Good morning in the United States. Welcome to our Q1 financial results disclosure Q1 2021. Actually, we have pre-announced our figures a couple of weeks ago, and actually we confirmed what we pre-announced. Before we dive into the details, please allow me for just some housekeeping statements. First of all, I think I don't need to read you through our safe harbor statement and our GAAP, non-GAAP adjustment, non-adjustment figures disclosure. We have all mentioned those data in the presentation and in the relevant releases as well. Actually, you can download that presentation either in your webcasting tool or from our website. As always, I would like to split the presentation into three segments in the presentation and then certainly Q&A. First, I would like to give you an overview of what happened in Q1, highlighting certain elements.
The financial review of the quarter, then some outlook, after that, certainly, if possible, I would like to answer your questions, which could be raised then. At the end of the presentation, we provided some supplementary data. Actually, well, the presentation is too dense to cover those aspects as well. Please feel free to look into that section as well in the downloaded presentation. At a glance, top line up by 32.5% on a constant currency level to EUR 72 million, which is a nominal growth of 27.4%. We are showing double-digit growth rates in all segments, instrument, Diatron, and smart consumables. Nice recovery in smart consumables. I'll dive into details of those elements as well. Adjusted EBIT more than double to EUR 16 million, coming from EUR 7.7 million after Q1 2020.
The adjusted EBIT margin is up by 870 basis points year-over-year to an adjusted EBIT margin of 22.3% after 13.6% in Q1 2020. We got through a number of important milestones to include one of the projects which certainly have the potential to allow Stratec to continue to stay on that growth track. In particular, one, and I would like to highlight one just because of the size. All of those milestones are certainly important. We had some prototype shipments for certain products. The product I would like to highlight here is the molecular product for one of the market leaders, where we got through a milestone.
The actual name doesn't matter that much, but it's something like a design freeze, which means the customer is now starting with all the regulatory work. Our regulatory work is actually already prepared, and certainly shelf life testing is something which is ahead of us and our customers. Actually, that gives us a certain degree of confidence that the product will hit the market within the foreseen timeframe, and current planning is actually the beginning of next year. With the continued high demand and positive customer feedback for our CLIA platform, which is one of the very few proprietary random access immunoassay platforms named CLIA. The first partner is about to launch the product, and we have a certain number already of contract negotiations.
Actually, some already contracted feasibility agreements, supply agreements, and other agreements which are actually showing very positive signals that our goal to introduce one of the very few chemiluminescent immunoassay random access analyzers to the market, which are actually It's really hard to describe. It's an open and close at the same time platform. Open between us and our partners, where they can actually run their chemiluminescent immunoassay on a proprietary platform and then close towards the customer, which means our customer can then, based upon their own choice, use this instrument as an open or closed system solution. This is actually allowing something which happened in the ELISA field 20, 30 years ago.
I think this platform offers something which allows smaller customers with innovative, more esoteric menus to use this technology, which offers a higher degree of specificity and sensitivity than ELISA tests as well. Like I said, great feedback. It's really like a technological platform for Stratec on the one-hand side, and certainly something which offers new perspectives to customers transferring their menu and their business away from ELISA more into chemiluminescent immunoassay. Getting to the financial review in detail. As already mentioned, sales nominally up by 27.4%. EBITDA from EUR 10 million to EUR 18 million, up by more than 80%. EBITDA margin, up by 830 basis points, clearly showing the scalability of the business from about 18% to more than 26%. Adjusted EBIT up by 109% from roughly EUR 7.5 million to EUR 60 million, all on a year-over-year basis.
Adjusted EBIT margin from 13.6% to 22.3%, leading to a consolidated net income of EUR 13 million after about EUR 6 million in 2020 after Q1. EPS from EUR 0.52 to now EUR 109. The basic earnings per share after IFRS from 37% to 95%. This is results from continuing operations, we actually excluded and adjusted the previous year's figures of the adjustments we made after we sold our Data Solutions business unit after Q1 last year. As already mentioned, Q1 2021 sales up by 32.5% in constant currency. Positive contributors, certainly the continued high demand for molecular and immunoassay platform, and a very strong business with the systems certainly.
