Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the full year 2025 financial results conference call and live webcast. I am Sandra, the call's call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Jan Keppeler, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Sandra, and welcome everyone to our full year 2025 financial results conference call. With me today are Marcus Wolfinger, CEO of STRATEC, as well as our CFO, Tanja Bücherl. As usual, following the presentation, both will be happy to answer your questions during our question and answer session. Be aware that this conference is being webcast live, and you can download the presentation either from the webcast or from our website. Finally, please allow me to draw your attention to our safe harbor statement, which we have on page two of that presentation. With this, it's now my pleasure to hand over to Marcus.
Thank you, Jan. As Jan mentioned, we would like to give you an overview over our actual events in 2025, followed by the financial review and certainly the interesting outlook this year, 2026. Certainly looking a little bit further downstream about our funnel and pipeline and everything else we believe will drive the company's growth in the next couple of years. After that, we would love to answer your question. 2025 was certainly impacted by geopolitics and uncertainties in the global markets, creating challenges not exclusively in those reported fields like supply chain and sales, but also in like decision-making processes worldwide, particularly within our customers, development funnel and so on, et cetera.
As a result, we have to perceive it as an above peer group achievement that the company's top line could be kept stable and with that, robust. Despite these difficulties and still lacking scalabilities and economies of scale, the overall performance in 2025 was satisfactory as the profit margin remained within the initially targeted range. This demonstrates the resilience of the business model and the effectiveness of cost and earning management measures. We made significant progress in the development partnerships, and particularly outlook after 2026 shows that these areas where we brought in new partners or new programs over the past couple of years is now leading to that we really get the rubber on the road with new development programs and new programs which are coming to the market in this upcoming quarter.
At the same time, we have to observe that particularly with the uncertainties in 2025, the development funnel is not as strong as it used to be. The next couple of years will most likely be dominated by the programs coming to the market. Probably a lot of follow-up systems, a couple of new systems, but the growth which is coming in the years between 2026 and the year 2030 will be driven by instrumentation sales. I think that's the positive sign.
With that certainly returning economies of scale and an improved margin profile. We have this positive outlook for 2026 and beyond. We'll touch details later on. One of the key highlights certainly is that despite those effects, we are keeping the dividend proposal stable with EUR 0.60 per share, which have to be confirmed by the AGM in June. With that, I would like to hand over to Tanja. She'll give us the financial review of 2025.
Thanks, Marcus. Also welcome from my side to today's call. Let's take a look at the key financial figures for 2025. As Marcus has mentioned, we actually continued to operate in a very challenging environment that has also affected our customers' order behavior and has given us additional strains on our supply chain. Having said this, you see in that volatile market environment, we generated revenues of roughly EUR 251 million. This actually represents a decline of 2.6% compared to the prior year or 1.1% on a constant currency basis. As expected, also, the earnings level declined in 2025, so the adjusted EBIT is around EUR 40.6 million with a margin of 16.2%, down from 19.1% in the prior year.
The adjusted EBIT amounts to around EUR 25.2 million, with a margin of 10%, down from 13% in the prior year. This decline in the profitability versus 2024 is actually mainly due to the higher earnings contribution from our Development and Services recorded in the prior year, 2024, which was expected, forecasted that this will not be repeated in 2025. In addition to this contribution from the Development and Services high margin portfolio, the product mix effect in other areas increased input costs and currency exchange rate effects had actually a negative impact on our margin development.
Nevertheless, very important for me is that at the end, we were at the lower end of our initial guidance for the adjusted EBIT margin of 10%-12%. We achieved that despite this lack of the planned revenue levels that we actually had. This was mainly due to our ongoing cost management that had a positive impact in here. On the next slide, we see now the transition from the adjusted to the reported earnings. Based on the adjusted EBIT of EUR 25.2 million, several one-time items occurred in 2025. The first one that you see on that page are the regular and planned PPA amortizations of EUR 3.1 million. Second, there was the extraordinary inventory write-off of EUR 4.3 million. The third bucket are the impairments on intangible assets of EUR 6.1 million.
