You can look at. So I'll start on page three, and Laurent and I will be available to answer questions. So we've continued to make good progress in Q3 on all our initiatives, building our hub-and-spoke lab network. As we wrote, we should be done, we should complete this activity by 2027. We continue to invest massively in our IT infrastructure, both in terms of IT infrastructures, our network, where we are rebuilding a very resilient and compartmented IT structure to to be more protected from potential cyberattack, to protect our data and our clients' data better. And in developing and deploying our proprietary suite of IT solutions to to be fully digital and fully integrated in what we do.
On that level, we start to have a lot of data because we have still some business lines, like Clinical Diagnostics, where we have not done that. And we see that the spend intensity in IT, in those business lines, which typically represent the industry a big patchwork of IT solutions, is up to twice as high as what we have in the business lines where we have done that already, like, for example, BioPharma Product Testing. So those investments in digitalization, not only will they bring much better quality of service, performance, ability to detect potential errors and speed of service to clients, but they're also, on the long term, when they are finalized, very cost effective. So this is something...
Those are the areas, less visible, of course, than our buildings and our labs, where we continue to deploy significant amount of capital and also operating costs, because it's also a lot of our users who are designing and testing those solutions. So operationally, we continue to make progress. You have seen that our growth in Q3 was a bit less. Maybe I can give a bit of color on that. This is mainly coming, as you can see by area of activity. Of course, our growth is softer in North America because BioPharma is a larger percentage of our activities in North America. This is partly due to some segment of BioPharma, the things we have put into this BioPharma activity. The BioPharma Product Testing is actually doing quite well.
It's mostly working for larger companies and products that are later in their development. The BPT area is still close to mid-single digit. In the best years, it was close to double digits, but still, it's still doing fine. The areas like Food and Environment Testing as you see, are growing above our objective. So is Consumer Testing, Diagnostic services and products are growing a bit like their historic growth, around 4%. Within BioPharma, the areas where we've seen some real softness is Agroscience. The whole industry is very challenged after a number of years of challenging situation in the market for our clients, and uncertainty about the regulations for getting new pesticides, new agrochemicals approved. There is some contraction in demand.
This was down more than 10% in almost 15% in Q3. Of course, it will plateau, it will bottom up, so we're optimistic that next year, we'll, we won't see the same type of decrease, but it is, in one quarter, quite significant. Another area that maybe we could have flagged a bit more is that in BioPharma, we have a number of laboratories, our Central Lab, for example, working for clinical trials of new drugs, doing the testing required for clinical trials. That can be a bit lumpy, because it can be very large studies. We've had a client that had a big success with one study and had to and could cancel a follow-on study because FDA didn't require it.
So that was unexpected, and a lot of work stopped at the end of Q2 in for that client. Then we've got another client, which study is completed. We've signed a very large ten-years contract with them that will start in the second half of next year. So we've got a bit of a lull in the clinical part of our business. It's the clinical part of BioPharma is less. Central lab part is much less than BioPharma Product Testing. But when you have an activity, big studies that stop, you can be also minus more than 15%. That has an impact on the quarter. We see that as absolutely transient, and actually, when that picks up, it can really boost the other way around.
That's why we are confident on our average growth for the five years, and we haven't changed that. But on one quarter, it is visible. Otherwise, all our activities are doing fairly well. We have put a bridge. We're continuing our M&A programs. We've been fortunate to find quite a lot of bolt-on deals at quite acceptable multiples. So our spend on M&A compared to the revenues we are buying for the full year might be, and potentially for what's coming for next year, might. That has freed some money for us to buy back our shares that we would have otherwise allocated to M&A.
As you can all see, I think our share is the biggest opportunity in the tech market at the moment, so we are investing in buying back our shares at the moment, and we'll step that up if things continue. And that's because we are saving on M&A. On our CapEx program, we are moving as planned. Our reorganization, we are moving as planned. It does cost us a lot of money to build this hub-and-spoke network, but it is also a finite investment in time, and every year we are getting closer to being done on that. On page five, we've discussed a bit our objectives. The profitability is continuing to be above plan, has continued to be above plan in Q3 in terms of margin.
