Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming here. I'm [Giovanni Zarella] Executive Director in the Healthcare Investment Banking team at Morgan Stanley, and I'm here with Claire Hinshelwood, who is CFO at Evotec. Hi, Claire. Thanks for taking the time to join us.
Thank you very much.
I guess maybe just to start, you stepped into the role of CFO at Evotec just earlier this year. What are your initial reflections on the company from your first, call it, 100 days?
I think the first thing that stands out is for sure the people and the quality of the scientific expertise that we have, which shouldn't be surprising in a company like Evotec. But the depth of knowledge and the breadth of knowledge has really been, for me, it's given me a great opportunity to learn from those people. I think it also shows the breadth of the offer that we have as a company that we can use to differentiate ourselves.
I would say on the flip side of that, because of that breadth of offer, maybe our story is a little bit complex to tell, and I think the market has probably struggled to just understand where do you position Evotec and really what is their offering. And you see that when you look at how the share price has evolved. The more that we can really leverage the strengths that we have got through our expertise and our science and bring clarity to the story that we tell and the offer that we make in the market, then I think that will be a real positive in terms of how you look at the business going forward.
Yeah. No, that makes sense. I guess maybe another question on your initial reflections on the company. Coming from outside the CRO/CDMO industry, what is the sort of outside-in perspective that you brought to the business that you think the business actually needed to hear?
Yes, I come from outside CRO/CDMO, but I also spent about 20 years in the life sciences industry, so not completely detached from it. I think the good thing is I have done a lot of transformation in the past, but being new, it gives you an opportunity to ask the obvious questions. I am quite a-- I think by process and I think in steps. For me, coming in and asking those questions and trying to piece together how everything works on an end-to-end basis, first of all for myself to understand, but then also how can that help us as an organization to really simplify the way that we work and bring clarity to everything that we are doing.
I would say that that outside-in perspective almost gives you. You come very objectively. You do not have an emotional connection to decisions taken in the past, and you can ask those questions quite authentically, and you get very transparent answers. Then the important part is how you use those answers then to drive the performance as you go forward.
Understood. Moving on to the market environment, it has definitely been a volatile couple of years for the sector. We have seen ups and downs in funding cycles, policy noise, shifting pharma budgets. How do you feel, I guess, about the current market and sector backdrop? What are your views?
I think anyone in this sector would probably agree, you see the funding improving, and that is definitely helping the outlook. I would say in our case, the investment of that funding, whilst we are seeing an improvement, there is still a lot more of the funding going in later stage pipeline investment. So we are seeing an uptick, but probably not as much yet as you see later in the pipeline. I do not think we are going to get back yet to the 2020, 2021 levels, but the increase in the funding, I think, has also given confidence in the market for customers to start to make investment decisions, to start to make longer term commitments.
All of that we see coming through in terms of our commercial indicators. We have talked about our sales improvement that we have seen year-on-year. We see a whole range of commercial indicators pointing in the same direction. So I think it has boosted the confidence. It is positive, but I think there is still more upside as we start to see that moving a bit earlier in terms of the pipeline.
You mentioned just about now some customers. In your discussions with client and partners, how would you characterize the mood right now? Is it more on the cautious side, or do you feel, and they also feel what you just mentioned, that we can see some beginnings of recovery?
I think they start to see the positive momentum as well, but people are being very choiceful where they invest and how they invest. And of course, looking for the maximum return in terms of that investment. So although we see more of a positive trend, I think choiceful, I would say, in how they use that investment and very focused on where they want to focus to drive the maximum returns that they can drive.
Besides the market and sector environment, which we know has been challenging, you are also currently in the middle of a transition phase, let's call it this way. Could you please give us an update on how Horizon is progressing?
Yeah. So Horizon is a super important project for Evotec. We have said publicly that we expect to see EUR 75 million in savings with about 20%-30% of that impact in 2026. So we are very much on track with that. There are various different streams of that program. Part is linked to the right sizing of our footprint, so we will go down to 10 sites. Part of it is really creating centers of expertise in terms of our scientific knowledge, and then we are investing also in commercial, as well as simplifying our processes and our ways of working. And we are seeing positive momentum in all of those spaces.
I think apart from looking at it through the cost-saving lens, you also have to look through the lens of how are you creating a stable platform for the future that is really transforming the organization and then creating that base from which you can grow. And that is really the important part. So apart from all of the other impacts, the change management, how we are establishing ourselves as an organization, working in a new way, and creating that stability to grow from is important. And we are doing well on all of those fronts.
And if we had to go maybe one level deeper, where do you see the biggest opportunities to simplify the organization and, as you said, to maybe think about it beyond the targeted cost savings?