Here we actually see that something we slightly missed last year and probably you remember that we discussed it already, that certainly our customers were focusing with all they had in terms of sales and service forces in new instrument placement and now certainly at the tail end of the pandemic, we see a very nice Service Parts and spare parts and certainly to a certain degree, Consumables business. Probably know that within that product group, certainly consumables does not yet play such a major role as in companies which are focused on consumables or test kits. For us, it means plastics to a certain degree. We are not providing all the plastics for all our instruments, which is still partly in the hands of our customers. Again, very strong in terms of maintenance parts and certainly spare parts.
A special highlight I would like to mention the chemistry sales in our Diatron business unit, and we already discussed that in detail that in certain diagnostics market segment, it is quite common that certain parts of the chemistry is supplied by the OEM supplier like us. In other areas like in immunoassay and in molecular, it's quite common that this is in the hands of our customer because it's obviously their core competency to offer these kind of technologies, owning not just the market access and the brand, but certainly owning the technology behind the actual test providing. A further positive contributor is certainly the single-digit growth coming from our Development and Service sales. Again, just to remind you, typically slightly margin-weak business.
If the capitalization of development milestones is not extraordinarily high like we had in 2019, certainly a rate between healthy 8% to, let me say, 15% is contributing positively to the margin and certainly contributing positively to the sales figures. Certainly we have this ramp-up curve, which is a negative contributor to sales ramp of newly launched products, where certainly our customers, and this is absolutely not our choice, this is our customers' choice. I think it is obvious that, particularly at the beginning of last year, leading our customers into autumn and certainly partly into the end of the year 2020, that certainly they allocated all their resources available into instruments or sales or consumables or whatever was their relevant business, which has an exposure to COVID-19.
Now we definitely see that our customers are reallocating the resources into other areas for them, clearly with the goal to continue to stay on their growth track. For us, it means a focus reallocation on instruments which have been launched in 2017, 2018 and 2019, which were kind of de-focused in the course of last year. Again, it's certainly easy to understand. Let me just give you an easy example. Obviously, our customers were trying to place new instruments only into accounts where there was already an instrument because this could save them some time, let me say, in process qualification, in and output qualification, service training, user training, the on-site validation and so on.
If the customer already had an instrument, it was certainly the choice of our partners to prioritize those partners because this led to an earlier utilization of the equipment placed, which again, on the other side meant deprioritization of those newly launched instruments, and now we clearly see that the focus is shifting back to those instruments. Adjusted EBIT and EBIT margin Q1 2021. Adjusted EBIT margin up by 109% year-over-year, EUR 16 million. Adjusted EBIT margin up by 870 basis points to 22.3%. We see quite uniquely only positive contributors, certainly the operational leverage, which helps us a lot. Certainly the product mix. Again, I would like to reiterate, this is not just a product mix of, let me say, margin-heavy instrument versus margin-weak instrument. It's actually a variety of different positive contributors to the sales and product mix.
On the one hand side, as I just mentioned, the shift towards more complex instrument or more margin-heavy instruments. Certainly the second aspect is the product mix weaker capitalization of development milestones. Which has nothing to do with the performance in development, it's just the timing thing here. Certainly, it's the product mix of between the relevant contribution to sales of instruments versus service parts, maintenance, and consumables. That actually improved as well. Certainly, just one further highlight, and I already mentioned it, is the chemistry sales coming from our Diatron business unit, particularly for hematological applications, which is developing very nicely. Certainly, efficiency enhancements. You probably can recall that we had an unexpectedly weak year of 2018. During that time, we made it very transparent that we don't want to over save during that year.
Certainly it was important to understand that, or it still is important to understand that during that year, we have established certain measures like we cleaned up our project pipeline, we looked into the assembly and manufacturing of margin-heavy sub-assemblies and ramped up our low-level manufacturing side under the umbrella of our Diatron business unit, which is now contributing positively as we are particularly in this business unit, we are assembling products with, A, high run rate and/or, B, a degree of complexity, where it actually helps us a lot to at least partly participate in the gross-margin on the gross margin side coming from that angle of the business. Getting to our cash flow, again, a very positive development. Operating activities, cash flows from EUR 3.2 million to EUR 40 million, up by 300%.