The overall revenues for the year will be a bit less than what we anticipated. We have a hit from currency, a significant hit from currency that, of course, we don't know what the currencies will do in the next two months, but assuming there are not some very significant changes, they will be below the target, so that will impact the top line and, transitionally, of course, profits, but our margins are higher on that. And we have a bit of a gap on organic growth in BioPharma that I think will continue in Q4, and we thought we should flag it now. So that's for our objectives. We think we will deliver on our cash flow, and we're also confirming our objectives for twenty twenty-seven.
As we said, we believe this situation in BioPharma is very transient. Our clients are positive. We have won a very large preferred partnership agreement with a large BioPharma that is going to start also next year, and we believe it could add material volumes. So, we are positive over the next couple of years, and we think we can achieve our objective for twenty twenty-seven. So that's it for our objective and for the introduction. I think we can open the microphone to Q&A now, please, operator.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin our question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star, followed by one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. Thank you. Our first question is coming from Himanshu Agarwal with Bank of America. Your line is live.
Hi, thank you for taking my questions. My first question is on BioPharma, which, as you mentioned, sequentially deteriorated quite substantially into Q3. Can you give us some color on the trends, especially in Agroscience exiting Q3, are you seeing some improvement, stabilization? And also, how much is it, as part of the group? Because it should be quite significant to weigh on the organic growth of the overall BioPharma division. So that's the first one.
Thank you very much. Agroscience is not much. I think we put somewhere in the press release, it's about 2% of the overall growth size of the group. The other part that's also affected, as I mentioned, is the Central Lab and the, which is also a few percent of the group. This, you're talking very significant drop, more than double digits. The other thing if you look at it, is BioPharma as a whole, so BPT is also not at our objective of 6.5%. It's more slightly below double digits, so that has an impact. We've got Discovery that we had flagged before.
The earlier part, it's also a small activity for us, a couple of % of our group, but Discovery is not going down now, but it's more flattish, and that's also a gap to growth. It's not that we're talking that our overall revenues are going down, and they are actually growing. We've had continued growth in the first nine months of the year, but it's growing less than before. So if you have some negative, that impact the rate of growth.
Thank you. And also on the 2025, it seems like, the improvement that we expect in BioPharma is going to be more back half weighted. Is there any risk of delays in terms of starting these clinical trial projects? Because I think a lot of the improvement in BioPharma is potentially dependent on those. So what is the confidence level on those starting in the second half? Thank you.
It's not only that, we think our overall BioPharma will improve next year. We flagged the second half for those specific clinical trials, but overall, our teams for BioPharma are positive, or BioPharma Product Testing teams are fairly positive for next year. I haven't seen the final budget nor discussed all the budgets with them for next year, but they see some. A lot of things have bottomed out. Also in discovery, very good biotech funding. And the cherry on the cake in the second half might be that, indeed, those large studies do restart, on top of the overall recovery of BioPharma that we still see coming next year. Of course, it's very hard to time it exactly by one quarter.
It's a whole industry, but we are, our leaders are positive about the development there.
Thank you. Can I just-
You asked for Agroscience.
Yeah.
Sorry, the only place where we have no visibility is the Agroscience. But when this will recover, this is linked to a number of factors that are hard to see, both regulatory and overall, how the industry is doing. And that's why we have flagged it, that both the seed area and the agro area might be challenged for a while or not, but it could well be challenged for a while. It's not a major part of our group, as I mentioned, 2%, but still, there, on that small part, we don't have much visibility.
Thank you, and just last question, housekeeping. Can you just talk about the potential impact of changes in French tax rate this year?
... and potentially next year? Thank you.
We don't think we'll be affected by that. First of all, Eurofins is a Luxembourg-based company. It's not a French company, although we are listed in Paris. We believe our size, the size of our activities in France, as defined, you know, I don't believe even the laws are passed yet. With the, how the laws look like, it doesn't look like we will be affected. Our activities will be below the threshold.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Annelise Vermeulen with Morgan Stanley. Your line is live.