I think we've got lots of opportunity to simplify, so that's the good thing.
That's good to know, yeah.
That's the good thing. There's lots of opportunity. You can look at it through lots of different lenses. I think if you start with our offering that we have to the market, how do we simplify that offer and make it easier for people to differentiate Evotec from a standard CRO and really recognize the enhanced value that we bring, the depth of our scientific knowledge and what that can bring you in terms of your time and your speed to market. So I think there simplifying the message, simplifying the offering, and simplifying how we approach the market is one space.
Then if you look internally in terms of process simplification. The cycle within our industry between when you first engage with a customer and start commercial discussions, right through to when you start to generate revenue, that cycle can be quite long. How do we simplify that process in different ways? One is how we simplify from the point we first engage with the customer to the point where we actually sign the order. What can we do there to make that more straightforward, automate more, benefit from AI to make that process shorter?
Then how do we simplify our internal processes and the execution of our service so that we can then go faster in terms of time to turn around and deliver that contract and then accelerate revenue generation. That is really important. Then I think also simplifying the way that we look at capacity utilization, the way that we plan our projects, the way that we execute, that will allow us to continue to optimize the cost base, but also continue to go faster. There is many opportunities. The good news is that we are tackling many of them. We have already seen good progress on the commercial side, for example, and we will continue to focus there.
If you had to help us to understand how this will translate into numbers, and you have already given a bit of details on the Horizon program. Once the current transformation is a little bit more advanced, how do you think about the underlying margin potential of Evotec's businesses over the, let us call it, the medium long term?
The margin, if you just take the Horizon part, and there is, of course, there is other elements which I will speak about, but Horizon in itself, because a large part of that is focused on our footprint that we have and managing some of the excess capacity that we have today, that in itself will drive, in the DMPD business, an improvement in the margin. We also are starting to look at really operational excellence and how we drive efficiency in terms of how we execute each of those services that we provide, and that will also drive upside in terms of margin.
If you look at the JEB business, where today that business is primarily CDMO business, our strategy as we go forward is that we will move towards We'll still continue with the CDMO business and anchor on that, but we will then be licensing out some of our technology. So whether that's our J.TRAIN, whether it's our media, or whether it's our sales, we'll be licensing out those that will then bring us revenue streams, which are highly profitable.
Then we have the link to the Sandoz deal that we did last year. Then we've got in the future royalty income coming from those. So those elements in themselves are highly profitable. The strategic deals that we work on, those come in various different structures. But where there's milestone payments associated with those also provide an upside in terms of the margin. We would expect to see that improve from a number of different elements.
You mentioned now some of the dynamics within the various business segments. So maybe going ahead on DMPD, where are you seeing the strongest areas of customer demand today if we had to think about it by, I don't know, modality, therapeutic area, or maybe stage of development?
I said at the beginning, we have a broad Service offerings. So we cover many therapeutic areas, which allows us then to have reach into various different areas of the market. So there we have the potential. If you look to the future, and we've had quite a few interesting conversations here today around the role that AI plays in the future, and so how can we then partner with some of the AI development companies to provide further data analytics or wet lab capabilities. So there's a lot that we can do in that space, and I think we're very well-positioned there with the investment that we've already made to be able to leverage that.
NAMs is an area where you see a lot of progress at the moment, again, because of the investment that we've made in the past around platforms that we have access to, our analytical capabilities, and the breadth of our service. We're extremely well-positioned to be able to benefit from that evolution that we see moving more and more into that space. I think now, and it comes back to how do we really present the offering that we've got. We do have a full offering, and how we are able to combine the elements of that as the market evolves, I think, is what is going to provide the base then for us in the future to continue to grow.
You mentioned Evotec has a partner to biopharma and strategic partnerships, of course, remain an important part of the business model at Evotec. What are the partners exactly looking for from Evotec today, and how has that pipeline of new potential partnership evolved over the last, call it, six months?
The pipeline that we've got, there's various different elements to it. So different molecules covering different therapeutic areas. So it's very broad. It's not one or two. There's multiple opportunities within those. Each of them are at different stages. Some might be quite early in terms of development, some might be in the due diligence phase, and some might be in term sheet discussions and finalizing what the structure of that might look like. Over time, of course, there's movements in terms of progression of where we sit with each potential deal in that pipeline. As you can imagine, those are quite complex deals in terms of, first of all, what are we offering to partners?
What are partners looking for? What is the question that they're trying to answer, and how does that match with the scientific expertise that we've got? Those discussions take quite a period of time to be able to land. But we are making good progress there. We have got a robust pipeline, but I think even beyond the pipeline, we have got the depth of scientific expertise where you can come with a problem that you want to be solved, and we have the expertise without being constrained in any shape or form to how we answer that. That is the type of partnerships that are particularly interesting, both from, whether it be with pharma on their side, but also on our side as well.
