The conference is now being recorded. Welcome to the conference call regarding the publication of Gerresheimer AG's annual results 2018. At the moment, all participants have been placed on the listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Now I hand over to Ms. Séverine Combe, Corporate Senior Director, Investor Relations at Gerresheimer AG.
Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us to review our full year 2018 results. With me today are Dietmar Siemssen, our CEO, and Rainer Beaujean, our CFO. As we did in the past, we are presenting a set of slides to accompany our remarks on this conference call. The annual reports, the slide presentation, and the press release are posted on the investor relations website at gerresheimer.com/investorrelations.
Before I start, I would like to remind you that the presentations and the discussions are conducted subject to the disclaimer. We will not read the disclaimer but propose we take it as read into the records for the purpose of this conference call. Our agenda today starts with a presentation by Dietmar and Rainer, and after that, we will enter into a Q&A session. I'm now handing over to Dietmar.
I'll go first. Thank you, Séverine, and thank you, and good afternoon. My first presentation as CEO for Gerresheimer to the public, I'm very happy to be here. I'm also very happy that you are here, and I'm happy that we have a couple of people on the phone.
The people who know me actually would rather expect me to stand at the board because I usually prefer to speak freely about the dynamics in the company a s we have a lot of people on the phone, I would rather follow the rules here and also in a certain way, follow the textbook. We will see more later in the questions. This is my first presentation to the market since I've started as CEO of Gerresheimer in November last year, and I'm very pleased to welcome you here in Düsseldorf.
With me today, as you heard already, is our CFO, Rainer Beaujean, who will review the 2018 numbers in a moment, and he is also responsible for all the ugly questions you might have later i only take the good ones. For that, I would like to share my thoughts on how I see the positioning of Gerresheimer today so i think we are already on the right page.
The title of the slide in principle says it all. Having spent almost three months within Gerresheimer, I'm really pleased to see what I've seen. I've seen a large amount of our plants, discussed with our managers and employees, and already met a couple of our customers. Of course, I spent quite some reasonable time with the current management team to ensure a proper transition.
Looking at the market, you have to say that we are really involved in a dynamic sector, which offers great potential for future growth. One of the reasons why I'm here. I found a capable and committed team across all regions and businesses, and we have great products, a broad portfolio of great products, and there is a tremendous know-how in our production processes.
If you go into our facilities, even for someone coming out of the automotive industry, you have to say it is impressive to see the know-how and the core competencies that we have in these facilities. With our global footprint, we can serve all customers worldwide, and the financial foundation, and that's very good, of the company is sound i t gives us room to maneuver.
Turn the page, please. Yeah. The next chart is one of my favorites already because you can really explain the whole company in principle on that chart. It's talking about a solid base, and I spoke already about the solid base in place to launch the next phase of our journey. As said, there is a strong base to start, and there is a solid amount of business identified that will generate growth. In all of our business segments, we see gross growth opportunities.
In Plastic & Devices, as well as in the primary packaging glass. A lot of this business in the plan is booked already. It's in the books, what we are talking about. On top of this growth, the creation of the Advanced Technologies and the integration or successful integration of Sensile Medical generates not only synergy but offers real opportunities for accelerated growth.
We are gaining momentum for the next generation of solutions for the pharma and healthcare industry, and we are transforming Gerresheimer from a contract manufacturer into a solution provider to our customers. Execution has already started to realize this potential. The planned increased level of investment in the next two years underlines this and will help to materialize our ambitious midterm plan because it's an ambitious plan.
Let's talk about the human capital. I found great human capital at Gerresheimer everywhere I met. There is a common ground, which is the pride and commitment to do what we do in an industry that in the end contributes to health and well-being. That also constitutes the DNA of the teams across the entire organization. There's strong focus on quality, continuous improvement, and productivity.
The board may have found a solid middle management with a broad industry experience. That is important because, as we all know, Andreas Schütte and Rainer Beaujean will leave us shortly, which I personally regret.
On the other side, I am looking into the future, I'm looking forward, and I'm very happy that the management team that we will complete latest July, and I hope actually it happens a little bit earlier, hopefully also a couple of months earlier. I personally hope that it's early that Dr. Metzner is able to start in Gerresheimer. Dr. Metzner, currently CFO at Ströer, will join us not later than July in the planning, and the handover process has already started. Besides the fact that he's from Ströer, his long years experience actually comes out of the pharma business, and he knows what he's talking about.
Another player, of course, Dr. Burkhardt, who leads the glass division, and myself, we will complete the new management team latest in July. Knowing the player, I have already a lot of confidence in the team today, and this is the team that will drive Gerresheimer into the next level.
Can we have another chart, please? I think I would like to have another the next page, if possible. I know the text, but you should have at least a picture to it, huh? It's a good start, let's turn to page eight. Much better. Thank you. One of the first tasks at Gerresheimer has been to look at the status quo. What do we have, and how does the world around us look like? We have, as I mentioned a couple of times, a strong basis. We are highly competitive with market position number one to three in most of our markets.
Our manufacturing production footprint is very well invested and provides a global accessible platform. Furthermore, the group has been working on enhancing its product portfolio, improving the mix and value proposition.
What is shaping our environment are the megatrends. I know everyone is talking about megatrends, for us, they are really relevant it 's worthwhile to look at them. If you look at this picture, just two examples t he self-medication, for example, with smart and convenient devices, we can really contribute to the well-being of the patients with our system solutions.
Others, such as ever-increasing level of regulations, are pushing us to constantly improve our quality, therefore sustain and further improve our competitive advantage. The ability to cope with these demands, it's a base core competence that we have in Gerresheimer, that increases the barriers for our competition to entry. It's a clear core competence you would not expect in that size.
The next picture is something you probably have seen, the attractive markets, I think we all know this slide from the last year's presentation. In the context of my initial review, it has been a very important one. My takeaway is very general t he markets within we operate are large, attractive, they are actually growing.
Positioning Gerresheimer in this market gives us the following picture, that's the next chart. We have clearly defined the markets where Gerresheimer acts at present, also as important, the areas where Gerresheimer is not acting. Looking at the entire pharma value chain, we play in two clusters, namely the primary packaging and the delivery systems and assembly. Within these clusters, we are already present in a number of services and markets. That is what we call the accessible markets.
There are other markets with similar characteristics, so-called strategic relevant markets. Here we have identified an extended playground for reasonable access for future growth. We are currently not present in these markets, but with our core competencies, we have the possibility to enter into these markets, into these business fields. As part of any prerequisite from our end to consider strategic market expansion, of course, we have to ensure base pillars like achieving superior technologies and products, cost leadership, also market leadership, at least number one, two, or maybe position number three.
To maximize these opportunities and derive synergies, we definitely benefit from our comprehensive portfolio across glass, plastics, products, systems, and devices, as we present ourselves as a broad solution provider to our customers. Not so different is the picture if you look into the cosmetics n ext chart, please. Here again, you see that we have identified neighboring markets where we could play.
For example, in systems delivery. This means, for example, deliver to a customer a cosmetic vial or bottle together with a cap or a pump, something we are not doing at present. This would allow us to move up the value chain with our customers, delivering pre-assembled components to our existing products. Advanced Technologies. Advanced Technologies is one of the areas I want to further work on with the teams in 2019, as I'm convinced that this could offer additional potential for growth w hy?
It means expanding our model towards a full solution provider to the pharma industry. With our current capabilities, our R&D and engineering centers, and our contract manufacturing operations, we have clearly the base to move further up the value chain. Now we bring product and process knowhow, development expertise, and the new world of connectivity and its possibilities under new defined roof of Gerresheimer Advanced Technologies.
What do we know about the future in this industry? The rise of biotech and biosimilar will go hand in hand with precision injection, both for small and large volumes. Digitalization and electronics will pave the way for more efficient healthcare systems. All players will require a high degree of convenience on how to handle devices, systems, data, and so on. With the creation of Advanced Technologies, we are starting to address these trends. One example.
Sensile cooperation with Sanofi and Verily, which is in the end Google, is the first add-on to the division. There's definitely more to come. It allows us to be involved much earlier in the customer development, significantly early actually, and generates more differentiated revenue streams, including royalties. If you compare to the system we have at the moment as contract manufacturing. Sensile Medical. We absolutely believe in the value of Sensile Medical.
We believe in the value that Sensile Medical adds to our portfolio, and it's a great asset going forward. This is not changed at all by the loss of one of the initial customers in the Sensile pipeline. As you might have heard, and we'll probably discuss it later, SC Pharma has terminated the contract a couple of days ago.
With the termination in one hand and the defined conditions for the acquisition on the other hand, we will end up paying EUR 90 million less for the acquisition than planned. On the negative side, this will, of course, impact our expected revenues from 2020 onwards. From a profitability standpoint, it will not affect us in the same way as the specific project was planned with lower margin.
Next to the communicated projects during the acquisition, we see the potential for further application from the state-of-the-art system that we acquired with Sensile. Last, we should not forget about how obvious the synergies are between Medical Plastic Systems and Sensile. In the future, it is clear that we will establish Medical Plastic Systems as internal contract manufacturer to Sensile.
The next chart, decisive steps to accelerate midterm growth have been taken to our 2018, that's a matter of fact r eferring to the title of the slide, these are decisive steps indeed and have been taken. Looking at the top left box, syringes, for example, ultimately, we want to have a flagship plant in Bünde, dealing with the next generation of syringes and RTF or Ready-to-Fill vials.
We have developed the Ready-to-Fill six line, have just released the CapEx for the increase of the capacity and b y the way, an absolute impressive technology that we are setting up here. That is fascinating to see f or an engineer, it's really impressive.
Additionally, within the planning period, we need to set up a new production site for heparin and vaccines in a lower cost environment. That means a new production facility in the east of Europe that we will set up in the planning period.
Looking at Medical Plastic Systems, we are currently expanding our production facility in the Czech Republic or Horšovský Týn. The construction work has started. The closure of Küssnacht, Swiss, is on track for this year. The new low-cost site I just mentioned in Eastern Europe will also accommodate Medical Plastic Systems products. We're also ramping up Pfreimd to serve as future CMO or contract manufacturing site for Sensile.
Another exciting areas of investment is getting ready for small batch production in glass and also for Sensile in our technical competence center in Wackersdorf. As well as the plastic devices in the U.S. with a spare space enlargement of our technical center in Peachtree City.
Finally, we want to drive more automation standardization as well as capacity expansion in PPG, means in the glass business. What we do here is we are boosting up the quality and the productivity in this segment. As you can hear, there's a lot of dynamic in the company. We are moving things forward. With this, I would like to hand over to Rainer Beaujean for the review of the financials 2018. Thank you.
Thank you, Dietmar, and from my end as well, welcome to this results presentation. I would like to be as quick as possible in this review. If there are things that I've omitted in my explanations, please address them in the Q&As, or even better with investor relations later on. We want to make sure that Dietmar's conclusion is very intensive and that we have also a lot of questions later on.
Moving on with me to slide number 16 and 17 for some company and market context. A year ago, we told you that our absolute priority after year of 2017, where we lost close to two percentage points of revenue growth, was to come back to growth. For this, we had identified four growth drivers, and I can say that all of them have been successfully performed in 2018, both organically and unorganically. The examples on these slides are, by the way, for a large part, illustrated in our annual report, if you want a bit more context.
Turning to slide number 17, we refer here to the IQVIA and market statistics. Volume-wise, the global pharma market volumes for medicine standard units remained stable in 2018, and within this, the generics category grew by 1.8%. IQVIA is not necessarily applicable 100% to our markets because it counts all units and other forms of packaging like blister packaging, but this is nonetheless a good proxy.
Regarding the outlook for the next years, IQVIA sees a global volume growth on a compounded average growth rate of a vast two percentage points, but with these disparities amongst geographies and between pharma versus generics. This supports our view that we need not only to improve market shares, but also to continue to drive our product mix towards more high-value products. How did we perform in 2018 against the spectrum? Please move with me to slide number 18.
On the revenue side, excluding Sensile, if you remember, well, a year ago, we started with a wide range between 0% and 4% of implied growth on a currency-neutral basis. After a year where we lost close to two percentage points of growth in 2017, we wanted to be conservative. It worked out well as we finally achieved 3.4 percentage points. We are pleased with this result also when you compare it with volume growth this year.
On the Adjusted EBITDA side, we have documented the adjustments related to Sensile and the network charges this year. On that basis, Adjusted EBITDA remains at par compared to last year on a currency-neutral basis that is at EUR 307.5 million compared to EUR 307.2 million last year. This is a good performance when you consider that we have lost close to EUR 6 million due to higher gas prices and close to EUR 5 million due to higher resin prices as documented in our annual report.
At Sensile, the timing of certain project led to a better-Adjusted EBITDA than expected, and we fell short of EUR 2 million against revenue targets given at the time of the acquisition. As mentioned by Dietmar, timeline can always vary as it is in a project-related business. All other metrics were in line with our guidance corridor. Turning on to the next slide for the revenues at constant currency.
All detailed explanations are presented at the bottom of the slide, just a few items from my end. In Plastics & Devices, we posted + 2.7% of growth on a currency-neutral basis, and this despite the unfavorable comparison due to the loss of the inhalation contract early on this year. Q4 is usually the strongest in terms of revenues contribution, and it was the case again in Q4 2018. Primary plastic packaging and syringes, to a lesser extent, supported growth.
Revenues generation continued to be mixed in devices. We continue to observe some weaknesses in the European inhalation customer base. Regarding Primary Packaging Glass, we continued to benefit from the overall recovery in the U.S. injectable business, the good cosmetics business, and overall good performance in European glass. All these are trends that we anticipate to further support the business in full year 2019. I just dealt with the Sensile in my previous comments.
Profitability-wise, turning on to the slide number 20. Here's the same slide as we have shown in Q3 earnings call, which means that we have isolated the performance of the divisions and the impact of the special effects. All explanations are detailed in a comprehensive way at the bottom of the slide, I just want to mention resin prices. We have temporarily lost up to EUR 5 million of profitability due to higher resin prices. We have continued to activate the pass-through clause.
The buildup of the new inhaler project started. As mentioned in Q3, this has triggered further investment, including OpEx, for the end of full year 2018, but also for 2019. Let's come to gas prices. Our costs have been higher by approximately EUR 6 million year-on-year. We have hedged at the end and already up to now, approximately 65% of our expected gas volume for 2019. I think the rest is straightforward as a result of higher or lower capacity utilization in our divisions and for the nature of revenues of Sensile Medical. A few words on currency.
The translations effect came more or less at the level we anticipated during our Q3 conference call, namely the EUR 39 million in revenues and the EUR 9.4 million in Adjusted EBITDA. the impact on a divisional level is detailed on the slide. A note on how we have budgeted currencies for our 2019 currency-neutral guidance and more generally, our midterm planning. The table is on page 105 of our annual report.
The U.S. dollar remains one of our most important currencies. We have taken 1.15 U.S. dollar for a euro for our budget assumption and hence currency neutral basis. This is important when it comes to distinguish our currency neutral guidance with the reported numbers. By the way, we have checked the currency sensitivity on the group, including Sensile and the rule of thumb around $0.01 variation equals EUR 4 million translation on the revenue side and EUR 1 million on the Adjusted EBITDA side still applies.
Moving on to our net income bridge. Here again, we have tried to give all the explanations in the boxes underneath the bridge. Going back to the currency impact on the next slide, it is important to bear in mind that alone the currency impact explains the majority of the negative impact coming from the Adjusted EBITDA year-on-year.
The higher one-off expenses are linked amongst others to the closure of Küssnacht, the severance costs linked to the departure of executive board members early in the year, the costs linked to the Sensile Medical acquisition project, and planned staffing adjustments. This relates to the EUR 16.8 million you are seeing on the left part of the bridge and show the delta and the one-offs year-on-year.
The EUR 49.9 million of one-off items represents the total sum of adjusted net income for the year 2018, and they include as well fair value amortization, which has gone up this year as a result of the Sensile Medical acquisition by approximately EUR 10 million. Lastly, we have a positive variation coming from income taxes, which is due to the effect from the U.S. tax reform on a large part.
As a result, the adjusted net income after non-controlling interest was higher by EUR 50.5 million in full year 2018, and per share, it translate into EUR 5.67 after EUR 4.06 last year. Moving on to cash flow and net debt on page number 24. On this slide, we show the contribution from operating cash flow and free cash flow. The free cash flow before acquisitions and dividends was EUR 59 million. We had a total cash out of EUR 172 million for Sensile Medical and EUR 60 million for Triveni. As a total, net debt amounted to EUR 886 million as of 30 November 2018.
A few words regarding Sensile, as mentioned by Dietmar, we now expect only a total of EUR 60 million to be cashed out in the course of 2019 after the cancellation by SC pharmaceuticals. We have already paid EUR 25 million in December 2018. This means that the total cash consideration will not exceed EUR 260 million compared to the EUR 350 million initially considered. This will have an impact on leverage for full year 2019 and w e will discuss this on our liquidity profile on the next slide.
As anticipated at the time of the Sensile Medical acquisition in July 2018, Adjusted EBITDA leverage was above 3 times as of 30 November 2018, namely 3.1 times. From an accounting point of view, we will record an amount of EUR 90 million as derecognition of contingent consideration from the acquisition of Sensile Medical during the Q1 of 2019. It is accounted for in other operating income and therefore part of the Adjusted EBITDA. It is obviously a real cash saving. As a consequence, the adjusted leverage for this year should be lower than 3 times.
Before hand over to Dietmar, a word on how we look at the relevant comparable basis between 2019 and 2018 in order to compare apples with apples. The basis for 2019 guidance is the full year 2018 reported, adjusted for the loss of the inhalation customer. For sales, this is approximately EUR 8 million, f or Adjusted EBITDA, it is approximately EUR 12 million, including the EUR 9 million compensation on top of the profitability contribution generated with this customer during the year before the contract was canceled.
Additionally, we also add back the network charges of EUR 1.4 million and the effects out of the Triveni put option of EUR 1.1 million. Further explanation can be found in the footnote on page 106 of the annual report 2018. Now I hand it back over to Dietmar. Thank you.
Thank you, Rainer. Could I get the next chart? That's very good. Yeah. First, I would like, before we go into the details of the guidance, actually, I would like to show you how we see the short and the midterm. First, it's an easy point for me w e are here to grow. Our ambition is to outperform the growth of the market, clearly. This applies to all segments of our business.
We want to do this in particular through market share gains and also winning new customers. Give you a couple of examples o ne example for the market share gain is getting a new inhaler contract in Europe. A great performance we delivered in the U.S. with the same customer, and we could win a big order of inhalers in Europe t hat will also lead to the fact that we invest into this growth.
For customer gain, we actually became, the first time, a number one supplier to a new large heparin customer, also affects Bünde with volumes in syringes. With innovative solutions such as Gx Elite glass or the Gx InnoSafe syringe system, we are upscaling our product mix with positive effects on revenues. Second, we are planning higher investments for 2019 and 2020 to increase the capacity for new projects and also drive quality and productivity.
We have planned 12% of CapEx to sales for the years 2019 and 2020. In principle, we are happy to execute this since we have a number of exciting projects in the books. Now we have to make sure that we build the capacity to serve these orders. Third, Sensile Medical is expected to generate meaningful part revenues from 2021 onwards. The new development with SC Pharma is already included in this plan.
Finally, with the expected margin contribution from the growth projects, coupled with lower CapEx from 2021 onwards, where we'll go back to this 8% that we originally usually have, the group's operating cash flow will improve significantly.
With that in mind, let us look at the next two slides as they outline our financial expectations for 2019 as well as the period 2020 to 2022 for the total group. For the guidance parameters for 2019, we plan to generate between EUR 1.4 billion and EUR 1.45 billion of revenues on a currency-neutral base. For the Adjusted EBITDA, also on a currency-neutral base, we plan to generate around EUR 295 million, ± EUR 5 million. CapEx, as already mentioned, will be in the range of 12%.
As we all know, not every quarter is equal in terms of contribution by experience to our year ending in November, the Q1, which is usually a Christmas quarter or it is the Christmas quarter, not usually. The Q1 is always the softest, and Q4, by experience, the strongest. The long-term general guidance metrics are unchanged.
Next chart. What are we aiming at in the midterm? We are currently aiming for an annual revenue growth rate between 4% and 7% on a currency-neutral base for the years 2020 and 2022. We see the Adjusted EBITDA margin for the group around 21% for 2020, and we will see the performance of the investments in the years now, and we are expecting for the two following years a margin improvement of 2% up to approximately 23%.
From 2021 onwards, we also expect, as I mentioned, the CapEx to go back to historical levels of 8% of sales. Now a few words of conclusion. We are back to almost my favorite chart. As mentioned in the very beginning of the presentation, I have found a strong base. Looking into our midterm plan for the next years, it is a strong plan, and we will make sure that we bring all our effort and we will materialize it. I think this is what counts.
Moreover, I have taken this job to bring Gerresheimer on a strong and sustainable, profitable growth path. Beside the execution of the aforementioned plan, we will also focus on this. We will further drive excellence in the company, invest in innovation, increase our customer focus, and we will really switch gears and bring the company into what I always call an attack mode.
In this, we will evaluate which additional segments, products, and areas can support us on our path to profitable growth. I personally look forward to drive our Gerresheimer together with the team into a strong future. I am now handing over to Séverine for our questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We are going to now start the Q&A sessions. I would probably ask if there are first questions from the room here, and then we will switch to Q&A for the conference call. There are one microphone here. We are going to start with Daniel Bender from Commerzbank.
Thanks for taking my questions. Three, if I may. One, on your operating cash flow development in 2018, I noted that the trade working capital moved up quite considerably towards the end of the year m aybe you can comment what is behind that. My second question would be to you, Dietmar, now that you are a bit more than three months with Gerresheimer.
So what was your expectation and what was confirmed, what was better, and maybe what was worse? Any comment would be much appreciated. Then, a question on your planned plant in Eastern Europe. Can you give us more details where that might be, when the decision will be taken, and when will you start building it out, basically? Thank you.
Answer is pretty easy. Networking capital was higher due to the effect of the very strong Q1, and especially the receivables increase, which we had on that basis.
Yeah. The second question was-
I meant Q4. Yeah. Not Q1. Sorry for that.
Thank you for the details. Yeah, the second question to me is a bit personal. What did I really expect? Well, were I nervous? There's no doubt. After almost 30 years in the automotive industry, even though it's not completely true because the last years was around 40% non-automotive. New in the pharma industry, I was nervous.
Because in certain ways, you learn new vocabulary. I now work on insulins, on different treatment methods, and of course, you have to go into detail. Nevertheless, we should not forget, we are still producing something. You come into the detail very fast and better than I expected. Patience is not my biggest strength, but they knew this beforehand.
I think I'm not patient with myself because I really want to be in the details and understand the business well a fter three months, the layer of ice is getting a bit tighter, there are certain areas where I'm careful to jump too much. Nevertheless, what you clearly see is, and that's not so different to the business where I were in, there is potential and y ou have to go out, make sure that the team is hungry, you have to attack the business, and that's fun, and w e will have a lot of fun in Gerresheimer in the next years.
The plant in Eastern Europe, yeah, we are quite far with the planning and also with the location, I think there's only weeks, we have finally decided it. I will disclose it a bit later. We are quite far in the planning. We need this plan not only for the contract we have here for the syringes. Also for products of the medical device systems.
The growth that we actually have in the books is so big that we really need this additional capacity, we also need the space. It's not about just putting some new machines into one of the facilities, we need the space. That's why we will set up this additional plant. Thank you.
Perhaps also to add on that, we are also changing our production footprint a fter the closure of Küssnacht, for sure we need some space somewhere else to shift customers to different areas. Also we need space for Sensile Medical production, also in Freiberg in Germany. This all has to be planned, because otherwise it's not possible, that's one of the reasons why we also looked carefully this year on what we have to do on also the restructuring in the different areas to make sure that our cost base is in the right setting for this new structure.
That's what we all have done in 2018 t herefore we feel very well prepared to go on further, in the future also, to make sure that also our profits in the outer years will come to a level which we have forecasted in our guides.
I think maybe we can add also the CapEx we see in the next two years. Not just to make the outside of our buildings a little bit more beautiful. We really need this to set up the capacity w e talk about the facility in Eastern Europe, we should not forget that we are setting up a new facility in Brazil, in Aparecida at the moment i just visited the playground, as I call it and t here will be almost 10,000 sq m of production site here.
We're expanding our facilities in the U.S., we're expanding our facilities in India, there's more examples to come so t he 12% of CapEx will not go into beauty of the company only. We will really add capacity for the business we have booked.
Other questions from the room? Volker Braun.
Volker Braun, Bankhaus Lampe. Thanks for taking the question o ne is, you pointed to the higher gas prices and resin prices in 2018. Now gas prices have eased w hat is the swing into 2019? That would be the first question. Second is, you mentioned the sound balance sheet. Okay, a lower purchase price is good news here in that respect. However, net at EBITDA is slightly below three, CapEx 12% of sales. Question would be, what is the margin of error, let's say, if demand was a bit weak, say, for two quarters, what is the sensitivity here?
I start with the gas prices. Gas and electricity both together, we have hedged up to now 65%. Which is a different story than last time. Last time, at the same time, we had perhaps approximately hedged 30%. Mr. Trump announced this Iran discussion and t hereafter, all the prices went up dramatically, and that was the reason why. Because normally we hedge in summer.
This year, we have got out of this situation, therefore, that we have made pretty early a huge amount of hedging for electricity and gas already in our balance sheet so t herefore, we feel pretty comfortable with the guidance which we give out, that we won't have a similar situation again, that we will lose approximately EUR 6 million on gas or electricity prices. Second question, lower purchase price. I can do that too. Yeah, you both can answer it i start.
The lower purchase price at the end takes you to the situation that we will have in the Q1 an other operating income, which is part of the Adjusted EBITDA of approximately EUR 90 million more. That's for sure reducing your net debt to EBITDA ratio dramatically.
It's not even lower than 3 times w hen you make your calculation, you come to perhaps 2.5 times, somewhere around that. At least for a year t hat for sure helps us in that situation temporarily. At the end of the day, it's also really the major thing out of that is that this is really a cash saving. Because when you look on the contract, what did we buy? We bought a technique. This contract will build on a risk portfolio.
The advantage is, it's never good to lose a customer, by the way d on't get me wrong. The advantage is with the EUR 90 million, we feel pretty comfortable on that basis. The other major factor is normally when you have to book another operating income, you normally would expect that we also book an impairment. This is not the case. When you look on our balance sheet, we only put EUR 5 million of goodwill in our balance sheet.
So I can tell you that the headroom above what we have thought about what we can do with this technique is much higher, and that's the reason why we don't have to do an impairment. Which hopefully gives also some comfort that we have also a lot of other projects, where we can talk about.
Okay. We're going to start by also putting questions from the conference call. If you need to ask a question, you need to press zero one on your telephone keypad. We're going to take the first question from Scott Bardo from Berenberg.
Thanks for taking my questions, and welcome, Dietmar. Apologies if I missed it, I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about why you chose Gerresheimer. Our understanding is that there could have been multiple different opportunities for you to move into different or even more familiar industries. What was it that really attracted you to Gerresheimer in particular? Just following on from that please, Dietmar.
You mentioned yourself, you've only been at the company, say, three months or so. This is a multinational company with many different manufacturing facilities around the world. What gives you the confidence at this point to outline a midterm target or put your stamp on where you see the business performing over the midterm in such a short space of time? Perhaps you can share some thoughts there i have a follow-up. Thank you.
Scott. Thank you for the question. The first one is always difficult t he personal ones are always the tricky ones. Why did I choose Gerresheimer? Yes, you are right. With success story abroad the last time, I had various opportunities. I also had the freedom to choose, yeah. That was a very good thing. I choose actually Gerresheimer because the environment I saw gave me the biggest evidence that I can write another growth story, and that's why I choose Gerresheimer.
Yes, I am only three months with Gerresheimer. It was a busy time already, it will also be a couple of more busy months, and I'm not planning anything else. Because I didn't start here to administrate the business. We have to bring dynamic into the company.
I've seen a lot of sites and looked at the various businesses. Why am I confident with the plan? In a certain way, a lot of the planning was already done i could, though, also influence the planning. It's not so difficult to get a good confidence because it's a very solid plan, which is not built on hope and pray, as I always say i t's built on a lot of businesses that mainly are already in the books. What we have to make sure now is that we materialize this plan. It's a solid plan. I feel absolutely confident with this plan, and we have to make sure that we deliver it, t hat's the point.
Very good. Thank you.
Yeah.
Just to ask, furthermore. I imagine that you were interested in the Sensile acquisition, which was announced prior to your appointment. Can you talk a little bit more about whether the recent development with SC Pharma has knocked your confidence in this platform to any extent, or whether there's any negative read across from the SC Pharma development to any of your other collaborations? I just really want to understand what happened there and whether there's anything that we should be more cautious of with respect to the rest of your business here.
You are addressing an absolute obvious question. Why is the customer stepping out so short in front of a launch? Is there a problem with the pump? Is there a problem with technology? Whatever happened t hat's the obvious question a ctually, we raised the same questions. The real reason why SC Pharma terminated the contract are unclear, I can't answer on that because they didn't give us any detail w hat is important, though, is that-
I have a lot of evidence that the pump, the technology itself Is not the reason t hat was also confirmed, by the way, by SGD Pharma. It was also confirmed one week later when I visited another very important customer, Sanofi, where we are quite far in the joint development. Here it was confirmed one more time that the pump is the state-of-the-art pump in the market with clear advance to everything else what you see from a complete neutral standpoint, of course.
Gives a lot of advantages. I also worked with Sensile on projects that are actually not in the projects we communicated during the acquisition and h ere also in the first tests we did in this direction, you can clearly see how advanced this technology is, and that gives me clear evidence.
In principle, I have to pick up a point that was at least stressed by Rainer Beaujean. We should not forget with the acquisition of Sensile, we did not acquire a handful of customer projects. We really acquired the technology. This pump is really state of the art, and it's so simple and genius in its detail, and the cost structure is extremely attractive, and the accuracy is very attractive, that you can really apply this to a various and broad variety of different treatments.
Very good. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, Scott. We're going to take the next questions from Veronica from Goldman Sachs.
Good afternoon, thank you for taking my questions i have two, please. The first one is, Dietmar, welcome. I'm curious, the adjacencies that you have alluded to in your opening remarks, these new market opportunities, which one do you think is most exciting? Can you maybe help us quantify the size of these, just as we think about the medium-term growth and revenue outlook for the business, we can start putting some numbers together.
My second question is also on the medium term, this is on the margin target of 23% after 2020. Looking at the historical margin profile, that would be a meaningful improvement for the business. Maybe you can talk about what are some of the drivers of that margin improvement that you're anticipating over the next two to three years. Thank you.
Maybe I take the second question first because it's a relatively easy one. The CapEx or the investments you see in the next two years are not only capacity increase, but it's also investment into automation of especially the glass facilities, that will definitely lead to productivity improvements. One of the things you see here in 2021 is definitely the result of this higher productivity.
On the other side, we are also improving the mix as we have products with higher value levels, our innovational products, that will definitely help. That's what we see here. Séverine just helps me with a side remark here. We have a couple of other projects, of course, that are running out from lower margin. That helps, of course. Yeah, the new market opportunities.
Some of them are not so rocket science because they are obvious, because the business is already booked. There's quite some growth coming from business that are there t he heparin syringes business is the big one. Another big one is this in-holder project. There is a handful of several handful of different other projects. If you look into the classic old business of glass, where everyone always told me they're not growing much, is this the right thing to be in?
With the right focus on excellence and also productivity, our competitive level will go up, we are actually growing in glass, we will further grow in glass also in the next years to come. It's some big, call it big blusters or bonanzas as I call them, but there's also a variety of other small things that in the end add up to solid growth.
If you allow me to add, when you look on mix management, we have shown you several new products in our portfolio, which also will help us to upgrade our profitability in the next years. Take Gx Elite glass as an example, or take RTF vials or ETF vials or all this kind of new products, which are really helping us or Gx InnoSafe.
They are all high volume, they are all high margin products, and they also will help us to increase our profitability going on further a gain, with all these upgrades, which we are running currently in Anápolis, in India, in new capacity all over the world, we clearly have the situation that our efficiency is for sure hurt by that, and that's the reason why we are not afraid of on top the scale effects, by not keeping the headquarters on the same level going on further.
On costs, you have scale effects, you have higher productivity, and you have, what Dietmar already mentioned, automation as one of the reasons and t hat's also the reason what I've said before, why we have for sure also done a certain restructuring here or there to make sure also that from a cost side we get to a higher level going on further.
Okay. That's very clear. Can I just ask a quick follow-up question on the Sensile revenue targets that you had communicated previously. Can you just give us a sense for roughly the EUR 200 million that you were looking for in 2020 following the SC Pharma contract cancellation? What's a more reasonable number for that?
Yeah. First of all, when we start and talk about it, for sure SC Pharma was a relevant project, but it is also important that Sensile has, and Dietmar already mentioned that before, has a very strong product base and a deep pipeline. When for me, I feel lots more comfortable to talk about the year 2020 because if you remember what we have said during the acquisition of SC Pharma, we always said we look only on five projects as a preliminary indication, which we outline to the market.
We never said this is the only revenue or the other expectation which we have on profitability. For sure, SC Pharma was the second project to come to the market a lways have in mind, the first one is already in the market t echnically, we are marketing currently already a Parkinson project in the market.
That's the reason why 2020 is lots more hurt by this SC Pharma cancellation. When you look again on our Q2 communication, we had the situation that we have shown there part sales of approximately EUR 55 million. For sure, SC Pharma had a major part of that in the part sales.
Also to be clear on that, sales wise, it was very important, but profitability wise, when you also look on what comes out of profitability in 2020, that didn't have such a huge effect. If you make an assumption and you would say from the part sales perhaps 80% or 90% of that what is not there in 2020, then perhaps that's a good assumption o n the other side, longer term, we always said also in our communication that the development won't stop.
That also means we will further have development sales and so on, that's clearly how we want to work with that and p erhaps that hopefully helps you a little bit to give you some flavor, what we see. It's more or less 2020, 2 022 is too far away, in my opinion, to tell you exactly how the situation will look like, because as Dietmar said.
In 2022, hopefully we will have other projects and we always said that all the projects which we put in are conservatively planned. I come back to my statement before, we have no impairment. We have a lot potential above that, even if we have the situation that we book in Q1 and other operating income of EUR 90 million.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you, Veronica w e're going to take the next questions from Falcó from Deutsche Bank.
Can you share some more color on the assumptions behind your new midterm guidance? So the 4%-7% growth. What is your assumption for the underlying growth of the business and how much would come from Sensile Medical? Secondly, can you give us an idea for the potential next steps in the advanced therapy segment?
What would be your focus areas here in terms of technology additions? Are you willing to use the EUR 90 million you now don't have to pay for Sensile for another smaller acquisition? Lastly, could you share some feedback on how the Sensile patch pump used in Parkinson is received in the market since its launch?
Okay. I have to think first what I do with the EUR 90 million, huh? Honestly spoken, the whole thing is I think 10 days old and I see it as a chance, but I have ideas, but I haven't clear plans how we spend this EUR 90 million i t's definitely an area where our room for maneuver is better again. Rainer mentioned it.
By end of this quarter, our leverage will be back on a, what we call target level of around 2.5. It's much more room to maneuver. There is a positive side effect w ould I have given up the SC Pharma business easily? No. Absolutely not. We have to look forward with this. The color of assumption for the midterm guidance, I think the risk to repeat ourselves t here's a lot of booked business here.
There is the contracts I mentioned, heparin and also the inhalers. We have plastic business that we've been successfully winning in South America. India, we will have quite significant amount of growth actually in the glass business in India i 'm not talking 10%, I'm more talking 30%. There's quite some growth there. There is business that we are able to deliver on. Bought from Sensile, Rainer y ou might be able to help me. We have to refer to the guidance we gave.
Let me help you also a little bit, how does it work out? In terms of base level organic growth should normally be expected for the financial year 2019, 2020, to grow with the market of products relevant to us and have in mind, it's not IQVIA. It's in Dietmar's presentation, where, for instance, syringes as well as Medical Plastic Systems should grow with a mid-single-digit growth. On the other side, the Primary Packaging Glass product should grow with a low-single-digit growth.
On top of that, what I've already mentioned before, Dietmar also mentioned it in his speech, we are expecting another percentage point approximately from product mix. Product mix means, the shift from low-quality products to high-quality products. I mentioned names before, the Gx Elite glass, for instance, also glass cosmetics packaging to also go in a different field because here we are also investing a lot, as you could see in our strategy.
Then on top you have the situation Sensile Medical for sure also will generate some growth based on the situation, that we have a starting point. We also hope that something comes out of the situation. Then on top, we shouldn't forget, we got two main contracts where we are investing heavily in the next two years in, and peak sales for the syringe business we mentioned with EUR 20 million, and peak sales for the inhalation business we mentioned with EUR 30 million. There's also ramp-up, which also will support our growth for the next years.
We almost forget the Parkinson's project question. As you know, in September 2018, we got the CE approval, which is the necessary approval for Europe. Since then, the pump has been very well received in the market with high acceptance of the patients.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. We're going to take the next question from David Adlington from J.P. Morgan.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Congratulations, Dietmar j ust wanted to check what your views were on the key barriers to organic revenue growth the company's faced over the last five years. I think organic growth has been largely flat over that time period. I just wondered what the barriers have been, and maybe you could just add some further color in terms of how you plan to address that going forward from here.
Secondly, just on Sensile. The EUR 100 million of revenues in 2020 and EUR 220 million in 2022, you were happy to give those numbers back out when you did the acquisition, but it sounds like you're stepping back from them. The 2022 numbers now really, I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
I take it. I think, let me take on the key barriers for growth in the last five years. I'm not very good in looking backwards i 'm usually looking forward, but there's no doubt, 2017 was negative. In the years before, there was definitely growth in this company. If you look really back, the average growth of Gerresheimer was always in the range of average 4%.
What I see in the company is that we gave some business away, with lack of focus on customer, with lack of focus on excellence, and that has been improved already, I'd say during 2018 i t is not only Mr. Siemssen coming in, the genius and saving everything. There's also a lot of work already done in 2018 and the result of 2018 in the end confirms this.
There's no doubt if we want to grow further, we have to further improve our excellence levels and customer focus, as I mentioned before. If you want to grow, you also have to make sure that you have the right level of innovation in the company to have new products available that are generating growth. The Sensile calculation, I would be happy if you would help me a little bit here, Rainer. As mentioned before, I moved the ugly questions to the left.
No problem. As I said before, SC Pharma sales in 2020 were a relevant one due to the fact that this was one of the projects which we assumed to start pretty early. That can't be taken from the Parkinson project, which is in the market already.
What I've said before was that approximately 80% of the parts sales, and also some of the royalty sales are at risk in that situation because there won't be another project who can be as fast in the market up to the year 2020. On the other side, as Dietmar already mentioned, this is clearly included in our guidance and the numbers which we have communicated in Q2 were preliminary target numbers. Again, we lost this customer.
We have to admit that we will lose the sales profitability-wise. It wasn't really relevant, because it was more or less disposable business, which we have calculated in and therefore, we have to accept it. For 2022, we feel more comfortable because we know how we planned other projects and how our situation was at that time when we announced the five contracts. Therefore, we feel comfortable that there is a chance to get to better numbers again in 2022 versus 2020. That's challenging.
Perfect. Thanks c an I just follow up just in terms of the 4%-7% growth you give in 2020 to 2022? Should we be expecting that, I think that's an average rate over the time period s hould you be within that range for the entire period? or could you be below that range in 2020 given the loss of SC Pharma and then accelerate beyond 2020?
I would rather take it the way that we start on the lower bound level, then we move upwards over the planning period.
Got it. Okay, thank you. Just one final one on the cash flow o bviously, you've got a lot of CapEx going on this year j ust wondered what exceptional cash costs we should also be expecting, and I think network capital is also expected to go up this year.
Yeah, for sure. When you look on the exceptional, you have the exceptional costs, which you won't have again, for sure. On the other side, we also had on the cash flow of the situation that we bought Triveni, and we do have to pay for the whole year because we already paid for the Sensile acquisition, EUR 25 million y ou have to expect that another EUR 60 million is still to come.
For 2019 t hese are the major effects o n the other side, we expect, and that's also one of the things which you have to put in the other operating income, that's what we also communicated at the beginning of the year, last year, the Küssnacht transaction. Here, we said that we try to get by selling the land to someone else, the cash in again, what we have on the restructuring, so make that neutral.
That's exactly how we have to look into it w e have this as a positive effect coming in in 2019 on top, if we are able to sell it in the second half of the year t he first part of this Küssnacht plan, we already sold several days ago, and the rest will come later during this year.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Given that we are running out of time, but I would like to give a chance for everybody to ask questions, maybe restraining yourself to one or two questions, and we are going to take Oliver from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yeah, Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Mr. Siemssen, also a warm welcome from my side. You mentioned in the introductory remarks that Gerresheimer has a sound financial position, which gives you room for maneuver. Can you just talk about what role plays M&A for you, and would you also be open for transforming M&A, or would you exclude big deals and focus rather on small deals? Also, after you sign off now the kind of targets, what are the operational priorities in the next six months? That would be question number one.
Secondly, also coming back on Sensile. I was obviously also surprised that a client walked away at this stage, can you give us some kind of background? What kind of contract structures do you normally have? Is the client normally not locking into certain commitments? If you can talk about that would be helpful and f inally, if you can also indicate what your organic growth assumption in your outlook would imply for 2019. Thank you.
Maybe I take the first question here with the financial position, what impact on M&A? As bad as this SC Pharma topic is, it brings us definitely back on an area where you have more freedom to maneuver w ith the full impact of the Sensile acquisition to EUR 350 million for the next two years, and the fact that we have a lot of CapEx in the next two years.
The areas to really maneuver in an M&A action would have been a bit limited. That might not be the case at the moment. Do we have some immediate things? I would say no, and if I had, I couldn't tell you. We are, of course, permanently monitoring the market, looking into various opportunities.
To answer the second part of your question, they do not necessarily have to be huge. They can be smart and intelligent add-ons f or example, in this field of advanced technology, where there's more music in than just, if you can say so, the pump. In the advanced technology, if you let your fantasy play a little bit more in connectivity and other added value system functions for the customer, there's a lot of ideas you can have.
There's also, of course, always thoughts about expanding certain other areas of the business t hat's what we are looking at. A fter three months, honestly spoken, that's not my biggest focus at the moment. The contract structure of this individual customer contracts. It's a tricky question.
First of all, we bought Sensile, and therefore, you have to remember that we have structured the milestones according to the risk structure of the project and not regarding their financial impact t his is, I think, a very important statement.
The contracts which we have bought are not contracts Gerresheimer has done. For sure, when you look on our structures for Medical Plastic Systems, where we are in the last three years before a product gets out to the market, then for sure the structure is totally different. You get compensations, you get breakout fees, all this kind of stuff i n development phases-
-that's a situation when you're six to seven years before a product gets to the market. You will have a different contract structure to accept, and that's the risk which we have to take w e have projects into our portfolio. One was mentioned by Dietmar before, which is the Sanofi one. For sure, this is with a customer which we well know. STD Pharma is a small company t hat's a totally different animal in that situation.
Therefore, the situation perhaps in this contract is different than with others, and that's what we have to accept. We decided for this kind of business, we believe that's the right way for our company. We have to accept that development is one piece of that y ou asked also for Sensile and how is it in 2019.
For sure, there is not more than development sales, which you should assume, which we always said, also doing the Q2 numbers. That's the situation also going on further w e always will have development sales, and remember the three revenue streams which we have to Sensile, development sales, part sales, and royalties. Development sales will play an important role during the next two to three years, hopefully always.
Thanks so much.
Plus some part sales in Parkinson's, for sure. Yes.
Thanks so much. Can you actually just confirm the 4%-7% midterm guidance, that's organic, right?
For sure. Yes.
Thank you.
Next question from Alexander from Hauck & Aufhäuser.
Yes, hi. Thank you very much for taking the question. First of all, you mentioned that margin or the improvement mix is one of the drivers for margin. Could you give a little bit of flavor how much of those high-value products you have already in your portfolio that you're selling in relation to the overall portfolio? This will be the first one, and then I'll ask another one.
For the mix, for sure there are several projects already out in the market y ou can see them on our website f or instance, Gx Elite glass. You can see some other projects s ome are still to come G x InnoSafe, for instance, is not there, will come a little bit later on.
It's widespread in this situation but t his doesn't only come out of mix, the growth and the profitability. Dietmar already said before, it's also automation. We will further invest into this situation, and on top of that, when we go to Eastern Europe, we are also expecting a different cost base, for instance, than in Küsnacht. We have other situations where we also will have advantages coming out of the movement of our portfolio in this direction.
When we build up our inhalation business in Horšovský Týn, which is our low-cost site for medical plastics currently, that also will help us on the profitability. Also for syringes, Bünde is our high-value flagship plant. To go more eastern for the heparin vaccine business, which we are also currently producing in the Bünde plant, will give us then also a different cost base in that situation o n top of that-
-for sure, we can then put into the Bünde plant with all the knowledge which we have, the RTF vials on top of the RTF syringes, so we have the whole knowledge there. This is the setting where we have to live with, and that's all in our minds when we put out the numbers and all the stuff has started. As I said, we have done certain restructuring this year. We also believe we have a good plan going on further to make sure that we are able to increase this profitability during the next years.
Share of revenue that you make with the high-value products?
We don't disclose that. As I said before, and you also can read that in our annual report, in the outlook, and you will find all that what I've said on page 106. Approximately 1 percentage point comes out of further improvement in product mix.
Okay. Two other questions on the outlook. Beyond 2019, you say that you clearly expect growth to accelerate, yet your lower end of the range, which is 4%-7% for 2020-2022, is actually considerably below the upper end of 2019 guidance. How should one think about that?
Think about that in the situation that you have to ramp up the manufacturing w e already said before that especially our inhalation business will start first-time production in Q4 2020. For sure, the syringe business starts a little bit earlier. Again, we also need our Eastern European plant for the outer years. That's how we have to think about that.
Okay. Finally, on the kind of a FX topic that you mentioned that the comparable figure for your sales guidance, which is based on a fixed rate of 1.15 to 1, is EUR 1.36 billion. Yet the average exchange rate in 2018 was EUR 1.18 billion, it's not really a comparable number, is it? Am I thinking in wrong lines here?
Yeah. You are right in that situation. That's the reason why we have set the EUR 1.15 billion is the basis also for next year and also for our outlook.
Okay.
The EUR 1.15 billion is the right number to look at.
You kind of have at least EUR 15 million headwind on revenue?
To forecast currencies, if I understand your question correctly, is difficult for us currently. For sure, we have the situation i have seen that other companies are guiding currency 1.14. That would be a positive effect for us. As I said, if you have the rule of thumb in mind, which we normally give out, you have the situation that one U.S. dollar, and the U.S. dollar is the most relevant currency, by the way, that $0.01 U.S. dollar change would mean EUR 4 million more revenues in that case when it goes down to 1.14, and approximately EUR 1 million on EBITDA down.
The situation in 2017-2018 was totally different w hen you remember Mr. Trump was elected, how the currencies reacted, that was a situation which was not very stable. If you ask several banks, they will give you an answer how the situation will look like. We start with 1.15, and then we will see how this will develop during the year.
That's what I'm saying, that using your rule of thumb based on the guidance you have given with the 1.15 exchange rate, given the fact that we had 1.18 last year, that would imply that your guidance also assumes up to EUR 15 million or EUR 14 million tailwind, if I do the math correctly.
Okay. When you compare that, yes.
Okay.
You can say that. Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, we're going to take the last question from Christoph Keplinger from Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. I'm sorry.
Hi.
Go for it, please.
Hi. Thank you. First of all, just wanted to say hello to Dietmar, all the best, and also to Rainer for his further journey, also, all the best. I just had actually maybe two follow-up question o ne, I'm not sure whether I got your statement on transformative M&A, whether you actually answered it or not. I would be interested in what, given that you looked at an extended market definition, how you think about that specifically.
The second question relates to the capital intensity of the business. Now, I understand from my colleagues that Dietmar, you have been very return-focused. I was wondering what your assessment has been here at the Gerresheimer business, because in the past, at least from our point of view, it has been very capital intense w e are undergoing another round of capital investment. Of course, now there might be opportunities to run this more efficiently also on the capital side. I was just wondering what your assessment was now on that respect. Thank you.
Yeah, okay. Sorry, I didn't fully understand the question.
I repeat.
If I understand the question right, you're talking whether we are planning with an M&A strategy, a complete transformation of the company. I would rather call it an opportunity driven, with opportunities not in a wide range, but also strategically planned. That's why we will also take our time to set up a clear strategy for the M&A. The strategy line of pipeline is, of course, not fully empty, because we have not started to work with my start in the company, and we are definitely looking at certain opportunities here. We have to see t he opportunity has to come.
Yeah.
The second question, I'm not sure I fully understood this.
In the past, before you came in, there was a lot of CapEx going into the business and with very limited incremental growth and return. Given that you basically come here new, and I was just wondering whether you had any kind of views about the capital intensity of this business at this stage or maybe in the medium term, because obviously, the projects right now, you cannot influence. Whether there is an opportunity to run the business more capital efficiently, I would say.
There's no doubt this is a capital intense business. If you see our facilities here and you see how you set up a clean room to fulfill the regulations, you understand that it's capital intense. What we do in 2019 and 2020, where we boost up, in principle-
-the investments from what we usually have, let me say, some 8%-12%, that is, of course, unique, and it's driven by the fact that we need to do these investments, as mentioned a couple of times, on the one side, the capacity increase, and also, on the other side, the automation. From my point of view, invest in that level, you can really also expect some growth to come. That we will not do the investments if the growth is not coming.
That's what we hope. Again, in the past, it has not been that great. Just as a feedback.
I come from the automotive supply industry w e are not the guys that have golden headquarters. Yeah. We invest the money into machines to produce parts. That's what we have to do here as well.
Thank you, best luck.
Thank you very much, everybody, for attending this conference call and this presentation. That will conclude now our conference call, and if there are any other questions, well, we can address them to investor relations t hank you.
Thank you.