Welcome to the bioMérieux 2025 third quarter sales conference call. The call will be structured in two parts. First, a presentation by bioMérieux group management team. Afterwards, there will be a Q&A session. During this session, you may ask question in two ways: by submitting a written question in the box below the player, or by joining the conference call and dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. I will now hand over to Aymeric Fiche, VP Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon, good morning, and thank you for joining this call. I'm with Pierre Boulud, CEO, together with Guillaume Bouhours, CFO. Please note that this conference call will include forward-looking statements that may change or be modified due to uncertainties and risks related to the company's environment. Accordingly, we cannot give any assurance as to whether we will achieve these objectives. I also remind you that today's call is recorded and that the replay will be available on our website, www.biomerieux-finance.com. I will now hand the call over to Pierre, and then we will open the call to questions. Pierre?
Good. Hello, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon. I'll start with giving you the highlights for the year 2025. I'll start with the sales numbers. We've reached a very important milestone, EUR 4 billion company now, bioMérieux, growing 6.2% organically, significantly outpacing a market that we are seeing growing around 1% when we look at the diagnostics results from most of competitors. This growth would have been 7.8% excluding China. What is very positive we feel in our performance for 2025 is we've made it a very profitable growth, reaching 17.9% of our sales, contributive EBIT, and growing 16% organically.
Finally, on the numbers side, very strong cash flow generation, reaching EUR 460 million, growing 40% versus 2024. Now if we go into the commercial dynamics and the four growth drivers that we selected in the context of GO•28. If you put them together, they've actually been growing 9.4%. Let me start with non-respiratory BIOFIRE. What I'd like to highlight here is an increase of the net unit installations. As you know, this is an indicator that we follow very closely. We've managed to install an additional 1,800 units of BIOFIRE in 2025, to be compared with 1,350 in 2024.
We have successfully grown our install base by 7% in 2025 only, which is very consistent with the growth perspective that we project for the years to come. We've done that, we'll come back to that, with very limited price erosion. The second growth driver, as you know, is SPOTFIRE, our point-of-care system. What I'd like to highlight here is a very significant improvement of the install base again, 110%. We've installed 3,400 instruments in 2025 with the successful launch of the nasal swab in the U.S. in the summer. The third growth driver is microbiology, where we have a very strong leadership position. As you know, we've been impacted by the decline in China.
Excluding China, we've managed to grow 6.3%. We are very satisfied, actually, with the instruments growth in the region of 14% in 2025, growing 14% in 2025 versus 2024. Demonstrating a very strong momentum for our microbiology solutions moving forward. An additional 2 percentage point price increase in microbiology, which is also a very positive factor. Finally, industrial applications. What I'd like to highlight is a very strong performance on the pharma segment, where our launches are demonstrating a very strong impact in the market and our pharma sales growing mid-teens. Again, very strong level of reassurance for the future, together with 2 percentage point of price increase.
Now, the two additional areas of sales that are not growth driver, but we still obviously monitor very carefully. Respiratory panels, we've actually managed to grow 1%, building on a very strong performance already in 2024. The epidemiology was broadly in line, distributed differently between quarters, but broadly in line for the full year between 2025 and 2024. What is making us very positive on this one is, again, very limited price erosion, below 2%. Of course, the install base increase that I was mentioning will also benefit the respiratory panels for the future. In immunoassays, we've been struggling with immunoassays franchise, as you know, in the last couple of years, -6% in 2025.
A positive factor that I wanted to highlight here is, the VIDAS KUBE, a new system for VIDAS that we have launched now a couple of years ago, is growing very nicely. There are replacements obviously there, but mid-teen sales growth in instrument in 2025, demonstrating that we are actively managing the replacement of the old VIDAS in the market. Those are the comments on the top line. If we look at the bottom line, 16%, as I was commented, commenting, improvement of EBIT, together with the 6% of sales. Definitely a significant operating leverage. We are deploying a GO•28 initiatives.
We are progressing on the automation with regards to our manufacturing costs, reaching 40% of the pouches fully manufactured now on the automated lines, which is good news, bad news. I mean, good news is we keep improving, and we still have an opportunity to grow this in the next few years and further improve our costs with regards to BIOFIRE and SPOTFIRE pouches. We are also progressing in R&D, following the decision to close the San Jose site. We are moving forward with having one unified team for microbiology, and we are progressing also with the transformation of a global customer service that will translate into a better service to our clients and efficiency improvement.
Overall, we've increased our headcount around 2% in 2025, so to be compared with the 6% sales growth that we are posting. Finally, on 2025, I wanted to give you an update on a very significant progress on our CSR agenda. We are actually, for nearly all KPIs, either at or above target. I'd like to highlight especially the CO2 greenhouse gas emissions, that has been reducing close to 30% since 2019, while our sales have been growing 50% since 2019. A very significant improvement, and we're talking absolute emissions, which, by the way, I'll come back to that, will lead us to review and upgrade our CSR ambition for the years to come.
