Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call of Medios. At our customers' 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 your questions. If any participant has difficulties hearing the conference, please press zero followed by the hash key for operator assistance. Now, I'll hand over to Claudia Nickolaus, Head of Investor and Public Relations and ESG Communications at Medios. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Welcome, everybody, to our earnings for the f irst half of 2025. As always, all relevant documents can 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, and our CFO, Falk Neukirch. Matthias will start with an executive summary, followed by Falk who will then provide details on the financials of the first half of 2025 and the guidance for 2025. Finally, Matthias will comment on our growth story. After the presentation, we will begin the Q&A session. I would now like to hand over to Matthias.
Thank you, Claudia. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our conference call for the first half of 2025. Let me start with the highlights and achievements for the first half of 2025 on slide three. We had a very good first half of the year, and I'm proud to present the positive development today together with my colleague Falk. Again, we posted increased profitability, and I would like to highlight the strong organic earnings growth. Revenue grew by 9.3% to almost EUR 1 billion, now standing at EUR 992 million. All segments contributed to growth, meaning organic and inorganic growth. EBITDA pre again increased disproportionately by 48.8% to EUR 46.3 million, driven by all three operational segments. Regarding EBITDA contribution, we are very satisfied with both the PS and the PST segments. Only the international business segment fell slightly short of our expectations. However, we are confident about future development here.
I am particularly pleased with the organic earnings growth of 12.3% on EBITDA pre level that significantly exceeded our target of growth in the mid-single-digit range. Consequently, we substantially improved our EBITDA pre margin from 3.4% for the first half of 2024 to 4.7% for the first half of 2025. Furthermore, EPS increased by 85.2% to EUR 0.50. EPS adjusted increased by 34.1% to EUR 0.96. At the request of various investors, we will now also report on the adjusted EPS every quarter. The strong and recovering operational cash flow in Q2 almost compensated for the negative working capital screening effect in the first quarter. All in all, we have once again succeeded in increasing our overall profitability. This confirms the operational strengths of our company and our strategy, which is focused on increasing margins while maintaining growth. Based on these results, we fully confirm our guidance for the year 2025.
Falk will provide more insights into the financials later. Now, a brief update on the search for a new CEO. As outlined in our last earnings call, I have decided to step down as CEO and do not plan for another term of office. There's already a shortlist of CEO candidates so that the supervisory board could come to a decision quite soon. I'm still confident that I will be able to hand over to a successor, ensuring a smooth transition until 31st of December 2025 at the latest, as agreed with the supervisory board. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that our shareholders approved all resolutions proposed by the executives and supervisory boards at our annual general meeting in May, with a large majority of more than 90%. Certainly, one of the best AGM voting results we have ever had. More to this in a minute.
We have also made progress in implementing our growth strategy, and we are fully on track with the integration of Ceban and our growth initiatives. In the second quarter of 2025, all planned integration steps have been successfully completed. This enables the Ceban team to shift their focus fully towards commercial and business development opportunities, utilizing the strong and leading platform of both Medios and Ceban. The first synergies were realized in the beginning of 2025, and we successfully continued this momentum into the second quarter of 2025. Looking ahead, we remain focused on further unlocking the full potential of synergies between the two companies. This process is strongly supported by our European platform, giving us a leading position in the Specialty Pharma compounding in Europe. This network is an excellent basis for our further international expansion, the realization of synergies, and cross-selling opportunities.
Furthermore, it will support the development of our activities in the field of advanced therapy, the future of individualized medicine. For the first time, we successfully conducted a share buyback of 1 million Medios shares, representing 3.92% of our current share capital. Therewith, we have responded to the wishes of many shareholders and to our conviction that the share price does not reflect the full value and potential of Medios. Furthermore, we might use these treasury shares depending on capital markets and business development for a stock option plan or as currency in M&A or withdrawal and capital reduction. Falk will present the details of the program shortly. Let's switch to slide four, providing a short overview of the selected agenda items for our last AGM, which took place on May 27. As said, all proposed resolutions were approved by a large majority of shareholders.
With these AGM resolutions, we have a modern remuneration system for the executive board in place with the new component operational cash flow, replacing inorganic growth as part of the short-term incentive. An overview of the current remuneration system can be found in the appendix of the presentation. We launched an attractive new stock option plan in 2025 and implemented the related conditional capital. We received a new authorization to issue convertible bonds and the respective conditional capital. In a nutshell, we are well financed and ready and well positioned to continue implementing our growth strategy by financing strategic investments, supporting M&A activities, or advancing our internationalization efforts. I'll have some further comments on the financials for the first half of 2025. Slide five shows the quarter-on-quarter development of our two KPIs, revenue and EBITDA pre.
