Hello and good morning everyone. Welcome to Fagron's H1 2025 results webcast. I'm joined today by our CEO Rafael Padilla and our CFO Karin de Jong. Rafael, we'll start by discussing the company's performance and a closer look at the regional developments. Karin will then walk you through the financial results. We will open the floor for questions at the end of the session. With that I will hand over to Rafael.
Thank you Matthew and good morning all. We're pleased to report strong first half with revenue reaching $476 million. This reflects 11.3% organic growth at constant exchange rates. Growth came from all the regions and segments led by LATAM Brands, North America and Compounding Services. Profitability grew by 12.3% to $95 million and our margin improved to 20% supported by operational excellence and synergies from acquisitions.
We also continued to execute on our M&A strategy with four new acquisitions completed: Bella Corp in Australia, Uni-Chem and SB Trade in Serbia, and Active Pharma in the U.K. Integration of our earlier acquisitions including LSP, Purifarma, CareFirst, Euro OTC and Guinama is progressing well and in line with expectations. As shared during our CMD in April we were evaluating the expansion of Anazao's Las Vegas facility. We are happy to confirm that the project has now been approved and will be operational during 2028. To finalize, our guidance for the full year remains unchanged, mid to high single digit organic revenue growth at constant exchange rates and slight increase in profitability year-on-year. Karin will provide more details shortly. Let us now look at the regional dynamics in EMEA. BNE performed well and continues to see the benefits of our diversified geographical footprint across the region.
Compounding Services also delivered solid growth driven by rising demand across both sterile and non-sterile. For the near future we continue investing in a healthy pipeline of new launches and refinement of our commercial approach to drive further growth. Operational excellence remains a key success factor in EMEA. This focus translated into better availability and procurement savings supporting both top line and margin expansion. Finally, the Dutch FSS expansion project we announced last year is advancing according to plan. Moving into LATAM, Brazil remains a standout with continued leadership and a clear growth in the underlying market in BNE. We're leveraging our global R&D center in Brazil to drive innovation, supporting recent product launches and adoption through targeted prescriber education. Consulfarma, the biggest industry fair in the world, was a huge success, again giving us good visibility for the upcoming period.
Maintaining good momentum like in EMEA, we are making good progress across our operational priorities, which is reflected in both revenue growth and margins, supported by higher product availability. To conclude, the Injeplast and Purifarma acquisitions are pending close. Turning to North America, B& E posted a year-on-year improvement supported by enhanced operations and ongoing drug shortages. We continue focused on improving our market share as we are clear challengers in this category. Compounding services remains strong with growth from new customer wins, increased volume from existing clients, and persistent drug shortages. As shared previously, GLP-1 related sales concluded in Q2, leading to a more challenging comparison in the second half. During our CMD, we explained that the transition to Anazao's new facility in Tampa is progressing as planned and is expected to be completed later this year.
In the meantime, we are operating both the old and new sites in parallel, which has temporarily resulted in double cost. Finally, our acquisition of Bella Corp in Australia marks our entry into the APAC region. Given its market characteristics, Australian integration will be managed under North America. Let's now say a few words about quality. Quality remains our key differentiator in our industry. With over 35 facilities globally, we are constantly inspected by regulatory bodies across the world to uphold the highest quality standards. During the first half of the year, 16 audits were conducted by regulatory bodies, all of them concluded with minor observations and received GMP license renewals at our Dutch and Czech facilities. Additionally, our internal team has also been working intensely and has conducted five global audits. With this dual approach, we enhance our abilities to adapt and stay ahead of evolving regulations.
Before moving on, regarding Wichita's warning letter, status remains the same as it was during our CMD, where the FDA acknowledged our corrective actions, adequately addresses its requirements pending site visit and before Karin takes over on our growth strategy. To support our organic growth, we are announcing an expansion in Anazao's Las Vegas facility to start in Q4 this year. The investment will be $29 million over two years and will give us revenue capacity of $150 million. This will position us to meet the rising demand, boost automation, and uphold the highest standards of quality. An additional leverage from this project is that this expansion will not require individual state pharmacy licenses to operate. Turning to our M&A activities, we're announcing today four more acquisitions showcasing our disciplined serial acquirer profile, starting with Bella Corp in Australia.
With this acquisition, we entered the attractive APAC region. Bella Corp is a supplier of premium quality raw materials and equipment to compounding pharmacists. Additionally, we also entered directly the Serbian market with acquisition of the two leading players, Uni-Chem and SB Trade. Uni-Chem specializes in the import, sales, marketing, and distribution of pharmaceutical products, while SB Trade holds licenses for repackaging and relabeling of APIs and excipients. Lastly, we also acquired a market leader in the essentials market in the U.K. Active Pharma specializes in supplying pharmaceutical raw materials and complements our previous acquisition of LSP. With LSP and Active Pharma, we have now a solid market position in the U.K. Now Karin will go through the financial highlights for the first half of this year.
Thank you Rafael and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining this call. Let me walk you through the first half of the 2025 financial results and provide more color. Full Year 2025 Outlook. In H1 2025, revenues increased by 10.9% on a reported basis to EUR 476.1 million, with North America again delivering the strongest growth of 16% organically. At constant exchange rate, the growth was 11.3%, mainly reflecting the weakness in Brazilian AI. Gross margin increased by 140 basis points year-on-year driven by the increasing weight of revenues from North America, which has a higher margin and procurement savings. Globally, our operating expenses increased by 14.1% year-on-year reflecting strong volume growth in North America and the impact of our recent acquisitions.
At a group level, our profitability expanded by 13 basis points year-on-year to 20%, showcasing the benefits of our improved operational capabilities and synergies from acquisitions. We maintain our strong cash generating capabilities as operating cash flow improved by 25.1% to EUR 52.5 million year-on-year for the first half of the year. Cash conversion is impacted by the phasing of working capital. Lastly, our net debt/EBITDA ratio remains stable at 1.5 x, leaving us enough headroom for any potential acquisition. Moving on to the next slide, the bridge illustrates our revenue development for the first half of 2025. EMEA reported a solid 3.8% organic growth at constant exchange rate, while LATAM posted an outstanding 16.1% organic revenue growth at CER supported by strong performance of brands and essentials in Brazil. North America's revenue grew by 15.6% organically at CER driven by a strong performance in compounding services.