Before handing over to Guillaume, who will give more granularity on the information on the financial performance. It's been two years now that we've communicated our GO•28 plan, we have. It's a good opportunity to step back after two years. If we look at the different dimensions of the GO•28 ambition, after two years, we've been growing sales 8% on average in the last two years. Significantly, very much in line with the plan. We've grown the EBIT by 20% in 2024, 16% in 2025, to overall an improvement of 260 basis points versus 2023. Very much in line.
In terms of team engagement, we wanted to be in the top quartile of the industry, at the end of 2025. Our engagement survey shows we're in the top 5% of the industry, and as I said, I want to come back to that. 29% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions versus 2019, very much in line with the ambition to reduce by 50% by 2030. With this, I hand over to Guillaume, who will share with you more insights on 2025.
Thank you, Pierre. Hello, everyone. Let's look at our financial performance. Pierre already explained very well the commercial dynamics of our different ranges. You see actually a wrap up on this page. The only thing I can highlight is that BIOFIRE overall, together without SPOTFIRE, represents 37% of our total sales as our first product range, and we take everything together, grew 5% in 2025. Of course, our second range is microbiology, which represents 33% of group sales. Now looking at maybe some colors by geography on the next page. North America grew an organic +8%. Of course, it's our first region for SPOTFIRE, fueled by SPOTFIRE super high growth.
Also a very good performance of industrial applications in North America, as well as non-respiratory panels. Latin America, as you can see, is super dynamic, quite a stunning +18% organic, and it's actually very solid on all product lines in this region. EMEA delivered a 5% organic growth in 2025. We can see notably a double-digit growth of BIOFIRE non-respiratory. I remember we always have, you know, questions on the internalization, meaning outside of the U.S., the push outside of the U.S. for BIOFIRE. I think this is also pretty visible here in the figures. In EMEA, we should mention a solid performance of industrial applications as well as microbiology being mid-single digit.
Asia Pacific, maybe let's stand there, had a contrasted overall 1.5% organic. Really contrasted because of course, we discussed China all over the year. Just to remind everyone, China declined, so for us, -40% is a market downturn with a lot of pressure from authorities to decrease the spend of hospitals, which actually translated in our field, which is mainly microbiology in China in a volume decline in 2025. Down 14% in China. Very dynamic actually in Asia Pacific, outside of China, +11% overall. We can mention India with plus, which is, yeah, 12%, so above double- digit.
Of course, Japan, which is now developed above 30% organic growth in 2025, with a great success of BIOFIRE and SPOTFIRE. Noting that there was the exceptional instrument sales of SPOTFIRE in Q1, but yet a great dynamic in this country. With that, let's turn to the P&L. With 6% organic on the top line, we have delivered a solid improvement in gross margin. You can see 8% like- for- like growth of gross margin, which is actually a 90 basis points improvement in the margin itself on a like-for-like basis. How do we explain that? We have a product mix effect. As you saw, we had a higher share of BIOFIRE, SPOTFIRE, which I remind everyone is a slightly higher margins than the rest of the group.
We also have in gross margin, a number of GO•28 efficiency that Pierre illustrated earlier, that improve our cost of goods sold. We had notably, really nice procurement savings in 2025 and supply chain international transport savings. This is all despite the impact of tariffs, which we had in H2, of course, in this gross margin part. Below, we have the SG&A in a, let's say, contained increase, I should say, at +4%. That also includes some of our GO•28 efficiency initiative, and then you had the examples earlier from Pierre. R&D is up 3% on a like-for-like basis. We continue to invest strongly in R&D at 12.5% of total sales.
We deliver innovation, and yet we have innovation powerhouse initiatives to make R&D more efficient overall. CBIT, our main indicator is, so contributive EBIT is up 16% like- for- like, as Pierre said. CBIT margin, as you can see, improves to 17.9% on the reported basis, which you can break down as 160 basis point improvement on the like-for-like FX and scope compare constant. Plus, impact of foreign exchange, which was actually a EUR -33 million, due to the strength of the euro currency against many other currencies. We can come back, we'll come back to FX later on this presentation.
Also a second effect, which is the effect of acquisitions, maybe the-- mainly the impact of SpinChip, in which we invest, a lot, of about EUR 20 million. All together, we publish 100 basis points of margin improvement from the reported basis. With that, turning to the rest of the P&L. The operating income, the reported one, was impacted by VITEK REVEAL impairment that we had already reported and explained in first half this year. Just to remind, it's a lower than expected commercial start of this fast AST product. We still believe in this product. We believe there are high unmet medical needs on this, on this, product, and we continue to invest.
We also decided in H2 to close the site of San Jose of Specific Reveal, and to combine the teams under our microbiology franchise in St. Louis in the U.S. We took the associated charges, let's say, impairment and restructuring charges, that you see in the non-recurring line for EUR 40 million. Our net financial results improved from EUR -9 to EUR +4. It's mainly linked to the positive impact of euro increase on our internal cash flows, so more technical topics. Income tax is at a 24.5% effective tax rate, down from 26% last year, but very stable when you look at the recurring part of effective income tax rate.
