Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 9M 2025 financial results conference call and live webcast. I am Sandra, the course co-operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been listened on remote, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Jan Keppeler. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Sandra, and welcome everyone to our 9M 2025 financial results conference call. With me today are, as always, Marcus Wolfinger, CEO of STRATEC, as well as our new CFO, Tanja Bücherl. Be aware that this conference is being webcast live, and you can download this presentation either from the webcast or from our website. Of course, following the presentation, we will have a question-and-answer session as usual. Finally, please allow me to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement, which we have on page three of that presentation. With this, it's now my pleasure to hand over to Marcus.
Yeah, thanks, Jan. Good morning in the United States and good afternoon in Europe. Before we start, ladies and gentlemen, I'm truly excited to welcome Tanja Bücherl, our new CFO. From minute one, it was clear that she brings not only a super strong financial background but also the energy and team spirit that defines who we are. With her expertise, she will play a key role in future strengthening our financial stability and setting the course for future growth. We are thrilled to have her on board. Welcome, Tanja. A big thank you goes out to Oliver Albrecht, our interim CFO until last week, who very professionally bridged the gap until Tanja joined the senior management team. With no further ado, let's dive into the agenda. I'll try to walk you through the first nine months at a glance.
Tanja will give you the financial review and some further financial details, followed by the outlook and focus, and the two of us then will try to answer your questions thereafter. We had a positive sales growth despite supply chain interruptions, which already kicked in in Q3. Not material, but already very visible. What we definitely see is a stabilization in the market. Like during the past two or three crises, we had, say, the dot-com crisis, after that the financial crisis, and after that COVID, certainly only a few months after these kind of hits we took in this industry, it was very visible that the end of the crisis is in sight. In this very case, I would like to remind you that after COVID, we had the supply crisis, and then certainly geopolitics and war and the tail end of COVID.
As a matter of fact, I think it's a well-accepted fact that this crisis took longer. If we are looking into those signals between the lines sent by end customer, by our customers, I think we really dipped out at this moment in time, and I think the worst is over. I only returned back from the United States, where we met key customers. I already mentioned that a couple of times that, particularly after Q4 last year, they started to grow again. Please allow me to remind you that in our industry, us as an enabler, we build infrastructure from the perspective of our customer. This is CapEx. They place the instruments. They use the consumables as soon as they, let's say, bring new tests on instruments.
They can actually grow with the fleet they already placed years and months ago, whereas we are coming at the very tail end of things, which means only if the market grows to the extent that our customers are investing into their own growth, into their own future, growth for STRATEC comes in. I think this is actually the inflection point where this is coming back. We see that the testing volume stabilizes. It was already very stable. If you look into the statements made by the quarter reports of our customers, you definitely see that they are very positive in terms of testing volume despite geopolitics.
Some of them, particularly in immunoassay and some other areas like in complex sample prep, the growth already came back, but it actually could not yet offset the declined volume after COVID-19 with molecular tests where the saturation took place during COVID-19. After that, everybody took advantage of those instruments which were launched and placed during COVID-19 and have not been forced to buy new ones. We see that the discussion started into the investment of new platforms, into keeping those platforms young. On the other side, even for those instruments which are in the meantime worn down after COVID-19 and the years thereafter, our customers are openly starting to discuss that even those instruments should have to be replaced. I think we are really through the roof. We had a fairly good margin development. However, the margin development was held back by the product mix.
At this moment in time, a little bit unfavorable, our products with high gross margin are still weaker. Those ones with the weaker gross margin are stronger, as always. Murphy's Law. Certainly, particularly towards the year's end, we have a number of development activities which will be accounted, which will then drive the margin. That is factored into our guidance and into our financial guidance, and I will touch base on that. On the other side, I think, like everyone, the headwinds we experienced in H1 got a little bit better, but are still material. All that is leading to the margin as is. We have confirmed our margin guidance, but I think it is important to again reiterate that as last year, 2024, we could make the statement at this point that we will probably end up at the upper edge of the guidance given.