Hi, good afternoon, Gilles and Laurent. I have two questions, please. So firstly, just circling back to twenty twenty-five, your comments in the press release. The commentary reads quite negatively or cautiously, at least, particularly for the first half of twenty twenty-five. Could you perhaps elaborate on what you expect to see in each of your end markets, particularly in the first half of the year? And based on what you can see today, do you expect to be able to deliver your 6.5% annual average organic growth in twenty twenty-five, or is that contingent on that BioPharma activity coming back in the second half? And then secondly, on the SGS Crop Science acquisition, in the statement you've noted you filed an arbitration against SGS in August.
Could you remind me exactly what that involves, and how long does that process usually take? I'm just wondering when we might see an update on that process. Thank you.
Thank you. Yes, for next year, we have no reason to think that we wouldn't achieve the organic growth that we have in our objectives. And if it was otherwise, we'd have said it. We flagged a couple of things. Maybe it sounds negative because we want to be transparent. At Agroscience, we don't have a visibility, but it's a small business. And the fact that we have those clinical activities, that where we are sure, actually, because we've signed contracts, that they would restart next year. So but the rest of BioPharma is doing well. We think the funding of the BioPharma is good, has recovered a lot for biotech.
Our clients have done a lot of source searching into which program to continue or not, but this trend is finishing. We have an Investors Day tomorrow in London, so the head of BioPharma, a global BioPharma business line, Tim, will talk about it, can give you a lot more color than I can. Again, we have not set our objective for next year, so I can't be too specific about it. Overall, what we said in the press release is we are positive about the overall growth outlook of our business.
And for the SGS Crop Science, yes, we feel that we had signed a deal and the deal should have completed, and we feel the other party did not do everything they should have done to make the deal complete. And therefore, we have filed for arbitration, and those processes take months. I mean, normally, arbitration is faster than court cases, but it still can take a couple of years.
Okay, thank you.
It's a EUR 45 million business. It's not a huge business, so it's not like it's gonna change anything on the bigger picture principle. If a deal is signed, we think it should complete.
Great, thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Suhasini Varanasi with Goldman Sachs. Your line is live.
Hi, thank you for taking my questions. Just a couple for me, please. The pricing cuts in clinical diagnostics in France, can you please clarify what is the extent of the cut and the scale of revenues it applies to? Second one is, on the forensic audit, it is good to see some of the results that got published today. Is there any other color that you would like to flag, over and above what's there in the press release? Thank you.
Thank you very much. Yes, those pricing cuts, they affect only our routine business because they were test specific, so our specialty business is almost not affected by those. I think the pricing costs are something like 8% on 300 million of revenues. That's the impact. Of course, we will have volume growth next year, and I guess that pricing cut supersedes any other cut that there would have been. Normally, there are cuts of 3%, 3-4% per year, so it's a bit higher than usual, but it's not like earth-shattering. It doesn't also affect our whole business, but we thought we should flag it, so the investors know the things that are going on. I mean, some of you have seen it, maybe others didn't.
On the financial audit, yes, we were pleased. You know, we've been attacked totally unfairly by short sellers. Of course, we all know and professional investors know why those people do that. They do that for their own interest and to make money out of it. They were certainly ill-informed and ill-advised because we've been able to refute all of their arguments, all of their claims, anything they insinuated, that we've been able to go back and prove it. I mean, it is a bit silly that we have had to ask external auditors to audit our cash situation that had already been audited by Pricewaterhouse, so by Deloitte, sorry. And prior to Deloitte, we had for years Pricewaterhouse.
It's a bit silly that we have to spend money to do that, but the report is for all to see. You know, it's very easy for someone to say, "Okay, I'm sharing a journalistic opinion," and without any burden of proof or any consequences, they can claim any nonsense or any fallacy or anything they want to claim. Of course, anything we put in a press release, we have to prove, we have to justify, we have to document, and we have to engage external advisors and things like that. The value of what we put is, of course, it has to be right, because otherwise we're liable for what we write.