Overall, our net income group share reported is down 8% due to the REVEAL impairment and associated charges. We have decided with the board to publish for the first time an adjusted net income and therefore an adjusted EPS. We decided that to align with market practice, and actually some of our investors were asking for that. The adjusted net income excludes the amortization of acquired intangibles and the non-recurring, but we are very tight on the non-recurring. Adjusted net income and adjusted EPS is up 9% in 2025.
By the way, the decision of the board is to propose a dividend to be voted at the AGM of EUR 0.98 per share, which is exactly a 9% increase, in line with the increase of the adjusted EPS. Turning to free cash flow, Pierre said it earlier, we had a really strong free cash flow generation in 2025, up 40% at EUR 462 million. Driven first by increase in EBITDA, pretty close to EUR 1 billion of EBITDA for bioMérieux now, EUR 960 million, up 5%. Working capital was a negative consumption of EUR 66 million, linked to mainly activity, actually, a small increase of inventory. Almost EUR 30 million increase of receivables.
We collected better when we look at days or overdue, we collected better from our customers, but of course, we had a higher activity at the very end of the year. Ended up the year with this higher receivables. In other working capital, we had more payments of social debt, means mainly variable compensation in 2025. Tax, I commented on the P&L tax with no major change of the tax rate. On the cash tax, there is a major positive impact of the changes of U.S. tax regulation.
It's a bit technical, but basically, more acceleration of R&D expense deduction, which drives a significantly lower tax payment in the U.S. in 2025, and probably more of the same in 2026, and then it will come back to more normal in 2027. In terms of CapEx, we will zoom on it in the next page, but EUR 328 million and 8% of sales. So overall, EUR 462, again, free cash flow that you saw. You see, we invested about EUR 155 in business development and financing activities. Business development was a SpinChip, Neoprospecta, and Day Zero Diagnostics acquisition. Overall, bioMérieux turned now officially into a net cash positive situation on the balance sheet at EUR 108 million net cash.
With that, we wanted to give you a zoom on the CapEx. This EUR 328 million is split, just to remind everyone, between about 2/3 in what is the usual manufacturing CapEx, as you can see, which supports capacity increase for future growth. Automation, that Pierre mentioned, for especially the manufacturing automation in Salt Lake City, and also internalization. You see here, I have a photo of our ongoing work of a new building in Marcy's or in Lyon, for enzyme manufacturing that were previously built outside. 1/3 of our CapEx is actually instrument placement. It means it's our investment to put instruments, let's say, for free, more or less, at our customers. Of course, with a slightly higher reagents price.
That was total EUR 110 million in 2025. M&A, so we have announced earlier, and it's opportunity to discuss a bit more, the acquisition in January of Accellix, a company which strengthens our offering in the pharma quality control segment for the cell and gene therapy market. We believe it will address new applications and unmet needs in this market. It's basically a point of need, so it's not like clinical, where we say point-of-care. Here, we say point of need instruments, which delivers an automated result in less than 30 minutes with lab-like quality. It will be used in cell and gene therapy, both upstream, when to send the patient blood into production, and downstream to verify the success of the operation and thus release the batches. It's a company that we knew.
We've been working with them since 2021. We had a minority investment and a targeted distribution of their product. We believe this product range will serve as an accelerator for the pharma quality control franchise inside our GO•28 plan and even beyond. You see the price that we paid, about EUR 45 million for 100% value of the company, and it should be basically around 2029, around EUR 20 million sales and breakeven by that by that year. With that, I hand over back to Pierre.
Thank you, Guillaume. It's now a moment to talk a little bit about 2026 outlook and, of course, key product launches to start with. Beyond Accellix, that we're excited to launch with the pharma customers, we are finalizing, following the acquisition of SpinChip, the CE filing to be CE marked, we expect by the end of the year, that we can do a commercial launch end of the year, Q4 2026, maybe Q1 2027. We also wanted to update you on the fact that we have initiated already the clinical study in the U.S., so that we are the objective, as we said at the time of the acquisition of SpinChip, is to be ready for a commercial launch in 2028 for hs-TnI with SpinChip in the U.S.
The second big launch that we expect in 2026 relates to SPOTFIRE. It's a bit of a strategic launch for us because it will be the first time we go into women's health with vaginitis. It will also be an opportunity to expand the use of the SPOTFIRE platform beyond respiratory and sore throat. The plan is to file during the summer, so that we, again, depending on the length of the regulatory review, we can launch at the end of 2026, early 2027. Last piece of launch, we had SPOTFIRE available in Europe with what we call the high-plex panel for respiratory and sore throat.