Last year, we even exceeded this. I think this year has to be understood that this is closer to the lower end of the guidance. We made material progress in the development of partnerships. Actually, we got a new customer in with finalizing development work, which was actually done mostly in-house, and the transfer is ongoing. We got a new partner. We see a significant upturn in development activities and in talks. Still highly fragmented, I think it is unrealistic to expect that such development work where the partner commits from the very get-go to a $40 million development investment and a $200 million downstream procurement commitment, I think this sees some limitations at this point. Things are getting more fragmented. However, our business model fits that very well. We definitely see that the demand not only in system development goes up.
This affects product lifecycle management, which is very margin-heavy. Instrumentation picks up as well. I think it is worth mentioning that in the budget round we are finalizing these days, we see a development resource allocation of 105% across the group. I think this nicely mimics what's going on. I think demand for development activities comes back, and development activities is the leading indicator for downstream manufacturing activities, and this is where we make the money. As already mentioned, lower end of 2025 margin guidance confirmed despite a lower sales outlook. I think it's a good signal that we had these issues with the magnet. I don't want to go too deep into details. We have almost sorted out the supply issues, so we just need to catch up.
We'll certainly not catch up entirely by the end of the year, but I think we are showing good trajectories with the measures established. Talking about efficiencies and measures established, I think the fact that we had to slightly cut the top end of our top-line guidance and still can maintain margin, I think this shows the efficiency measures are really tangible, are really showing efficiency. I think this is a good point to start from growth here again. I think we'll talk about growth as soon as we show our guidance for 2026, which will not happen here. That only happens when we talk about full year's result. That gets me to the point where I would like to hand over to Tanja.
Thank you very much, Marcus. A good day, everyone. Also, from my side, a warm welcome. My name is Tanja Bücherl. As you have heard, as of November 1st, I joined STRATEC as the new Group CFO. I can tell you already after my first week that this is a company with really great potential and a remarkable team spirit. I am really looking forward to actively shaping our continued development and supporting the next steps on our path of sustainable growth. With that, let me now take you through our financial performance for the first nine months of 2025. As you can see on the chart, the sales increased by 2.5% at a constant exchange rate, reaching EUR 175.6 million versus EUR 173 million in the prior year period. As you also know, we had very positive momentum in the first half year.
The sales in the third quarter declined by 3.4% at a constant exchange rate. It was mainly impacted by the already mentioned supply chain disruptions, as well as, let's call it, a softer momentum in the Service Parts and Consumables business. But more to that later on in my presentation. Let's have a look to the Adjusted EBIT margin. For the first nine months, we stand at 7.3% versus the 8.8% in the prior year. Also, as a consequence and driven by the temporarily increased tax rate in the third quarter, and despite an improved financial result, our adjusted net income for the first nine months decreased by 15.8% year-over-year to the EUR 7.1 million that you can see also on that chart. This leads also to a corresponding adjusted earnings per share of EUR 0.58. But maybe let me take me also a note here regarding the outlook.
We expect a significantly improved earnings dynamic in the fourth quarter. Given the implied regional mix, a notably better tax rate in the final quarter of the year 2025. As a result, the full year tax rate should be significantly below the 26.5% that we showed in our report for the first nine months. Coming now to the adjustments with a closer look in our Adjusted EBIT and adjusted net profit. There is not too much to say on that slide because nothing unusual in the adjustments for the first nine months happened. For the period, we adjusted EUR 2.3 million in the PPA amortization, as well as EUR 1.7 million in other adjustments. They are mainly attributable to the so-called one-off. It's advisory expenses that we have already recognized in the first half year of 2025. Therefore, we are going straight to the next page, the sales.
We will have now a bit more deep dive on our sales development. In the first nine months, the sales increased by 2.5% year-over-year at a constant currency to the already mentioned EUR 175.6 million. This was mainly driven by a double-digit increase in the development and in the service sales. Thanks to the ongoing high development activities and the large numbers of active customer projects that we are having. The system sales was more or less flat year-over-year. The ramp-up curves of the newly launched systems continued to be flatter than actually expected. The already mentioned supply chain disruptions, they impacted us negatively already in Q3, causing especially some delivery shortfalls in the immunoassay franchise. This was hitting us actually a lot in Q3, but we are looking for a coming back in the next quarters or in Q1 next year, 2026.
