Hello, everybody out there. Thanks for tuning in again to the IR Quarterly Wrap-Up by Siemens Healthineers. This week, we have been discussing with the leadership team of the company about next year's budget. Final outcome of this process will be core element of the Q4 reporting in November. Last week was a turbulent week in terms of our share price, but also overall equity market turbulence. Still, under the impression of it, we will try to give the listeners a bit more comfort in terms of the attractiveness of our equity story by summarizing our discussions with investors post-reporting. So like last time, I'm here in beautiful Franconia with Bernd and Jochen, and has been proven custom of the past editions, maybe, Bernd, you kick it off with telling the audience your key points.
Yeah. Thank you, Marc. I mean, first of all, we saw continued positive equipment book-to-bill of 1.07. We were above one in all segments. Year-to-date, we are at more than 1.1. We had solid revenue growth of 4.3% on very tough comps. Yeah, as a reminder, the previous year quarter was 10% growth, and we achieved this despite continued headwinds in China. On a group level, we were able to expand margins by 60 basis points, despite foreign exchange headwinds of around 100 basis points. I was very happy to see Varian and Diagnostics performing very well, yeah, after a previous year, which was not easy for these two businesses. And all in all, we have to concede that in the beginning of the year, we have underestimated the impact of the anti-corruption campaign.
We assumed that this will cost us about 100 basis points of growth on a group level. Now, we will probably see around 250 basis points of impact. But I think on the positive side, it's a strong message that we, despite these headwinds and these bigger headwinds than originally assumed, confirm our outlook in both revenue and EPS.
Thanks, Bernd. So we got asked what our Q4 assumptions in this confirmed outlook now actually assume for China.
Yeah, China. Thanks, Marc, and we expect for Q4 to see a significantly lower decline in Q4 than what we have seen in Q2 and Q3. Bear in mind, Q2, the decline was 14%, and in Q3 it was 13%, yeah? And when we look at Q4, why do we believe it will be much less declining is because it has much weaker comps, yeah. Last year's Q4 was already impacted to a certain extent by the anti-corruption campaign. What does this mean now in absolute terms? When we look at the quarters sequentially, this less decline in Q4 means a sequential improvement in absolute terms in revenue. And we believe this is a fair assessment of the dynamic we see currently in China for the fourth quarter, and this is also what we reflected in the outlook.
Thanks, Jochen. So Bernd, maybe also going a bit beyond pure financials, what are indications on the ground that the decline is actually easing in China?
Yeah. After the anti-corruption campaign dragged out for longer than expected, we now see the dynamic in China stabilizing. Q3 revenue was slightly above Q2 revenue. We saw equipment book-to-bill in China two times in a row above one. Bear in mind that revenue in the denominator is on a low level, but it is a positive sign. And all in all, the anti-corruption campaign is about the behavior. It's about the reaction of our customers to the investigations, and we also see that customers can only hold their breath, so to say, for so long, and that is also why we see the dynamic stabilizing.
In terms of demand coming back, maybe the stimulus also plays a role. What do you actually read into this?
See, the stimulus is, I think, a clear signal of the Chinese government that it sees healthcare and building out the healthcare system as a continued priority, and I think this is a positive overall. We see the stimulus getting prepared in multiple steps, starting with the Tier 1 hospitals. We expect it to impact revenues earliest in the first half of the next fiscal year, though. When talking about the next fiscal year, I think coming from the low levels in this year, there are three reasons to be more optimistic about China. Yeah, so on the one hand, we will see a normalization. Secondly, there is also pent-up demand from this year, and the stimulus is another source for positive momentum.
Bernd, so aside from the anti-corruption campaign, you see the Chinese market intact, right? And what about other markets in the world? We feel comfortable there, too, right?
Yes, and I think the strong book-to-bill we report in this year so far shows, and reported, despite the extraordinary weakness in China, shows that the other 85% of the market are very well intact.
Can we briefly remind people what we said at Q2 with regards to imaging guidance and its, correlation to the China situation? Apparently, this was not 100% clear from us at that point of time. I guess that's one for you, Jochen.
Yeah, I think that's, that's a good point. Yeah, when we discussed the China anti-corruption campaign impact for the entire year, meanwhile, yeah, and, in Q2, in the Q2 discussion, there were a lot of discussions about the impact or potential impact of a lower China revenue share for imaging margins. And therefore, we want to give some comfort on the imaging margin guidance, which we lowered in May with our Q2 results already to the lower half of the margin range, yeah? What we said back then is that, if our growth assumptions would not turn to be real for the second half in China. That means, at that point in time, that if it would just be flat in Q4, which was not the assumption we had back then, yeah?
That we would still expect to see the margin in imaging at the lower end of the margin range. We did not want to imply with it that there was no revenue risk anymore in China, but that the margin risk, if revenue risk would kick in, would be ring-fenced. Yeah. Obviously, we didn't get that message clearly enough across, yeah.
Yeah, thanks for the memory refresher. Next to the China topic, people were trying to assess the situation when it comes to implications for our outlook for 2024 and 2025. Jochen, maybe you could run us through this.