We are expecting to have in H1 2026, the CE marking for the low-plex panel, five targets, nasal swab, that will allow for European customers to address the new opportunities and to use this point-of-care solution with a lower-plex panel. For instance, in France, we had in February a new decree that allows to do a point-of-care testing under certain conditions for certain diseases, the financing still needs to be refined. It's now regulatory approved to have those panels used outside of the hospital and the labs. Guidance for 2026, we plan to grow between 5% and 7%, or around 6%, with an improvement of the EBIT of at least 10%.
If we go to the details of the performance, we expect non-RP to grow around 10%, building on the cross-selling and out of U.S. expansion, knowing that we are at the end of 2025, we've been growing the non-RP panels 13%, very much since 2023. Very much in line with the guidance. For SPOTFIRE, we expect to grow our sales by between 40% and 60%, which is very much in line with the trajectory that we have to reach EUR 450 million by 2028. Microbiology, we expect to grow between 3% and 5%, with China still declining, but softer than what we experienced in 2025. We are expecting mid-single digit China decline.
That will also come together with a high comparison basis in terms of new instruments. As I said, in microbiology, we grew new instrument sales by 14% in 2025. Industrial applications, very much in line with the plan, between 7% and 9% sales growth. Moving on to respiratory panels, we are actually expecting between - 3% and 2%, and +3% evolution, knowing that we had a very strong Q1 2025. We have a very high comp basis. Just to remind you, we were growing 21% respiratory sales in Q1 2025.
To keep in mind, for those of you who look at quarterly evolutions, Q1 2026 is expected to be very much impacted by this. In immunoassays, -5% to zero, and still a little bit of the same story of PCT and China decline. Finally, last but not least, we expect currency effect to have an impact on the CBIT. Our estimate at this stage, and we update on a regular basis during the quarterly calls, is EUR 50 million-EUR 60 million negative impact. I leave Guillaume to give you a bit more color on this one.
Thank you, Pierre. We try to update you on our FX exposure, and we know it's a complex topic. As you all have in mind, we have a very high exposure to U.S. dollar on revenues, but much smaller net of cost on the CBIT because we have a high cost base in the U.S. We try to give, and again, it's estimates, of course, the impact of a 5% variation versus the euro on the CBIT.
It's, for example, on U.S. dollar, you can see that, if you compare U.S. to India exposure, it's 12x more U.S. than India on the revenues, but it's only 3 x more on the CBIT, so keep in mind that we are much more sensitive to the rest of the world than U.S. Now, beyond this, let's say, theoretical variation, we try to give you a bit of a view on the right on where the current rates and depending on the currency, these are the current rates for the spot ones or the forward rates for the more variable volatile currencies versus the 2025 average.
You see the changes and therefore how it translates into a forecasted FX impact. Again, bear with me, they are estimates. The total today is actually pretty negative, very negative, due to the really high euro currency strength against most of the world. A guidance which we estimate today between EUR -50 million and EUR -60 million. As Pierre said, we will do our best to update regularly these figures during the year.
Thank you, Guillaume. As we are now, as I was sharing earlier, we are two years into the plan. We felt it was a good opportunity to give you an update on our GO•28 ambition. First of all, I mentioned the CSR new ambitions and milestones. We are very much in line, in some cases, above the plans that we articulated before. We decided, especially on two pillars of our CSR ambitions, to review upwards the ambition. On the planet side, what we want to do is to expand beyond Scope 1 and 2, which is, as you know, very much the control zone of the companies. We wanted to add a target with regards to Scope 3, which is the CO2 emissions of our suppliers and our clients.
We'll work on helping them to reach -35% by 2034. We've added, it was approved by the board, a CO2 net zero objective by 2050, including Scope 1, 2, and 3. On the health side, we wanted to strengthen the dimension of accessibility in our CSR ambition. We wanted to make sure that for antimicrobial resistance impact, we are capable to improve for low and middle-income countries the results that we provide. As you know, in those countries, there are significant challenges with antimicrobial resistance.
We want to make sure that bioMérieux solutions are well available there, as well as we've increased the coverage of antibiotics from 80% to 90%, because it's very relevant, again, in the spirit of making sure that antibiotics resistance is well managed everywhere in the world. That's for the CSR ambition. With regards to the more financial ambition, by building on the performance 2024, 2025, and the guidance that we gave for 2026, we are very comfortable to confirm the ambition in terms of sales growth, 7% on average between 2023 and 2028. For the EBIT improvement, we've said we would grow at least 10% every year.
For the years to come, we... based on what we've already initiated in the context of the efficiency program that we have, we are also very comfortable to confirm the at least 10% every year. With regards to the margin improvement, as you can see, when you put together 2024, 2025, and 2026, we are almost, after three years, at the level of 340 basis points improvement versus 2023. So we have upgraded it to around 500 basis points to be reached by 2028. I remind you, at constant exchange rates, at constant scope. This is pretty much what we wanted to share with you before we go into the Q&A session.