Again, although we still have heavy investments, very nice development here as well on the investment activities and financing activities all in all, a very positive development, leading to a generation of free cash flows of about EUR 10 million in Q1 as compared to minus EUR 4 million in Q1 2020. Leading to cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period of about EUR 45 million compared to about EUR 35 million in 2020. Equity ratio continued to be the exact same, and that obviously could be reduced, giving us all the relevant firepower for everything we have or might have in the pipeline in the future. Now getting you an outlook. Financial guidance on a constant currency basis, we guide for a sales growth of at least, and I would like to reiterate, this is an at least guidance, high single-digit percentage range.
Again, allow me to really read you through the disclaimer of that data. An adjusted EBIT margin of around 17.5%-18.5% after 16.7% in 2020. The investments in tangible and intangible assets combined of around 6%-8% of sales after the previous year guidance as well. We always guided for about 10%-12%, and please bear with me, this was actually related to the real estate activities we had over the past five years. I think we are good on that side as well. Both top and bottom line guidances are actually on the basis of that we still see high volatilities in our customers' order behavior and in their forecast behavior.
That's why certainly, let me say, within the bandwidth of Q2 and Q3, where the actual orders are already logged in and are in manufacturing, certainly we were a bit more cautious as far as Q4 was concerned. Based upon that, additional forecast received and additional orders received based upon those uncertainties I've just mentioned, we actually applied a higher degree of cautiousness as far as Q4 is concerned. Which means some parts of those additional orders have not been incorporated into the guidance of Q4 2021, just to be on the safe side. Our focus for 2021 and beyond, certainly, we want to drive forward the development program for next-generation molecular solution for one of the actual dominant players in the market. Again, it's not that this is the one and only program and Stratec is over-focused into that program.
We have a lot of things ongoing in development and in the deal pipeline products like, let me pick out one for Grifols or for Instrumentation Laboratory and some others of the market players, of the bigger players. Very nice business ongoing there. Certainly if we see the idea of a further diversification, certainly this molecular program has the potential to become one of the bigger projects and bigger products for Stratec. Certainly a focus on potential M&A activities. We have several things ongoing. I just want to make that very clear. After the acquisition of Diatron and the Sony DADC BioSciences business back in 2016, we didn't actually stop M&A activities, just that we are very selective, we are very cautious, led to the point that we didn't acquire anything during that timeframe. We kept our eyes open. We performed several due diligences.
We looked into opportunities. For the one or the other reason, we didn't execute. That's why we continuously have that on our list. We look into M&A. We have a couple of things ongoing, which used to be the case in the past as well. At this point, nothing is so concrete that we might have an execution in the next weeks. Again, we are active here and there. We have a team sitting on that for M&A and for the PMI Post-Merger Integration as well. Certainly the high number of, let me call it the pre-contractual activities with our customers, like performing feasibility studies, performing the discussions about product specifications and product design requirements discussions and so on. We want to transfer all those activities into development and supply agreements.
I would actually say that we have two bigger ones in a final stage. You know I don't want to overpromise, but I think this is a matter of months. I'm very positive that we can actually execute two of those things by the end of the year. We actually executed one over the past months. Certainly, and I'm not saying that the pandemic is over. We have a lot of our customers, which are still very demanding. However, we know we have a very solid deal pipeline as far as new projects are concerned. We know that we have a very solid launch pipeline of products which will be launched to the market in months and quarters to come.
We have actually something which became less transparent during the pandemic, that we launched a number of products in 2017, 2018 and 2019, which are only at the very beginning of the product life cycle. It's very important for us to manage that transition to post-pandemic priorities. It's not only managing our product, it's actually managing the expectations of our customers and fulfilling the expectations in terms of quality, in terms of reliability, in terms of our help for them to perform their regulatory obligations, in terms of our manufacturing validation, in terms of providing the relevant contributors to their success in time. That's certainly something where it doesn't only mean reprioritization of the activities within our customers, but even in manufacturing and in the development department of Stratec.
This already gets me to the end of the presentation, and I would like to hand back to Stuart, our operator, who will explain it how to work it out with Q&A.