Our recent acquisitions contributed EUR 13.1 million to the revenue. FX during the period was a headwind, mainly in LATAM due to the weakening of the Brazilian AI. On the right side, our P&L shows a 10.9% revenue increase together with our EBITDA before non-recurring results growing 12.3% which reflects our operating leverage benefits. We see an increase in depreciation and amortization by 16.5% year-on-year mainly relates to the amortization of PPA items of our past acquisitions and investments in North America. Our financial cost increased versus last year driven by higher interest rates on our debt items due to phasing out of past hedging instruments in combination with an increased FX result and more costs. As a result, earnings per share grew by 12.7% to EUR 0.62 for the first half of the year.
Turning to the next slide, EMEA in this region revenue performance was supported by solid organic growth within all segments and ma. Organic growth in EMEA was supported by geographical diversification in this region driven better pricing and volume year-on-year and an improved product availability. Looking at the region's profitability, revenue margin expanded by 60 basis points versus H1 2024. This expansion was achieved thanks to the successful execution of our strategic priorities and operational excellence initiatives. Two acquisitions, mainly Eurotech SE and Guinama, are the main contributors to EMEA's inorganic growth in the first half of the year and as Rafa mentioned earlier, we closed the acquisitions of Uni-Chem, SB Trade, and Active Pharma in July and this will contribute to inorganic growth in the second half of the year.
For the year we expect a low single digit organic revenue growth at CER for EMEA and profitability margin in line with H1 2025. Moving on to LATAM, sales increased by 1.1% to EUR 86.9 million, showcasing strong growth in the brands and essentials but mostly offset by the impact from a weakening Brazilian AI. Organic growth at CER was 16.1% and as mentioned by Rafa earlier, we continue to leverage our innovation strength and launch new products in the market driving the number of prescription and overall volumes. Based on this we were able to see a nice price and volume dynamics where both were positive year-on-year in LATAM. We continue focusing on improving our operational capabilities even further. We achieved a 10 basis point revenue margin expansion to 17.4%. We expect a high single digit to low double digit revenue growth against CER for full year 2025.
This does imply a normalization of growth rate in the second half of the year compared to H1 2025 mainly as we start to comp off against strong recovery growth rates seen in H2 2024. For EBITDA margin, given the seasonality of this region, H2 is always better than H1 on an annual basis, so we do continue to expect an improvement year-on-year. Moving on to the next slide, revenues in North America grew by 16% to EUR 212.4 million as compounding services maintains its accelerated growth rate. While FX represented a small headwind effect, P and E continues to grow at a fast pace, mainly supported by operational improvements in product availability and drug shortages. During H1 we benefited from GLP-1 drug shortages for a total amount of $20 million. Of that, the B&E benefited $5 million. Excluding the revenues from drug shortages, B&E grew by 6%.
Compounding services continues to be the growth engine of the regions, reporting a solid 16.6% revenue increase year-on-year or 15.6% organically against constant exchange rates. Trends seen in the past. Outsourcing and a high demand for personalized medicine remain and supported the results during H1. Compounding services and more specifically AnazaoHealth benefited from GLP-1 shortages. As shared previously, GLP-1 compounding concluded in Q2. This will lead to a more challenging comparison in the second half. Just to remind everybody, in H2 2024 we had $12 million in compounding services and $3 million in the B&E segment. Our operating costs in the region increased year-on-year as we continue to support volume growth at compounding services and the double cost of AnazaoHealth while the transfer to the new facility takes place.
The effects from higher operating costs were fully compensated by improvements in operational performance, resulting in a stable revenue margin year-on-year of 19.5%. Going ahead for North America's revenues, we expect a low double-digit percentage of organic growth at CER and an EBITDA margin broadly in line with H1 2025. Turning now to our cash flow, our business model has several strengths and one of them being strong cash conversion. Operating working capital increased by 150 basis points to 13.8%, reflecting higher inventories to support product availability. The temporary build-up of inventory is a strategic move in LATAM ahead of the biggest industry trade fair, Consulfarma, and improving product availability. Operating cash flow increased by 25.1% to EUR 52.5 million. Maintenance CapEx ended at 3.1% of revenue when excluding one-off projects. Our free cash flow conversion was 39.9% when adjusting for one-off CapEx, slightly below our guidance.
However, it should correct towards the end of the year as working capital normalizes. Moving on to the next slide, our net debt evolution for the period. The bridge shows an increase of EUR 50 million in our net debt, going from EUR 271 million- EUR 321 million. The increase is mainly related to the acquisitions. Nonetheless, our net debt/EBITDA ratio remains stable at 1.5 x, giving us more than enough headroom for any potential acquisitions down the road. Going forward, we will continue our prudent approach and remain below the 2.8 x internal threshold. Before I hand it back to Rafael, let me go through our full year 2025 outlook. We are expecting revenues to be in the mid to high single digit organic growth at CER with different dynamics depending on the region.
For EMEA, we expect a low single digit percentagepercentage of organic growth at CER with an upside inorganically driven by the acquisitions done and announced today. LATAM is expected to end at a high single digit to low double digit percentage of organic growth at CER. As said, North America will have tough comps as we phase out the tailwinds of GLP-1 shortages. This will have an impact on growth levels in Q3 and Q4 2025. However, the underlying drivers are strong and we expect a low double digit percentage of organic growth at CER. We also expect our profitability margin to slightly improve year-on-year. EMEA showed strong results in H1 and we expect this to remain during the course of the year. North America is expected to be broadly in line with H1 level and lastly we expect LATAM profitability margin to slightly improve in 2025.
Please note that our profitability guidance only considers the acquisitions that are closed. We expect maintenance CapEx to be at 3.5% of revenues for 2025 excluding the already announced one-off projects and investments. I would now like to hand it back to Rafael for his closing remarks.
Thanks Karin. To conclude, Fagron is the only global, vertically integrated, niche defensive, high cost generating company operating in the pharmaceutical compounding 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 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 personalizing medicine. Let's open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much, and before addressing your questions, please introduce yourselves. If you wish to ask a question, please dial on your telephone keypad to enter the queue.
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Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Hello. Good morning, this is [Franklassen of the Grove, Peter Kemp]. Good morning. Two questions please. First of all, can you elaborate on the situation of the tariffs? Does that have any impact on you? What do you see in general on the purchasing side of your raw materials of the APIs? What kind of pricing trends do you see there? That's my first question. Secondly, on Brazil, 16% organic growth. That's nice. Could you elaborate how much is roughly driven by price and how much by volume? What do you see on the competitive side, competition side in Brazil? Thank you.