If you wish to ask a question, you may ask in two ways: by submitting a written question in the box below the player, or by joining the conference call and dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. The next question comes from Kavya Deshpande from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I've just got two, please. First is just looking at your group organic revenue growth guidance and comparing it to the flu headwind you've estimated in a very weak respiratory scenario. Is it fair to say that the bottom end of your 5%-7% range is driven mostly by the flu, and in that case, you would expect no sort of underlying slowdown in the rest of the business? Just also on your EBIT guidance. You're guiding in line with your GO•28 plan for at least 10% organic EBIT growth, even though the floor of the top line guidance is a bit lower at 5%.
Would you be able to share the levers that you have that give you confidence you can sustain that level of profitability, especially if we do end up at sort of the lower end of the revenue guide because of weaker flu and lower contribution from high-margin RP sales? Thank you.
Yes. On the top line, definitely respiratory season that let's say decreased, and it's visible in the stats in January. Again, as Pierre said, we are comparing to Q1 2025, which was a high comp basis for respiratory. Yes, when we look at our guidance and the range between 5% and 7%, the main element that could change between the lower or higher performance in this range is definitely the strength of the respiratory season, which we have to remember is actually throughout the year, huh. Yes, we see January and February, let's say lower than last year, I mean, it varies quite a lot.
Two years ago, we were surprised by strengths in Q2, Q3. Last year, October, November, were pretty low, and then December, super high. Yeah, let's see throughout the year, overall, and that's what we, let's say, try to take in our assumptions, as you could see on RP between -3% and +3%, depending on the, on the full year. On EBIT guidance, thank you for the question.
Yes, definitely, we want to confirm, we commit to the at least 10% organic EBIT growth, with sales that can be between +5% and +7%. Even with +5%, it's more difficult, but even with +5%, we would commit to +10%. Why do we feel confident? Because of our GO•28 plans. As said, and as illustrated by Pierre, we have quite a lot of initiatives, ongoing efficiency improvements, that we believe we can, we can push and that we continue to deliver in our third year of GO•28 in 2026.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Aisyah Noor from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, Pierre and Guillaume. Thanks for taking my question. My first one is on BIOFIRE, specifically the 1,800 placements you made in 2025. This number was strongly ahead of your 2024 number of 1,350. Could there be a dynamic here where you lost some customers to this competitor last year, and they've now come back because those one-year contracts have run out? I'm just trying to understand if the 450 run rate per quarter for BIOFIRE is sustainable for 2026, or if there were any one-off dynamics here. My second question is on the flu season.
Your U.S competitor has called out a 20% decline in respiratory sales for the first quarter. Does that sound realistic to you? I understand you don't guide on quarters, but given the flu volatility, it would be great to get your insights here. My third question is on China. You are guiding to a mid-single-digit decline in 2026. How does this compare between the immunology and microbiology business? What gives you confidence that the decline is due to a weak market and not market share loss to your local competitors? I ask this because some of your Chinese or some of the Chinese IVD companies are forecasting positive growth in 2026. Thank you.
Thank you. I can start with the first two ones, and maybe we can together with Guillaume and so on the third one. The 1,800 installation that we've seen, and I remind you, it's a net on, so it's between the, you know, the tenders we lose and the tenders we win. Very strong performance, we are not seeing what you are suggesting, i.e., customers would have left in 2024 and come back in 2025. What we are seeing is, it's either new customers or customers who increase capacity in terms of testing units in their labs. It's primarily a signal of competitiveness, I would say, of our solutions in the context of competition that you're describing.
For us, now we don't project, you know, it also depends on the market dynamics. We don't, we don't give estimate, as you know, in terms of installations, from one year to another, but it's definitely a positive and, as I said earlier, a positive signal on our capacity to grow sales on BIOFIRE in general in the next few years. Flu season, yeah, it's, you know, it's complicated to comment on the impact of the flu season in the middle of the flu season. But for sure, as Guillaume was alluding to, we are seeing, especially in the U.S., a level of flu season, which is below what we've seen in 2025, and I think we should account for that.
Very similar when you look at the data from the CDC website, very similar to the 2023, 2024 respiratory season. Probably mimics this. This is what we're looking at, but of course, when we publish the results for Q1, we'll be in a position to share more perspective on what the flu season looks like for Q1. Finally on China, maybe two words. As you know, it's mostly microbiology, I would say, in China. We are not seeing a significant shift in market share. To be honest, it's really a market decline. We've also seen, if you look at the Q4 results, China declining around 5%, mid-single digits.
Very much in line with the projections for 2026. We are seeing a stabilization of the market. Unfortunately, still declining mid single digits. As we speak, this is what we plan for 2026. I don't know, Guillaume, if.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Just on the majority of sales, as Pierre mentioned, it's actually 90%, nine zero, microbiology. It's really, yeah, vast majority, microbiology versus immunoassay in China.
The next question comes from Rachid Anwar from Investec. Please go ahead.
