Good morning, and welcome to Fagron's nine-month 2024 Trading Update Conference Call, hosted by Rafael Padilla, CEO, and Karin De Jong, CFO. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If you wish to register for questions, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad at any time. Post call, if you have any questions, please reach out to investor relations email address, that is investors@fagron.com. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Rafael Padilla, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you and good morning, all. We are pleased to report excellent revenue development in the third quarter, achieving organic growth of 12.2% at CER, bringing our nine-month organic growth to 12.6%. This strong growth is coming from all regions and segments, highlighting the strength of our structural growth drivers. North America continues to be the largest contributor to our performance, while in Latin America, revenue development was excellent, mainly supported by brands. In EMEA, growth was driven by both B&E and compounding services. On the M&A front, we have accelerated activity and are happy to announce three new deals, while we remain committed to our disciplined approach. These acquisitions across all regions support our ambition of global market leadership.
Lastly, for our full year guidance, we reaffirm our revenue outlook to be in the range of EUR 850 million to EUR 870 million, with an improvement in profitability year- on- year. Moving on to the next slide, the nine-month revenue bridge shows growth across all regions. North America performed strongly, followed by our M&A activity, Latin America and EMEA. The FX impact was negative due to the weaker Brazilian real. Looking at the individual regions, EMEA's nine-month growth was led by Compounding Services, as we continue to benefit from robust demand, drug shortages, and new product launches. In Latin America, Brands was the main contributor, as it benefited from our broad product portfolio, innovation strength, and improving operational excellence.
North America's strong performance was driven by all segments, and again, compounding services continues to be the main driver due to the strong market demand, drug shortages, and new customer wins. Let's now move to the third quarter. In EMEA, revenue growth was driven by both BNE and compounding services. In BNE, the impact of Poland was more than offset by strong demand elsewhere in Europe, and as said in previous calls, our operational excellence efforts helped drive this growth. It is important to highlight that the performance in Poland remains resilient, as we continue to focus on our strategic actions already discussed. In compounding services, demand remained solid, helped by drug shortages and strong comparable from last year, especially following the launch of dexamphetamine in August. In Latin America, reported revenue growth for the quarter reflected the impact of the weaker Brazilian real.
But when looking at underlying organic growth at constant exchange rates, Brands revenue experienced a very nice acceleration, supported by our broad product portfolio, increased customer stickiness and loyalty. Also, essentials has seen positive trajectory for the last two quarters, and compounding service in Colombia continues to develop well as underlying trends in the region remain solid. Moving on to North America, we saw an exceptional growth in BNE as our operational excellence initiatives, like improving product availability, enhancing procurement processes, are paying off. In compounding services, FSS continues to grow impressively, driven by increasing demand and improved operational capabilities. Anazao also continues to perform well, driven by demand for prevention and lifestyle treatments, along with the temporary drug shortages, which we expect to continue till the end of this year. Lastly, our investment in the Tampa facility is expected to become operational by the end of this year.
Moving on to the next slide, during this quarter, we signed three acquisitions, two of which are pending closure. Out of the three, two are in the BNE segment, making further progress our objective for global leadership. In EMEA, with high single-digit revenue contribution, we acquired Euro OTC Pharma in Germany, which will give us scale and sourcing benefits while expanding our customer base. In Latin America, we acquired Purifarma, a well-established player in Brazil's essentials segment. This deal solidifies our position in the Brazilian market. Purifarma annual revenues around 200 million BRL, and it includes three facilities, which will help us improve operational leverage and expand our product portfolio. Lastly, in North America, we signed and closed the 503B book of business of Ritedose, with annual revenues of low double-digit million dollars. This deal includes the customer base-...
inventory and sales force, adding around $2 million North America Q3 revenues. Moving to the next slide, on quality, this is a big factor in our industry, and we remain committed to maintaining the highest quality standards across all our regions, in line with the rapidly increasing regulatory requirements. So far this year, 17 audits have taken place globally, and if we zoom in on this quarter, we had an FDA audit at our Anazao facility in Las Vegas. The audit concluded with 3 minor observations, and our team is working towards the closure. As mentioned during the last conference call, we had an audit at our Wichita facility in the month of June that resulted in 7 observations. After the submission of our responses, our team has been working to bring the audit to a satisfactory closure.