As you know, during the preparation of the consolidated financial statement 2025, the annual impairment test is required to be tested. Out of that, we recognized this impairment loss, which is actually not cash effective. This is also a very important note on that side. The impairment that we show here is mainly related to a delayed market launch and reduced sales potential for one product family of the Diatron brand. Adding to these three effects, we have another one-time effect, such as consulting and reorganization costs of around EUR 2.5 million. In total, the result of the reported EBIT is EUR 9.1 million and a slight negative consolidated net income. We are showing you this reconciliation very transparently because the adjusted result is reflecting much better our operational profitability of our business.
While these one-time costs, especially the impairments, are mainly addressed for the balance sheet cleanups and our ongoing focus on the future growth. In terms of revenue, as we mentioned, we see the slight decline of this 1.1% on a constant currency base. There is also one positive note. The demand for the MDx systems has continued to stabilize following the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as you all know. At the same time, we are seeing a growth in immunoassay systems. We also see that the performance, especially toward the end of the year, is particularly encouraging. In the Q4 , we achieved actually a double-digit growth in our system sales. On the other hand, these ongoing uncertainties in the global trade, geopolitical tensions, and the resulting effects on our customers' ordering behavior and the supply chains have had a negative impact.
In addition to the prior year comparison, we see again this huge impact from the high margin Service Parts and Consumables and the Development and Services segments, which were exceptionally high. Overall, we could frame also the picture as follows. The environment remains very challenging for us. Based on our 2026 order forecast, we see that this trend, or let's call it this shift to the H2 year of the year, continues also in 2026. Now we see on the slide, the breakdown of our revenue by the business segment. You see our systems business remains our most important revenue driver and is benefiting from the growth momentum mentioned earlier, particularly in the immunoassay segment.
On the second part, you see our Service Parts and Consumables, so the recurring revenue driven by our installed basis of systems, which is for sure also very important to our business model. In 2025, we actually see, especially here, the volatile ordering patterns and the ordering patterns of our customers, were mainly attributable to logistics and cash flow optimization at our customers. Last but not least, in the bucket, you see the development in service revenue. You see as well here the decline. As also mentioned earlier, this is particularly given by the strong year comparison to 2024. Overall, the revenue structure that you see on that chart confirms that we are building on a very diversified portfolio with a growing share of recurring revenue. Let's have a look to the adjusted EBIT and the EBIT margin.
The adjusted EBIT declined by 24.8% to EUR 25.2 million. The adjusted EBIT margin stands at 10%, down from the 13%, as mentioned also already. This is a decrease of 300 basis points. Factors are contributing to this. First, we had this exceptional high earnings contribution from the Development and Services and also from the Service Parts in 2024, which could not be replaced in 2025. Second, we face the margin pressure due to the less favorable product mix, the higher input costs, and the negative currency effect. On a positive note, our efficiency program that we have installed already several years ago and structural measures are having a noticeable impact on the cost base.
This is giving us the confidence that we will be able to increase the profitability again in the coming years as the growth and economy of scale took fully place. Last but not least, we see now a very mixed picture in the cash flow for 2025. You see the operating cash flow is in a minus of EUR 0.4 million. This is actually significantly below the 2024 figures. The main driver for that is our very strong back-end loaded business performance in 2025, especially into December 2025, which leads to a significant increase in the trade receivables with a related contribution later on now in the Q1 of 2026. At the same time, we have started to reduce our inventory levels, which remain elevated.
The inventories, as you see, stood at around EUR 130 million at year-end, already below the prior year figures of 2024. Our investment ratio in property, plant, and equipment and intangible assets at 6.5% of revenue was actually below the targeted range of 8%-10%. Here, we were intentionally selective and focused without jeopardizing the strategic projects of STRATEC for the upcoming years. The net financial debt has risen to approximately EUR 112 million. This is corresponding to a net financial debt to EBITDA ratio of 3.3 compared to 1.9 in the prior year. Despite this increase, our balance sheet remains solid, the equity ratio stands at around 55.7%.