Let's move to the next.
The next question comes from Hugo Solvet from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. It's Hugo on for Delphine Le Louet. Just on pricing, please, to get a bit more details, what does the FY 2026 guide imply for respiratory, non-respiratory, and microbiology pricing? Have you seen also reagent pricing getting worse, probably sequentially in Q4, Q1, given replacement cycle competitions, and competitors launching products? Second, on immunoassays, when do you think would be a realistic timeline for the business to go back to growth again? Thank you.
Thank you, Hugo. The first question is easier than the second one. The first question, pricing erosion. Basically, for respiratory panel, which is the most competitive panel, we have a price erosion, which is below 2% in 2025. For non-respiratory, it's below 1%. I mean, as you follow us, it's been very stable actually in the last couple of years, so we don't expect a significant degradation on this front. Beyond BIOFIRE on micro-organism or industrial applications, we are working on pricing improvement in the same order of magnitude as what we've seen in 2025. That's for the pricing questions. With regards to immunoassays coming back to flat, but actually Q4 was better.
It's only one quarter. It's also, even though it's, we are still suffering the PCT decline, even though it's 17% of our immunoassay sales, it's still impacting us significantly less than in the past, but it's still there. It's still impacting us in China. We have those two headwinds. As I said, our guidance is -5% to zero. There is still, we're still seeing as a realistic option to stabilize sales for immunoassays in 2026. Mid-midpoint, if you wish, for immunoassays, is -2.5%.
Next. Next.
The next question comes from Janne Koch from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I would like to try my luck with the flu season again. Could you help us with the phasing of your sales guidance in 2026? Is it fair to assume that sales growth in H1, and especially in Q1, is below the lower end of your sales guidance, given the tough comps? Secondly, on the planned launch of the vaginitis panel and the point-of-care market, could you speak a bit about the size and the dynamics of this market, and how does your test compete with existing solutions? If I remember correctly, your midterm targets for SPOTFIRE only include RP sales. Should we assume that sales from vaginitis come on top of your targeted number?
Lastly, on syndromic testing, one of your competitors has recently received FDA clearance for a GI panel, which detects 11 different pathogens. Since your panel is able to test for 22 targets, I'm wondering: How important are these additional 11 targets you have, which your competitors does not have?
On the flu season, you want to.
Yeah.
give it a try?
On the phasing of sales guidance, definitely not balanced. It was not in, the comparative basis is not balanced. We had a very strong Q1 last year, a very high comp basis in Q1. Obviously, Q1 should be lower than the full year guidance, of course. Then Q2, Q3, Q4 should we will see in these quarters, should be higher than the average overall. That's very clear. Point-of-care, maybe the prospects, Pierre?
Yeah, vaginitis and, high-sensitivity troponin. What we have said is when we get very close to the launch, at the time of the launch, we'll probably update the market on the expectations in terms of in terms of sales, in terms of market share, and giving a sense of how our products compare with the competition. Obviously, it's also depending upon the label that we get from the regulatory authorities. As soon as we are ready to launch, we'll share with the market the perspective. We don't expect a significant impact of vaginitis in our sales forecast for SPOTFIRE. GI panel, I was not sure I was fully getting the question because there are a number of GI panels in the market, actually. What we've done into...
Last year, actually, what we did in 2025, was we launched a midplex, so 11 targets panel, on GI, and we have a 22 panel for higher plex, when we need to have when the doctors want to have a more comprehensive review of the potential pathogens. We believe we have the portfolio for GI that allows to to to compete and to address the competition. Yeah, that's basically what I can share on the on the GI panel.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you, Janne.
Next.
The next question comes from Natalia Webster from RBC. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one on microbiology: You reported double-digit growth in blood culture, reagent sales, and mid-teen sales growth in instruments. How much of these are coming from competitive wins? Are you able to provide more detail on the wider market environment for blood culture, and if there's been a change to the lower utilization that you reported previously? The second question, just on that 3%-5% microbiology guidance, do you see this as conservative, given the 8% growth that we saw in Q4? Instead of how much of that range is dependent on China performance specifically? Finally, on SPOTFIRE, on your 900 placements in Q4, have these predominantly been driven by McKesson versus those in hospital settings? Are you able to provide an update in terms of what you're seeing in the uptake of five-plex versus 15-plex panels? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon. Let me start with the microbiology questions. Yes, we are very pleased with the good dynamics in terms of instruments, which we believe confirm the leadership that we have taken in microbiology. There is within those numbers, competitive wins, but to be transparent, especially since we have a leadership position, a number of those installations are also replacements of old instruments. We don't communicate or share exactly what the split, but it's definitely good dynamics in terms of future revenue growth.
The 3%-5% guidance, you're right, we did actually a very strong performance in Q4 with 8% growth. There was a little bit of a rebalance with China, which was declining less. Also, as I said, very strong instrument sales that we don't expect to happen again. We are very comfortable with a 3%-5% guidance for microbiology. That's what we believe should we should see in 2026. Finally, SPOTFIRE placements, 900 installations. Guillaume.