Moving to our full year guidance, we are reaffirming revenues between a range of EUR 850 million to EUR 870 million, with an improvement on profitability year on year. Maintenance CapEx, as a percentage of revenue, shall remain within the 3%-3.5% range, excluding the one-off CapEx projects we announced in previous quarters. Lastly, to conclude, Fagron is a global, vertically integrated, niche, defensive, high cash generating company, operating in a highly fragmented market. Our resilient business model is fortified by a diverse geographical footprint, and these factors, coupled with demographic trends and our emphasis on personalization, are the basis of our success. Our quality focus, together with our ongoing operational excellence initiatives, will help optimize our business through global synergies, while a disciplined M&A strategy remains a key part of our growth.
Sustainability is a paramount priority and a strategic cornerstone for us, as together we create the future of personalized medicine. With that, we open the floor for questions. Thank you all.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. That is star one for questions, and our first question today comes from Matthias Maenhaut from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Good morning. Hope you can hear me.
Yes.
Maybe three questions from my end. Firstly, maybe on the full year guidance, you have a very strong Q3 with strong organic growth. Why not narrowing it down to the high end of the sales guidance range? And what do you expect in terms of profitability? I think previously you mentioned slightly up. Do you think this will still be the case, or could it be a touch more than slightly? And then maybe also, touching on the midterm targets. I can clearly see the high single digit sales growth CAGR organically. But in terms of the midterm margin target, how should we think about that? Which time frame do you think you can achieve that, and what will be the drivers? That would be my first question.
Yeah. Good morning, Matthias. Thank you for your questions. Maybe on the full year guidance, assuming no significant changes in the current market conditions, we reiterate our guidance of EUR 850 million to EUR 870 million. This is excluding the Ritedose acquisition, so we added EUR 2 million of inorganic growth on the back of that acquisition in Q3, so the guidance is excluding that. Also, we saw a negative FX impact, driven mainly by a weakening of the Brazilian real, which had an impact of approximately EUR 5.3 million for the third quarter. So in the guidance, we anticipated a similar FX rate in Q4, as we saw in Q3. But of course, development of FX is not something we can predict, and remains an uncertainty.
Currently, with the information we have, we are confident with the sales guidance range we have given. On the first one, on your midterm guidance, yeah, we remain committed to our midterm guidance on sales and on profitability. Of course, we've gave that guidance a couple of years ago, so things have changed with certain acquisitions we have done, especially in the US, that had a dilutive impact on our EBITDA margin. But we are confident that with the projects we have launched and the focus on operational excellence, that we will move towards that long-term guidance. A bit on profitability guidance that we have, that we have given. Profitability guidance says that we expect an improvement compared to last year.
For Americas, we'll see the profitability moving towards 21.5%, so benefiting from the strategic actions we have given. LatAm, usually H2 is better than H1, so we also expect for this year that that will be the case, so we expect an improvement there. For North America, I said also, during our half-year update, we see that we have some double cost that we have for the Tampa facility on the one side, and also we hired a lot of additional people at our facilities in Boston and Wichita to help the growth that we've seen. So that will have an impact on profitability. So overall, we expect the margin to increase year on year and also give some color on the different regions.
So I hope that sheds a bit more light on the guidance, Matthias.
... Yeah, thank you. Second question is maybe on the U.S. acquisition of Ritedose , could you maybe talk a little bit on, the price paid, on the reason of selling, this book of business? Is this API to sterile or is this sterile to sterile? Will this be, effectively, move into the capacity of Wichita or Boston? And can you maybe give us a little bit of an update on, capacity utilization at Wichita and Boston? That will be my second question.
Yeah. Thank you. So Ritedose was indeed a small book of business we acquired. It's a customer base, a sales force, and inventory that we acquired. And the enterprise value is a high single digit amount, with half of that in the form of an earn-out. Just to be clear, it's a book of business of syringes, so no bags. So if you say, "Okay, what's the limitation on capacity?" It's not that much because we can easily integrate additional syringe volumes into the facility. It's embedded in the Wichita facility, and it's mainly API-to-sterile syringes that we add. So we're in the transition phase currently, because it was fully embedded in the Ritedose organization, had low profitability, and currently we are integrating this into our facilities.
We added in Q3, as mentioned already, EUR 2 million of sales in our inorganic growth. We expect a low double-digit amount in millions of USD on a full-year basis. Profitability on the business will move up towards the average of the region, so of the US region towards Q1 2025.
Maybe adding, Matthew, on the current capacity that we have at FSS, right? With the two facilities. As we have explained previously, we need to think on Wichita between $150-$175 million, of course, depending on the SKUs, right? And Boston, it's around $100 million. That's at full capacity and utilization and therefore, we announced during the last call, if you remember well, the $39 million investment across the street in Wichita, and as from 2027 will add approximately between $200-$250 million more fully IV line, dedicated.
Yeah. Thanks. Maybe just a short follow-up. Would it be fair to say that Wichita is presently almost maxed out in terms of capacity and most of the growth is in Boston, or would that be not necessarily the case? And why?
No, it is. Oh, sorry, Matthew. It is not necessarily the case, indeed. And it is, you always need to think as a progressive step-up, right? So the market demand is clearly there, so we see it. FDA and regulations are increasing, so therefore there is a need for outsourcing, right? We are a reputable name in the industry, so we want to pick up this growth step by step, steady, because we don't want to make any fault along the way.
Okay, thank you. I have some more, but I'll get back in the queue first.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Matthias.
Thank you. And our next question now comes from Victoria Lambert, from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi. I've got a few questions, please. So just on the first one is just understanding the impact from Hurricane Milton on your US facilities. So I understand your Tampa facility is currently closed for a few days during the hurricane. So is this expected to have a limited impact on earnings? And then if the facility is damaged and offline, possibly for a few weeks, would this then have a material impact on results? That's my first one, and then I'll ask the others after this. Thanks.
Yes, thanks a lot, Victoria. And indeed, this is a very important question. And first of all, we were taking care, right, on the safety of the employees. That's our first focus on this subject. And what we have seen last night is that, at this moment in time, what we have seen is that our facility has not suffered any significant damage. Of course, we need to evaluate, right? As you said, these days we are closed. We evaluate, in principle, the facility didn't suffer any damage.
Okay, great. Thank you. And then, just pivoting to the Wegovy shortages, are you guys assuming this is resolved by next year, or is there potential for it to be resolved now in Q4? And what would this do to your revenue guidance for North America? I assume it would maybe have a take away $6 million from the revenue contribution for Q4. And then maybe if you're seeing any impact from more competition in the space from the likes of Weight Watchers and Hims & Hers. Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you, Victoria. So indeed, we still see benefits from the specific shortage in Enbrel for the third quarter. So we had an additional $6 million sales in Enbrel in the third quarter, which was also embedded in the comparables. Based on our analysis, we expect that we can continue to sell this product into Q4, and so into the guidance, we embedded a similar amount as Q3. So the $6 million is embedded in the guidance, and based on our assessment, we believe that we can sell into the fourth quarter. We will reassess by the end of the year what the situation is. So what will happen in twenty twenty-five remains uncertain. So, but for Q4, this is our assumption that was embedded in our forward-looking statement.
Great. And are you seeing more competition from, like, Weight Watchers? I think they announced they were doing Wegovy compounding at the beginning of the week.
Sure. So we see that it's the market is useful, as we have seen the previous quarters, right? And our approach here is that we serve our current customer portfolio when they require it, and we focus 100% on our core business, which is improving as the underlying market is also improving, right? And that's our mainly and primary focus.
Okay, great. Thanks. Just my last one, just on your M&A announcement today, what sort of impact should we assume for the balance sheet? Is this gonna be mainly debt-funded? Yeah, any help here would be helpful. I mean, do these acquisitions fit your usual M&A criteria in terms of, you know, being strict on valuation? Thank you.
Thank you for the question, Victoria. We announced two smaller deals. The German one and the US one, we fund from our free cash flow. For Purifarma, which is a slightly bigger deal, enterprise value of that is BRL 250 million, which is EUR 42.5 million, and part of that will be financed with the free cash we have in Brazil, and part will be borrowed from a bank in Brazil. It's a combination of both. We don't expect a big impact on our balance sheet. Maybe just to clarify, we signed the deal in Brazil. It didn't close yet, so there are some conditions to closing.
So we don't expect for Q4 to have additional sales, or an additional contribution from this acquisition, as well as the German one. So Euro OTC also have some conditions to closing. So the only addition will be the Ritedose book of business that we acquired. Maybe on the multiple, as said, enterprise value, BRL 250 million. Sales is around BRL 200 million, and that's 10% EBITDA. We believe that within 18 months, we can bring the profitability to 18%-20%. So we see that, there's a very strong synergy case on this. It's based on an operational plan we have, and our execution capabilities. The synergies are, of course, on the leverage side.
So we see procurement savings, we can enhance our product portfolio, we can impact the production facility in our production site, where we have additional capacity to do that. We have distribution center, which we can leverage. So overall, there's a strong synergy case on this one. So that's the reason that we say that within only 18 months, we can bring it to 18-20 times, 20%, sorry. Sorry. Wanna add?
No, very well said, Karin, and also adding Victoria, if I may, saying that, as you know, Brazil is the biggest market globally in terms of volume. Imagine that 80% of our current volume in BNE comes from this market. The last quarters, we saw good results, and this comes from the strategic actions that we outlined. Remember that we said short term, market leadership protection, midterm, the launch of the brands. We have seen excellent, excellent development on the brands. And of course, as we want to continue benefiting from underlying market growth, it's essential for us, it's essential for us to consolidate the essentials segment, right? Purifarma is clearly leading the essentials, so no brands, only essentials, with a very compacted portfolio, extremely compacted product portfolio, which is, as Karin said, right, on everything that she described.
It is quite easy for us to integrate. Even think, Victoria, that our production site can go, or you can go from our site to production site walking, and it takes five to 10 minutes walking, right? So as said again, we expect in the next 18 months in our synergy plan already outlined, that profitability will be between 18% and 20%.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. And from ING, we have Stijn Demeester with our next question. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is also on Purifarma. From what I understand, you're acquiring number three in the market. Are you not concerned about antitrust issues, and is there a formal review process ongoing? Because if I read it correctly, you would approach around 60% market share. And then, relate that in Brazil, have the other competitors shown a bit more pricing discipline in recent months? And also, another question on this one: What explains the lower profitability of Purifarma, given it has some scale in the market, but the margin seems to be much lower than your own margin in the region? So that's my first set of questions.
...Yeah, good morning, Stijn. So on the first question, indeed, the condition to closing is competition clearance, which we need to get, and we feel confident about the outcome, but of course, we need to go through the process. Timing of this varies, but could be anything up to six months.
Good morning, Stijn. Regarding the operational synergies and multiple, Purifarma, if you remember in the past, when we acquired companies like DEG, Pharmanostra, Viaf arma, those EBITDA margins were between 8% and 12%. They were typically companies with a broader product portfolio than Purifarma at that time, and with some brands in their portfolio, right? Due to our integration and synergy capabilities, we were able to bring those companies in four months on average, right, to around 20%. So what we see in this case is that Purifarma has, again, is a very compacted product portfolio, 100% on essentials, which has, of course, less marginality, zero brands, right? Which has more marginality.
So the first thing that we're going to do is enhance the product portfolio and increase some brands that were in the pipeline, because Purifarma has a very good presence in the market, has a 100% average in customer base. This is one. And then secondly, we are confident on increasing profitability, even only if we would work on the Essentials, because the product line that we see in the Essentials is quite synergistic with ours, right? The same products, the same specs, in many cases, the same suppliers, and here the volumes will substantially increase. So this means that when we go to market and we buy a product, for example, Orlistat, which is a very important one, now we have current volumes of 6,000 kilos.
When you add the 3-4 thousand kilos more than that Purifarma has, so our pricing coming down origin, and then, of course, the quality control, the production, the distribution will have enormous leverage for that.
Yeah, maybe to add, Stijn, on your question on pricing dynamics in that market. So if we look at the price volume dynamics for the third quarter, specifically for the LATAM area, we see some price relief. Of course, there's a small impact in FX, driven by that, where we see a bit of relief in pricing, and that's for the first time in many quarters, and we see volume growth. So main sales development is driven by that volume increase and a small price relief. We see a price impact there.
Okay. Would you say the Purifarma margin has suffered more from the entrant, from the new PE-backed entrant, a couple of years ago, since they're more concentrated?
Yeah, that is a very nice one, Stijn. What we have seen historically, because Purifarma is in the market for the last 40 years, right? Purifarma has been always at the lower end, regarding pricing, right? So despite the fact that there was a new entrant acquiring company with, as you said, right, some price pressure, Purifarma has always been leading that market with low pricing points, right?
What we are going to add on the synergetic plan that we were explaining is, of course, also the pricing, monitoring the pricing in the market, because it's in this part, it's a commodity price. It's a supply and demand, right? So then it comes into our platform to monitor that pricing in the sales pricing point.
Was it a competitiv e process?
No.
Okay.
No. We approach. Yeah.
Okay, all right. Then two follow-ups. One on the FDA release of last week, stating that some part of the GLP-1 supply chain are normalizing. It affects Tirzepatide, I understand, which is a bit similar to Semaglutide. Now, is there still a probability that you see the Semaglutide shortages lasting next year? Or do you think categorically that it should be resolved by Q4?
Yes. Thanks, Stijn. As we said before, right, we have a really limited view on it. So we, as we also said during the call, we explain quarter on quarter, right? We are totally focused on our core business at Anazao, which we are seeing very nice developments, and we will inform quarter on quarter, as again, we have a very limited view on this.
Okay, understood. And then last small one, you now have licensing from Boston in 46 states. California is still missing, I gather?
Correct.
And is there any visibility on that one closing?
No, we not, right. So we have fulfilled all the documentation requirements, right? And we are in the waiting mode.
If there is something extra needed, we comply really rapidly, because as you are now indicating, it's a very important state for us.
Yeah. Okay, thanks. That's it for me.
Thank you, Stijn.
Thank you, and we now move on to a question from Frank Claassen, from Degroof Petercam. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, all. Two questions left. First of all, on the BNE business in North America, that growth accelerated very nicely from, let's say, mid-single digit to mid-teens. Why, what has really happened? Can we zoom into that? Why did it suddenly change and accelerate this much? Is there some restocking going on, or is it, yeah, your efforts? And is this growth also sustainable? Maybe that's the first question.
Yeah. Thanks a lot, Frank. Good morning. And indeed, these developments that we have seen in the last quarter are, for us, very much in line with our vision of being number one in this market, which is the highest in value, right? We're seeing Brazilian volume, this one in value, so there is a very nice complementarity there. Specifically, on your question, right, why? Because we have put a lot of efforts within the team in order to improve our operational capabilities. So as you know, the last quarters, we moved our production to Decatur, Alabama, right? So with the new distribution center in there, we have brought together the procurement in our Austin service center office, right?
And those efforts of the team, which is doing an amazing job, are now paying off, and it's mainly three areas. The first one, it's product availability, which was one of the lowest as we have outlined in other calls of the group. The second one in the supplying chain, and of course, in the procurement processes. And as we also explained during the last conference call, we started also project to deliver some of the products, some of the recipients of our BNE line in the U.S. from our factory in Latin America, right, in Brazil. Going forward, of course, we would like to continue seeing this double-digit growth, right?
This would accelerate our path to get the leadership position, which is not easy because this is a very good company, but we stick, we commit to the guidance that we have given during the capital markets day, right? With the mid- to high-single-digit growth in our BNE segments. So this means of course, compounding services, growing the region at a higher pace.
Okay. Thanks. And then maybe on Poland, the change in reimbursement system, is that now, yeah, let's say, gone in the numbers? What can we expect going forward? And maybe, yeah, what has changed in Poland so far?
Yeah. Thank you, Frank. So on Poland, so we still have a negative price impact in Poland in the third quarter, which was similar to Q2 and Q1. We see that the comps are getting softer in Q4 because the market last year anticipated the change in regulation. So you saw the volumes in Q4 last year dropping. So the comps are getting softer. We see the situation normalizing in the sense that volumes are not dropping, and the pricing impact will be fully embedded as of Q1 next year. So I think the diversification strategy has paid off because you see, if you look at the BNE growth in Q3, it was 4.7%. So it paid off because the other countries, they compensated for the price loss that we had in the Polish market.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you, Frank.
Thanks, Frank.
Thank you. And up next, we have Thomas Vranken from KBC Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for taking my question, and, congrats on, another quarter of strong results. Maybe first question, from my side is on, North America, on the acquisition there of Ritedose. I was just wondering if you could clarify why you decided to go for, the acquisition of a specific book and not, let's say, the entire company. Were there any segments, you mentioned this already earlier, in particular that attracted you to, that company or, others that did not maybe?
Yes. Thanks and good morning, Thomas. So, Ritedose is a company, you can also look at the website, which they had at that time, the 503B part. And of course, the biggest part is the registered niche pharmaceuticals, as we call it here internally. And they decided to have full focus on that line, so therefore, they tried or they decided to divest this book of business. Of course, we were very much interested because as Karin was explaining previously, the product portfolio is almost like for like with ours, it's an OR syringe portfolio, API-to-sterile, and Ritedose is a very reputable name in the industry. So of course, that's for us, very important.
As we were saying before, quality and regulation is extremely important in this market. And again, as set, we are taking the customer base, the sales force and the inventory, and when that's slashed, then we will start producing at our Wichita facility.
Okay. Thank you. In NA, in EMEA, I just wanted to double-check when do you expect the completion of the integrations for LSP and for pharma products? You mentioned the dates were on track. Just to have a bit of an idea on how you think about timelines there.
Yes, sure. So integration process with the acquisitions that we make takes normally 24 months, right? So completion will be at the 24 months period. And of course, first we focus in the administrative part, right? Finance, HR, all those back office elements, which are very important for us. And then, of course, we move to the quick synergies, mainly on the operational side, right? Procurement, so LSP, we were at that time selling around 20%-30% of their needs. Now, of course, has moved to 70%, 80%, and going up, right? So that's what we take next to, of course, for example, pharma product in Hungary, the production site, as it is Essentials that we bring immediately to our Polish facility. And then the last part. Those are the last months.
We go into the sales part, where we enter with our best practices regarding sales, right? And of course, we include our unique products. Those are the brands, for example, the SyrSpend, in order to enhance the product portfolio of these companies.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Thomas.
Thank you. And we're now moving on to Eric Wilmer from Kempen. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, all. Thanks very much for taking my questions. I've got two remaining. Regarding the Purifarma deal, it seems that the number of FGE is slightly above Fagron's average when you measure it both by sales and EBITDA. I think you mentioned cost savings as a key source for synergies, but how will you make sure that your customers or your new customers don't walk away, which have actually been used to lower pricing? And the reason I'm asking is that you it seems that you're anticipating faster synergies capture with this deal compared to the seemingly more straightforward EMEA deal. So I was wondering any takes there? That will be my first question.
Yes, thanks a lot, Eric. Good morning, and what you are referring to, it's very important to bring the reflection on how does a sales order from us, a purchase order from our customer work, right? So a customer has a very broad product portfolio in a pharmacy, and the customer quotes to the whole industry. Remember that there are approximately 30 players, right? Each one with its specificity. So Purifarma, the advantage of Purifarma, is, as you said, the low price points and availability, right? Our advantage is the enhanced product portfolio, and we are quite competitive in pricing as well, right? I mean, Purifarma is leading the essential segment, but we are quite close, right? We're hand-in-hand fighting with Purifarma.
Of course, when a brand is in the quotation, then we have more hedge to negotiate with the customer, so we can go lower in price for Essentials and take it, right? So our thesis here is on the sales side, and in order to have this customer loyalty, first of all, is enhanced product portfolio of Purifarma. Out of this compacted range, 300 items, we will bring it to the average of the group. Of course, this brings some cannibalization internally, but remember that we have 40% of the market, so there is a 60% rest of cannibalization, right? And this has more stickiness factor to the customer. On the pricing point, we will remain competitive because now you have the two main players in this segment.
What we were explaining before on the market intelligence part, monitoring pricing, monitoring inventories, right? Having the product available, this is a key element there. This will bear its fruits. A good example is, maybe you remember, Eric, the Pharmanostra deal in 2012, if I'm not mistaken. That was a similar case, right? Low EBITDA, focus on, not 100%, but 90% on essentials. And now Pharmanostra, which is Infinity Pharma, it's at group average, right, around 20%, with a strong portfolio, with very good and reputable brands, and extremely competitive in the sales side. On customers, right, that will remain and will stay loyal.
What we see in Brazil is that customers really appreciate the work we do because they see it as a partnership, because it's an open market, right? So they also need to compete, and they also need to go to the doctor and generate scripts. The fact that we bring high-end pharmaceutical compounding science, our R&D, global R&D center is located there in Brazil. This gives opportunities for the customers. So they like when we acquire a company, and we bring this company to the next level.
That's very clear. Thanks for the very elaborate answer. But does it mean that you need to increase inventory levels yourself in Brazil as well, based on this acquisition?
Yeah, that. You could think like that, for sure, for sure. We have a good inventory management there. Purifarma has normally more inventory than the average of a Fagron Group company because it's more the thinking process. Okay, we have inventory for a period of time. We sell it good. We don't sell it okay. We will sell it anyway, right? That's how it's being, the thought process being elaborated there. Of course, when it enters into our systems, remember that we align our operational process in four blocks. The first one is demand planning and forecasting. When we introduce our best practices there with the system, we will see, of course, stock reduction on Purifarma current inventory levels, whilst we will keep or increase product availability.
Okay, thank you. And then the next question, that's actually surrounding the, your EMEA Essentials business. If you would correct for the previous Hungarian acquisition, I think sales were, yeah, roughly flat year-on-year, despite, strong organic growth outside Poland, I think, over the past, or good growth over the past, quarters. Am I right to assume that the Essentials business was also somewhat softer outside of Poland, or am I missing something in Q3? Thank you.
No, I don't think the Essentials was softer outside Poland. I think a lot of different markets contributed to that growth, and of course, Poland had a big impact on that. It's mainly Brands and Essentials in Poland. So that had an impact, but we don't see a structural decline of our Essentials business outside Poland. That's not what we see.
Very clear.
Thank you very much. Eric Wilmer.
Thank you, Eric.
Thank you. And as a brief reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that is star one for your questions today. And we now have a follow-up from Matthias Maenhaut from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thanks. First question is maybe on Euro OTC. Could you maybe just there elaborate a little bit on the deal metrics? I don't think we touched upon those yet. Synergy capture and reason of selling of the owners. That would be my first follow-up, please.
Yeah. Indeed, you're right, Matthias, so if you look at Euro OTC, we acquired the raw material part of the business. Enterprise value is a low double-digit amount, with a small earn-out, and the sales is a high single digits, with an EBITDA around 15%. We expect to increase profitability to group average in 24 months, and indeed, there are some conditions to closing, but they're more administrative of nature, so we don't expect any problems of closing that early next year.
Sure, Matthias, and on the strategic rationale and the process itself, we approach the owner, right? So we were the one approaching, and this of course, it's a process that takes a long time, right? So it's cultivation phase and building up relationships, so we did approach. And from a strategic perspective, of course, this is total, and remember, during the capital markets day, that slide with four pillars, the first one was global leadership in BNE across all our markets. And we have said many times in calls that Germany is the biggest market in BNE, in Europe, and that we were number two. There you see there is a phenomenal company leading that market, that's Caelo.
It's really, it's an amazing company, and we believe that, of course, bringing in Euro OTC group will still be number two, but this will give us a platform to accelerate our pathway towards this market leadership, which we envision together with the US, as the top strategic priority for this segment, right? As Karin said, we have the synergies on the product portfolio, right? Because we're adding volumes, and of course, we will increase the customer engagement because we will also bring new items into Euro OTC portfolio. Important to say that we'll have two brands, Fagron Germany, which is close to Hamburg, and then Euro OTC, like we see in other countries like Poland or Belgium or Brazil, where we have a multi-brand strategy, right?
Again, the integration will take, as a normal integration, twenty-four months with all the steps that we described before.
If I first may do a full follow-up, can you give an idea of your market share in German countries and the market share of number one player? How big is the difference, and how fragmented is that market actually still at this point in time?
Yeah, the fragmentation we see, again, Caelo, which is again leading that market with substantial market share. Then it's Fagron Germany, and then it's Euro OTC group. Then you have very small players, which we don't take because the share there is very small, right? So now, when we close acquisition, we'll have Fagron and Euro OTC group in one side, and then Caelo still leading that market. So think around 30%-40% for the Fagron group and the rest for Caelo, and a small part, residual part for other players within the European landscape.
Okay. Then a second follow-up question was actually on the U.S., more specifically on Anazao. You commented on good growth, underlying growth. Could you maybe elaborate a little bit on, or quantify that? And then secondly, also, I recall that the strategy of selling semaglutide was one in where you sell potentially to new customer on the basis that they also allocate other business to you. How far are you proceeding with that strategy, and how meaningful is that in the underlying growth? That would be my second follow-up, and then I have a last one.
Yeah. So to comment on the sales growth of AnazaoHealth, so this quarter, they have a sales growth of 11.1%. And as you can remember, in the last couple of quarters, we were above that. So we were around 30%, and then we corrected for the tailwind we have on the shortages, and then we ended up around 12% growth. So now we see that the comps, the shortages are also in the comparables, so the number normalizes, and it's around eleven percent. So if you look at the underlying business, it's performing very well. Want to-
Sure.
Talk about the drivers?
Yeah. Of course, Karin. Sure, Matthias, and you're totally right. So our thesis at the beginning was, okay, we only, of course, we serve our loyal current customers, and when we get a new customer, we onboard it for Semaglutide when the rest of the business is being brought. So that was a good strategy at that time. Nowadays, we don't see new onboarding customers also bringing the rest of the portfolio, so it's quite a low pace, if you will, on that respect. And when you look at the whole year, what has this brought? This is not the main element of the underlying growth at Anazao. It's more the new items that we have launched during the year. Anazao is a very innovative company.
It is number two in that segment, very reputable as well. As we were saying during the presentation, we had an audit with only three minor observations in Vegas, so the customers recognize that one, and we try to introduce very, very innovative in this segment, and this is the main driver for the underlying growth that we have seen, together with increased demand from those customers.
Okay. Maybe, so a follow-up on the transfer to Tampa. Are you completely transferring all the business to the new facility?
Yes, we are.
Yeah, and the old facility is closed, is going to be closed?
Yes, this is... Yes, this is a process that we are having now, as Karin is explaining now. So we are in the middle of this process. We will explain this during this semester, right? And during the first semester of this year is when we're going to uncertain capacity of this product portfolio.
Okay. And a last follow-up is on the Brazilian acquisition. Just from my, I might have misunderstood it, but what is actually the customer overlap you have between your business and Purifarma?
The Brazilian market has, Matthias, eight thousand different compounding pharmacies. During the last twelve months, there were one hundred and eighty-seven new ones opened. So you see that the market in terms of volumes, of course, as we have explained, but also in terms of compounding pharmacies has been growing, right? Purifarma sell to an extent, customers, not to all of them, not to all of them. Fagron with the companies that we have there, remember, it's a multi-brand, multi strategy. We serve 100%, 100% of the market. So normally what we did, right, because there has been a period that we have not been active there in many.
One of the synergy elements that we do is to include new customers into the company that we acquire in order to increase the outreach of this.
Sorry, the line broke up a bit, so I didn't get the full response. But there is some overlap, or there is minor overlap, or there is substantial overlap?
There is there is a good overlap. Some overlap, right? So again, we serve to the whole market, the eight thousand selling points that we have, compounding pharmacies. Purifarma sells to a substantial, so I think on +50% , around 60% of the market is being served by Purifarma. So there is also an opportunity to increase the number of customers that Purifarma will serve when it will be part of the Fagron group.
Okay. And if you look at your synergy target from 10% of sales, that's mostly cost synergies or is that sales synergy?
The majority comes from the cost part. Nevertheless, this sales approach that we were explaining at Eric's question, it's an important part of it. But the substantial part, the substantial part is on the operational side, which is, of course, very... And again, we, with the whole humility, please, we believe that it's easy for us to integrate because it's a very compacted line, 300 items, essentials, commodities, right? Same items, almost same specifications, a lot of providers, manufacturers that are the same, right? So it's quite an easy integration for us.
Yeah. Okay, maybe last follow-up on Brazil. The Brazilian real versus the US dollar is, of course, depreciating. This has an impact on your sourcing conditions, so the pricing part, has it been able to fully compensate for this negative headwind on sourcing conditions, or only partly?
No, there's a part that's being compensated, Matthias. And, of course, it's double, it's the transaction exposure on the one side on FX, and it's translation exposure on the other side. So, transaction, we partly hedge also. The translation we don't, because of the costs related to that. However, we have sufficient headroom in our net debt/ EBITDA ratio and our other ratios to bear and to mitigate that risk.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Matthias.
Thank you. And as there appears to be no further questions at this time, I would now like to hand the call back over to you, Mr. Padilla, for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you very much. All the questions were great, and let's talk the next conference call at the beginning of next year. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for joining today's call, ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.