In analyzer systems, we observe a promising and actually ongoing stabilization in customer orders following demand disruptions that the industry faced after the post-pandemic. The Service Parts and Consumables, last but not least for the nine months of 2025, they were slightly down year-over-year as volatile global trade restrictions, as you all know, led to some logistics optimizations at our customers. Therefore, we actually have seen order volatility, especially in Q3 2025. Coming from the sales now to the earnings, close a look now to the Adjusted EBIT and our EBIT margin on that slide. You see that the Adjusted EBIT margin declined by 150 basis points year-over-year to 7.3%. I told you already this is mainly due to the decrease in the gross margin from 27.4% last year to 25.8% in the first nine months.
Yeah, the decline results from the still, let me call it, less unfavorable product mix in the system business, a reduced share of our high-margin service parts and consumables sales in Q3, as well for sure also the unfavorable FX rate environment that we are in compared to last year. However, a good sign also here, the progress was made in the functional cost areas. We have done, we have started early our homework. We are confirming the strict cost discipline and also initiated efficiency measures to have the countermeasures in place for all of these negative environments that we are facing currently. Coming now to the cash flow and our net debt development.
The operating cash flow remained negative for the first nine months, mainly due to high tax cash out that we have recognized in the first half year and as well reduced trade payables compared to last year. However, the operating cash flow improved in Q3 and amounted to positive EUR 4.4 million. As of September 30, also the investment ratio continues to be slightly below our initial budget. For the full year, we expect a total investment in tangible and intangible assets to remain slightly below the predicted range of 8%-10% of sales. Our leverage, you see as well here on that chart, means the ratio of net debt at the EBITDA LTM is currently at 2.4, up from 1.989 at the end of the fiscal year 2024. It is still on a very solid level.
Last but not least, I would like to highlight the successful closing of a EUR 125 million syndicated loan during the third quarter. This facility replaces the bridge financing related to the Natech Plastics position back in 2023. I'm really, really happy with that move because with that transaction, we were able to further optimize our financing structure. At the same time, it is providing us the sufficient flexibility to support our future development. Therefore, I really would like to take the opportunity and to thank all of the STRATEC colleagues that were involved in that process, and especially also my predecessor, Oliver Albrecht. This brings us also to the end of my part of the presentation. For the full year outlook 2025, I will hand over back to my colleague, Marcus.
Thank you. Financial guidance, we already touched base several times already during the presentation. As mentioned, we confirmed to go flat top line. We are expected approximately to match previous year's top line figures on a constant currency basis. Adjusted EBIT margin, we have forecasted at the beginning of the year financial guidance between 10%-12%, after 13% last year. We confirmed that we'll match the guidance, but clearly mentioned that we'll most likely end up towards the lower end of this guidance. In order to achieve that, we are certainly tracking a number of KPIs very closely, as Tanja already mentioned. There is a high earnings contribution of high margin development and service sales expected in the fourth quarter in order to achieve that and certainly better scaling effects by the utilization under the system business and upcoming supply chain interruptions.
It's really that we are keeping a very close monitor on that. Again, as Tanja already mentioned, we'll most likely end up a little bit south of the investments in many intangible assets. So, even better than expected, which was already good after last year's 7.1%, we'll slightly end up in between the 7.1% and the 8%. So, better than expected. Let me try to walk you through our activities over, let's say, the next three quarters and give you an outlook. So, as already mentioned, we are maintaining cost discipline.
