Good morning once again. We continue our online healthcare conference with yet another interesting company, Stratec SA, and I'm very proud to have with me the CEO of the company, Mr. Marcus Wolfinger. He will share some insights on the company with us, and I'm sure many of you know the story already. Stratec designs and manufactures fully automated analyzer systems in the field of clinical diagnostics and life sciences. Furthermore, it offers complex consumables for diagnostics and medical applications. We do cover the company, and I will provide you with a link to our research in the chat box in a minute. As usual, we will record this meeting. It will last for about 30 minutes, including Q&A and talking about Q&A. If you have any questions, please enter them in the chat box on the lower right-hand corner of your screen.
Marcus, let me hand it over to you.
Thank you so much, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our presentation. I think I don't need to walk you through the safe harbor statement, so let me directly dive into the presentation. This is going to be a short presentation, so please allow me to mainly focus on those areas where we saw material changes or where I think certain areas are worth to be mentioned and not give you the comprehensive presentation of what we do. We actually work together with the biggest players in diagnostics and life sciences, mainly automating applications in the laboratory. The main differentiator to most of our peers is actually that we do not develop instruments and consumables from scratch.
We actually invest a lot of money into our own technology pool, and in the cooperation with our partners, we customize this technology according to the mutually agreed upon specifications and requirements of the customer. This leads to a customer-specific product, but actually it means that as our technologies and intellectual property rights are kind of wrapped into these applications and solutions, consumables, both consumables and instruments, it means that we are able to link development and manufacturing, and this allows us to invest upfront and to harvest downstream with the sales of the products. Our customers cannot walk away. Typically, as a trade-off for using background technologies, reliable, proven, and approved technologies, our customers are required to sign off minimum commitments in terms of minimum purchase obligations. We are the leading player in the space of OEM instrumentation and consumables.
This means you'll never find a Stratec product out there. You will always find a product of our customers, and these products are actually labeled under our customers' name, but as mentioned above, they bear at least parts of Stratec's technology. We are working in this field for decades. We have certain specialties, so if you would talk to our customer, what kind of business would you give Stratec? They would certainly name molecular diagnostics, immunoassay, immune hematology, complex sample prep, sample prep for NGS, and so on and so forth. This is where we have more than only the technical skills to develop instruments and consumables. This is actually where we are a partner and actually a sparring for our partners to talk about the applications, about the do's and don'ts, about price drivers, and so on.
Often enough, we understand at least the automation aspects of our customers' tests and biochemistry, as well as our partners' too. We are about 1,500 people, more than 40%, so close to 50% actually working in R&D. As I've just described the business model, I think it is important to understand in order to position ourselves as this partner bringing our own technologies, we really need to invest. We actually seed with development, and we harvest with manufacturing. That's our business model. We are headquartered in Europe. Main manufacturing site is actually in Switzerland, as well as in Germany. We do low-level manufacturing, so from parts upstream, like this includes PCBAs or motors, down to pumps, then complex readers or centrifuges, full integration in analyzer systems. We do that in Hungary, and our main consumable manufacturing site is in Austria.
We do all the above in the United States as well, where our focus is definitely on consumables and customer service. At this moment in time, and I think this makes us unique, we have about 50,000 analyzer systems running out there, which means over the past, let's say, 5-10 years, we sold about 50,000 analyzer systems, which are still working. If we sell an analyzer in year one, this analyzer will be operational in year five, six, seven, eight until it's getting decommissioned by our partners. As long as these instruments are operational, they consume not only the consumables, in most of the cases the biochemistry coming from our partners, but they consume our plastic consumable, our maintenance parts, and our spares, which represents more than 40% of our revenues and is actually recurring revenue. 50,000 analyzer systems, that's really a big number.
This is actually a number. If you would talk to a company like Roche or Siemens Healthineers, they would actually mention the same order of magnitude, certainly their instruments and therefore generating their revenues. In our case, it is only generating our revenues. These 50,000 analyzer systems are generating revenues of EUR 3-5 billion for our partners. Here you can see kind of the split. Sorry. If we sell an instrument, these instruments generate downstream revenues for our partners with the tests. Typically, in a split that we contribute to with about average 10-15% to downstream value generation, and our partners generate 85-90% with their biochemistry. This gives you that ratio of with our EUR 250-300 million in revenues. With those instruments, our partners generate between EUR 3-5 billion in revenues using those instruments.
The company went public in 1998. Since then, we have a compound annual growth rate top line of 13.13% and similar CAGR growth rates on the income side as well. Split in 2024, which was entirely uncommon and unprecedented, is that this was the first year in the company's history where instruments, so the analyzer systems, haven't been the biggest revenue block. In 2024, it was only 32%, whereas service parts and consumables comprised out of 43%. This is, and forgive me for this wording, this is actually still attributable to the COVID hangover. We have actually outpaced the market during COVID-19, particularly with our molecular instruments. This led to a certain degree of saturation, and we are still working down at. We typically name five franchises we are working in, molecular being one of them, and with the PCI instruments sold during COVID-19, there are still certain overcapacities.
Work down, these instruments are getting lifecycle and aged. Again, we are not yet there where we see run rates in sales with molecular instruments as we have seen like in 2019. We see the inventory levels of our customers. We see the age of the instruments. This actually, keeping these instruments in the field is a means to an end. However, in 2024, sales of instruments were partly compromised by the still very low sales volumes coming from molecular instruments. This will turn back. We think that we can continue to grow in absolute numbers with service parts and consumables, and certainly we keep the development and service revenues up, but sales with instruments are coming back, and this will certainly contribute positively to our bottom line as well.
I think it is important to understand that typically we are describing our today's situation in this triangle that at this moment in time we are lacking economies of scale with instrument manufacturing as the volumes, particularly in molecular, are still fairly low. The second corner of this triangle is that at this moment in time we are still suffering high input prices as compared to the initial design of the instruments. Long story short, we are buying more expensively than planned. The third corner of the triangle is that we have certain limitations. We are not entirely blocked, but we have certain limitations with price increases towards customers. The reason is that in most of the applications we are in, there are these governmental payers and big insurance companies.
They have agreements with the customers of our customers, which are typically the labs and the big lab chains. They have contracts with our partners, which are those Roche, Siemens Healthineers, and DiaSorin of the world. They have long-term contracts with us, so we can ask for price increases, but it requires certain negotiations, and nobody's actually fond of getting price increases in. We have that triangle, lack of economies of scale at this moment in time. We are working on our BOM costs heavily. We have already seen structural improvements there, and we are working with price increases with our customer. All those three things are happening at the same moment in time, and we are actually expecting a big relief in the future coming from this triangle and sorting out the issues coming from that triangle. I talked a lot about the relevant contribution.
I think this chart nicely shows what we do and what our partners do. We provide the analyzer systems. We provide the software, and the software actually includes embedded software, only controlling a motor or reading sensors to more complex embedded applications like image interpretation downstream to the business logic of the instrument and the connectivity. We have our own IoT solution. We have cybersecurity solutions. The whole nine yards here with instruments, we do everything, including connectivity to track systems hardware-wise and connectivity software-wise. In some of the cases, the plastic consumables are already coming from our partners, particularly the legacy consumables, where there are predecessor instruments. Often enough, there are predecessor consumables. We are using that as well. We focus more on those areas where consumables are getting more complex, particularly to drive specificity and sensitivity of the test.
All new diagnostics and life science applications are going that direction. Let me just pick out a stupid example. If we are focusing more and actually the industry does in neurodegenerative diseases, I think it's well understood that higher sensitivities are required. That's why some of our partners are developing the next generation of the high-sensitivity immunoassays, which requires entirely new instrumentation, and we are well established in this area. The tragedy of neurodegenerative diseases and new therapies available means a lot of new diagnostics, and this is one of the areas where we are certainly focusing together with our partners. At the bottom, you see the typical product lifecycle.
Depending on the application and if we have platforms available or if we start the customizing process of our technology from scratch, it requires us two to four years to get a prototype and evaluation unit into the hands of our customers. Typically, the approval phase and integration phase where our partners and we are actually in a combined approach integrating our customers' assay and the consumables on the instrument take another two years until the instruments are hitting the markets in certain markets. A very steep ramp-up phase follows where the sales of the instruments is put on a wider approach worldwide, full menu on the instrument available. The initial maturity phase is where growth rates are shrinking, but we establish a fleet, an install base.
Typically, like in year 12 to 15, we see peak sales, and from then on, lower numbers of instruments are placed, but still we have a very attractive business with spare parts and maintenance parts because even if no new instruments are sales, till the entire sunsetting of the instrument, typically these instruments are living in the laboratory for like five to seven years longer where we continue to sell the parts running on the instrument. Revenue split, as mentioned, molecular, particularly more complex immune diagnostics and hematology and immune hematology are our core applications. I'm typically describing it very much oversimplifying. We don't want to be the first one in the market with spare head technology where it takes like a decade to establish technologies, but we want to be like the second or third.
The innovators, we go for spearhead technologies, but not the really first one. This is where the way how we innovate, the way how we are putting technology, this is where we feel placed very, very well. As mentioned, looking into where the money is made, the majority obviously covered by our customers, which own the customer relationship towards the lab from a value proposition, they benefit most. We feel very comfortable because this helps us to develop our technology and sell the same technology to a number of partners, not the same instrument, but the same technology. As mentioned, we have this strong recurring revenue base with in 2024, 43% coming from consumables and maintenance parts. Install base grew nicely over the past years. As mentioned, this is actually the driver and the engine of this recurring revenue sales.
Touching base on our customer base, this is the top 20 in diagnostics. These are not like not a comprehensive list of all of our partners, but as diagnostics is certainly our biggest market, it's worth talking about that number of customers. Those ones indicated in dark blue are our today's customers. Those ones in gray, not customers yet. It's assorted by their revenues with their end customers and their market position. Like led by Roche, I think it is important to clearly mention that although we are working with 16 out of the top 20, it looks like a horribly saturated market, but actually it isn't. Certainly, we have some customers on that list where we are doing five programs out of seven available. On the other hand, there are some customers where we are only doing one program out of 40.
Way to go and still enough room to grow with those partners. We typically split in three major segments. The biggest one typically entertaining their own forces in order to develop instruments. Here we are typically doing the niche products, niche products still being big enough for us to feel fairly comfortable. Further downstream, we often enough do the core products. On the right-hand side, we put some of the innovators in customers where we believe they might make their way into the top 20 themselves or they will work with partners putting them on a new sales level and sales platform. That is what is actually happening. It is not only going for the really big ones, it is going for the innovation leading companies as well.
Sales over the past years, I'm sure in our industry you saw a lot of plots where our peers are comparing their 2018 and 2019 sales with their 2024 sales just to eliminate those years with nice tailwinds coming from COVID-19. We typically look into these revenues as well. We feel relatively comfortable with our growth rates. We foresee growth in 2025. If you just put a straight line through 2018, 2019, and 2024, you see those extraordinary high sales years in COVID-19 and normalization thereafter, now getting back into this growth rate. Again, the cooperation and the business model with our partners allowed us to get through this troublesome times fairly robust and resilient. If you see revenue declines in our peer groups, it looks way more devastating than here. We are fairly comfortable and, as mentioned, switching now back into growth mode.
We touch base on operating divisions in the 2024 sales adjusted EBIT margin, like those peak years, extraordinary high growth rates, and now getting back into an EBIT margin where we feel comfortable. I think long-term the company belongs in that like 15% adjusted EBITDA area, and this is where we are actually planning return to get back there. Some Q1 figures, nice growth rate top line, get through all the KPIs, and this is actually getting me straight into our financial guidance for 2025. We foresee consolidated sales for 2025 with low to medium single-digit % rate on a constant currency basis, adjusted EBIT margin 10-12% after 13% in 2024. We were on the cautious side when giving guidance.
Still, we see some lumpiness in the market, but like I said at the beginning of the presentation, I think the market switches back into a more prospective mode coming from out of COVID, and nobody knew where we were going, where diagnostics was going. Actually, the FDA playing a certain role in limiting the abilities to get products faster to the market. High saturation or almost a paralyzed mode. When we were at JP Morgan at the beginning of the year, everybody mentioned that Q4 was the first quarter where growth rates got back into that mode, which has been seen in 2019 ex-COVID, after COVID with declining growth rates or even negative growth. As mentioned, we have this deferred approach as compared to our customers. They invested a lot during COVID, placing new instruments. If they now get a new test, they grow right away.
They put a new test on such an instrument, but still the capacity is out there. The capacity is worked down. Market is growing, putting more tests on these existing capacities, and that gets us downstream to more investment, and this mode is actually coming back on the investments in intangible and tangible assets. We foresee 8%-10% of EBIT. In 2024, we only saw 7.1%. Focus definitely maintaining cost discipline, then to grow our footprint in adjacent areas. Certainly we have a well-filled M&A pipeline, very binary as everyone knows. We were very close in 2024, did not work out, but we keep our eyes open when we have an ongoing process. If you believe in consolidation, this is actually the time to look into M&A. There are good assets out there for reasonable prices. Let me put it that way. We have a nice deal pipeline.