So it's not, it's really two different level of certainty of reliability on both sides. I'm surprised that investors get fooled so easily by those short sellers report, but unfortunately, that's what it is. But I think we've done everything we could to cover to basically respond. We know that those related parties situation that we've had historically, they of course create an opportunity for trying to make a company's management look bad, and that opportunity we want to remove, and we will work on that. We are working on valuations and all those buildings to potentially get them bought by Eurofins, if Eurofins shareholders so wish. Because that's an open flank.
Even though we are sure we didn't do anything bad there, and the company's made all efforts possible to make sure everything was at arm's length, we cannot prevent people from claiming it is not the case if they don't have to prove anything. So we will also work to get that behind us. We've had, on that occasion, extensive discussions with shareholders, and we listened to anything that could bother them, and we're trying to address anything that comes up. There was questions about our board. Maybe we'll add one member of our board that is also independent, to have a fewer people in each of the committees or fewer overlaps between the committees. That's something we heard we're gonna work on, and we're gonna continue to improve anything.
The rating agencies, ESG agencies, have significantly improved their ratings of Eurofins. We'll continue to do whatever makes sense on that level. We're improving ESG reports, so we're doing a number of things, so we've really always been listening to investors and doing things that make sense, but that provided the silver lining. It provided another occasion to communicate, exchange with our core investors and listen to what is important for them, and we're making progress on those things, too, so I think that forensic audit closes the door and puts a lid on those totally unfounded claims, and we can move on and focus on our business, which is improving, and the main thing is I'm very pleased about the financial development in the company.
Our profits and our cash flow are really growing. We are coming into a phase now where we will reap the benefits of all those investments. So the next few years look very positive. And, yes, so we'll generate cash, and if the market doesn't recognize it, we'll just buy back our shares.
Thank you. Just a follow-up, please. I think in your press release, you had indicated that you might put to the vote to shareholders about buying back the sites owned by related parties. Is there any timing on that vote? Would it be next year, early next year, mid-next year?
Yes, if we can get everything done by then, if we can get the valuation done and everything, we'll try to put that, at least for part of the buildings, on the agenda of the next general assembly. We don't want to do a special general assembly just for that, but that would be the likely timing.
Thank you.
Same thing, if we're going to add a board member, that would be the timing where we'd probably do that. Once a year, we propose to the shareholders the reviews of the board membership.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Tom Burton with BNP Paribas. Your line is live.
Yeah, hi, Gilles. Hi, Laurent. Thanks so much for taking my questions. I've got a few. I'll just start on just BioPharma, on the cost side there, I guess, because on the H1 call, you'd referenced the group's response on the cost side to some of the lower growth you've seen kind of elsewhere in your European business, and where you've been carrying a bit too much staff for activity, you'd adjusted the cost base. You suggested that if things didn't turn around in BioPharma, you might do the same there. So I'm just wondering, with the weakness you kind of observed through Q3, the softer outlook you've talked about for 2025, and some of the recovery expectations being pushed into second half of next year, how is that thinking around costs evolving?
Or have you, in fact, already started taking action on the cost base there, and maybe that's why you're able to give a better message on the margin and possibility to try and understand just, you know, margin protection versus maintaining sufficient capacity there for when that market eventually recovers. Then on startups, your guidance notes mention you expect to continue the high intensity of startups, but I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, there weren't any new startups launched this quarter. I know there were some blood collection points, but that marks, I think, the first quarter in several years where we've had no startups. So I'm just wondering how we should think about the cadence and sort of quarterly and annual sort of planning of startups. Any reason why you didn't open any up this quarter?
Is it just a timing sort of, I guess, based on the response to activity, or was that always part of the plan? Then finally, just one more on the EY forensic report. A comment that's come up with a few investors today is regarding the statement within the report around limits of the report, and it references that some of the information provided by the group was on occasions incomplete.
... I appreciate some of that might just be standard sort of disclaimer language, but maybe you could just give some comments on, on why that, if that's the case, why that might have been, as it suggests, some of the conclusions could have been different if, if the information had been more complete. So any reassurances or kind of details you can give there would be helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Yes. While we cannot decide on when our clients start some new programs and so on, we can control our costs. So costs, of course, our teams are managing their costs. And yes, in Agroscience, they were a bit slow in responding and managing their costs, but they are doing so now. And in other areas, of course, they are managing their costs. It's faster to manage costs in America than it is in Europe, especially if you're talking about personnel costs, but this is being done. And if there is, these things don't develop as fast as we think they will, of course, they will be adjusted further. You're right. On startups, we have a plan to open a number of BCPs, blood collection points, which are relatively low-cost startups.