Thank you, Frank. Good morning. Regarding tariffs, as you know very well, we were discussing during CMD, when you look at our U.S. business, 80% is compounding services, which is of course manufacturing in the U.S. Raw materials account for 10% of the final product value. 20% is B&E out of this 20%. When you take out of the total 100%, 8% is raw materials APIs. When we deep dive on this 8% of sales, we have explained many x and we remember that you always are very much interested in our operational excellence programs. Our procurement supply comes 60% from Asia. Out of this 60%, if you zoom in again, you make Carpaccio 60% China and the rest India. Having said that, as we also said during CMD and it was explained that one, during CMD, we see that our suppliers are also sensitive to this situation.
We are seeing also price reductions at origin. Next to this, we are also having a pricing pass through policy to our customers, which understand perfectly. So far, we reiterate what we said at CMD. No material impact for us.
Yeah. The second question on Brazil, price and volume dynamics. We see for in the first half year of 2025 a nice development on both sides. Most of the sales increase, however, is driven by a volume increase and a smaller part is driven by price increases. We do see that both are positive. The price element also driven partly by the FX movement of the U.S. dollar versus the Brazilian real. Overall, very strong performance of LATAM in the first six months. The competitiveness in the environment.
Yes, thank you, Karin. On that, Frank, we see, as we were saying before, that the underlying market is growing. We see that there are more scripts there, and this eases the competitive pressure that we saw some years ago. Next to this, we have just had the Consulpharma fair, as you know, is the biggest one in the world in compounding. Many compounders coming around the globe: Asia, North America, Europe, Africa. When we compare when we were there for the first time in 2010, and we compare it now, 15 years later, it's times 10. You see the fair now with more than 60, 70 companies showing their products and services to the market, more than 10,000 participants. Therefore, the market again is growing, has good prospects, and competition is together with the fact that we're saying that we are every time more and more innovative.
This gives us also good leverage in the market.
Okay, that's very elaborate.
Thank you, thank you.
Next one, please. Hello?
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, Matthias.
Yes, hello, good morning, Matthias Malat. Thank you for taking my questions and congratulations with the results. Maybe two for [Mayanth]. If I recall correctly, in the guidance previously you were aiming for more margin expansion in the second half. Is this still the case? If so, what would be the drivers? The second question is maybe on the M&A. Can you elaborate a little bit on the deal multiples, the reason of the shareholders to sell, as also the growth profile of these businesses? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you Matthias. Maybe to start on your guidance question. So maybe firstly to start on the sales guidance. So indeed we reiterate our guidance. Mid to high single digit organic growth against constant exchange rate. Initially we anticipated one quarter of GLP-1 sales embedded in that guidance. We see some additional benefits in the second quarter. Overall we move more towards the mid side of that guidance. If we then look at the profitability guidance, we increased profitability with 12.3%, an uplift of 13 bps and in line with EBITDA of full year 2024. What we expect to see in the second half is an EBITDA margin for North America which is broadly in line with H1. Same for EMEA which had a very strong first half of the year.
For LATAM, as you know, we have the seasonality impact H2 versus H1, with H2 usually being stronger than H1. We also expect that. Overall we do expect a slight step up in EBITDA margin compared to last year, but it will not be as big as the step up that we have seen 2023 versus 2024, which was 50 bps. That a bit on the guidance. Maybe on the acquisitions, I suggest I do the financials. Maybe you can elaborate a bit more on the recent selling. We did a couple of small acquisitions in July and earlier this year we already announced three. If we look at the four smaller ones, we have one in Australia, Bella Corp, and then we have three in EMEA, with two in Serbia.
If we look at the sales of that, it's a mid to high teens amount of sales, which for Bella Corp was a couple of million. Most of it is allocated to the EMEA region. In this case, the profitability is below group average. It's in line with the strategy that we have, that we have a strong synergy case and we expect that we can bring the EBITDA margin of the acquisitions up to group average within 24 months. The multiple is in line with historical multiples that we have, so that's between 6 and 9, but it's on the low side of this range and maybe a bit high on the reasoning.
Yes, for sure, Karin, and good morning, Matthias. There are mainly two reasons for these four deals and of course for the others that we have presented. The first one is succession, as we saw with SE and Guinama. The second one is that entrepreneurs see us as a nice platform to develop their business and help further the customers. Having said that, when you look at the four deals that we have done now, Bella Corp and Uni-Chem were our distributors in Australia and in Serbia. We had a very nice relationship, a long-lasting relationship for many, many years with John at Bella Corp and Nenad at Uni-Chem in Serbia. We have decided to now be directly present in the market. We're going to focus now, as we do in other countries, on targeted prescriber education and creating more scripts, mainly with our brands.
When you look at SB Trade, we are acquiring SB Trade now, together with Uni-Chem. We have a strong presence there also for succession reasons. Going to Active Pharma, which is very interesting because now we're going to have production capabilities in the U.K., which is nice after Brexit. Mark is joining us because he believes that with our platform, Active Pharma can go to the next level. Now we have, together with Fagron U.K., LSP, and Active Pharma, a leading position in the U.K. market, which is growing, underlying growing with strong personalization and prevention and lifestyle trends. Thanks, Matthias, for your questions.
Thank you for the answers.
Thank you very much. The next one, please.
I hope I'm audible. This is Usama from ABN AMRO. Hi Usama, I just have two small questions. First one, with regards to M&A, what is the status of Purifarma? If I look at the cash flow statement in terms of M&A, how much cash has already been paid out and which acquisitions are yet to be paid? If in terms of proportionality, if you can indicate how much is still left to be paid out in H2. These two questions would be from my piece.
Yeah, maybe Usama, starting with the cash flow question. The acquisitions that we announced today are paid in July, enterprise value of $13 million. $13 million. That's what you will see as a cash out in the second half. If you look at the outstanding liability at the end of June, that was $11.6 million, of which $6.2 million is contingent. That's expected to be paid over the next two years, depending on the results of the past acquisition. They're fairly limited amounts. If you look at the two pending ones that are not closed yet, those are the Brazilian ones, because you have the big one, Beauty Pharma, which has the same status as we mentioned before. We are waiting the outcome for competition clearance, that's BRL 250 million.