Maybe moving on to JEB, which is also being transformed, and it is moving towards an asset-light business model. How do you see the balance evolving between the manufacturing revenues, technology licensing, and the strategic partnerships that you just talked about?
As I said before, the CDMO part of the business will continue to be an important part. We are making some additional investment there in the near term that will give us a bit more capacity over the few years ahead. The licensing deals, a bit like the strategic deals that I described in the DMPD business, those licensing deals, particularly if you talk about the J.TRAIN, which is quite a sizable investment, those discussions will take time to ramp up. We announced this earlier this year that we would start to license it. We have had a lot of interest already shown.
We are starting to have those discussions, and we would expect to see something coming through in the next, I will not put a timeline on it because nobody knows, but not necessarily in the very near term, but those take probably more than 12 months to be able to reach fruition. We will see over that period, the CDMO business will expand a bit because we will have more capacity, but then we will also see, later in the midterm Horizon, first of all, the licenses playing a part, and then as we move a bit further out that Horizon, then you will have the licensing income growing and that being complemented by the royalty stream.
There is definitely a lot going on, a lot of exciting initiatives. Help us a little bit understand the outlook for the business, right? As you look into 2027, what gives you the most confidence that the revenues that have been delayed from this year will ultimately [convert] What are the milestones that we and the investors should look for in the next 6- 12 months?
There's definitely a lot going on, that's for sure. I'm confident from a number of fronts. I think the obvious one is that the commercial indicators, you see those trending in the right direction, and therefore, we know that that will convert to revenue over the future periods. That already gives you confidence that we see the base business is starting to show the signs of recovery that we've talked about historically. I think for me personally, what also gives me a lot of confidence is the way that we're looking at the business.
We're really trying now to bring a lot more granularity in that we will focus on the different component parts that make up the total revenue picture. In the past, we've talked about one revenue number, and it's been quite hard for people to dissect and to understand the drivers of that. Going forward, we've been doing a lot of work around splitting that into component parts, understanding the drivers behind each of those and the KPIs that attach to each of them, and then how we are building up that forecast link to historical data, a lot of analysis that we've done around historical trends, how we see that forecasting forward.
That level of granularity will then give us the confidence that the financials that we are committing to and that we're putting out in the market are robust and that we have the action plans and the details that go behind it. So we'll have a robust commercial strategy that will underpin the base business. We will have strategic plans around how we want to manage our strategic deals. I described what we're doing on JEB. All of those component parts, each one of them managed with individual KPIs, really gives me the confidence that we know how to manage the business, we know where the growth levers are, and importantly, we're staying on top of progress.
That's very helpful. We discussed Horizon, we discussed segment dynamics, we discussed the outlook in a lot of detail. But if we had to take a step back, which parts of the Evotec story do you feel that investors may be under-appreciating today? What do you think would drive meaningful value creation in the next few years?
I think we still get confused sometimes as being a normal CRO business. Therefore, I don't think the full value of our scientific expertise and actually the value creation that that can bring is truly recognized in the market. So with that expertise, that means that we can get drugs faster to market. We can have a higher probability of success. I don't think that's fully understood, that differentiating factor, that we don't just execute a service, but we give insight, we give recommendations, we help our partners to structure what that development process can look like so that it has the best returns for them. So I think we have to do more in terms of that. I think that's one part that's underestimated.
JEB is extremely exciting. We have a technology that we've developed that nobody else has been successful in developing. We've proven that with the deal that we did with Sandoz. We continue to prove it with the work that we're doing more broadly in the market. I think we have an exciting and a different business model where others can benefit from it without us having to make the capital investment. So I think when you take all the different elements together, we are very differentiated, and yet we still quite often get put in the bucket with the generic CRO provider, and therefore, that extra that we provide is not always seen in the value creation.
That makes sense. Maybe one last final question. We hope to see you here next year as well, of course. So if we're sitting here a year from now, what are the two or three key things that will tell this audience and investors that the strategy has been successful and is moving in the right direction?
We'll have delivered on our Horizon promises. That's the first one. We'll have brought more clarity around the component parts of the DMPD business, and we'll have helped people understand the dynamics of those component parts. Really importantly, we'll have delivered on the commitments that we'll have made on those component parts. I think that that is what we need to do, to build the understanding of the value creation we have in Evotec in the market, but also to demonstrate on our ability to deliver and commit on what we've, or deliver on what we've committed to the market.
Great. Thank you, Claire. It has been a pleasure talking to you.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.