In addition, as you know, we successfully completed the refinancing of the bridge loan in 2025 and negotiated and signed a new syndicated loan of EUR 125 million. This measures secures our financial flexibility while we are still working in parallel to improve our cash flow and the debt ratios again with a very strict working capital management program. With that, I would like to hand over to Marcus again.
Thank you, Tanja. Let me walk you through our financial guidance for 2026 and beyond. Sales in 2026 is expected to grow in a medium to high single-digit percentage range on a constant currency basis. As always, the important information lies within the imprint. As already mentioned into our ad hoc announcement where we disclosed, among others, the prelims, we clearly mentioned that the sales growth will predominantly materialize in the H2 of the year. I think this is something which was observed over the last couple of years that we were always trying to pull in the back-end loading of the year, and it got actually stronger and stronger.
This year, we actually foresee that we move the customer forecasts more towards like mid-year in order to be able to supply the products than towards the end of the year. As a result of that, the Q1 is expected to see a sharp reduction in sales, which comes along with a dip in profitability. First of all, this is not happening as a surprise. Secondly, we have those measures in place, and if we are looking into our resource allocation in, and in those elements, like incoming goods, et cetera, that we are have well-established structures to satisfy the requirements of our customers and to satisfy the orders which came in and are coming in these days.
As mentioned, in some cases, we actually moved the forecasting system in order to be super safe, in terms of abilities to supply more towards like an ordering system away from forecasting. Regarding the EBIT margin guidance, we foresee a previous year level of 10%. Certainly we see some further effects from our efficiency gains as well as from scalability. Unfortunately, those gains will be partly offset by a higher input cost contribution, and we actually foresee and actually already see the impact of the geopolitical conflicts that certain raw materials are actually seeing further price increases. On the investment side, the intangible and tangible assets combined, we see a range of 6.5%-8.5% of sales.
Long term, again, even further importantly here, the imprint for the years between 2026 and 2028 on the basis of 2025, we have a nice ramp up in certain products. I'll touch base on that in a minute. The new products are certainly the growth driver. New products doesn't necessarily mean new products. Often we have drop-in placements which are then positioned in, like, slightly different markets, even those markets where higher throughputs or worldwide distribution is happening for those products. We see and foresee a slight recovery, not a material recovery, however, a slight recovery in the MDx system demand. I don't wanna, like, stress the situation too much, how many molecular instruments were placed during the pandemic.
After that certainly the market was saturated for a certain period of time. We definitely see that this is coming to an end. However, in our forecasts for 2026 and then beyond between 2026 and the year 2030, the recovery doesn't play a meaningful role anymore. Then certainly we see an initial contribution from early-stage products as well as from those transitions of new product generations with partly higher selling prices or the fact that at the tail end of the positioning of those instruments, other instruments, will accelerate as well. Between 2028 and 2030, after the 6%-8% growth in the period between 2026 and 2028, we foresee a 10%-12% compound annual growth rate for those years.
A continuously increasing revenue contribution from new products. New products doesn't necessarily mean products which are launched then. These products are hitting the market between now and then, and are then in their actual growth phase. We foresee dynamic growth with the Service Parts and Consumables business as a result of the growing install base. I think this is only a natural evolution that as the fact that we went sideways between literally 2022 and 2025, certainly the install base didn't grow anymore. Our Service Parts and Consumables business didn't grow, particularly not those elements which are related to our install base. The Consumables business certainly grew during that time.
I think, again, it is super important to highlight that if we are looking into the breakdown of revenues, that we certainly saw three material changes over the past five years. Historically, we are coming from a development contribution of, say, 10%-20% with a service parts contribution from 30%-40%, and then the remainder instrument business. That certainly changed twice during the pandemic and then the years after that with supply crises, et cetera. That changed, the budgets of our partners were allocated into more product lifecycle management in order to keep the products young, in order to overcome that situation that on the input material side, product life cycles shortened.
On the other hand, everybody was trying to prolong and push out the product life cycle on the sales side because of grandfather renewals in regulatory and because of, like, you can do that. That's a means to an end to push out product life cycles by two or three years. We are coming to the end of that situation, which means development budgets are now reallocated into new product development. Downstream, that means that, on an absolute, like EUR or USD level, development and sales will continue to see nice growth rates and are robust, but it will be overtaken by instrument growth.
If we look into the rearview mirror in, like, 2030, we will see that at least partly we are returning to the historic percentages of contribution of the relevant product classes like split into instruments, consumables, spare parts, maintenance parts, and development. The return of economies of scale and our cost efficiency improvements will then drive the margin going forward. That's why our margin target is based on a real bottom-up calculation and a bottom-up approach, so we only took certain instruments into consideration. I'll touch base on that in a minute. The adjusted EBIT margin will be on an at least 13% level by 2028, and then followed by the two years between 2029 and 2030.
The EBIT margin will be at least on a 15% level by 2030. Back to historical EBIT margin strength, certainly coming along with the associated cash flow and all other KPIs. To where we believe that we can return into historical area. I think it's worth mentioning that there is one KPI which we don't expect to return to historical levels, which is probably inventory level. I mentioned before that we see more obsolescences on the input side at a higher cadence and within shorter time frames as compared to historical data points. On the same talking, that our customers are pushing and continue to push our product life cycles in terms of longer sales of the same platform, which means that we will face last time buys.
In most of the cases, these last time buys are paid by our customers, but they are sitting in our inventory. In the meantime about 10% of the... Tanja mentioned that elevated inventory levels are actually for those last time buys. Inventory level has to be perceived, like more specifically, where are they coming from? This is not from products which have run rates. This is actually saving supplies in the future. Certainly, we have to see that there is a threshold. If a product is only like five or seven years out to sunsetting, typically, big interventions into development, which are leading to reverification and revalidation and reapproval and in such senses, redevelopment, or in such cases, redevelopment doesn't make too much sense.
In these cases, we are more shooting for a like last time buy in order to tackle obsolescence. I think it is important to mention that our guidance does not include our full funnel and our full pipeline. The forecast does not take into account any revenues from analyzer systems in the OEM setups. Which means our classical business model where we use background technologies, based on new developments and background technologies that we develop, analyzer systems and consumables, which are then specific to the customer, but they are our technology. Like, this is what we call an OEM setup.
Again, allow me to repeat what I started to say that this forecast does not take any into account any revenues from analyzer systems in an OEM setup where the product is already in development, but the development and supply agreement is not yet signed or finalized, and the customer has not yet placed an order for that. The sales growth is actually tackling sales growth rates at a constant currency level. I mentioned the upcoming launches, and this is one of the first times where we have decided to try to put a little bit more meat around the bones, what's actually coming up and why do we derive growth from that.
Like in the discussions we had, at the tail end of the pandemic, we believed that the product launches which happened through our customers during the pandemic and shortly thereafter, could offset the dip in the molecular space as a result of the saturation of the market in molecular during the pandemic. The ramp-ups were slower than expected. They are only able to show traction these days and only in some of the cases. That's why I think it is important to talk about launches and what launches actually means for us and for our customers. We have given the product names. Please bear with me that these are actually random and slight hints to the actual technology behind that or product names or foreseen product names of our customers.
Please do not expect us to follow up on the project names. Internally, only the project numbers differ from that. We have here Project L on our list, which is a next-generation, fully automated immunoassay analyzer for an existing customer. The beauty here is that this instrument is a direct drop-in replacement, which means it is not foreseen to go through this growth phase. From day one on in the mature markets and in the majority of the markets, it will replace the predecessor solution one by one. The menu is comprehensive. The menu provided by our customers, obviously, is comprehensive from the get-go, we do not expect to go through a phase. On the beauty side here is that the product comes along at a higher throughput range and for a slightly elevated price.
This is not actually a volume driver. This is a price driver on the one hand side. On the other hand side, the positioning of the instrument in a higher throughput environment is actually giving a chance to the smaller brother of that instrument, which is coming from us as well. That segregation is actually leading to a demand effect on the lower platform as well. I would actually consider this as a double strike. Project M is a next-generation molecular instrument. Again, a direct drop-in replacement. Status is, as in the previous case for Project L, is design transfer to series manufacturing, so no technical challenges anymore, and a clear timetable and timeline together with our customers. Product M is actually specifically made for decentralized testing in the molecular space.
Again, derived from the market need for solutions like that, to be positioned mainly in the United States and markets where decentralized molecular testing is playing a meaningful role. We have Program R. By the way, this is assorted by when those products will hit the market. It's not assorted by size or how meaningful that is. That is actually like on the timescale. Project R, again, is a product family for an existing customer. The predecessor solution consisted out of two solutions, out of two instruments. One came from us, the other instrument came from one of our competitors. We got a competitive win, we have set a scalable solution for the high-throughput markets and the lower-throughput markets with the same. We call that core modules. The core of the instrument is comparable.
This has huge advantages for our partners in terms of serviceability and service part supply. At the end, it gives us a real scale because, like I said, it's not only replacing our solution, it's replacing the solution of one of our peers and therefore will lead to aggregated growth here. The system is in system verification and validation on customer side. Again, minimal technical risk. We have Project N, which is a multiplex molecular solution, again, particularly placed in the United States market. It's designed with the specific needs of highly decentralized testing environment. Again, instrument design is completed. Assay transfer is happening within our customer side.
You see this is actually means that the launches are now not happening within the next few quarters, but downstream then. Again, nice supplement, nice allocation of those resources which are ramping up manufacturing here at STRATEC. Then we have Program H, which is a product we wanted the beginning of this decade. Status is prototype design is completed and assay development at customer side is ongoing. High-sensitivity immunoassay, one of those market niches where everybody expects huge growth rates. High-sensitivity immunoassays are particularly used like in neuro or oncology. Those areas where like the aging population and the demand in the Western world is leading to further treatments, where at this moment in time, a couple of hundred of different kinds of treatments are in development or in their approval phases.
What we typically see in diagnostics is that new treatment leads to new diagnostics and new diagnostics demands, particularly for neuro. High-sensitivity immunoassay will play a meaningful role in the future. This is where we already have a good footprint. We have a number of instruments and consumables in the high-sensitivity immunoassay market. One of the growth drivers we see. Then certainly we call it sounds a bit boring, module business, but it's definitely important for us and growing, is that still there is a number of customers which are doing in-house developments. They do not reinvent the wheel. We are providing customer-specific setups where we are not selling modules in terms of we sell a pump and everybody could use or build such pump, which is commoditized.
We are developing specific modules which are then fulfilling and only fulfilling the requirements of the customer, which has huge advantages from a pricing perspective, but also from an approval perspective. Let me briefly walk you through the market trends in our different, typically we call it franchises, application segments. We call it franchises in order to take different throughput classes and technologies alongside with applications. There is no good way for that. We internally call it therefore franchises. If we are looking into the surveys provided, the growth of the IVD space is not as high as it used to be before the pandemic or even during the pandemic. Still very solid growth rates. Low to mid-single-digit growth rate is expected to happen during those forecast periods we have given.
In the United States , everybody expects a strong growth rate. Certainly, this is no longer ELISA or those, let me say, very old technologies. Certainly, high-sensitivity or the transfer of single molecular non-plex technologies into Immunoassays playing a role. Certainly, like for applications, like in the neuro space where no DNA or RNA is concerned, but enzymes are concerned. Certainly the Immunoassay choice is the method of choice. We have a number of applications within proteomics and that therefore, certainly immunoassay is accelerating faster than everything else.
In the molecular space, definitely the ongoing trend so far only happening in the main market in the United States, not that much in Europe or Asia. The ongoing trend in decentralization in molecular, certainly as in most of the cases in this world, the United States has a leading role. The decentralization in the United States is actually mainly coming from the reimbursement system. The reimbursement system in Europe and Asia does not yet support a higher degree of decentralization in the molecular space. For us, we believe that Europe will come at the tail end of the development. Certainly the molecular space will see certain recoveries as particularly those instruments which were placed prior to the pandemic or during the pandemic saw some extraordinary high wear and tear.
The field service organizations of our customers, and therefore our supply with spares, and replacement parts, certainly showed that, again, this is a means to an end. You can only keep a product so and so long in the field with service measures, and then there is a point where the placement of a new instrument is making an economical sense, and we see that some of our customers are in an accelerating cadence moving towards that path, the trend. Certainly what we see our franchise of complex sample prep, we see that the breakthrough discoveries in genomics and cell therapy are driving a way, way higher demand in sample prep than that used to be the case. If we were talking sample prep 20 years ago, this actually meant pipetting from a donation, a vessel into a microplate.
In the meantime, often the complex sample prep is actually more complex than the full analytical process used to be the case 20 years ago. That's definitely one of the drivers here. Hematology and other routine testing. Certainly, the area sees material pricing pressure and a lot of competition coming out of China. Highly commoditized market. We still see opportunities here and there, but only like in markets where specialization plays a role and where differentiation from the commoditized suppliers are playing a meaningful role. This market, like in the Western world, is almost entirely in the hands of Sysmex and Beckman Coulter. There is a number of smaller players like us, but probably only like five to 10.
The majority of them highly specializing like we do, so like in those area where instruments are put into the big track systems, the players I've named before are playing a role, and only in special markets players like us are playing a role. Certainly immune hematology overall, a market which is not growing that much. There is only a few players, not even a handful of meaningful players. As we have an active cooperation with one of the market leaders, particularly high in throughput, the cost efficiency requirements and workflow optimization is calling for newer instruments and innovations, and that's actually what we do here. Let me hand over to Tanja now. She'll walk us again through the bridge, how we believe that the historical profitability will return in the years to come, and then we would love to answer your questions.
Thanks, Marcus. Despite these market trends that we heard now and our internal launch pipeline, we are introducing also our Business Excellence initiatives. Means, different pricing measures, targeted portfolio optimization, Operational Excellence, and therefore also higher capacity utilization in our location. Those are building up actually the key drivers of our planned margin expansion. When we start on the left side on that chart, you actually see the starting point of the adjusted EBIT margin 2025, 10% in 2025. The next blue bar is showing you our target for 2028, where we want to achieve a margin of at least 13%, and by 2030, at least the 15% on the right side of that chart. How do we will achieve those figures?
Between 2025 and 2028, we expect actually headwinds to gather up around 260 basis points due to exchange rate effects, mainly driven by our US dollar exposure, as well as a less favorable sales mix. We are countering these headwinds with targeted measures with our business excellence initiatives. The commercial initiatives and the portfolio optimization will contribute positive with 100 basis points, and the biggest ticket and lever in that will be the operational excellence and improved capacity utilization. This will deliver roughly 460 basis points. In the period from 2028 to 2030, we anticipate another mixed effect as we expect our system business to grow more strongly than the service parts.
At the same time, we plan additional improvements in pricing and portfolio, as well as further efficiency and economy of scale. Together, this lever will enable us to increase the adjusted EBIT margin to this 15% by 2030 as already mentioned. With that, we would end our today's session, and we would like to hand over back to Sandra to open the Q&A session.
Thank you, madam. 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've entered a 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 who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Michael Heider from Berenberg Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon and welcome. Thank you very much for this presentation and for giving the details on your future sales growth and margin extensions. I have four questions, two are related to the future plans and two other ones. The first one may be on the Diatron write down that you had. Can you maybe be a little bit more specific on the project that you are talking about? Secondly, you're expecting a sharp decline in the Q1 in revenues. Sharp decline, is this something around - 15% or how would you phrase this? On your targets, midterm targets, you also talked about new customer wins or some of these projects.
Can you give a little bit more insight here to what kind of customers are we talking about? Are these are price bracket customers? In what area are they active? And how did you get these new customers? On the margin extension, the main as just explained by Tanja. The main margin extension is coming from the CE and OE excellence programs. Can you also be here a little bit more specific? I mean, if we look at the timeframe 2025 to 2028, if I'm not mistaken, this should mean something like EUR 10 million cost savings or where is this exactly coming from? That's it for the moment. Thanks.