That will be paid for the most part if we close that, and a part is left behind as a subsequent payment. Same for Insure Plus, which is a smaller amount that is also paid at the moment of closing, which we will of course announce separately. That's what's on that side. Sites open.
Thank you, that will be all. Thank you.
Thank you, Sama. Next please.
Your line is now open. Please ask a question.
Yes, good morning, [Stein] from IMG. Two questions, if I may. I'm sorry if these questions have already been asked. I was late to join the call. The first one is on semaglutide. Is there any way to apply the GLP-1 theme in the quarters to come, despite a hard stop in semaglutide sales due to the FDA? Maybe by playing alternatives such as tirzepatide or supplying the industry, because from the latest Novo Nordisk, we understand that there's still compounders who supply this product to the market or alternatives. Secondly, on the Australian acquisition, is it correct that it will be recorded under North America? Those are two questions I have.
Yes, thanks a lot. Thanks for your questions. Both are new, so you didn't miss it before. Regarding semaglutide, as we indicated today in the press release, also when we were explaining the results, we are going or we stopped during Q2, so May 22, as you know, we concluded compounding and we follow strictly FDA regulations and framework. If there was a chance, if FDA regulations and framework would allow, of course, we would look at possibilities. At this moment in time, we concluded the compound.
Yeah. Maybe on the Australian acquisitions, it will be indeed part of the U.S. business. A couple of reasons for that. First, it was a distributor of Fagron, so the brands and essential business in the U.S., so there's a relationship already built in the past years. That's one. We see similar products in the Australian market as we see in the U.S. market. We also see big U.S. players active in that market, so the big Medisca, PCCA, that are actively working in that market. That's the reasoning behind it. It is of course for us a nice entrance in the APAC region. We said at the capital markets they want to enter that region, we see possibility.
It's a small acquisition, but it's a good first small step into that new region and we hope to continue our acquisition strategy in that region with doing more acquisitions not only in Australia but also in the other countries there. Thank you for the question, Stein.
Thanks, Stein.
Maybe if I am allowed to follow up on this. Yes, from memory and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in the past you already had some Australian business which you, I think, divested too. I think it was [ICD]. What has changed that you now revisit that market?
Yes, sure. That's a very, very good one, Stan. At that time Fagron Trailer was a greenfield operation and it was relatively small at that time. When we started leading from top position the company at the end of 2017, we believe that we had to have a narrow focus mainly on the U.S. market, of course, maintaining our strong positions in both Europe and LATAM, of course. That was where the focus was laying at. After that and after being successful in this North American trajectory, we decided, as Karin was explaining, we also want to enter into the APAC region mainly out of the four global regions, North, South America, EMEA, so Europe, Middle East and Africa, the whole block. APAC is the smallest one. However, we see a rapidly growing trend mainly on prevention, lifestyle, aging, population, of course, personalization.
We have also observed quite closely that Australia offers this opportunity. As Karin said, it's a copy-paste of the U.S. market. You have the same kind of products, formulations, prescriptions, medical doctors prescribing, compounding in this segment. Of course you have the two main U.S. competitors, Medisca and PCCA. We have seen that it's quite profitable for this kind of companies entering that market. Therefore we had some discussions with John. Bella's owner has been our distributor historically. We decided okay, let's go direct, let's go direct together and let's go towards market leadership which is a long way to go because especially Medisca has a strong position there. Therefore now with this renewed focus we are going to look at APAC first of all with Australia and then we are looking at other possibilities in other countries. That's a very good question, Stan. Thank you very much.
Okay, thanks for the answer.
Thank you. We will just wait a moment whilst the next questioner's line is opened. Thank you.
Hi, good morning, can you hear me? This is Eric Romer from Campaign speaking.
Yes, Eric, good morning.
Good morning Rafael and Karin. I got a few questions and apologies if I've missed these. Also jumped off from another call. I had a specific question on the essentials business in North America. There appeared to be quite a steep sequential drop between Q2 and Q1. I was wondering if you could highlight it. Sorry if I missed. On Latin America, organic sales growth implied organic sales growth seemed to have gone to around 14% in Q2 from 18% in Q1. Is this fully explained by comps or did this come from slightly more tense market activity? The last question is, I think you already highlighted a bit in relation to your answer to Stan's question. I was wondering what we should expect from here.
Should we first expect a string perhaps of deals in Australia before you enter some of the other markets and what are the primary other markets in South America, sorry Southeast Asia that you are eyeing.
Thank you for sure. Thank you for your three questions and you didn't miss it, Stan. They are not repeated. For starting with the third one on Australia, you are right. First of all, we looked at this market because it is quite similar to the current activities that we are doing in the U.S. Again, we know the products very well because we have been supplying Bella, we know the formulations. We are now getting in touch with professionals there, medical doctors, big compounders, and we see nice, nice developments or future developments. Of course, Eric, of course it's small so it has room for growth and we're going to focus there. We're also looking at other possibilities and there are interesting countries like Singapore, Malaysia, for example, southern part of China where we see more and more traction on prevention and lifestyle and healthy aging, BHRT, IV's treatments.
We are looking into that and we believe that we can, of course, calm and steady, have new developments there on the Brazilian growth. Regarding competition, as we were saying also at the beginning, we see that, of course, competition in Brazil, as it is the biggest market in volume, it's tough. I mean, it's the toughest market. However, it has eased compared to the past. Also, we need to bear in mind that our strong focus is on brands. We have also launched new brands during Console 5 and this year targeted brands help us for the stickiness factor, as you know that very well. We have been investing a lot in operational excellence programs from our big factory in Brazil, in Annapolis and Service Brazil, and of course our distribution center where we have centralized.
We tried also from an operational perspective on the central side to be extremely competitive.
Yeah. Maybe on the U.S., what we do see in the first and the second quarter is that it's strong on the B&E side. Q1 was extremely strong, but Q2 is also strong. Of course, there's a bit more GLP-1s in the first quarter than in the second quarter. Overall, there's no specific reasoning for the decrease because we do believe that Q1 and Q2 both were very strong, and H1 was at 15.7% on the brands and essentials in total in the U.S. From that side, there's no specific reasoning whilst Q2 is dropping compared to Q1.
Understood. Thank you.
Thanks, Eric. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial key five on your telephone keypad.
Okay.
Thank you very much for your participation today. I will remain at your disposal if you have further questions. We wish you a great summer. Thank you and goodbye. Thank you all.