Overall, in the U.S., for the U.S. part, yes, the majority, about 2/3 were actually driven by McKesson. You've seen we put on the slides that in terms of installation, we put on the slide that in terms of sales, the indirect channel is now 60%. It grew very nicely. It's a successful partnership. It grew very nicely, this part in 2025. I think the second part of your question, if I heard correctly, was about the mix effect inside SPOTFIRE. We have now balanced sales 50/50 between the five-plex and the 15-plex, with therefore a growth of the share of five-plex in 2025.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah, please.
Sorry, just to follow up on the microbiology blood culture as well, whether you're seeing an improvement in utilization there?
Sorry, your question is, do we see a degradation?
An improvement.
Improvement? Yeah, it's too early to say. As you know, I think you probably refer to Waters closing the acquisition of BD. You know, we are obviously watching it, and it's a bit early because it just closed. We'll see what's the impact in terms from a commercial perspective, with regards to new deals. But as we speak, what we are seeing is very much the continuity of very strong performance. Just to highlight 8% growth in microbiology. I mean, I don't think we have the details for BD, but I think they've communicated a decline of diagnostics business by 10% in Q4.
We see the performance, even though we are disappointed with the overall performance in 2025 in microbiology, which, as you know, is below initial guidance, we're seeing it as actually very positive competitive evolution in the market.
Thank you.
Okay, moving to some online questions. We have four questions from Christophe-Raphaël Ganet from ODDO BHF. Inflation of personal cost, what should be the most likely pace of evolution for 2026 and 2027? What is the install base of BIOFIRE FILMARRAY full year? What is the level of price effect on FILMARRAY Q4 and full year? The last one, can we have an update on savings efficiency plans, in terms of million euros, what is the rest of the journey up to 2028?
I can take some of those. Thank you, Christophe Raphael. Inflation of personal cost. Basically, with our global footprint and of course, the more weight of U.S. and France, we see kind of average, we call it merit increase or I think inflation of personal cost, around 3.5%, to give you an idea. To come back to the other questions, the level of price effect on FILMARRAY. As we said earlier, and just to repeat, on the respiratory panels, we see a price erosion below 2%, and that's been there's no significant acceleration on the quarter. It's a regular and consistent trend. On non-respiratory, the price erosion is actually very minimal.
It's below 1%. Savings and efficiency plans due linked to GO•28. Actually, we have never reported in million euros. As we said from the start, we measure it through our EBIT margin increase. You saw that, as Pierre said, after two years, and when we had our target of 2026, we will have likely, let's say, delivered the 340 basis points of organic margin improvement that we were targeting in three years instead of five. As Pierre stated, we have actually logically increased the five-year target to 500 basis points organic improvement versus 340 basis points .
It's also to be very clear, it's not the end of the journey after very well delivering in 2024, 2025 and likely 2026. It's not the end of the journey. We still have a lot of topics ongoing. Some of our initiatives have delivered earlier than expected. I'd like to mention in 2025, the procurement savings. We gave a numbers. It's quite a number of millions delivered in 2025. Some of those were ahead of our plans.
There are other topics that are more, let's say, going to produce their effects in 2026, even some in 2027. We have plans even, I can tell you, for initiatives that are in the making, that have preparation steps in 2026, that will actually deliver full year in 2028. With that, I would say rest assured that we still have a number of positive effects from GO•28 plans that are to come in this 500 basis point improvement.
The install base of BIOFIRE is 28,500, right?
Yes. End of 2025.
End of 2025.
One question from Arnaud Cadart, CIC. What about the recent decree authorizing the point-of-care testing in France? What are the business opportunities for bioMérieux, and what could be the uptake?
Yeah, it's a very recent development, very French, but very recent development, where we're seeing it as good news, good news for the patients, good news for the business. That there is now in France a decree that allows to do point-of-care testing. It's organized, or it depends on the disease, it also depends on the settings. It's, yeah, it's very regulated and organized way, but still allows to do testing outside of outside of the lab. There are two. Obviously, SPOTFIRE is impacted, but also SpinChip for myocardial infarction could be authorized, but also the respiratory test, especially for elderly patients in the, we call them EHPAD, in the houses for elderly patients.
There are those opportunities are opening. The decree was published, I think, two weeks ago, we still need to work together with our clients on what it means. As it sometimes happens in France, it's authorized, but it's not funded. There is a funding mechanism to also organize and and refine. We are working on it, but it's very positive news that the market is opening outside of the U.S. and Japan to point-of-care testing. We'll see how it goes.
Another question from Arnaud Cadart: What loss to expect in 2026 at the EBIT level from the recently acquired company? It was around EUR -20 million in 2025.