Yeah, most important, we confirmed our group outlook for fiscal year 2024 for revenue growth and adjusted EPS despite China. We did give one qualification on the top line, on the growth outlook, that this will be more at the lower end of the range. In addition, we pointed out for the diagnostics margins, that we assume them now to move towards the upper end of the range. And secondly, we also lowered the tax rate assumptions based on the positive impact we have seen in the first three quarters. In addition, we lowered the growth assumptions for imaging due to China, and just, referring to what Bernd said, the 150 basis points additional decline from China relative to our original assumptions from November 2023, and accordingly, we also pointed to around the lower end of the unchanged margin guidance for imaging.
Yeah, thanks, Jochen. For 2025?
Yeah, I mean, for our fiscal year 2025, obviously, people look at the consensus and the consensus numbers. On adjusted EPS, for 2025, I think we still see decent potential to get into the 12%-15% CAGR as described for the first time at the Capital Markets Day in November 2021, and then also repeated on a regular basis, also in Q4 2023. What is important, and keep that in mind, is that this was always formulated ex antigen, yeah, and at constant portfolio and exchange rates. I think we also confirmed, and can confirm, that we expect good margin dynamic in all segments in fiscal year 2025, and when we specifically look at imaging margins in 2025, we still feel comfortable with around 100 basis points margin expansion, China getting better, being one of the drivers.
But we also see, and that is also very important, a healthy development in the other 85% of revenue-contributing countries in the world, yeah. And let me stress again, this is obviously from today's point of view. We are currently in the midst of our budget discussion here in Forchheim with the teams for next year, and as always, we will give you a well-founded assumption set for our next year's outlook in November with our Q4 results.
Yeah, while already speaking targets, Jochen, we got quite some pushback on our cash performance. Could you run us through your thoughts there?
Yeah, I mean, first of all, in Q3, Imaging, Varian, Advanced Therapies showed a strong cash conversion at 1 or above, and also for the overall company, this was a decent quarter. On a year-to-date basis, we are not where we wanted to be. Fiscal year 2024 is skewed towards the second half and Q4, and that is not ideal for improvements in inventory and contract assets. Yeah, that's why you saw, for example, in Q3, an increase in inventories to be built up for the big revenue line we expect for Q4. This year's mainly improvement is therefore only in accounts receivable, and we saw that very, I would say, very clearly in Q3.
Expect, despite this, expect operating working capital improvements to kick in more in the next fiscal year, and with that, we will also delever to a solid 2x in 2025, and we are pushing here clearly. We have also, meanwhile, defined dedicated projects with clear responsibilities to optimize the operating working capital throughout the whole value chain end to end.
And so speaking of pushing hard, we also pushed hard in our diagnostics segment in terms of the transformation program. So, "Wh- where, where can the margin go?" we were asked.
Yeah, here, first of all, I want to really give kudos to the diagnostics team, which executed so well the first phase of the new margin trajectory, the transformation program, which was very much about taking out, in a one-time effort, costs which were not necessary anymore after the completion of the Atellica portfolio. We will not see the same effects in the future. Yeah, we cannot take out costs, or you can take out costs only once, so to say. We will see from now on, margin expansion more from an evolutionary basis, yeah, by the costs for sustaining the legacy portfolio melting down with the size of the installed base, and we will see a further improvement of the growth dynamic.
So we expect in the next year, a further uptick, but expect us to be rather in the lower half of the guidance range of 8%-12%. But speaking commercial execution and growth dynamic, I'm very, very happy with how the team showed up at ADLM in Chicago with a new and bold campaign, "Do Less," yeah, which is exactly targeting what everybody needs in diagnostics, better productivity, and good answers for the huge staff shortage crisis in this industry.
Yeah, and maybe, it's a bit of curse of success, but, we were then asked if this business is now ready to be sold.
I think it was very, very good that we have been exclusively focusing on the transformation program, and we will continue to focus now on bringing diagnostics to the margin levels it deserves to be at. I think we have said multiple times that we look at Siemens Healthineers as a company with two cores, so to say, where the diagnostics business has less synergies with the other businesses than the other three businesses have with each other. But this is not an unusual situation in the industry, and for the time being, the focus is on the transformation program and on further margin expansion.
Thanks, Bernd. We also got some questions on molecular imaging and its growth prospects. Maybe that's a nice one to round it up for today.
Yeah. Thank you, Marc, and it was fun to put, let's say, another nugget of our portfolio in the limelight in this quarter. Yeah, because molecular imaging really is an exciting business, on the one hand, because of the continued growth in the PET/CT and SPECT/CT business. We have a new exciting product with the Biograph Trinion, which we just launched, which will help us to grow equipment growth in the equipment business and, of course, the service business later. But in addition, this business also contains our PETNET business, yeah, which is the distribution of radiopharmaceuticals, which is growing very steeply, driven by, on the one hand, you know, your new markers, yeah, like for diagnosing Alzheimer disease, but on the other hand, the strong growth in what is called theranostics.
I think this additional nugget here we highlight here is another very, very good example for the attractive procedure growth in our markets, but also how we can drive growth with our own innovations, but also how the world innovates for us and gives us tailwind.
Great. So thanks, Bernd and Jochen, again, yeah. It's been fun. We look forward to seeing you guys on the road in September, very many conferences, and also, of course, invite you to join us for seeing our great products at the ASTRO, and also the RSNA a bit later, in December. I think we have, really, really exciting things to show you there, so maybe reach out to our team, to organize something. And other than that, I hope you have a nice summer break. You can still manage that, and, bye-bye. Stay safe.