Deal means new programs coming in. Execute on that is definitely a focus and to leverage our existing and new customer base with the 2023 acquisition Natech. Then certainly look into our cash flow dynamics and look into inventories as well. This gets me to the end of the presentation. Please take a look into our corporate social responsibility slide. Now handing back to MWB in order to commence with the Q&A. Thank you. Thank you so much for the insights. Let me start out with a quick question regarding replacement cycle. You said 50,000 units are out in the field over the last 10 years, 12-15 years life cycle. Do you see that growth going forward at some point starts to be driven by not only growth in new customers and new applications, but also by a solid replacement cycle that's being triggered?
Are there customers that are upgrading old machines into new machines if they have an edge on speed or functionality? 100% true, both. Please bear with me. It's fairly complex to describe that. Typically, we see different dynamics in the course of such a cooperation. After development and when instruments are placed, certainly the first, say, five to eight years, it's almost exclusively new instruments. Certainly, as our customers are trying to keep their customers with attractive offering, and obviously it's a huge investment for the laboratories to establish a new cooperation in terms of training and qualification and quality and integration of the workflows in a laboratory. That's why customers downstream are super sticky, not only ours, but the lab customers as well.
From year five on, obviously it starts that an existing instrument gets replaced with a new instrument of the same kind. Downstream, actually, it is super attractive because between 30-45% of the revenues, like in year 10 or 12 of such a cooperation, means actually replacement of an instrument of the same kind. Now getting to the second part of your question, which is again a dynamics which we did not see over the past 15 years. At this moment in time, let me make a stupid core example because this typically works fairly well because everyone understands. If you are in an economical trouble sometimes, and typically you replaced your car after 100,000 mi every time, and now you are in economically troubled sometimes, you may consider using the same car for 150,000 mi.
Making certain investments in service and maintenance, like replacing the braking system or anything the like, and this is what's currently happening. This is what we see in our KPIs. The acceleration of service parts and maintenance parts in 2024 is just mimicking that decision that our customers are trying to keep existing instruments, instruments they sold during COVID-19, as long as possible in the field in order to avoid new investments with new instruments. That is why we see this decline in the contribution coming from instruments. Like I said, that's a means to an end. You can only do that so and so long. After 200,000 or 250,000 mi, you need to replace your car if you want to rely on a solid instrument. It is like in the aircraft industry over time. There is innovation.
There are new tests which are requiring new parts in the instrument, and that's what's actually going on at this moment in time. Great. Thank you. Quick question regarding your guidance for adjusted EBIT margin in 2025 versus 2024. You do expect a lower adjusted EBIT margin even though negative effects expire. Is that due to costs that are higher or revenues? Revenues you're expecting to grow actually this year, right? Yeah. Actually, certainly we had a contributor in 2024, an extraordinary strong fourth quarter. This year is again super back and loaded, and we wanted to make sure that we can stick to that guidance. We are continuously monitoring guidance, and we'll probably come back in the course of the year. Again, I don't want to give that hint that something's going to happen.
This is the guidance, and this guidance was based on that high earnings contributor in the fourth quarter of 2024, which is not expected to happen this year, but again, super back and loaded, so we want to be on the safe side. All right. There are a few more questions, but given the time, I will focus on one range of issues, that's M&A. On the one hand, a lot of questions were targeting and focusing on the question what you are looking for in M&A. Are there certain regions, certain products that you're trying to get? And also, of course, and that's the flip side of the coin, are you considering yourself being an M&A target? Because the valuation has come back quite a bit and private equity is looking. Now, we got about one minute.
I know it's tough, but if you could maybe give us an idea. Short answer, being an M&A target, ourselves, this is certainly something we shouldn't comment on, but obviously this is attractive and everyone knows that this is actually the time age of private equity looking into a situation where there are big stakes in the hands of a family, as in our case. I know that there is a high frequency of requests, but like I said, this question should be discussed with other players. I'm not private equity. I'm running this company. Again, this is an attractive time for investments. Certainly, we had some nice premium in the share before COVID, and after COVID, this is the same company, a very successful business model, growth will come back, attractive situation. I have to admit.
Looking into M&A, like I said, there are super attractive targets in the market which haven't been in the market for the past, say, 10 years. If you believe in consolidation, and I believe in consolidation, then this is the time age of looking into M&A. Reasonable prices, good targets. All right. Given the time, unfortunately, we have to close the presentation at this point. The next one will be Marino Made Biotech. I just posted the link in the chat. Thanks, everybody, for attending. Thanks, Marcus, for sharing your insights with us. Of course, thanks, everybody, for your great questions. I'll see you all later. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Have a good day. Thank you.