For the first time in our company's history, we have exceeded the half a billion euro revenue mark in one single quarter, while significantly increasing the EBITDA pre margin of the second quarter, 2024. In Q2 of 2025, EBITDA pre and the respective margin of 4.6% grew significantly compared to last year. This was driven by positive momentum from all operating segments and our strategic focus on higher margin products. This positive development is also reflected on slide six, illustrating the revenue and disproportionate EBITDA pre growth for the first six months. Whereas revenue increased by 9.3%, EBITDA pre grew strongly by 48.8%, with a corresponding margin of 4.7% compared to 3.4% in the first half of last year. As Falk stressed, this is fully in line with our strategy to focus on higher margin products to achieve an overall margin improvement.
This is all from my side for the moment. I now hand over to Falk to provide more details on the financials for the first half of 2025 and the guidance for 2025.
Thank you, Matthias. Welcome also from my side. I will give you now a more detailed overview of the financials for the first half of 2025. You can, of course, find the full financial statement on our August slide. Let's go to slide eight. All in all, we had a strong first half of the year 2025. Revenue rose by 9.3% to EUR 991.7 million, mainly driven by the operational segment ID inorganically and PS organically. Gross profit of Medios Group improved significantly to EUR 101.1 million from EUR 60.4 million in the previous year. This is an increase of EUR 40.8 million and a substantial increase of the gross profit margin to 10.2% compared to 6.7% in the previous year.
This improvement is mainly caused by the inorganic contribution of the segment ID, which contributed EUR 31.8 million plus gross profit and higher gross profit margins. Gross profit of the PST s egment rose by EUR 4.9 million and reached a gross profit margin of 23.6% compared to 19.9% in the previous year. This was caused by organic growth, a better product mix, but also the elimination of performance-based payments or compounding orders in the amount of EUR 3.3 million. Gross profit of the PS segment increased organically by EUR 4 million, reaching a gross profit margin of 4% compared to 3.6% in the previous year, also reflecting the focus on revenues with higher margins. Personnel cost rose by EUR 15.5 million to EUR 35.9 million. The essential part of the growth of EUR 30.5 million is attributable to segment ID.
In addition, an amount of EUR 0.5 million is caused by a modest personnel cost increase in PS and PST. As an extraordinary cost item, EUR 1.3 million personnel expenses of segment services are attributable to the communicated termination of extensive support contracts. Other operating expenses rose from EUR 15.4 million to EUR 23.0 million, an increase of EUR 7.6 million, thereafter EUR 7.2 million attributable to segment ID. The EBITDA pre increased to EUR 46.3 million compared to EUR 31.1 million in the previous year, mainly following the gross profit development. The EBITDA pre margin increased to 4.7% compared to 3.4% in the previous year and was supported by the EBITDA contribution of the segment IDs and the organic growth of PS and PST, also by focusing on higher margin products. EBITDA pre was adjusted by extraordinary expenses in the amount of EUR 4.1 million compared to EUR 6.6 million last year.
These expenses mainly consist of EUR 2.4 million for ERP system implementation, EUR 0.4 million expenses for stock options, and EUR 1.3 million one-off related to the change in the executive board. The decline in overall adjustment is mainly attributable to the discontinuation of performance-based payments for increased compounding volume in 2025. Depreciation and amortization increased significantly by EUR 6.9 million to EUR 18.8 million, largely due to the acquisition of the Ceban Group. Of the total amount for depreciation and amortization, EUR 12.1 million are attributable to the amortization of customer base. EUR 2.6 million are attributed to release assets, and the remaining amount of almost EUR 4 million belongs to operational depreciation. The financial result of minus EUR 4.3 million decreased by minus EUR 2.8 million and mainly includes interest expenses for the charges utilized from the facilities of the existing SIM loan, which amounted to EUR 167.5 million at the reporting date.
The tax expense rose from EUR 3.7 million to EUR 5.4 million, reflecting a tax rate of 29.7% compared to 36.8% in the previous period. The decline in tax rate is mainly caused by non-tax deductible expenses in the previous year. Due to the strong performance of all operational segments, plus the disparate reduction in extraordinary expenses, the net result almost doubled to EUR 12.7 million, despite higher depreciation and financing costs. Asked earnings per share rose from EUR 0.27 to EUR 0.50, an increase of 85.2%. As outlined by Matthias, for the first time, we've reported also the adjusted earnings per share that amounted to EUR 0.96 versus EUR 0.72 for the first six months of 2024. This figure is based on the net result after tax adjusted for extraordinary expenses, PPA depreciation and amortization, as well as corresponding tax expense adjustments.
Due to a reporting date-related net working capital effects, the strong operational performance of the first half of 2025 is not fully reflected in the operating cash flow of EUR 23.4 million. This is mainly due to a rise in trade receivables in the segments PS and ID at the reporting date. Free cash flow of EUR 20.5 million is consequently also impacted by the same net working capital effect. The investing cash flow of minus EUR 0.9 million reflects a CapEx of - EUR 2.4 million and subsequent accrued purchase price payments for the acquisition of Ceban of - EUR 1.5 million, as well as cash inflows of EUR 2.4 million from the disposal of fixed assets in the sale of a pharmacy in the Netherlands.
Financing cash flow of - EUR 14.9 million reflects total repayments of EUR 32.5 million of the SIM loan facility, consisting of - EUR 12.5 million scheduled redemption of the term loan and - EUR 20 million net repayments of the withdrawal revolving credit facility, interest payments of minus EUR 5.7 million, mainly related to SIM loan facilities and lease liabilities repayments of minus EUR 2.5 million. Cash and cash equivalents of EUR 87.8 million by the end of the reporting period consisted mainly of really available bank deposits. The equity ratio increased from 54.6% at the end of December 2024 to now 57.0%. On slide nine and ten, we provide a breakdown of the organic and inorganic growth. Slide nine shows the inorganic revenue growth amounted to EUR 66.9 million or 7.4%, fully dedicated to the ID segment. Organically, revenue increased by EUR 17.6 million or 1.9%, mainly by focusing on higher margin revenues in segment PS.
Slide ten shows the organic and inorganic EBITDA pre breakdown by segment. EBITDA pre increased inorganically by EUR 11.4 million or 36.5%, fully dedicated to ID segment. Also, both PS and PST show organic earnings growth. The EBITDA pre development in segment services reflects a thoughtful structural expansion of the new strategic segment advanced therapies, but also increased board remuneration. Let's go to slide 11, providing an overview of the segments. The 9.3% increase in group revenue is mainly driven by ID and to a lower extent by PS and PST. The external revenue of PS segment increased by 1.5% to EUR 800.1 million and of PST segment by 2.5% to EUR 110.2 million. The ID segment contributed EUR 81.1 million external revenue in the first six months of 2025, which is an increase of EUR 69.6 million. EBITDA pre for the PS segment amounted to EUR 26.4 million, a plus of EUR 3.5 million or 15.4%.
EBITDA pre for the PST segment increased by around EUR 1.2 million to EUR 12.1 million or 10.8%. ID contributed with an EBITDA pre of EUR 13.8 million for the first half of 2025 and a margin of 17%. As outlined by Matthias, ID is slightly below our expectations, but we are confident that the segment will develop positively. Slide 12 provides status information on the recent financing structure. In November 2024, the debt financing of Medios was replaced by a SIM loan facility in a total amount of EUR 225 million, consisting of two tranches: a term loan facility of EUR 125 million with a term of five years, repayment started in March 2025, and for the first half of 2025, we repaid EUR 12.5 million.
A revolving credit facility of EUR 100 million, also with a term of five years, the RCF has a term extension option of up to two years and a step-up option of further EUR 50 million to finance future growth. An estimated free cash flow of EUR 40- EUR 50 million enables Medios to repay the term loan and to finance further growth. At the end of the reporting period, the total loan amount found under the SIM loan facility amounts to EUR 167.5 million, EUR 111.5 million under the term facility, and EUR 55 million under the RCS facility. Slide 13. Let me now address another important milestone that underscores our specific shareholder-centric approach. We successfully completed our first public share buyback offer in June. The offer was very well received by the market, and I'm pleased to report that we acquired 1 million shares, which corresponds to approximately 3.92% of current share capital.
The offer was made at a price of EUR 12.4 per share, reflecting a premium of approximately 9.3% over the five-week average closing price, underlining our strong confidence in the long-term value of Medios AG. In total, more than 11 shares were tendered by our shareholders, which reflects an allocation quota of 92.78%. The buyback was conducted under the authorization granted by our shareholders at the 2023 annual general meeting, which remains valid until June 2028. The acquired shares could be used flexibly as permitted by the AGM resolution for purposes such as employee participation program, share-based compensation, or strategic considerations in M&A transactions. Overall, we are confident about the business development over the next months and confirm our guidance for the full year 2025, as shown on slide 15. Our guidance parameters are revenue and EBITDA pre.
For 2025, we expect revenues to reach approximately EUR 2 billion, reflecting growth of around 6%. EBITDA pre is expected to grow by around 21.5% to around EUR 96 million. Organic growth should be in the mid-single-digit percentage range. Both parameters reflect an EBITDA pre margin of approximately 4.8%. The EBITDA pre guidance is adjusted for extraordinary expenses like M&A-related costs, expenses from stock option programs, and implementation costs for an ERP system, and as explained, as well as from 2025, on one-off expenses due to the change in executive remuneration system. A summary of our strategic priorities is outlined on slide 16. For this, I am back to Matthias.
Thank you, Falk. The three pillars of our growth strategy are outlined on this slide. Our half-year results show that we are making good progress in implementing our strategy, particularly in terms of margin improvement through focusing on higher margin products and services and the internationalization of our business model. The organic EBITDA pre growth in our segment here is of EUR 3.5 million and PST o f EUR 1.2 million, representing organic growth of 12.3% for the first half of 2025, also shows that we are continuing to strengthen our business model in Germany. With Ceban, we have achieved internationalization. The first FX synergies are currently being implemented. We are also making good progress regarding our activities in the field of advanced therapies. We received the manufacturing license for gene therapeutics for customer-specific projects at one of our sites near Stuttgart. There, we are building out our capabilities in small-scale formulation till finish for personalized cancer vaccines based on mRNA and/or peptides.
We also have the special expertise required by law in the field of gene therapeutics among our employees. This development confirms that we are making progress in reaching our goals to be the perfect partner for the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors in the future and keeping our promise of delivering the best therapies to patients. Regarding M&A, we have demonstrated that we have the necessary tools and strength for further inorganic growth. We have a shortlist of interesting opportunities, namely vote on acquisition. In a nutshell, we are on track to further implement our strategy and to ensure further attractive growth. Thank you for your attention. Falk and I are now available to answer your questions. Operator, could you please read out the instruction?
Yes. Thank you very much. We will now begin our question and answer session. If you have a question for our speakers, please dial nine and the star key on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial three and the star key to cancel your question. If you are using speaker equipment today, please leave the handset before making your selection. One moment, please, for the first question. The first question goes to Sam England of Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. The first one, can you talk a bit about the mix-shift higher margin revenues in the PS segment? I suppose, how much further can that mix move over time? Should we be expecting further upside to gross margins in the PS segment going forward? The second question is just on the international business. It looks like margins dipped a bit from Q1 into Q2. Just wondering what the drivers are there and what you see as a realistic long-term margin for the international business. I suppose, are there any timing factors or seasonality that we should be aware of as well in the Ceban business? Thanks.
Sam, thank you for this question. I think the PS segment, yeah, we had a certain upside in the second quarter here, margin-wise, but I think this is nothing we would see in the third and fourth quarter. All in all, I think this is also a little bit to do with the first quarter where we didn't show certain rebates we expected from suppliers. We have considered quite a few of them in because contract prices were nailed down in the second quarter, and this is the reason there was a kind of recovery effect there. This we will see now in the third and fourth quarter very stable. I think PS segment will develop quite stable in the third and fourth quarter. I don't see any significant rise so far in 2025 for the PS segment margin-wise. In respect to the international business segment, I think, yes.
As Matthias already mentioned, we are a little bit behind expectations there. Revenue, but also margin-wise, generally, we expect the margin range between 16%, but it could also be up to 20%. It's the kind of range because it's quite not very homogeneous. What we see here as a business, we have different kinds of business activities in the international business segment from home to sterile and non-sterile compounding, which is, of course, delivering different kinds of margins. There is a certain movement over the different quarters depending on what kicks in more or margin-wise. We will recover in the second half of the year. That's for sure because we see customer contracts kicking in, revenues kicking in, and also margins, especially in the sterile and sterile compounding. We are very certain that we will recover in the next six months of 2025 here.
Great. Thanks very much. If we have the demand, we didn't receive any further questions. We will leave the line open for a moment. If you have another question, please press nine and the star key. The next question goes to Alexander Galitsa of HAIB. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for the question. On the PST segment, maybe you can provide some context to it. We see that this division has been growing modestly for a while now. I think Q1 of 2024, if you compare to Q1 of 2022, revenue is virtually flat. It seems to me that having digested the regulatory changes we've faced and also the recent divestment, we should be accelerating in the segment, but that's nothing that we are seeing currently, at least. Q2 was probably somewhat better, 3.8% top-line growth, but we are still kind of expanding in this EUR 52 million-EUR 55 million quarterly revenue corridor for, I think, eight quarters now. If you can maybe provide any context to assume what are your expectations for this division in terms of growth going forward.
Okay. Alexander, thank you very much for this question. I will start to answer then over to Falk. If I look at the figures, you're right with regards to revenues. They are quite stable. Remember, the focus on high margin products and services. It's the same for PST. Also here, we are focusing on higher margin services. If we look at the EBITDA pre, H1 compared to 2024, we can see an increase by almost 11%. Increasing from EUR 10.9 million up to EUR 12.1 million, which is a pretty good development. Revenue-wise, you're right, it's EUR 107 million up to EUR 110 million, so it's 2.5%. This focusing on higher margin services, of course, means that EBITDA has to grow faster than revenues. This leads to an increased EBITDA margin of now almost 11%, 10.9% compared to almost 10%, 10.1% in the first half of 2024. This is part of our strategy.
This is our strategy. We will continue to focus on this high margin business with the goal to further increase the overall EBITDA pre margin.
Yeah. Thank you, Matthias. I think not too much to add, actually. You're right. It is. I mean, we developed quite well on the profitability side, even that in case the revenue is more or less, yeah, stable at a level of 55, 56, sometimes 54. The development EBITDA-wise is quite impressive. What we, of course, as we are able to fulfill our sales strategy here and fill our capacity as the manufacturing entities, this is very clearly our plans, and we're working on this now, yesterday, and also in the next quarter. We will be able to increase profitability also percentage-wise here, not only absolutely, but also percentage-wise in the direction of 11% and maybe slightly above. Here we have some upside to use spare capacity, which is at the moment available. Upside is possible as the contracts in we are trying to nail down in our safety.
Thank you. Maybe a couple of questions related to free cash flow. As you mentioned, H1 was somewhat still held back by your networking capitals. For the full year, or maybe the other way around, for the second half, you would expect cash flow to step up in free cash flow. If you can make a statement as to the full year, are you expecting free cash flow to approach maybe EUR 40 million? If you can make any comments here, it would be helpful.
Yes. Thank you. I know that. As you remember, we started with a little backpack in 2025. It was a spring effect, which helped in 2024 for operational cash flow-wise. This was, of course, also a backpack we had to carry through the first quarter. It was seen in the operational cash flow in the first quarter. I think we recovered quite well. We've done quite well. We are now at EUR 23 million in operational cash flow. What we said is not a—I know I'm not saying that—it's not a guidance, yeah. What the client, the CFO, could expect is maybe an operational cash flow of EUR 50 to EUR 60 million. This is at least my statement I made somewhere in March 2025. I think I still think this is possible. I don't think we will be at EUR 60 million, but maybe at around EUR 50 million, yeah, operational cash flow-wise.
As you know, we have an operational CapEx`` level of up to EUR 10 million roughly annually. This brings us to a free cash flow of—let me think about it—yes, EUR 40 million- EUR 50 million. If we start probably at EUR 50 million, operational cash flow is probably EUR 40 million, more on the lower end, also on the free cash flow. Yeah. Is that answering your question?
Yes, that's very helpful. Thank you. Maybe the last one from my side is regarding ERP implementation costs, EUR 2.4 million for the first half. Is there much to come in the second half? Also, is there anything in 2026?
Yeah. The ERP program will be part of this, will go live beginning of 2026. There will be further efforts and also further costs in 2025. I expect around EUR 12 million here in 2025, which is implementation costs, which we will address in 2026. We will go live in the first phase. What will kick in then are license costs, of course, which we won't address, of course, because this is our normal running cost of the system in the amount of per annum around EUR 1.5 million annually. If we tick off other waves, because the ERP project is not covering the full Medios at the moment, it's covering a major part of the offset segment and of the service. If we implement further waves or what could be possible is not decided yet, we will have further implementation costs.
They will be lower because the start is always difficult, as you know, because you have to select in the system. You have to nail down certain things and implement certain things. It will be definitely lower, the implementation cost, if we start further waves for implementing the ERP system. Don't nail me down on any euro amount now.
Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your questions. We didn't receive any further ones. Let me hand back over to your host for some closing remarks.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for attending this half-year call. See you soon at one of the following conferences. We are happy if you attend our November cfall again for the Q3 figures. Enjoy the rest of the week, and bye-bye from Berlin.
Bye-bye.