Thank you, Marcus. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. One moment for the first question, please. First question is from the line of Oliver Metzger from Commerzbank. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Good afternoon, Marcus and Jan. I have some questions on the increased guidance. I clearly appreciate the increase. It's about the orders, my question, so which you have not incorporated into your guidance. Just for clarification, in a normal year, you would factor in orders also from the fourth quarter to 100%, and now you just disregard them to have a safety cushion. Is this summary correct?
Yeah, Oliver, thanks very much for that question. Actually, thanks for bringing it up. I think it's a good comparison to compare, like how we would act in a regular year and how we are acting now. Certainly all our activities and our guidance and all our plannings and forecasts and budget is based upon information, which is a derivative of either contractual data in the agreements like minimum run rate or minimum purchase obligations from our customers in an early stage, and certainly is based upon We call this a rolling forecast system established between our sales department and the actual procurement department. Certainly at the back end of that, certainly the sales department of our customers as well, and they provide us with a forecast. This is very customer dependent.
Some customers are actually giving us a monthly update, and they have a rolling forecast of one year up to 15 months. Others are only updating once a quarter, and they only have one year or six months. It's really very customer dependent, and it actually depends very much to their logistical processes. It's not that one-size-fits-all solution, it's that we get the information on a different scale from different customers. What we then do is we, particularly for those customers where we are working with for years or have a longer experience, we certainly assess the quality of the forecast compared to the actual number of instruments and service parts then taken later on. We compare the forecasting quality to the actual data then achieved later on as actual data. Based upon that, we are doing a certain offset.
We know that some of our customers are forecasting too conservatively and for our manufacturing planning, then we certainly are then planning a bit more aggressively just to make sure that if they have higher demands, very back-end loaded, that we are able to supply. The same thing is that we have some customers who are typically a bit over-optimistic, where we are doing the same offset in the different direction. That's what we typically do. Certainly we provide the market then with a still a risk-offsetted guidance based upon that data. In this particular case, we have made no material change to the level of risk adjustment we have already incorporated as compared to our earlier guidance. At the beginning of the year, or actually the data which has been provided at the end of last year.
The increased order forecast for Q4, which I've mentioned, in the initial guidance framework are still not included in the updated guidance, given that high volatility and uncertainty on the back of the pandemic. The reasons for our guidance upgrades are actually slightly better than expected top-line performance in the first months of 2020, and particularly in our Service Parts and Consumables business. Certainly we got a bit more optimistic as far as our capacity constraints worked out in the first month, or actually at the end of last year, which means we'll probably be able to ship a bit more in H1 compared to our initial planning. On the margin side, certainly the higher share of high margin Service Parts and Consumables is certainly affecting that nicely as well. I hope that answers your question. I wouldn't say we have been overcautious.
It's just that the degree of uncertainty and unpredictability led us to, let me say, an adjustment there where we said we don't want to incorporate that in our guidance at this point.
Yeah. Great. That was quite a comprehensive answer that basically answered also my second question. I have just one follow-up also regarding the orders, because you reported an increase in the order forecast for second half, which is basically Q3 and Q4. You said you reported that in the first quarter as basically we talked last time to each other, I think it was five weeks ago, at the end of the first quarter. Was the increased orders for the third quarter also already part of the initial guidance or have you factored that in now?
Yeah. No, certainly. It's actually both, Oliver. We got further increases of forecasts for Q4 and actually higher demands as initially planned for Q 2 and Q3, but Q 2 and Q3 were already factored in on that higher demand level. I hope that answers the question as well.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you very much.
You're very welcome.
Next question is from the line of Jan Koch from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, Marcus. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three, please. Coming back to your raised sales guidance for 2021, can you help us with the expected phasing of the sales growth and the many moving parts, especially for the second quarter? Last year, you already recorded some COVID-related sales in the second quarter, but at the same time, you posted a significant decline in development revenues. What can we expect here for the current quarter? A brief follow-up on this topic. Have you seen any changes in the order behavior of your customers in the last two weeks? The largest customer reported its results last week and mentioned that it is expecting a significant decline in COVID revenue in the current quarter. Just curious if this is already reflected in your order book. Finally, on M&A.
The M&A activities of your largest customers have picked up strongly recently. Do you see this as a risk because your customers could increase their in-house manufacturing capabilities? Focus more on point of care market, or do you see this as an opportunities as test menus could get expanded or you might benefit from new outsource systems? Would be great if you could share your thoughts on this topic.
Absolutely. Jan, thanks very much for those questions. If I'm answering the wrong questions, please let me know. I'm just answering as I understood, just correct me if I'm actually misleading you. What do we expect for Q2? Order and demand level are still extraordinarily high. What we definitely observe, and I think this is something very generic, that particularly for those customers, and it's a bit difficult to mention names as I don't want to, again, mislead you. That's why I'm picking just out the example of a market player, which is not actually a customer for our instrument business unit, just picking out Quidel. You probably saw that they came out very early with a very pessimistic forecast. I think this is an observation, what we clearly see.
On the one hand side, at the tail end of the pandemic, we see a higher degree of centralization, which means the higher volumes are getting back into the more centralized environments like the bigger labs, the Quidel, the Labcorp of the world, which is actually very beneficial to us that we clearly see a focus. Actually companies like Roche or like Hologic and like Beckman have actually reported the same thing, that they see a, and I don't want to say renaissance because this sounds a bit like it was already over, but what we clearly see is that the centralization continues to accelerate.
On the other side, we see that those super expensive formats, like if you run on a very important point of care instrument, a cartridge-based test where the test cartridge on a standalone basis already costs like EUR 10, EUR 15, you clearly see that those tests are cannibalized by those lateral flow self-testing devices, like in the COVID-19 case, by all those antigen-based lateral flow tests. You clearly see that. On the other side, we still see nice demands for instruments which are at the lower edge of point of care testing, where you know we have several of those instruments, like instruments with 10, 15, 20, 25 tests an hour, where we still see a nice demand here.
What we clearly observe is that those analyzers and those cartridge-based instruments, which are providing one test every 30 minutes or one result after 30 minutes or two results within an hour, that those are clearly cannibalized by the lateral flow test. Like I said, the orders and the demand levels are still extraordinarily high. We still have a huge backlog situation.
It's obvious that our customers, and I think I mentioned that in the presentation, is that during the pandemic, it was obvious that our customers focused on those of their customers which already had a number of their instruments because this helped them in user training, in service training, in qualification, in validation on-site, and all those regulatory processes, as compared to a new customer where they would have to go through all that relevant regulatory hassle, and their service technicians and their sales forces simply haven't had the time. That's why they focus on, let me say, those customers who already use their technologies, their instruments, and their assay kits. Now it's certainly time to drill one step further down, and that's why the instruments are now going into the bigger hospitals and so on, which offers them a nice potential.
It's obvious that after the fact that all instruments which could run COVID tests, independent of if this means antigen tests or molecular tests or genetic tests, all those instruments were running at capacity level. Which means typically the instruments are designed to run probably five days a week, probably one or one and a half lab shifts of six to eight hours. All those instruments now ran 24/7, which clearly means that now getting back to a more common utilization level means that at the back end of the pandemic, when already the testing volume for our customer goes back, it simply means that it goes back to a more normal degree of utilization.
For us, it still means high sales, particularly as we see decentralization. From today's perspective, I think it is absolutely too early to talk about revenue numbers for Q2, but they certainly will be higher as compared, that's what we foresee, compared to Q1. Still in Q2, we haven't had those high comps as we were only at the very beginning of that ramp-up phase with instrument supplies. We still have the high demand, so we are actually expecting a nice Q2 as well. Actually, I think that answer already answered part of your second question regarding that some of our customers are already reporting declining COVID-19 testing, but taking into consideration that we are now going back into a more normalized utilization level.
Getting back into a phase where instruments which have only been sold in 2019 and 2020, because of the high degree of utilization, are already aged and at the end of their life cycle because they were running 24/7. We already see a nice demand coming from replacing instruments which were only sold in 2019 and 2020. We all see that, actually what we clearly see is that our customers are actually defending their market. We see that they are supplementing their menu available. It's no longer exclusively COVID. It's respiratory panels, it's multiplexing panels where it's respiratory and some other orphan diseases coming along collaterally with COVID and so on and so forth. We see our customers being very active in putting the right menu together to work out their niche in a post-pandemic scenario.
Again, I want to top that up with our very attractive launch pipeline for the next periods to come. I think particularly of high importance is the launches we had in 2017, 2018, and 2019 to include instruments like the LIAISON XS for Diasorin or the [Non-English content] instrument for Becton Dickinson, along with some others, which actually lost a little bit of focus during that time. I think taking the growth prospect of the business coming along with the launch of those instruments, I'm not worried about the coming quarter. Now getting to Diasorin with their acquisition or announced acquisition of Luminex. I think this was the background of your last question. It's a bit complicated.
Certainly, I want to make clear that we are not in a position to comment on the potential strategies of our customers in great detail, particularly as far as their M&A activities are concerned. Please allow me to make here more general statements, and certainly all those statements only being based on our internal assessment. At the first glance, there might be some overlapping from the menu side between Diasorin and Luminex, particularly on the molecular side and particularly on the point-of-care side. Based upon my understanding, the solutions have a huge difference as far as throughput is concerned. The LIAISON MDX can actually run more than 20 tests per hour, and the consumables are actually cost-wise at the lower end and don't play a major role to the cost for the consumables.
Therefore, I think that the product panel and product portfolio coming from Luminex differs a lot to the currently existing product portfolio from Diasorin, which on the LIAISON MDX side is provided by our manufacturing capabilities. Thus we think that there is not much of an overlap or cannibalization. Certainly Diasorin has. If we see where Diasorin is coming from, it's really a great achievement that they have also achieved and have generated a great molecular diagnostics franchise after the focused acquisition, which was the Diasorin Molecular, almost exclusively. Over the last couple of years, they have considerably expanded the install base throughout the pandemic. Thus it would probably not make a ton of sense to deprioritize this franchise. Certainly the next generation of the LIAISON MDX, will from our perspective, be key to secure their current customer base.
On the other side, I think if you see our capabilities in terms of automated equipment, certainly Luminex only provides what we would call readers, which are only a part of our product offering. This only in the life science research arena, we don't see any overlap at all. I think it's just worth mentioning that Stratec offers equipment and fully integrated equipment using Luminex devices as readers. I'm just picking out one known example. We have a couple of examples here, but one of the known examples is actually an instrument we provide for Thermo. Again, this is an instrument where we are offering fully automated equipment and technology is using a Luminex reader, and the Luminex reader is actually an integral part of our instrument. From the outside, you don't see that the Luminex reader is integrated.
From the outside, it looks like an integrated thermal solution. This is actually something where we feel actually comfortable and we don't have a not invented here syndrome. We're actually looking forward into that solutions as well. We are definitely monitoring the situation, but it's definitely our focus to always continue to demonstrate to our partners the high quality and performance of our solutions, of our capabilities to innovate, of our technologies and the services we are offering. That's actually our focus.
Okay, great. Thanks a lot.
You're very welcome.
As a reminder if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone telephone. Next question is from the line of Michael Healy from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi, Marcus. Yeah, just a couple of questions then.
Mr. Healy, your line is breaking up. We can't really hear you.
Is still high demand of instruments or spare parts? Hello? Hello?
Mr. Healy, we can't understand your line. It's breaking up.
Hello? Hello, can you hear me? Hello?
Hello, Mr. Healy?
Yes. Can you hear me?
Yeah. Can you repeat your question, please? Thank you.
Yes. Hi there, Marcus. Yeah, apologies for that. I'm not sure what happened. Just a quick question on Q4. The types of orders you're receiving, can you share if it's more still high demand for instruments or is maybe it shifted more towards consumables and spare parts? Just to clarify on one point you brought up earlier, Marcus, on the development revenue side, are you able to give a where we should expect the development just for the full year to sort of land? Obviously, we had 2019, which is exceptionally high. Should we just be modeling growth on the last year's, what sort of revenue?
Michael, I'll try to answer your questions. I only got fragments of it, so I'm actually making kind of derivatives from the fragments I got. I think your first question was about our adjustments in Q4, whether or not this affect instruments exclusively or if we adjusted the service and spare parts demand as well. Clear answer, the only adjustments we made is to our instruments business. We are only partly receiving forecasts for consumables. That's actually one of the priority tasks of our sales department, to derive potential demands for maintenance kits and Service Parts and Consumables from the actual install base reported by our customers and the actual degree of utilization.
We do that in ourselves, but like I mentioned before, the quote-unquote of "adjustments" being made, the very cautious approach to include those increased demands into our guidance regarding Q4 is exclusively related to instruments. On a normalized level, and I hope I got your second question properly, regarding breaking down development activities coming along margin weaker than instruments and consumable sales. At this point, and you know this is a matter of one of the regulations of International Financial Reporting Standards, when and how to capitalize development milestones. Again, I'm always complaining that the degree of capitalization has nothing to do with the actual performance of the company. We have never in the company's history spent so many hours on development activities and have brought so many development projects and products in the pipeline forward.
However, the degree of capitalization is a little bit lower, which is linked to milestones. I wouldn't expect any material change for the remainder of the year. 2021 will be a year of a lower degree of capitalization of development milestones. We believe, looking into milestone and development planning for 2022, that this will slightly shift, but not on that order of magnitude we had back in 2019, when certainly that huge milestone has diluted our margin of Q1 and to a certain degree of the entire year then as a consequence of that. I hope that answers your question.
Yes. Thanks, Marcus.
You're very welcome.
Next question is from the line of Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Oh, yeah. Hi, good afternoon. Marcus, three questions from me. Firstly, can I just come back on Hologic? Obviously, as asked before, there was this kind of change in the message that the expectations for core would have been lowered. Can you just confirm, so the most recent order forecast from this account, have these not adversely changed following this announcement or basically over the last few weeks? Do you have any visibility in terms of forecast from Hologic for 2022? That would be the first question. Secondly, just clarifying. Have you actually said that the sales growth in the second quarter will be higher than the first quarter? Third question, obviously, we always focus on this kind of big new account that is coming up, but can you provide any kind of color in terms of the additional new contracts or launches that are coming up?
When are these actually going to occur? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Oliver. Excellent questions. Let me say before, I obviously messed it up again. I was trying to get across that sales, not sales growth. Sales in Q2 is expected to be higher than Q1 sales. Sorry for that if I didn't express myself in a proper manner. Forecasting, though, it's certainly not upon me to comment forecasts given by our customers. What I can say is that our forecast adjustments has nothing to do with our customers. Obviously, our customers have longer planning cycles as they are obviously communicating that to external sources. It's not upon me to comment that. For us, we are treating every customers in the same manner. We are not commenting on the quality of the forecast of those customers.
Again, if our customers are talking about COVID-19 testing demand, what they clearly are trying to get across is that it means that they are selling less tests. Which doesn't necessarily mean that they are selling less or more instruments. Those figures are influenced by means and methods I've just mentioned before, just picking out obvious numbers, but there are actually dozens of different contributors, just picking out two which are so obvious. Matter of fact, all instruments with COVID-19 exposure were running 24/7. They want to get it back into more a normalized solution, which means that they are utilized between 30% and 70%, which means even if the demand of COVID-19 tests halvens, we are still north of the normalized utilization level, which means they are still placing more and more instruments to get back to that normalized level.
Certainly, the majority of our customers actually cannibalize their own fleet. They have their own incubator labs where they are developing new tests. They have a number of tests. Some of our customers even have hundreds of instruments in those labs. They all, in order to supply their customers, they ship those instruments to their customers, and now they are getting those instruments back into their own incubator labs. They have to replace the instruments in the field now with new instruments coming from us. I just want to make that point. It's important to understand if our customers are talking about declining testing volume, this doesn't necessarily mean that it means a lower or even higher demand for us. As a contributor to the actual placement of instruments differ a lot from the actual demand as a derivative of the testing volume.
I hope that answers the question. Did I miss one? I think I missed the third one. Can you please repeat?
Yeah. I was actually just wondering in terms of the new upcoming launches. We always talk about the kind of big one, but can you provide any kind of visibility beyond this kind of big one? What kind of other launches are coming up?
It's a bit difficult for me, as always, to comment on details where our customers have not yet provided data. I think the most important ones are actually our CLIA derivatives for the time being, and for probably next six to nine months. In parallel, we are launching some second-generation instruments to include, this is something actually that I already announced, the next generation of the LIAISON MDX. We have another product launch, which is not yet announced by our partners, where we actually even didn't disclose the name of the partner. Certainly the molecular program, and I think this was the one you just referred to in Q1 of 2022. Again, I can only reiterate myself. It is so important to understand that product launch and product launch doesn't necessarily mean the same thing.
If our customers are launching a product officially, it means that they are launching instruments in certain territories where they got regulatory approval. Certainly, they didn't submit their filings and their clinical trial data and the submission data in all regulatory systems of the world at the same time. Which means at this point, it's quite common to launch instruments in the first place in Europe, with the new In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation called IVDR. This has already changed to prioritize the U.S. launch, which means instruments will then be, from 2023 on, will be launched in the United States first, and probably Europe second, Asia third, with a time shift of almost a year in between each of those launches.
Then we have to see that typically our partners are starting the sales of new platforms with a partly crippled menu, so they don't have all their tests available at the same time under the launch. It typically takes them a few quarters until they get to a comprehensive menu, which means at the beginning, after the launch of such a new product, they can only go into certain markets. Even in those markets, they can only go to certain customers using their, by then, already approved menu. Long story short, it means that if we say we are, together with our partners, launching an instrument early 2022, it doesn't mean that you'll see a huge upswing in our sales figures already in Q1, Q2 of that year.
Those growths which will come in 2021 and 2022 is actually based upon instruments which have already been launched in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Important to understand that.
That's perfectly helpful. Thanks so much, Marcus. Can I just, lastly, rephrase this earlier question I had. If we look at the instruments you have in your portfolio, which are used for COVID-19 testing, so not talking about a specific client, so overall in this kind of portfolio, have you in the recent weeks experienced or seen any kind of adverse shift in terms of order patterns or not really a change?
In order, again, I already mentioned that I cannot answer that question right away. Certainly, the priorities in my personal, my market-facing of communication to the decision-makers in our customers is that we are continuously communicating about order pattern coming from their customers. Let me say, quoting them, the first statement they say is, "Our customers even don't know, and they are telling us, and we don't know. What should I tell you?" It's actually a sequence of estimates and predictions. That's the first thing I want to get across.
Secondly, is that I would say that we are probably, I don't know, two or three months ahead, as far as we can make predictions, because we are trying to consolidate all the data coming from our customers and are trying to find out the parameters in the prediction of all of our relevant customers. Straightforward answer to your question is that we certainly saw a change in the behavior and in the order pattern of our customer already in Q4 and in Q1. Let's say most recently, with all those announcements being made and with a more pessimistic outlook of some players in the industry, the pattern didn't even change.
If you just look into it, and I just can comment on statements being officially made in the earnings call of Roche, where we don't have an active sales business of instrument with Roche, is that they clearly said they definitely see a trend towards centralization. You know they have a point of care offering as well, which obviously hasn't performed that well, but the centralized business performs very well. They clearly stated that they still see ongoing high demand, which again, is a derivative of the utilization of the equipment. Their growth is actually high, that they are growing or expected to grow their business in Q1, obviously Q2 and Q3, and in Q4, they see high comps. I think this is an observation which mimics the expectations of the majority of the diagnostic players at this point.
Perfect. Thanks so much, Marcus.
Very welcome.
There are no more questions at this time, and I would like to turn the conference back to Marcus Wolfinger for any closing comments. Please go ahead.
Again, Stuart, thanks very much for hosting this conference. Ladies and gentlemen, this actually concludes our Q1 2021 call. If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to call our investor relations department or just drop us an email. Thanks very much for your interest. Even if you just want to discuss aspects of the industry, do not hesitate to call us. Thanks very much. Have a good day and a good afternoon. Please stay safe and stay healthy. Again, thanks very much. Bye-bye.