I think we found the ideal balance over the past two and a half, three years to, on the one hand side, make sure that everybody understands that we are really looking into the details and are trying to be super disciplined, but still not saving costs for the sake of saving costs, but still being very potential oriented, invest where investment makes sense and still be disciplined. I think that's the right thing to do. We didn't oversave. We see a lot of companies who oversaved and now are really struggling. We didn't do that. Let me remind you that just one example, looking into development activities, it doesn't make too much sense to cut into activities which will lead to growth and earnings in two, three, four years from now, particularly considering that we have existing agreements with our customers.
We want to make sure that we are delivering on milestones. We continued a nice investment policy into the future, into our colleagues, into the education and training of our colleagues. We are very proud that we did not only try hardly to find this very narrow balance, I think we managed that fairly well. We want to execute on a deal pipeline. This was actually an area where we focused a lot over the past six months. A lot of things were ongoing. We mentioned that a couple of times. From here and then, we did new feasibility work. We brought a couple of new things on board, which a couple of them will replace our own instruments after the development. Just as an example, we do the LIAISON XL 2.0 for Diasorin, where we use the predecessor.
We do the successor instrument for other instruments we have in the field. We are very proud that our customers are coming back. On the other hand side, we really managed to bring new customers or new programs within existing customers on board. This is not just saving legacy. This is actually investing into growth, and the likelihood that growth returns is getting closer and closer. Again, allow me to remind you that during the discussions at the tail end of COVID-19, we were very keen on the fact that during COVID-19 and right after, we launched a number of new platforms, and we thought that we could offset the dip. I think it was very clear to everyone that particularly the molecular market will dip after COVID-19.
We said we can most likely offset this dip with the three instruments which were launched during COVID-19 or thereafter. Unfortunately, the growth rate and the ramp-up curve is and used to be slightly flatter than expected. We can report that one of those instruments is starting to show nice traction and we are expecting the same thing to happen with the other two instruments. Certainly, we continue to grow our footprint in selected markets, like in areas where we believe that we find this, again, narrow balance between not doing the spare head sparing technology, but being the second one.
When markets are starting to get more mature, like in high-sensitive immunoassays, where we were together with our partners, the first ones here where we have nice development programs ongoing, the same applies for advanced imaging and cell and gene therapy, where we have started to try to build our footprint as well. Certainly, we want to manage our well-filled M&A pipeline, as always. Allow me to remind you, this is very binary. We continue to look into opportunities. At this moment in time, we have a handful of opportunities, nothing super concrete. It is the full spread. We are typically looking into technologies. We are looking into markets and we are looking into geographies. Again, it has to be understood that probably the next decade in this industry will be dominated by local for local. We will definitely have to do more in the United States.
We'll definitely have to do more in China and continue to have high investments and activities in Europe. Local for local is probably the thing in order to overcome geopolitics and other activities which are limiting abilities to do business with goods across the continents these days. I already mentioned localization. Very important, certainly cash flow in order to make sure that we can do investments. We want to continue to improve our cash flow dynamics. Here, we already achieved good results over the last quarters and over the last years. However, there is still room for improvement and getting closer from a cash flow perspective, closer to the earnings situation. I think that's the actual goal here. We definitely have to put a strong focus on inventory management.
For you who continue to have these discussions with us, at this moment in time, still our inventory levels are too high. We still have a number of products where the products are very young. We have high inventories, low run rates. Although we nicely worked down inventory levels already in 2025, we continue to sit on an elevated level of inventories. For those products which have high turnover rates, obviously, the inventory levels are highly optimized. Without a solid recovery of the market in those areas where we are really sitting on a high inventory level, it will definitely continue to be a challenge to materially reduce the inventory levels.
If we think about where we used to be in the past and offset that by last time bias we had to do on the procurement side, I think there is still room of EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million on inventory level, which could be reduced over the next couple of years. That will certainly lead to the equivalent cash release. This gets me to the end of the focus. Now I would like to hand back the word to Sandra, who will explain us how to do Q&A. Thank you so far.
Thank you. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume of the webcast while asking a question. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Jan Koch from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good afternoon, Marcus. Hi, Tanja. Thanks for taking my questions. I would like to take them one by one. The first one is on your guidance for 2025. Is there any risk that development sets that you plan to recognize in Q4 will only be booked in Q1 2026?