Basically, the companies acquired in 2025, and especially SpinChip, which is a major one, was in January 2025. It's now embedded as an organic contribution in 2026. It's fully embedded in our, in our figure and in the, in the target of +10% organic in 2026. The one that will be on the scope change is actually Accellix, which will be a loss for the first year, probably a few million euros of losses contribution in 2026. I remind you, we have said that we would target a break even in 2029 for this group.
Okay, one question, or two questions from Charles Pitman-King from Barclays. The first one is on the BIOFIRE non-respiratory panel. With the increase in competition in the U.S., will the recent launches of the GI-MID and WATCHFIRE panels be sufficient to maintain double-digit growth as the install base matures? This is the first question. The second one is on tariffs and pricing. We are projecting for 2026 negative currency impact of EUR -50 million to EUR -60 million on EBIT. We assume the 15% U.S. tariff rate, and we mentioned the procurement savings in full year 2025. The question is, could you elaborate on the mitigating actions being explored to protect margins? To what extent price increase could be further leveraged in a more cautious hospital spending environment?
I'll take the first one, you will take the second one. For non-respiratory panels, you're right to say that the recent launches of GI-MID and WATCHFIRE are not going to be sufficient to maintain a high to maintain double-digit growth. I mentioned, we've actually grown the install base by 7% in 2025 only. The main driver for growth, actually not market share, it's market growth. We expect the market on non-respiratory panels to keep growing, be it meningitis, be it blood culture infection, be it GI.
Pneumonia.
Pneumonia. All those markets are growing actually faster than respiratory panel. We are the only ones with such a broad menu of panels. Best competitor are three to four panels, we have seven. We keep working on cross-selling, expanding the market, and the growth of the install base, which is again, 7% in 2026 versus 2025.
That's tariffs pricing. Actually, there are a lot of sub-questions in this question. I think FX impact, we give visibility. Tariffs, we have not discussed, so thank you, it's a good opportunity. The impact in 2025 was approximately EUR 10 million, EUR 11 million exactly, in our P&L of additional U.S. tariffs that we had to pay, mainly in H2. What we see for 2026, and that we have embedded in our guidance, is about a bit more than double that, EUR 24 million. This impact is after the negotiation with our suppliers, who take, let's say, their own share and we take ours.
But it's before the effects of price increases, which are not specific to tariffs, of course. On price increases, just to mention that we have-- as Pierre said earlier, you know that where we can push on price, on price is in microbiology industry applications. It's not easy, but we are, we are disciplined to do that. Around 2% in microbiology and industry applications in 2025, and we should be ballpark in the same target in 2026. There are many other actions on the margin improvement, we call them efficiency improvements, as part of our GO•Simple pillar of GO•28.
As I mentioned earlier also, they are part of the margin improvement that we have in our guidance, and that we have even improved for the 2028 target to 500 basis points over the five years. Moving to the live question. There should be a question, or Anchal Verma.
The next question comes from Anchal Verma from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Great, thanks for taking my questions. Can I just ask, given your net cash position, can you share an update on your capital allocation priorities? How are you thinking about opportunities for larger scale M&A? My second question, maybe going back to your comments on the margin, if we just think about the bridge for 2026, how should we think about that balance of margin improvement coming from operating leverage, or mix and cost efficiencies?
I can start with the capital allocation and M&A. Basically, our strategy is very much to continue what we've been doing, we call them bolt-on acquisitions. We have a strong balance sheet, we are looking at companies that bring differentiated solutions that support our core business. That's very much the continuity of it. We are very much in that spirit. Guillaume mentioned it, we are going to increase our dividends by 9%, which is also a way to give cash back to the shareholders. It's the other element I would mention on capital allocation. With regards to 2026, margins improvements-
It's actually mainly cost efficiency initiative on top of of course, of volume growth and, let's say, the scale effect that comes with it. We'll see on the mix, but when you look at it overall, especially with the RP, that could be again, around neutral. It's not the mix effect that drives the margin improvement, it's mainly our own initiatives, and let's say, yeah, proper cost management and cost control.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Okay, one question from Maja Pataki. Hello, Maja. On the vaginitis panel, can you share how it compares to what is in the market now, and how should we think about the pace of uptake? What's the biggest difficulty with the roll-out?
It's too early to to share the details of the vaginitis panel, and when we get closer to, first of all, the filing and then the approval, we'll share more details. What I can share is we're excited actually with the vaginitis panel because it will be an opportunity to leverage the very unique features of SPOTFIRE outside of respiratory and sore throat. We expect time to results to be very competitive, and we expect the plexing capacity of SPOTFIRE to bring an additional differentiation to what exists in the market. Time to result, point-of-care, plexing capacity, as you know, we like to launch products at bioMérieux that are differentiated. We'll come back to that, but we expect to launch a differentiated solution in the field of vaginitis.
Okay, with that, we can close the call. We'll be on the road next week, so we will have the opportunity to meet with some of you. Our next call will be on April 23rd to comment on Q1 sales performance.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye!