Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call of Medios AG. At the customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulties hearing the conference, please press 0 followed by the hash key for operator assistance. May I now hand you over to Claudia Nickolaus, Head of Investor and Public Relations and ESG Communications at Medios?
Welcome everybody to our earnings call for the 2023 financial year. As always, all relevant documents can also be downloaded from our Investor Relations website. Additionally, this presentation can be followed in parallel via the internet link provided to you in the invitation. Today with me is our CEO Matthias Gärtner, our CFO Falk Neukirch, and our Director International Business Development, Konstantin.
Thank you, Claudia.
Matthias will then start an executive summary followed by Falk, who will then provide details on the financials for the fiscal year 2023, the guidance for 2024, and the outlook for 2025. Finally, Matthias will comment on Medios' growth story. All three gentlemen will be then available to answer your questions. I would now like to hand over to Matthias.
Thank you, Claudia. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our conference call for the full year results of 2023. Today I will only comment on the main highlights of fiscal year 2023 and on the acquisition of CBAN, an outstanding event for Medios. Regarding CBAN, we will focus on the highlights since most of you probably participated in the conference call just last week. Let's go directly to slide 3, providing an overview of the highlights for the full year 2023 until today. First, a summary on the development of our two operational segments. Pharmaceutical supply had a strong full year, benefiting not only from the scale of inventories at higher prices sales, sorry, of inventories at higher prices. Our segment, patient-specific therapies, was impacted by regulatory headwinds and by performance-based expenses for the transfer of compounding volume from AfS as part of the BBW transaction.
The good news is that overall, we managed to compensate the regulatory price reductions since September 2022 in the patient-specific therapy segment. In 2023, we also completed the integration of BBW and the sterile manufacturing volume of AFS in our labs as part of this acquisition in January 2023. Following the strategic sale of Kölsche Blister in June 2023, we have centralized all blister activities in BBW's lab near Stuttgart. Now some comments on our financials. All in all, we had a very good fiscal year 2023, posting record revenue and EBITDA pre for the group. Revenue grew by around 11% to a new record of almost EUR 1.8 billion, and EBITDA pre increased by more than 10% to EUR 60.5 million. Moreover, we fully repaid our loan liabilities, and we can use the revolving credit facility to finance our operations.
And again, we met our narrowed guidance 2023. Falk will provide more insights on the financials later. Regarding our ESG activities, we worked on the implementation of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, abbreviated the well-known CSRD, and EU taxonomy requirements. Elements are already included in our non-financial reporting 2023 that we publish today for Medios, still on a voluntary basis. And finally, I'm especially proud that once again we are delivering on what we promised. In the Q1 2024, we acquired the first company outside Germany, the Dutch market leader CBAN Pharmaceuticals, with activities also in Belgium and Spain, an outstanding milestone in implementing Medios' internationalization and growth strategy. This brings me to slide 4, presenting an executive summary of this transformative and value-enhancing acquisition. What is special about the acquisition?
This acquisition is the first milestone in our journey and vision to build the leading European specialty pharma platform. In addition, we get immediate market access to three European countries: the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain. After closing, Medios will not only be number one in Germany but also number one in the Netherlands. Additionally, we will have a footprint in Belgium and Spain. In other words, the new Medios group will have a leading position in compounding of specialty pharma in Northwestern Europe. With the acquisition, we will significantly diversify our product portfolio and value chain in specialty pharma. We will run a network of 23 owned pharmacies in the Netherlands and will be adding the API business. API stands for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients and the High Margin Non-Sterile business as well. The good cultural fit of the two groups strongly supports the cross-selling potentials and synergies.
The acquisition is being made at an attractive multiple and will be mainly financed by cash and debt and only to a small extent by new Medios shares. The share component also was a strategic decision as we will gain Bencis, a European private equity company, as a new investor. I would like to stress that the transaction is immediately EBITDA pre accretive and will increase our earnings margin from the very beginning. We expect to significantly exceed the EUR 100 million mark in EBITDA pre already in 2025, with an EBITDA pre margin of 5%+. Falk will provide more insight on the financing later. Let's switch to slide 5, providing a snapshot on CBAN. CBAN is a fast-growing leading pharmaceutical compounding platform founded in 2004. We are very pleased to welcome around 5,600 motivated CBAN colleagues.
As just said, CBAN has activities in three European countries with a leading market position in pharmaceutical compounding in the Netherlands. CBAN's revenue and EBITDA adjusted grew at an average growth rate of more than 15% over the last three years. The EBITDA adjusted margin amounts to an attractive 18%. For a deep dive on the CBAN operations, you can listen to the replay of our CBAN investor call last week and see the slide on CBAN in the appendix of the presentation. The replay is available on our Investor Relations website. Now some comments on the financials for the Q4 and the full year of 2023 as illustrated on slides 6-7. Slide 6 shows the quarter-on-quarter development of our two KPIs, revenue and EBITDA pre.
After our third and best quarter in Medios history, revenue and EBITDA pre were below this level in the Q4 , also due to the already described regulatory price adjustment impacting our PSP business. Consequently, the EBITDA pre margin for the Q4 of 3.2% was slightly below last year's level. However, revenue in the first nine months of the fiscal year 2023 increased by around 11% to a new record, and EBITDA pre also amounted to a new record level as shown on slide 7. Most of this growth was attributable to organic growth. Despite regulation and a difficult economic environment such as high interest rates, Medios has once again recorded sustainable growth. Now let's move to slide 8.
Supplemented by CBAN's operations and geographic coverage in three additional European countries, our German-wide network of around 800 specialized pharmacies will be enlarged by CBAN's network of owned and additional partner pharmacies. CBAN's network covers around 3,300 pharmacies and more than 200 hospitals as well as the 23 owned pharmacies. This is an excellent basis for our further European expansion and the realization of synergies and cross-selling opportunities. This also means that the number of the currently around 400,000 individualized preparations in 2023 will substantially increase. On slide 9, we present our progress on some important ESG KPIs for 2023. Regarding the S in ESG, we are happy to maintain the high proportion of women in our overall workforce, namely 58%, as well as 46% in management positions.
In the area of products and services, we were able to keep the number customer complaints measured against all compounded preparations, respectively deliveries, very low at 0.2%. Looking at the environmental KPIs, we can see that energy efficiency measures show its effects. For this reason, we consumed 9% less energy in 2023 than in the previous year. Moreover, the share of green electricity reached 41% in 2023. The lower energy consumption and the green electricity purchase led to 41% less emissions in the field of Scope 1 and Scope 2. This is all from my side for the moment. I now hand over to Falk to provide more details on the financials for fiscal year 2023, the guidance for 2024, as well as the outlook for 2025.
Yeah. Thank you, Matthias. Welcome from my side. I will now give you an overview on the financials, for the fiscal year 2023. A full financial statement can be found, as always, on our website. Let's start with slide 11. As already mentioned, we had a very good fiscal year 2023. Revenues increased by 10.8% to almost EUR 1.8 billion, again, a record due to continued organic growth in both operational segments as well as inorganic growth by the acquisition of BBW in January 2023. Gross profit increased by 2.9% to EUR 112 million, with a lower gross profit margin of 6.3% compared to 6.8% in the previous year. This is due to the already mentioned regulatory price deductions, the performance-based payments, and the higher portion of revenue as well as gross profit originating from pharmaceutical supply segment, which shows lower gross profit margins than PSP segment.
The increase of personnel costs by 8.6% to EUR 36.6 million is a result of the acquisition of BBW, the expansion of compounding in the PSP segment, the continued buildup of central functions and scheduled salary increases as well as performance-related special payments. Excuse me. Despite a constantly growing Medios group, we were able to decrease other operating expenses by EUR 1 million to EUR 23.0 million. Rising IT and marketing costs were more than offset by savings in other operating expenses categories such as legal and consulting costs, mainly by centralizing of so far decentralized finance functions. EBITDA pre grew by 10.3%, resulting in a stable EBITDA pre margin of 3.4%. As previously stated, the margin was burdened by regulatory price adjustments that started in September 2022 as well as the increased contribution of PS segment, which led to lower EBITDA margins.
The EBITDA pre was adjusted by extraordinary expenses in the amount of EUR 8.1 million, thereof for stock options almost EUR 2 million, around EUR 1 million for M&A transaction costs, and all around EUR 5 million for performance-based payments for the acquisition of compounding volumes. Depreciation and amortization decreased from EUR 22.2 million to EUR 21.0 million. An increase in financing costs by around EUR 0.9 million to EUR 2.0 million was triggered by drawings under the RCF, mainly due to finance the temporary increase of in inventories in the PS segment. Undiluted earnings per share slightly increased by 2.6% to EUR 0.79. Operating cash flow for the fiscal year amounted to EUR 16.4 million. Frankly speaking, this is not the amount we were aiming for.
In 2023, we were very much forced to focus on EBITDA generation in the PS segment to offset the regulatory headwind of the PSP segment. We were very successful in doing that, what our EBITDA results proved. But this has also forced us to build up stock above the normal level, which we planned to sell off fully in the second half of 2023. The return to the normal level of inventory and receivables was unexpectedly delayed. So we saw a higher level of inventories and receivables end of December 2023 compared to year-end 2022, which lowered the operational cash flow of 2023 by roughly EUR 22 million. The explanation for this is one thing, doing better the other. For me and the whole board, cash flow is key.
Therefore, I and the responsible key management will from now on even heavier focus on this key aspect. The goal is to generate a perpetual positive operating cash flow in every quarter and to increase the annual operating cash flow significantly in 2024. We already started in Q1 2024, and I'm optimistic that we will be able to show a positive operating cash flow already in Q1 2024. Investing cash flow of -EUR 16.6 million resulted primarily from the cash component from the BBW acquisition of EUR 19.2 million less acquired funds. Excuse me. Financing cash flow of -EUR 8 million reflects the repayment of the revolving loan facility and interest payment in the amount of -EUR 5.3 million. Approximately -EUR 2.4 million were paid under long-term lease contracts according to IFRS 16.
Free cash flow before M&A amounted to approximately EUR 15.1 million in 2023 following the lower operating cash flow as just explained. Cash and cash equivalents amount to roughly EUR 71 million, also below the amount at year's end 2022. The equity ratio increased from 77.8% by end of 2022 to 78.8% by end of 2023, mainly because of a decrease of non-current liability. Let's now switch to slide 12. Both segments contributed to the increase of external revenue of around 11%, mainly driven by the PS segment. In the PS segment, external revenue rose by 12.1% to around EUR 1.6 billion. External revenue generated by the PSP segment increased by 2.7% to EUR 226 million. EBITDA pre for the PS segment amounted to EUR 46.7 million, a plus of around 23%.
EBITDA pre for the PSP segment declined to EUR 21.8 million, around 8% below the previous year level. The absolute decline and also the decline in margin is mainly due to the already described regulatory headwind. The margin in relation to external revenue in PS segment was up 0.3% to 3.0%, whereas the PSP margin decreased from 10.8% to 9.7%. As said, on group level, the EBITDA pre margin of 3.4% matches the margin of the previous year. Slide 13 provides you an overview on the financing of the cash component for the CBAN acquisition. We will finance the cash component of EUR 235.3 million by drawings under the already agreed bridge facility of EUR 200 million. The bridge facility has common market interest rates, which are increasing during the term of the loan.
The remaining EUR 35.3 million of the cash purchase price will be paid by cash at hand of further drawings under the additional available syndicate loan over EUR 75 million. The bridge facility is planned to be replaced by a long-term debt facility like a bond or step-up of the existing syndicate loan. We expect to generate a free cash flow less interest payments of EUR 30 million-EUR 40 million starting in 2025, which then will be used to repay the new debt facility over a term of five to six years. Let's go to slide 15, providing our guidance for the full year 2024 for the Medios group, including CBAN, and the outlook for 2025 as already presented at our conference call on the acquisition of CBAN last week.
For fiscal year 2024, we expect revenue to reach the range of EUR 1.9 billion-EUR 2.1 billion, reflecting a growth of 11.1% considering the middle of the corridor. EBITDA pre is expected to be in the range of EUR 82 million-EUR 91 million, a disproportionate rise of 43% at the middle of the guidance corridor. The guidance for 2024 is subject to the assumption that we will reach control on CBAN in May 2024. The EBITDA pre guidance includes integration costs, but it's adjusted for extraordinary expenses like M&A transaction costs, expenses for stock option programs, performance-based payments for compounding volumes, and implementation costs for an ERP system. As an outlook for 2025, not as a guidance, the further integration of CBAN is expected to lead to revenue of approximately EUR 2.15 billion.
The reason for the slightly lower revenue increase is a focus on increase in margins and cash flow, which to a certain extent also means that we would accept discontinuing certain revenue with lower profitability. Also, as an ambition but not to be understood as a guidance, we expect in 2025 for the first time to cross the EUR 100 million mark in EBITDA pre by a targeted EBITDA pre of around EUR 110 million and a corresponding EBITDA pre margin of around 5.1%. This shows very clearly that the acquisition is EBITDA pre margin accretive. We will significantly increase our profitability with a potential EBITDA pre margin above 5%. A summary of our strategic priorities is outlined on slide 16. For this, I hand back to Matthias.
Thank you, Falk. Our growth strategy strongly advanced with CBAN. Its three pillars are outlined on this slide. In addition to strengthening our core business in Germany, CBAN will enable to expand our operations into other European countries. We plan to further diversify our business model by entering the production of advanced therapies, meaning medicines based on genes, tissues, or cells, all expensive and complex therapies. This fits well as we are already a trusted partner for high-value drugs in Germany, and we will be one in our new European markets as well. In our last earnings call in November, I announced that we hired a new high-profile manager who will be responsible for the new field, advanced therapies. We are blessed to welcome him next week.
As a result of CBAN's integration and the implementation of our growth story, we defined financial targets for 2025, replacing and exceeding our previously mentioned midterm targets as just presented by Falk. We remain excited and confident that we will achieve these targets. In a nutshell, our growth story is well on track. Thank you for your attention. Falk, Konstantin, and I am now available to answer your questions.