Thank you.
Hello and good morning everyone. Welcome to Fagron's H1 2025 results webcast. I am joined today by our CEO Rafael Padilla and our CFO Karin de Jong. Rafael will start by discussing the company's performance and a closer look at the regional developments. Karin will then walk you through the financial results. We will open the floor for questions at the end of the session. With that, I will hand over to Rafael.
Thank you, Ignacio, and good morning. All right, we're pleased to report strong first half with revenue reaching $476 million. This reflects 11.3% organic growth at constant exchange rates. Growth came from all the regions and segments led by LATAM Brands, North America, and compounding services. Profitability grew by 12.3% to $95 million and our margin improved to 20%, supported by operational excellence and synergies from acquisitions.
We also continued to execute on our M&A strategy with four new Bella Corp in Australia, Uni-Chem and SB Trade in Serbia, and Active Pharma in the U.K. Integration of our earlier acquisitions, including LSP, Purifarma, CareFirst, Euro OTC , and Guinama, is progressing well and in line with expectations. As shared during our CMD in April, we were evaluating the expansion of Anazao's Las Vegas facility. We are happy to confirm that the project has now been approved and will be operational during 2028. To finalize, our guidance for the full year remains unchanged: mid to high single-digit organic revenue growth at constant exchange rates and slight increase in profitability year-on-year. Karin will provide more details shortly. Let us now look at the regional dynamics. In EMEA, BNE performed well and continues to see the benefits of our diversified geographical footprint across the region.
Compounding services also delivered solid growth driven by rising demand across both sterile and non-sterile. For the near future, we continue investing in a healthy pipeline of new launches and refinement of our commercial approach to drive further growth. Operational excellence remains a key success factor in EMEA. This focus translated into better availability and procurement savings, supporting both top line and margin expansion. Finally, the Dutch FSS expansion project we announced last year is advancing according to plan. Moving into LATAM, Brazil remains a standout with continued leadership and a clear growth in the underlying market in B&E. We're leveraging our global R&D center in Brazil to drive innovation supporting recent product launches and adoption through targeted prescriber education. Consulfarma, the biggest industry fair in the world, was a huge success, again giving us good visibility for the upcoming period, maintaining good momentum.
Like in EMEA, we're making good progress across our operational priorities, which is reflected in both revenue growth and margins, supported by higher product availability. To conclude, the Injeplast and Purifarma acquisitions are pending close. Turning to North America, B&E posted a year-on-year improvement supported by enhanced operations and ongoing drug shortages. We continue focused on improving our market share as we are clear challengers in this category. Compounding services remains strong with growth from new customer wins, increased volume from existing clients, and persistent drug shortages. As shared previously, GLP-1 related sales concluded in Q2, leading to a more challenging comparison in the second half. During our CMD, we explained that the transition to Anazao's new facility in Tampa is progressing as planned and is expected to be completed later this year.
In the meantime, we are operating both the old and new sites in parallel, which has temporarily resulted in double cost. Finally, our acquisition Bella Corp in Australia marks our entry into the APAC region. Given its market characteristics, Australian integration will be managed under North America. Let's now say a few words about quality. Quality remains our key differentiator in our industry. With over 35 facilities to audit globally, we are constantly inspected by regulatory bodies across the world to uphold the highest quality standards. During the first half of the year, 16 audits were conducted by regulatory bodies, all of them concluded with minor observations and received GMP license renewals at our Dutch and Czech facilities. Additionally, our internal team has also been working intensely and has conducted five global audits.
With this dual approach, we enhance our abilities to adapt and stay ahead of evolving regulations before moving on. Regarding Wichita's warning letter, the status remains the same as it was during our CMD enablement, where the FDA acknowledged our corrective actions and equity, addresses its requirements pending site visit and before carrying takes over on our growth strategy to support our organic growth. We are announcing an expansion in Anazao's Las Vegas facility to start in Q4 this year. The investment will be $29 million over two years and will give us revenue capacity of $150 million. This will position us to meet the rising demand, boost automation, and uphold the highest standards of quality. An additional leverage from this project is that this expansion will not require individual state pharmacy licenses to operate.
Turning to our M&A activities, we are announcing today four more acquisitions, showcasing our disciplined serial acquirer profile, starting Bella Corp in Australia. With this acquisition, we entered the attractive APAC Bella Corp is a supplier of premium quality raw materials and equipment to compounding pharmacies. Additionally, we also entered directly the Serbian market with acquisition of the two leading players, Uni-Chem and SB Trade. Uni-Chem specializes in the import, sales, marketing, and distribution of pharmaceutical products, while SB Trade holds licenses for repackaging and relabeling of APIs and excipients. Lastly, we also acquired a market leader in the essentials market in the U.K. Active Pharma specializes in supplying pharmaceutical raw materials and complements our previous acquisition of LSP. With LSP and Active Pharma, we have now a solid market position in the U.K..
Karin de Jong will now go through the financial highlights for the first half of this year.
Thank you Rafael and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining this call. Let me walk you through the first half of the 2025 financial results and provide more color. Full Year 2025 Outlook. In H1 2025, revenues increased by 10.9% on a reported basis to EUR 476.1 million, with North America again delivering the strongest growth of 16% organically. At constant exchange rate, the growth was 11.3%, mainly reflecting the weakness in Brazilian AI. Gross margin increased by 140 basis points year-on-year driven by the increasing weight of revenues from North America, which has a higher margin, and procurement savings. Globally, our operating expenses increased by 14.1% year-on-year reflecting strong volume growth in North America and the impact of our recent acquisitions.
At a group level, our profitability expanded by 13 basis points year-on-year to 20%, showcasing the benefits of our improved operational capabilities and synergies from acquisitions. We maintain our strong cash generating capabilities as operating cash flow improved by 25.1% to EUR 52.5 million year-on-year. For the first half of the year, cash conversion is impacted by the phasing of working capital. Lastly, our net debt/EBITDA ratio remains stable at 1.5 x, leaving us enough headroom for any potential acquisition. Moving on to the next slide, the bridge illustrates our revenue development for the first half of 2025. EMEA reported a solid 3.8% organic growth at constant exchange rate while LATAM posted an outstanding 16.1% organic revenue growth at CER supported by strong performance of brands and essentials in Brazil. North America's revenue grew by 15.6% organically at CER driven by a strong performance in compounding services.