I would start actually with the first question on the Diatron write off. As we have also communicated in our talk announcement, it's actually one product family of the Diatron business that we have needed to impair. It's attributable to not of our, one of our core businesses. It's actually one of the niche businesses where we wanted to enter. It's the veterinary business. This is the project that we're talking about. As we said, this is mainly due to the cost increases that we have faced due to the delay of the project start and the revenue drop that we have seen in the forecast for the upcoming year for this project.
Then Michael, you brought up the Q1. Again, we want to be super careful in trying to comment that we probably saw that Q1 was not one of the best quarters of this industry with the profit warnings we saw, like with bioMérieux, QIAGEN, and others. Again, like, let me try to set the stage. This has absolutely nothing to do with the strong quarters for at least not as far as we are concerned. We did not pull in 2026 Q1 activities into the last quarter in order to meet our goals there. We definitely see that the demands coming from the markets are tremendously shifting to the H2 of the year, and even there towards the last quarter.
We definitely see it in our forecast, in our Everywhere we see that. Q1, and again, it will not be super good. We flagged that already in the ad hoc announcement. I mentioned that before, where we covered Q1 and covered our prelims as well. I think if you would expect a sales in the area where we used to be in Q1 of 2024, this would be a rough guidance as far as top line is concerned. Certainly talking about new customer wins. Allow me, like, you know, I'm typically saying everything in STRATEC has a story.
We have to see that the growth which we foresee to happen between, let me say, 2026 in particular, but then in the quarters thereafter with those platforms I walked you through, this has nothing to do with new customer wins. These were the new customer wins we saw between, to give it a widespread, between 2019 and, say, 2023. What we definitely see these days is that particularly in 2026, that the funnel became thinner and more technological driven. I think like those crises do not make it our customers easier to take decisions. We have to see that over the next instrument platforms will be driven by a higher degree of local for local.
We expect that the Indian market, the Chinese market, the U.S. market will see derivatives as compared to those markets which will be addressed in Europe and the regions of the world. Back in the days, an instrument was developed under, say, a global umbrella and then only in really small areas customized for the local market. We believe that these times are over. At this moment in time, nobody wants to pay the extra cost for the local for local approach, but everybody needs it, and that's actually leading to a certain paralysis in terms of decision-making processes. Our development pipeline, particularly towards market launches, like with software development verification, is super strong. The area where we have to catch up is actually early stage to bring in new development pipelines. We see a lot of opportunities, have more leads than ever.
We have to put this through the funnel in order to make it real development programs. We see huge demands like in proteomics, I mentioned that before. We see a huge demand in like science and gene therapy. We see huge demand and obviously the associated diagnostics with that. What we definitely see is that there is a transfer from the traditional detection methods, more to more optics and high precision optics, and this is where we are really very well-positioned. Your last question was about margin expansion. At this moment in time, we had to set up a plan. We set up a plan in a way that we know which instruments will come to the market. We have already dedicated plans with our customers, particularly for on that pipeline slide.
Those elements on the left-hand side, they are already set on a timescale, so we know when those instruments will come to the market. Margin expansion during that time will not come from product mix. Actually, product mix will provide a certain headwind. Therefore, we have set up margin expansion. Margin expansion here means, and Tanja mentioned that already. It means that we have and are looking into manufacturing depth. It means that we have to look that we are doing the right products at the right side of STRATEC and probably pull in back, development depths and probably outsource the right parts. There is a number of programs ongoing, certainly, supplier management and other areas. There is, you know, this is not just that we set up a plan and set up a goal.
There are actually already concrete measures. Here we have to see that our supplier network is a very robust one, and we have to see that changes to such a supplier network means a lot of work in terms of qualification, in terms of regulatory, in terms of incoming goods, and so on. Certainly we are working in an environment where we have to ensure supply, which means we have a certain lineup of contracts with existing partners, and that's why all those measures will take some time, but they are already lined up. I hope that helps.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one. It seems that there are no further questions. Back over to you, Mr. Keppeler, for any closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you, everyone. This concludes the conference call. If there are any follow-up questions, please do not hesitate to contact us and the entire investor relations team. Thank you and goodbye.
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