We are now in many areas, we've done the startups we needed to do. We are still planning a number of startups, for example, in North America, for food testing labs, microbiology labs, water testing labs, but we didn't do one this quarter. I would say probably the cadence of startups will slow down because also in Asia, we are waiting to see in China, we're a bit more cautious about China, so we are waiting for the startups that we've made to come to hit the targets of profitability that we've set.
So we have. I don't have the budget for next year, so it's hard for me to answer specifically, but I would say, yes, the trend in volume of startups, number of startups over the next two or three years will go down. Anyway, we also are targeting a lower impact in terms of percent of the EBITDA that is affected, and with the startups. But we do have a plan to open quite a number of BCPs to complete certain regions where we thought M&A is too expensive. For the forensics, yes, this is standard language, but I will let Laurent answer. I think he has had extensive discussions with EY on this, so he will tell you why they write that.
Yes, indeed, this is a standard disclaimer that the forensic auditors always use. I mean, on the contrary, I mean, EY has been performing a very thorough investigation with the coverage, which is reaching more than 93% of the cash and cash equivalents, which is not often seen in such exercises. So no, this is just standard, and overall, as you can see, the findings were very limited and all immaterial. So this was a very reassuring report for all the people who had a doubt, maybe on accuracy in terms of cash management or accounting and the cash position in the balance sheet of Eurofins at the end of last year.
No, Ernst & Young would not sign a report.
They are the leading auditor for CAC in France.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Allen Wells with Jefferies. Your line is live.
Hey, good afternoon, Gilles, good afternoon, Laurent. A couple from me, please. First, I just wanted to follow up on a question from earlier. I think it was from Himanshu. It was just kind of digging into the shape and timing of the growth slowdown, particularly in relation to obviously the pharma and agri and diagnostics business. Obviously, looks like it slowed materially in three Q. So could you maybe just confirm, I'm not sure it was confirmed, if the exit rates were actually weaker?
I'm just trying to work out as we think about the fourth quarter, when you see 3Q drop to what looks like a 3% underlying organic growth number, if I strip out the working day impact, is that the trough or can 4Q actually drop lower based on directionally? That's my first question. Then secondly, just on diagnostics, you mentioned the price cut in September needs to be absorbed. Given that quite large magnitude of price cuts, how long do you expect it to take for that run rate to be absorbed till you get back to the mid- to low-single-digit growth number within that business? Thank you.
We've seen the forecast for Q4 of our leaders, and they're not planning a further slowdown in Q4, as we can tell. We're not negative on the evolution in Q4. That's for your first question. The understanding is EUR 24 million, so that's EUR 6 million per quarter. That's the impact on Q4 of this activity in France. Normally, we end up compensating with volume about 4% per annum. That's about a two-year impact in terms of volume to compensate from organic growth without the BCPs that we're opening. Of course, the BCPs that we're opening had a lot more growth, so it's gonna be compensated a lot faster.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Arthur Truslove, with Citi. Your line is live.
Thank you very much for taking my questions, Arthur from Citi. My first question was just on your full year margin guidance. So you've obviously, at the midpoint of the EBITDA guide, you're talking about a margin of 22.1%, which, if I'm not wrong, is the same as in H1. My understanding was that normally, H2 exceeds H1 by sort of 100 basis points or so. So I was just wondering if you were being a little bit conservative there? The second question I had was in respect of a bit of staff turnover. So I saw that, Natalia Shuman, who we met at the CMD last year, and I think the year before as well, seems to have left the company. She was obviously involved in BioPharma.
I was just wondering if you had any comment on that, and then my final question was, on the consumer and technology side, you saw an acceleration of organic growth in Q3, and I just wondered what drove that. Thank you.