Yeah. Jan, good afternoon, and thank you for the question. As always, this is forward-looking, so there is always a certain risk associated, but I would really see this as minor. Obviously, we know that in this tight situation that we have to monitor things very closely and that we are in continuous communication, not only with the internal project teams and the internal project management, but they certainly keep communication up with their counterparts within their customers if approvals are required. We are definitely very confident that this is not going to get an issue. However, this is forward-looking. Things can happen, although we do not expect. Again, allow me to remind you that certainly things continue to be extremely back-end loaded. I think you see what has to be achieved top line and bottom line-wise in the third quarter.
We have already asked the teams, the manufacturing teams, and the associated development teams to work between Christmas and New Year. Allow me to, first of all, thank them again, and secondly, make that very clear that this is super back-end loaded, therefore inherently risky, although I do not see any risk to fail.
Okay, great. Secondly, your largest customer is in the process of being acquired by private equity. Do you believe that this could have any kind of implications on your business?
No, Jan, thank you for bringing that up. We should not get that into a situation where we are talking about gut feeling and things like that, I think on a professional level. Actually, I only returned back from this very customer. I was there on a scheduled trip, but certainly this was one of the topics we discussed. They made it very clear that their communication with private equity is about growth. We have ongoing programs where we are a key supplier supplying with our products, our products which bear our own IP. The risk of walking away is very, very small. We have ongoing development programs where we are not only a contributor in terms of development work, we are a contributor in terms of know-how and finalizing things and getting things done and getting things done right.
I think the level of contribution we have within this customer is key. I think that private equity invested in this company to return the company into higher growth rates, to take advantage of the synergy which exists here and there in order to focus on what makes them strong. I think if we see the position of, in this very case, the Panda instrument, although an instrument being in the market for a couple of years, still the gold standard, still the instrument which provides the benchmarking for every competitor to Hologic on the other side with a quality which is unprecedented. If we put that all together, I think our position within this company is very, very strong. I think they understand our contribution to their future success, so I'm not worried about that.
Understood. Finally, you mentioned in the press release that you recently initiated a partnership for a well-established high-throughput product in the molecular diagnostics area. What does that exactly mean? Are you going to produce that system for the customer or develop the next generation? How big is the in-store basis? When do you expect to receive the first revenue? What is the potential for you here going forward?
Yeah, Jan, please forgive me, it's way too early to talk about that. Particularly those elements where you are trying to get your hands around is actually something which is still under discussion. Definitely, it requires a lot of development work. The tail end manufacturing is very lucrative. It's one of the bigger ones. It's most likely one of the biggest programs which have been outsourced over the past years. We are very proud to get in touch with this partner. I think it's important to understand that this is just the initiation. This is everything else, but in a status where we can disclose details about curation of development work, when this extension will go to the market, and how big the manufacturing volume might be.
I think it is important to, for us, it was important to show internally and externally that the momentum comes back on the one hand side, but definitely with the activities ongoing, the big chunk of manufacturing will only be three, four, five years downstream.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Oh, yeah, good afternoon, Marcus. Hi, Tanja. Welcome on board. Three questions also from my side. First, I just wanted to come back also to Jan's question on Q4. I mean, you need basically EUR 20 million incremental sales. Can you just unpack that a bit in terms of providing some kind of color? How much of that is development? How much is equipment just to get a better feeling for that? Along these kind of lines, when you had this kind of volatility now in terms of consumables, in terms of timing disruptions from tariffs, is there not also a risk factor when there's now the kind of Supreme Court challenging the kind of whole tariff setup that people just say, like, "We're going to pause and see if there may be chances to order excluding any kind of tariffs"? That would be question number one, please.
Yeah. Tanja, can you answer the first part, like breakdown of revenues expected for Q4? Because I don't have it in front of me.
Yes, sure. The biggest challenge comes from the systems, actually, followed with the development service. Yeah. Those are the two main pillars for the increase in Q4.
Oliver, obviously, we were trying to kind of look into the relevant risk exposure of the relevant positions. Actually, when we updated the guidance, certainly, this was only after we looked several times and went through each business, each program, each contributor. We were actually trying to find out if there is any residual risk, and that was actually already factored in. I think the answer should be a no. With those supply chain interruptions, as mentioned before, we cannot say it's all over. Those elements which are affected in the meantime, we have access to those products. Respectively, they are in transfer. Obviously, it needs some time to get them through a supply chain and to get them in. There is a likelihood that we can slightly recover. Please do not expect that to happen, and please do not factor it in.
Leave it as we gave the guidance. However, I think the message should be that this was a temporary interruption and that we have sorted out the issue. Kindly allow me to remind you that this actually happened entirely unexpected. Obviously, we saw with the discussion about rare earth that some of our products are affected, and we found alternative sources or workarounds. This very magnet we are now talking about is actually a magnet where the specification actually does not foresee the usage of rare earth in the magnet. There, contamination got in, and the contamination is exactly at the threshold when the export rules are kicking in for rare earth. The contamination is 0.1%. That actually led to the fact that we could not get those magnets out of China. That was really kind of a surprise to us. We reacted immediately.
People from procurement, our Head of Procurement was actually in China during that time, and a big thank you to her. She sorted that out very nicely. I think we are back on track. However, things like that can always come up, and I think these kind of issues are here to stay for the next couple of years. We have to deal with them. We have to factor those things in when talking about supply chains and lead times and guidance. Certainly, we have to learn from that. Particularly talking about Q4, Oliver, even with the Supreme Court activities regarding tariffs, those things which have to be supplied by the end of the year, we already have our hands on, or they are in Europe, and our suppliers have their hands on. I do not expect anything from this side. Thank you.
Okay, understood. Second question, because there is a lot of weakness in the industry from China. Can you just remind us what exposure you have to China? I mean, I guess it is all indirectly, but how much is that? Do you see that the demand for the systems that are being used in China is also further incrementally deteriorating?
Yeah, I think it's extremely complicated to describe that. I think if you talk to our customers, they are definitely trying to maneuver around statements regarding China. Our exposure, so first of all, we don't have any material substantial customer in China. We have a couple of important customers in Asia, but definitely our top 10 customers are sitting either in Europe or the United States. We can see literally only two behavior patterns within our customers. Some of them are actively trying to reduce their exposure in China. Some of them are actually trying to see this as a chance and not trying to, certainly on an as high as possible risk-free approach, to take advantage of that there is demand for certain products of our customers, and we are supporting exactly that.
If they need products made in China, we definitely help them to manufacture, in our case, assemble those products in China. We do assembly, final assembly, and final testing according to Chinese rules in order to support their activities. However, we are trying to reduce our exposure. Top line exposure is neglected. Looking into our customers, we see a couple of our customers which entertain nice sales in China. I think with this indirect exposure, we are south of 5% of revenues. When I say indirect, we are selling to our customers, and our customers are selling products into China. There are limitations. If, say, Chinese customers want to include our customers into tenders, that is a huge effort for them. That does not happen that often anymore. There are secondary markets which are served by some of our customers.
That's why their exposure is fairly minor. We have to see that, particularly with our hematology business, we are seeing strong competition out of China, particularly in those areas where commodities are concerned. Systems of lower complexities are concerned. Definitely, the competition out of China is getting stronger and stronger, particularly when pricing plays a material role. However, that actually shows how important our strategy and execution and our strategy is that, as mentioned before, we definitely want to develop and supply spare head technologies, not spare head, spare head. This has to be handled by the research organization. But as soon as this initial dust settles, we want to be there. We want to be the immediate follow. We have nice technologies. These days, we have huge investments into things which are concerning workflow, things which are concerning safety and security in providing the results, development in IoT, cybersecurity.
Everything which concerns haptics, ease of use, safety of the instrument. This is where investments in the Western world and in Europe are actually taking place. Here, we feel excellently positioned.
Super. Thank you. Last question, if I may, just on the molecular diagnostic market. I mean, what kind of signs of recovery do you see? Can you just remind us where are you in terms of equipment sales compared to, let's say, the kind of pre-pandemic baseline?
Yeah, Oliver, let me answer the second question first. We are in a very special situation. The main contributor to our molecular franchise are mainly three instruments. With Diasorin, we are in a generation change. With BD, we are in a ramp-up situation. Only with Hologic, we have something where we really have comparable pre-COVID data. I think I'm not telling you any secrets here because the data points are disclosed that Hologic is about on a run rate which represents between half and two-thirds, depends on the relevant instrument, between half and two-thirds of pre-COVID levels, but picking up. That's a nice thing. What we definitely see as a behavior pattern across all our customers is that they are trying to launch the product lifecycle.
I do not necessarily mean that we develop an instrument in year one through five and then launch it, and then we sell it from year five through year 20. What I mean is that when an instrument gets sold to the end customer or placed in an end customer lab, and it runs there for four years, five years, six years, and so on, there is a moment in time where the instrument gets worn down and typically gets replaced. During the last two years, we definitely saw that our customers were trying to prolong those lifecycles in the laboratory with the relevant instrument to the extent possible. As mentioned, this is a means to an end. You can only do that so and so long.
We definitely see that these discussions, which are actually reflecting the fact that typically an instrument of a certain age causes higher service costs, and that probably the amortization of a newly placed instrument is actually positively offsetting the service costs. I think that the decision-making processes and the ongoing discussions are actually showing that our customers are at this point where they say, "Okay, we take this instrument out and we place a new one," and that's exactly when the growth comes back. I'm actually particularly within some customers expecting even a catch-up effect here.
Super. Thanks so much, Marcus.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one. The next question comes from Michael Heider from Berenberg Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Hi, Jan. Hi, Marcus. And welcome, Tanja. I have a couple of questions left, detailed questions here. When I start with the sales development in your systems business in the third quarter, you actually said, I mean, there obviously were supply issues, and I believe that was on the immunoassay side. I think you have said that. Yet, your sales were flat versus previous year. Is my assumption correct that this shortfall then was made up by the molecular system side, or is there something else that has been growing?
Affirmative. Molecular and to a certain degree immune hematology as well. Affirmative.
Okay. On the margin side, yes, we have seen lower margin in the third quarter versus the previous year due to a negative mix and also due to the negative mix in the instruments business, but also due to the lower share of consumable sales. Yet, again, here, your quarter-on-quarter margin has improved. I would assume now, because you're only talking about the lower consumable business now in the third quarter, that the mix overall in the second quarter must have been better, the product mix. Yet, your margin is higher in the third quarter. Is this all a result of your cost-saving measures, or what is the story behind that here?
Yeah, efficient methods are coming in nicely. Certainly, this is a lot about product mix and scalability. Michael, allow me to say that forecasting our consumables and particularly maintenance parts and spare parts business is way more complicated than the instrumentation business. Certainly, on the instrumentation and high-volume consumables, we have established forecast systems, and we should know where we end up over the next three months, six months, nine months. On the consumables and maintenance part side, that's a little bit different. What we definitely saw with tariffs kicking in is that there was a change in behavior pattern of our customers. Actually, we had a deep analysis about the behavior, and some of the business was actually already pulled in in the first six months, which led to fairly well-established results then.
We actually, at this moment in time, we typically got the last orders of the year, particularly for consumables and spare parts, and that was actually weaker than we forecasted initially. It is factored in our amended guidance, but it was weaker than expected. Not only that, as the business is more short-term and therefore does not allow for high predictabilities and high transparency, even the change in behavior pattern came on top here. The arriving something from the past does not make too much sense. Like margin drivers in Q3, definitely slight recovery in the molecular business, some development programs ongoing. It is actually across the border. Certainly, in some areas, the better economies of scale are helping us very much as well. We have performed price increases. We are trying to apply discipline in terms of procurement activity.
