, just run rate wise versus Q2, you know, besides the impact from M&A that you've done in Q2, how should we think about that run rate ex- M&A as we, as we think about Q3? You know, you think you can hold on to that run rate or, you know, things have softened through Q2, and we are coming out of Q2, organic is somewhat weaker than what we've seen at entering the Q2. The second question was just on cost. It's, it's quite, quite a good performance to limit the organic EBITDA decline in second quarter to, like, 3% from what I calculate, versus 8% gross profit declines.
You know, you alluded to some of the measures you've taken, but is that sustainable through the year, or there were one-off effects on cost in Q2, which helped, you know, the second quarter EBITDA decline to be less than the sharper decline we saw on gross profit line? Third, Joachim, you mentioned something about, you know, giving back pricing in Americas in CASE. Is that one-off, or is that a trend or tendency you are seeing more across other parts of the world as well, given clearly the dynamic is not much different in many parts of the world in terms of demand weakness? Thank you.
Take the first two.
Okay. Okay, try to try to remember all your questions, but okay, let's go for the first question. I think only, EMEA, you need to see that a little bit in the context of the organic growth there. Yeah. In Q1 last year, we had a 34% growth, 31% in Q2, and 32% in the third quarter. On such a peak, to come in with an organic growth in the second half of the year with an organic -2.2% is an excellent performance, in my view. If we, you heard Joachim also said in EMEA, we expect basically the performance to have a similar profile like the second quarter, eh?
Because we see there also the markets having a, the environment is quite tough over there at this moment. Now, on the other hand, we have also M&A, because that's also part of our growth model to pick up, and as always, our M&A pipeline is always quite active and full. We're not so concerned there. I think you should see this a little bit in the context of the previous period. On the second question that you had on our operating cost and if this is sustainable. Yes, it is, and we actually expect to accelerate in the second half of the year, as basically our operating cost measures are gaining traction. Yeah? Obviously, in the first quarter, where our performance was very strong, we saw organic growth everywhere, except in the Americas.
Obviously, we're not gonna cut costs over there, but we're basically accelerating now M&A integration, back office synergies, taking synergies of our platforms out, taking digital synergies also into the business. Those are the items that we are focusing on, and of course, they take a little bit of time to come into fruition. We see already the benefits of that, and you can see that already in Americas, where that normally happens faster, you can see that in the conversion margin. Then on the principal side, maybe, Joachim, you can.
Yeah, I'll talk on the, on the pricing. He was asking that was for the third one. On the pricing, I mentioned the Americas, and that is true that some of the chemistries we're serving, they were so short last year that, well, pricing was rather easy to be done. This year, obviously the market is long, and our partners are scrambling to keep their plant loaded because they cannot turn down, below a certain ratio if the market's not there. They really want also us to push through our formulations, the volume in the market, then pricing gets some easing. As I indicated, I think we have reached a point there in the Americas where it's not, the prices are not going down further. I think, as I indicated, we see some, some rising again, also of the activities.
What we usually do, Chetan, also to give you some comfort around that, is that we also very, very meticulously just do very simple things, and Thijs will be laughing at me. We're counting customers. We're, I told you, this is what we also do in the Americas. We're not losing customers there, but we're making sure we, we stay competitive with our formulations, that they don't start to reformulate as out them. Moving on, is that a wide, trend wider, globally? Well, certainly from the industrial segments, especially also here in Europe, you see similar trends which kind of kicked in, and that was a little bit surprising. I think when you look at historical cycles, usually, the U.S. started first, Yeah, and the market was not doing so well, and Europe followed.
This time around, it looks like it, it's the other way around. We see that in Europe also starting, I, I don't expect it to be, to be that deep, that as compared to what we have seen in the Americas and in Asia. Yeah, more of the same. Well, with the kind of picture, you go into individual markets, picture is different. When you go into China, I indicated before, industrial activity is not strong. When you then move on into India, they still have a strong growth pattern there, which also enhances us, enhances our ability to, to keep up the pricing then with this even maybe expand margin. Does that sufficiently answer, Chetan?
Yes. Thank you.
Thank you very much. The next question is from Thibault Leneeuw of KBC Securities. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I have a question with respect to which cash level you would like to maintain. I assume the M&A pipeline is well filled. What is the cash level that you would like to maintain?
Yeah, difficult question. I think that you can better, but what we give guidance on is basically our cash conversion, which is 90%, 85%-95%. We're sticking that, so I think you can use that to basically retract your cash, cash level. There, we feel very comfortable. We have EUR 766 million in facilities. Obviously, the cash that we generate, a large portion of this goes straight back into the business to fund our M&A growth. Yeah, if you take the percentages that we're using, and then in the beginning of the year, yeah, we did a bit larger M&As instead of smaller tokens. Yeah, you can see that also in our cash out.
Yeah. Okay, thank you. with respect-
Sorry, you need to take, you're making a point there. You also need to take into account obviously our leverage outlook, where we're staying within the 2.5x-3x range, and then that's how we manage that.
Okay, thank you. How are you looking towards the seasonality in the gross profit margin, given the strong different dynamics, for example, in EMEA and the Americas, where in EMEA gross profit margin increased significantly? Can we there see more seasonality in the second half, and maybe we can see potentially less seasonality in the Americas due to the weaker gross profit in the first half?
Yeah, I think you should see that in light of mix. Like, in the U.S., we indicated that we are more exposed to the Industrial Chemicals, while in EMEA, it's the opposite, much more exposed towards the Life Science segment. In the Life Science segment, yeah, the service level is also much higher. You have more products, which you, which you put in. The lateral value chain is much more broader, so that gives you also, of course, more gross profit percentage power, basically, to work with your customer because they don't only look at the cost of the product. I think you should see it in that respect.
The Life Science side of the business is a very resilient business model, and you can also see that in our current performance. Yeah.
Which will help us in H2, if I may add.
Yeah.
We added, as indicated before, with Gillco and Vogler, assets purely playing in the F&F field. They will contribute EUR 150 million.
Yeah, there's a mix effect from EMEA that you need to take into account as well. Joachim said we're diversifying in the Americas also more towards the Life Science segment.
Yeah.
when you talk about GP percentages, yeah, the acquisitions we did, for instance, in LATAM, what we did in Colombia and also our Mexican business, they are performing at a lower profit percentage than the Americas. So that also you need to take that into account as well.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Yeah, no further questions on the conference line, and we've come to the end of this call. I will now hand over to the Chief Executive Officer, Joachim Müller, for his closing remarks.
Thank you. Well, thank you to everybody for dialing in. As said, it is an interesting time out there in the market, but our business model is just intact, and we will continue to deliver to promise. We do, as Thijs mentioned before, whatever we can control. Obviously, we can't control the markets, but when you look back historically, whenever there are difficult times, there are also a lot of opportunities, and we're very much determined to tackle those and grow our company from strengths to strengths. Thank you again for dialing in. I'm looking forward to talking to you an update on our Q3 results. Till then, take care, and goodbye.