Thank you. Yes, H2 is normally better than H1, and we think it will be this year. You know, there's a lot of rounded numbers on, in... First of all, when we say close to EUR 7 billion, it doesn't mean it's gonna be exactly EUR 7 billion. That's one side, and we're being-- yeah, we try to be conservative, but we did want to flag that the margin will be higher than it was initially planned. Anyway, you know, all of that is a moot point, because the market is valuing us as if we had only a 15% EBITDA margin. So frankly, that's talking about things two commas after the digit or one comma after the digit seems a bit irrelevant in the current context, but I appreciate you are doing your work precisely.
But indeed, we are generally conservative. Yes, Natalia, I can't say too much, but she had to go back. She lived previously in the U.S., and she had to go back to the U.S. for personal reasons, and her scope was BioPharma Europe primarily, so that couldn't be continued, unfortunately. Consumer and Tech, it did well in Q3. It's a relatively small business, so you know, it's more Asia-focused, Asia-biased, and we had some tougher comps before, so it is a bit of a recovery there. I wouldn't read too much. Generally, I wouldn't read too much on one quarter. I said that repeatedly, but you know, I think the overall trend in what we do in all the activities are good on the midterm.
That's why we give a growth objective, which is an average over five years, which we think is achievable, and of course, you know, every quarter there's not a lot of news and not a lot to talk about, so we focus on small differences, but they are not always meaningful in terms of long-term value.
Right. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our final question today will come from Shubhangi Gupta with HSBC. Your line is live.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. So my first question is, again, on the BioPharma business. If I look at commentaries from most life science and biotech companies, they have started to see improvements in biotech funding, book-to-bill ratios, and orders, et cetera. However, if you expect a recovery in H2 in 2025, so is it down to few large customers? Because, as I'm seeing, the end markets have started to show signs of improvement. And second question, just on China: Do you expect any impact from the China stimulus program or the volume-based procurement that has started impacting the diagnostic business in China? Thank you.
Thank you very much for your question. Yes, I think something has been really misunderstood in our press release. We're not saying that BioPharma, as a whole, will pick up in H2. We think BioPharma is picking up, and as I mentioned, our BPT business is actually doing relatively well. It's already at a mid-single digit growth. But what we mentioned specifically for H2 were clinical trials, so studies, large Central Laboratory testing programs, which we will, we have known contracts that will start in the second half of next year. So that's what we wanted to say. But the clinical part in Eurofins is sub 5% of our total business. So it's not. Whereas BPT is maybe 15% of our total business, or more.
I don't have the exact numbers in my head right now. So, we're not saying we think our whole BioPharma will only start growing faster in second half of next year. What we said is those clinical trial activities, we know they will pick up in the second half of next year. And China stimulus, yes, it's hard to say for us what the impact, direct or indirect, will be or on diagnostics. We're small in China. We are. China is also less than 2% from our revenues. We are in a business where scale matters, and as a foreign player, it's difficult to have scale on purely local Chinese market. It's quite ambitious and to think that a foreign company can dominate a local market in China, so we are not trying that.
We are working mostly focusing in our areas in international trade, so testing products that go in or out of China, either for Chinese importers or for importers of product that from China.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
This is all the time we have for today's question and answer session. We would like to turn the conference back over to Dr. Gilles Martin for any closing remarks.
All right. Well, thank you very much to all of you for joining the call. We are looking forward to meeting many of you in London tomorrow and in New York in a couple of weeks, for those of you who are from North America. As I mentioned in introduction, as we wrote in our press release, we think the outlook for all of our businesses is very good. We see our profitability continuing to improve, our cash flow continuing to improve, and cash flow would improve not only because profitability improved, but also because we, little by little, we will be done with all those programs that cost a lot of money, either being building our hub and spoke network, or big sites, or developing the new generation of digital solutions to run our business.
So we're doing a lot. We're spending a lot. We're doing it on many activities, on many continents, but this is making progress, and we are still convinced we are building very strong franchise in very attractive markets. And yes, BPT, the BioPharma activities and Agroscience were soft in Q3. We think overall in the long term, they are needed and they will certainly pick up. So thank you very much for your support, and looking forward to meeting you in person soon. Goodbye.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's call. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day, and we thank you for your participation.