All in all, I think things are lining up nicely. However, we are not really satisfied. I think as soon as scalability and the right product mix comes back, we can easily get closer to our historical margin. However, I want to make sure that even when I say that I believe the market comes back and the momentum comes back, that all sounds very bullish. I want to make sure that you understand that particularly timing is super unpredictable. I think that if we finalize our budget cycle and if we are coming out with our new guidance, we will already show this slightly positive momentum, but definitely 2026 will not be this year of the great relief. What I wanted to get across is that I think there is a chain of things which have to happen.
The positive mood of our customers, the return of the number of their sales when they get new tests on the instruments, when they are actually continued to grow. I think in immunoassay, they grew all the time, but in molecular growth comes back, ensemble growth comes back, in proteomics growth comes back. All in all, a super nice lineup here. However, this has to go through these pipelines of development activities, market launch, regulatory. It will take some time. I wanted to get across that we believe that we are through the work. That's the thing we want to get across today.
Okay. Thanks. Another question on the supply issue. Do you think that there will be a structural change to your supply situation? I mean, are you considering maybe in more times to have a dual supply or a supply that is more diversified? This then, in turn, will maybe result in a more costly supply side for you? What is the reaction to the situation? Also, in that context, how did your customer react to this? I mean, are they obviously not thinking about cancellations? You are expecting to just deliver the instruments then a little bit later. I mean, what was the reaction on that side?
Yeah, Mike, thanks for bringing it up. Actually, a complex question requiring a complex answer. First of all, and please allow me to get to that point first. Definitely, whenever possible, we already have dual sources for suppliers. There are certain things where either economically dual sourcing makes no sense at all or where it actually provides risk. Certainly, there are some key suppliers which have their own IP, which would mean trying to find a second source would actually mean that most likely the source material would not be compatible, which means you would have to branch from day one, which is extremely risky from a regulatory perspective and should be avoided from our customers. I think obviously trying to de-risk supply chain is one of the core challenges, which means when, where, and how to source.
Definitely, and that's something we are trying to get our customers on board, is that in some areas, we can only address that properly by going into high inventory levels by highly risky and single-source parts. We already reacted over the past 15 years towards that, that we are trying to particularly develop the complex materials ourselves, which means that we can easily move manufacturing from A to B to C if we don't get our hands on things, and that we control those suppliers at the very tail end, which have their own IP. However, there will be materials. Just think about microcontrollers. You cannot just walk away from a microcontroller supply and you see the issues VW has these days. I think this is certainly something no one actually expected.
I think we will have to accept that we are living in a world that supply chain interruptions like this can happen, that in a globalized world where raw materials are sent 10 times back and forth between Asia and only if one step gets interrupted, the entire supply chain gets interrupted. I think this is something, these are problems which came to stay. Probably in a deglobalized world, they will still stay for longer than everyone expects. The result of that, like particularly sourcing more locally and manufacturing local for local, will definitely have an impact on pricing.
I think this is an assessment each of our customers have to take either to accept that they will have to live with supply chain interruptions on the one hand side or something we can handle for them, but that definitely will find its input to the price tag attached to the instruments and attached to spare parts. However, I think we are not the only one facing that problem. I think this will actually pop through the surface in a couple of industries over the next year. Hope that helps.
Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Then last question here, really, on your inventory situation and operating cash flow for the full year. What do you think you can achieve in the full year on the operating cash flow side? A detailed question here on the inventory, because you mentioned that you have higher inventories in one particular area where it requires an upturn in the end demand and market demand. Are we talking about molecular here, or is this something else?
is allocated in our molecular business, right? It is particularly affected by the lower than expected or flatter than expected ramp-up curve. Definitely, this is our biggest block here. As mentioned, we stick to that guidance at the very beginning of the year, said that we will most likely manage to reduce our inventories by the end of the year in the area of EUR 5 million-EUR 10 million. I think we are on a good track here. That actually leads to the equivalent cash release coming from inventory levels.
All right. Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Jan Keppeler for any closing remarks.
Thank you all. That concludes the conference call. Thank you and goodbye.
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