Our recent acquisitions contributed EUR 13.1 million to the revenue. FX during the period was a headwind mainly in LATAM due to the weakening of the Brazilian AI. On the right side, our P&L shows a 10.9% revenue increase together with our EBITDA before non-recurring results growing 12.3%, which reflects our operating leverage benefits. We see an increase in depreciation and amortization by 16.5% year-on-year, mainly relates to the amortization of PPA items of our past acquisitions and investments in North America. Our financial cost increased versus last year driven by higher interest rates on our debt items due to phasing out of past hedging instruments in combination with an increased FX result and more costs. As a result, earnings per share grew by 12.7% to EUR 0.62 for the first half of the year.
Turning to the next slide, EMEA in this region, revenue performance was supported by solid organic growth within all segments and material organic growth in EMEA was supported by geographical diversification in this region, driven by better pricing and volume year-on-year and an improved product availability. Looking at the region's profitability, EBITDA margin expanded by 60 basis points versus H1 2024. This expansion was achieved thanks to the successful execution of our strategic priorities and operational excellence initiatives. Two acquisitions, mainly Eurotech SE and Guinama, are the main contributors to EMEA's inorganic growth in the first half of the year. As Rafael mentioned earlier, we closed the acquisitions of Uni-Chem, SB Trade, and Active Pharma in July and this will contribute to inorganic growth in the second half of the year.
For the year, we expect a low single digit organic revenue growth at CER for EMEA and profitability margin in line with H1 2024. Moving on to LATAM, sales increased by 1.1% to EUR 86.9 million, showcasing strong growth in the brands and essentials but mostly offset by the impacts from a weakening Brazilian real. Organic growth at CER was 16.1% and as mentioned by Rafael earlier, we continue to leverage our innovation strength and launch new products in the market, driving the number of prescriptions and overall volumes. Based on this, we were able to see a nice price and volume dynamics where both were positive year-on-year. In LATAM, we continue focusing on improving our operational capabilities even further. We achieved a 10 basis point revenue margin expansion to 17.4%. We expect a high single digit to low double digit revenue growth at CER for full year 2024.
This does imply a normalization of growth rate in the second half of the year compared to H1 2024, mainly as we start to comp off against strong recovery growth rates seen in H2 2023 for EBITDA margin. Given the seasonality of this region, H2 is always better than H1 on an annual basis, so we do continue to expect an improvement year-on-year. Moving on to the next slide, revenues in North America grew by 16% to EUR 212.4 million as compounding services maintains its accelerated growth rate. While FX represented a small headwind effect, P and E continues to grow at a fast pace, mainly supported by operational improvements in product availability and drug shortages. During H1 we benefited from GLP-1 drug shortages for a total amount of $20 million. Of that, the B&E benefited $5 million. Excluding the revenues from drug shortages, B&E grew by 6%.
Compounding services continues to be the growth engine of the regions, reporting a solid 16.6% revenue increase year-on-year or 15.6% organically against constant exchange rates. Trends seen in the past. Outsourcing and a high demand for personalized medicine remain and support the results during H1. Compounding services and more specifically AnazaoHealth benefited from GLP-1 shortages as shared previously. GLP-1 compounding concluded in Q2. This will lead to a more challenging comparison in the second half. Just to remind everybody, in H2 2024 we had $12 million in compounding services and $3 million in the B&E segment. Our operating costs in the region increased year-on-year as we continue to support volume growth at compounding services and the double cost of AnazaoHealth while the transfer to the new facility takes place.
The effects from higher operating costs were fully compensated by improvements in operational performance, resulting in a stable revenue margin year-on-year of 19.5%. Going ahead for North America's revenues, we expect a low double-digit percentage of organic growth at CER and an EBITDA margin broadly in line with H1 2025. Turning now to our cash flow, our business model has several strengths and one of them being strong cash conversion. Operating working capital increased by 150 basis points to 13.8%, reflecting higher inventories to support product availability. The temporary buildup of inventory is a strategic move in LATAM ahead of the biggest industry trade fair Consu Pharma and improving product availability. Operating cash flow increased by 25.1% to EUR 52.5 million. Maintenance CapEx ended at 3.1% of revenue when excluding one-off projects. Our free cash flow conversion was 39.9% when adjusting for one-off CapEx, slightly below our guidance.
However, it should correct towards the end of the year as working capital normalizes. Moving on to the next slide, our net debt evolution for the period. The bridge shows an increase of EUR 50 million in our net debt, going from EUR 271 million- EUR 321 million. The increase is mainly related to the acquisitions. Nonetheless, our net debt/EBITDA ratio remains stable at 1.5 x, giving us more than enough headroom for any potential acquisitions down the road. Going forward, we will continue our prudent approach and remain below the 2.8 x internal threshold. Before I hand it back to Rafael, let me go through our full year 2025 outlook. We are expecting revenues to be in the mid to high single digit organic growth at CER, with different dynamics depending on the region.
For EMEA, we expect a low single digit percentage of organic growth at CER, with an upside inorganically driven by the acquisitions done and announced today. LATAM is expected to end at a high single digit to low double digit percentage of organic growth at CER. As said, North America will have tough comps as we phase out the tailwinds of GLP-1 shortages. This will have an impact on growth levels in Q3 and Q4 2025. However, the underlying drivers are strong and we expect a low double digit percentage of organic growth at CER. We also expect our profitability margin to slightly improve year-on-year. EMEA showed strong results in H1 and we expect this to remain during the course of the year. North America is expected to be broadly in line with H1 level and lastly, we expect LATAM profitability margin to slightly improve in 2025.
Please note that our profitability guidance only considers the acquisitions that are closed. We expect maintenance CapEx to be at 3.5% of revenues for 2025, excluding the already announced one-off projects and investments. I would now like to hand it back to Rafael for his closing remarks.
Thanks, Karin. To conclude, Fagron is the only global, vertically integrated, niche defensive, high cost generating company operating in the pharmaceutical compounding 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 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 personalizing medicine. Let's open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Before addressing your questions, please introduce yourselves.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial key six on your telephone keypad.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Hello, good morning, this is [Frank Klassen of the Grove, Peter Camp]. Good morning. Two questions please. First of all, can you elaborate on the situation of the tariffs? Does that have any impact on you? What do you see in general on the purchasing side of your raw materials of the APIs? What kind of pricing trends do you see there? That's my first question. Secondly, on Brazil, 16% organic growth. That's nice. Could you elaborate how much is roughly driven by price and how much by volume? What do you see on the competition side in Brazil? Thank you.
Thank you, Frank. Good morning. Regarding tariffs, as you know very well, we were discussing during CMD, when you look at our U.S. business, 80% is compounding services, which is of course manufacturing in the U.S. Raw materials account for 10% of the final product value, 20%. It's B&E out of this 20%. When you take out of the total 100%, of course 8% is raw materials APIs. When we deep dive on these 8% of sales, we have explained many x and we remember that you always are very much interested in our operational excellence programs. Our procurement supply comes 60% from Asia. Out of this 60%, you zoom in again and you make Carpaccio 60% China and the rest India.
Having said that, as we also said during CMD and it was explained at that one during CMD, we see that our suppliers are also sensitive to this situation. They are. We're seeing also price reductions at origin and next to this we are also having a pricing pass through policy to our customers, which understand of course perfectly. So far we reiterate what we said at CMD. No material impact for us.
Yeah. The second question on Brazil price and volume dynamics. We see for in the first half year of 2025 a nice development on both sides. Most of the sales increase, however, is driven by a volume increase and a smaller part is driven by price increases. We do see that both are positive. The price element also driven partly by the FX movement of the U.S. dollar versus the Brazilian real. Overall, very strong performance of LATAM in the first six months. The competitiveness in the environment.
Yes, thank you, Karin. On that, Frank, we see, as we were saying before, that the underlying market is growing. We see that there are more scripts there, and this eases the competitive pressure that we saw some years ago. Next to this, we have just had the Consulpharma fair, as you know, which is the biggest one in the world in compounding. Many compounders coming around the globe: Asia, North America, Europe, Africa. When we compare when we were there for the first time in 2010 and we compare it now, 15 years later, it's x 10. You see the fair now with more than 60 or 70 companies showing their products and services to the market, more than 10,000 participants.
Therefore, the market again is growing, has good prospects, and competition is, together with the fact, as we're saying, that we are every time more and more innovative, and this gives us also good leverage in the market.
Okay, that's very elaborate. Thank you.
Thank you. Next one, please. Hello?
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, Matthias.
Yes, hello. Good morning, Matthias Malas. Debrasheva, and thank you for taking my questions and congratulations with the results.
Maybe two from my end.
If I recall correctly, in the guidance previously you were aiming for more margin expansion in the second half. Is this still the case, and if so, what would be the drivers? The second question is maybe on the M&A. Can you elaborate a little bit on the deal multiples, the reason of the shareholders to sell, as also the growth profile of these businesses? Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Matthias. Maybe to start on your guidance question. Maybe firstly to start on the sales guidance. Indeed, we reiterate our guidance: mid to high single digit organic growth against constant exchange rate. Initially, we anticipated one quarter of GLP-1 sales embedded in that guidance. We see some additional benefits in the second quarter. Overall, we move more towards the mid side of that guidance. If we then look at the profitability guidance, we increased profitability with 12.3%, an uplift of 13 bps and in line with EBITDA of full year 2024. What we expect to see in the second half is an EBITDA margin for North America which is broadly in line with H1. Same for EMEA, which had a very strong first half of the year. For LATAM, as you know, we have the seasonality impacts H2 versus H1, with H2 usually being stronger than H1.
We also expect that. Overall, we do expect a slight step up in EBITDA margin compared to last year. It will not be as big as the step up that we have seen 2023 versus 2024, which was 50 bps. That a bit on the guidance. Maybe on the acquisitions, I suggest I do the financials. Maybe you can elaborate a bit more on the recent selling. We did a couple of small acquisitions in July and earlier this year we already announced three. If we look at the four smaller ones, we have one Bella Corp, and then we have three in EMEA, with two in Serbia. If we look at the sales of that, it's a mid to high teens amount of sales, for Bella Corp was a couple of million. Most of it is allocated to the EMEA region.
In this case, the profitability is below group average. It's in line with the strategy that we have, that we have a strong synergy case, and we expect that we can bring the EBITDA margin of the acquisitions up to group average within 24 months. The multiple is in line with historical multiples that we have, so that's between six and nine, but it's on the low side of this range and maybe a bit high on the reasoning.
Yes, for sure, Karin, and good morning, Matthias. There are mainly two reasons for these four deals and of course for the others that we have presented. The first one is succession, as we saw with Eurotech and Guinama. The second one is that entrepreneurs see us as a nice platform to develop their business and help further the customers. Having said that, when you look at the four deals that we have done now, Bella Corp and Uni-Chem were our distributors in Australia and in Serbia. We had a very nice relationship, a long-lasting relationship for many, many years with Bella Corp and Nenat at Uni-Chem in Serbia. We have decided to now be directly present in the market. We're going to focus now, as we do in other countries, on targeted prescriber education and creating more scripts, mainly with our brands.
When you look at SB Trade, we are acquiring SB Trade now, of course, together now with Uni-Chem. We have a strong presence there also for succession reasons. Going to Active Pharma, which is very interesting because now we're going to have production capabilities in the U.K., which is nice after Brexit. Mark is joining us because he believes that with our platform Active Pharma can go to the next level. Now we have, together with Fagron U.K., LSP, and Active Pharma, a leading position in the U.K. market, which is growing, underlying, growing with strong personalization and prevention and lifestyle trends. Thanks, Matthias, for your questions.
Thank you for the answers.
Thank you very much. The next one, please.
I hope I'm audible. This is Usama from ABN AMRO. Hi Usama, I just have two small questions. First one with regards to M&A, what is the status of Purifarma? If I look at the cash flow statement in terms of M&A, how much cash has already been paid out and which acquisitions are yet to be paid? If in terms of proportionality, if you can indicate how much is still left to be paid out in H2. These two questions would be from my piece.
Yeah, maybe Usama, starting with the cash flow question. The acquisitions that we announced today are paid in July, enterprise value of $13 million, one three. That's what you will see as a cash out in the second half. If you look at the outstanding liability at the end of June, that was $11.6 million, of which $6.2 million is contingent. That's expected to be paid over the next two years, depending on the results of the past acquisition. They're fairly limited amounts. If you look at the two pending ones that are not closed yet, those are the Brazilian ones. Of course, you have the big one, Purifarma, which has the same status as we mentioned before. We are waiting the outcome for competition clearance. That's BRL 250 million.
That will be paid for the most part if we close that and a part is left behind as a subsequent payment. Same for Injeplast, which is a smaller amount that is also paid at the moment of closing, which we will of course announce separately. That's what's on that side. Open.
Thank you. That will be all. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Sama. Next, please.
Your line is now open. Please ask a question.
Yes, good morning, [Stein] from IMG. Two questions, if I may. I'm sorry if these questions have already been asked. I was late to join the call. The first one is on semaglutide. Is there any way to play the GLP-1 theme in the quarters to come despite a hard stop in semaglutide sales due to the FDA? Maybe by playing alternatives such as tirzepatide or supplying the industry. From the latest Novo Nordisk comments, we understand that there's still compounders who supply this product to the market or alternatives. Secondly, on the Australian acquisition, is it correct that it will be recorded under North America? Those are two questions I have.
Yes, thanks a lot. Thanks for your questions. Both are new, so you didn't miss it before. Regarding Semaglutide, as we indicated today in the press release and also when we were explaining the results, we are going or we stopped during Q2, so May 22, as you know, we concluded compounding and we follow strictly FDA regulations and framework. If there was a chance, if FDA regulations and framework would allow, of course we would look at possibilities. At this moment in time, we concluded the compound.
Yeah, and maybe on the Australian acquisitions it will be indeed part of the U.S. business. A couple of reasons for that. First, it was a distributor of Fagron Inc so the brands and essential business in the U.S., so there's a relationship already built in in the past years. That's one. We see similar products in the Australian market as we see in the U.S. market. We also see big U.S. players active in that market. The big Medisca PCA are actively working in that market. That's the reasoning behind it. It's of course for us a nice entrance in the APAC region. We said at the capital markets they want to enter that region. We see possibility. It's a small acquisition, but it's a good first small step into that new region.
We hope to continue our acquisition strategy in that region with doing more acquisitions not only in Australia, but also in the other countries there. Thank you for the question, Stein.
Thanks, Stein.
Maybe if I am allowed to follow up on this. Yes, from memory and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in the past you already had some Australian business which you, I think, divested to, I think it was IMCD. What has changed that you now revisit that market?
Yes, sure. That's a very, very good one, Stan. At that time, Fagron Sterile was a greenfield operation and it was relatively small at that time. When we started leading from top position, the company at the end of 2017, we believed that we had to have a narrow focus mainly on the U.S. market, of course, maintaining our strong positions in both Europe and Latin, of course. That was where the focus was laying at after that and after being successful in this North American trajectory, we decided, as Karin was explaining, we also want to enter into the APAC region mainly out of the four global regions, North, South America, EMEA, so Europe, Middle East and Africa, the whole block. APAC is the smallest one. However, we see with a rapidly growing trend mainly on prevention, lifestyle, aging, population, of course, personalization.
We have also observed quite closely that Australia offers this opportunity. As Karin said, it's a copy paste of the U.S. market. You have the same kind of products, formulations, prescriptions, medical doctors prescribing, compounding in this segment, of course, you have the two main U.S. competitors, Medisca and PCCA. We have seen that it's quite profitable for this kind of companies entering that market. Therefore, we had some discussions with John, Bella's owner, has been our distributor historically. We decided, okay, let's go direct, let's go direct together and let's go towards market leadership, which is a long way to go because especially Medisca has a strong position there. Now with this renewed focus, we're going to look at APAC, first of all with Australia and then we're looking at other possibilities in other countries. That's a very good question, Stan. Thank you very much.
Okay, thanks.
Thanks. Thank you. We will just wait a moment while the next questioner's line is opened. Thank you, Operator.
Hi, good morning, can you hear me? This is Eric Lohmer from Campaign speaking.
Yes, Eric, good morning.
Good morning, Rafael. Karin, I got a few questions and apologies if I've missed these, also jumped off from another call. I had a specific question on the essentials business in North America. There appeared to be quite a steep sequential drop between Q2 and Q1. I was wondering if you could highlight it, and again, sorry if I missed. In Latin America, organic sales growth implied organic sales growth seemed to have gone to around 14% in Q2 from 18% in Q1. Is this fully explained by comps or did this come from slightly more tense market activity? The last question is I think you already highlighted a bit in relation to your answer to Stan's question. I was wondering what we should expect from here.
Should we first expect a string perhaps of deals in Australia before you enter some of the other markets, and what are the primary other markets in South America, sorry, Southeast Asia that you are eyeing?
Thank you for sure. Thank you for your three questions and you didn't miss it, Stein. They are not repeated. For starting with the third one on Australia, you are right. First of all, we looked at this market because it is quite similar to the current activities that we are doing in the U.S. Again, we know the products very well because we have Bella Corp. We know the formulations. We are now getting in touch with professionals there, medical doctors, big compounders, and we see nice developments or future developments. Of course, Eric, of course it's small so it has room for growth and we're going to focus there.
We're also looking at other possibilities and there are interesting countries like Singapore, Malaysia, for example, southern part of China, where we see more and more traction on prevention and lifestyle and healthy aging, BHRT, IV's treatments. We are looking into that and we believe that we can, of course, calm and steady have new developments there. On the Brazilian growth and regarding competition, as we were saying also at the beginning, we see that, of course, competition in Brazil, as it is the biggest market in volume. It's tough. I mean it's the toughest market. However, it has eased compared to the past. Also, we need to bear in mind that our strong focus is on brands. We have also launched new brands during Console 5 and this year targeted brands help us for the stickiness factor, as you know that very well.
We have been investing a lot in operational excellence programs from our big factory in Brazil, in Anápolis, fiber service in Brazil, and our distribution center where we have centralized. We tried also from an operational perspective on the central side to be extremely competitive.
Yeah. Maybe on the U.S., what we do see in the first and the second quarter is that it's strong on the B&E side. Q1 was extremely strong, but Q2 is also strong. Of course, there's a bit more GLP-1s in the first quarter than in the second quarter, but overall there's no specific reasoning for the decrease because we do believe that Q1 and Q2 both were very strong and H1 was at 15.7% on the brands and essentials in total in the U.S. From that side, there's no specific reasoning whilst Q2 is dropping compared to Q1.
Thank you. Understood.
Thanks, Eric.
Thank you.
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Okay.
Thank you very much for your participation today. I will remain at your disposal if you have further questions. We wish you a great summer. Thank you and goodbye. Thank you all.
Thank you.
Bye.