Then the courier is taking up the sample. The sample is shipped to one of our laboratories, and then it's processed, tested, and kept for possible treatment in the future. That market is very different in Europe overall. You cannot say about the European market. You can see here, we say about so-called penetration, yes. This is the amount of percent of families buying that kind of service. You can see countries with relatively high penetration. 5% is Portugal, Hungary, Romania, and we have countries with relative low penetration or something in the middle. Germany is below 1%, right? Why is it so? There are several reasons. First of all, it's a behavior of the society. Yes, I mean, the importance of the family, the way the families are taking decisions, medical environment, awareness of the service, the way you can conduct marketing or sales activities.
There are some countries where it is much easier, some with limitations, and also scientific and medical background of the given country. Yes, in some countries, stem cell therapies are simply much more popular than the others. On average, Europe is around 2%. Comparing to the U.S., which is 3%- 4%, this is still a place to grow. Selected Asian countries have more than 10%. It's Korea, for example, or Taiwan. I mentioned about certain issues in Europe, and it's difficult for Europe, not only for our industry. I mean, we are over-regulated, yes. We spent, for example, supporting one family seven years at the courts in Spain. After the final ruling of the Supreme Court, we can collect the cord blood in all territory of Spain. Before, it was not possible. We have still places we can simply improve the penetration.
One of the key countries we believe in is Germany. There are certain things we cannot really influence. Yes, the number of newborns in Europe is going down and will continue going down. That's an issue of all developed countries. Should we take care of that? No, not really, because we cannot change it. We should just find countermeasures to prevent that topic to influence us too much negatively. Yes, COVID 2020, it happened. Can we change it? No. Obviously, there are consequences. We had limitations in access to hospitals, but it's gone. COVID is there, but it's part of the daily routine and it's not influencing us anymore. That hit us at the time, and that took us, you know, two years to recover. Our former European competitor bankrupted, which really hit trust to the industry.
You know, if you store material for 20 years, you expect it's like in the bank, yes, it is safe. Our competitor bankrupted, but we protected the samples belonging to 300,000 families, yes, from 50 countries in Europe and Asia. That was 2019. The trust is already rebuilding. These are things we cannot really change. You can name them black swans, yes, but we are not really focusing on them at the moment. Russian war in Ukraine, yes, we cannot change it. Obviously, that triggered issues in several European economies. On the other side, yes, I think that we can improve our results, and Thomas will now comment shortly on interesting things.
Yes, continue, gerne. [Foreign Language]
I mentioned before about, you saw them up, but it's more about where we can grow. At the moment, what we can see is really a strong recovery in Eastern Europe, understood as Poland, Hungary, Romania, and we believe also, and this is why we conducted that acquisition in Slovakia and Czech Republic, that the growth also will be there. We see, let's say, a mixed picture in Central Europe. We are facing issues in Germany. South of Europe depends, again, I mean, we have countries doing pretty well and countries which are underperforming. Spain is doing pretty well overall. Portugal is not doing that well. It's a mixed picture. Overall, ultimately, I believe that we are able to grow this, let's say, penetration ratio further.
At the moment, if you look at our historical numbers, we are rather increasing market share than being able to grow penetration, with some exceptions. Exception is Poland for sure. We face similar problems like in Germany. After all these black swans, we dropped sales 40%, actually. We recovered already half of that. This year, growth in Poland in terms of new units is more than 20% year- over- year. I think it's really good. We only believe that if the economy gets more stabilized, we will have really a path to grow. We have a new member of our board. She joined us one and a half years ago. We established a position of Medical Director, which altogether should simply bring us to better numbers.
We are simply trying to take our best from the countries we are really doing well to the countries we are not really happy with the results yet. Competition is something which you are actually lacking because we understand that competition is helping. It's a paradox. We have monopoly in Germany, monopoly. In Poland, we have 90% of market share. On average, we have roughly 70% of market share. This is a problem because this is so niche service that if there are less companies marketing it, there is smaller awareness. This is a niche product. We will never reach 50% of penetration of the service. We see why Romania, you know that Romania is the largest market in Europe, not percentage-wise, in number of collected samples. Why? Because there are 11 companies. Banking is trendy. There are private networks of hospitals having own cord blood banks.
It is simply pumping up the interest. Competition helps. If you have a company which has no competitors, ask also a question, especially in the consumer market. I think in B2B it's different. Yes, in the consumer market, competition helps in growing the awareness. We see, if you compare what it was in 2022, and we can really, 2022 was a very, very bad year. We started a slow recovery in H2 2023, and we continue 2024, and 2025 is looking good. Perspectives are looking pretty good as well. We continue with, we confirm our outlook after the first half of the year is published today in the morning. We've been in talks with the Czech and Slovakian companies at the time.
This is one of the reasons we had these guidelines pretty broad, that we rather assumed we will be in the upper range because we knew that that acquisition will sooner or later happen. As we are not in H1, we did not consolidate results of Czech Republic and Slovakia at all, because it will do it since H2. Summarizing, we continue improving our results. We're already back in the 10th quarter in a row. Some markets are really doing pretty well. Placenta will help us. Maybe that was not told. Placenta is recognized in many countries as a source of life. Why cord blood is, what is cord blood? Nobody knows, but everybody knows what is placenta. We can see that it's more naturally accepted by doctors, midwives, also parents. Why it was not before? Because of the science.
The development of therapies, experimental therapies from stem cells, from placenta is after cord blood and after cord tissue. Ten years ago, we got the first license for placenta banking in Poland. Our sales team rejected to sell it because there was not enough evidence it makes sense. It's strange. Sales team, they always like new things. No. Now we have enough science behind, so we decided to roll it out. We can see positive outcomes in several countries. We continue investments, particularly in sales and marketing in Germany and Poland because these are the two biggest countries in our group. We like simply to grow them because the gain is the biggest there. I think that's...
That's it.
That's it. Thank you. If you have any questions, yes.
Thank you, Thomas. Yes, we're open for questions. I would start with the first one. I think it's for you, Thomas. If we look at the guidance, you're already halfway there, and you just said you will be consolidating some additional EBITDA in the second half. Is there anything we have to factor in for the second half of the year, or is it a very conservative outlook, judging from today? I would rather say it's a realistic one. We are comfortable to achieve our guidance. Yeah.
I mean, we corrected guidelines in our history up.
Yes.
I think it's better to stay on this. Today the economic environment is fragile. Everything may happen. We believe it's better to rather be more on the safe side and correct it up rather than correcting down.
Maybe a quick follow-up. In your report today, you mentioned that you will be focusing more on the core and that the EBITDA is of the continued operations.
Right.
What is the figure for the discontinued operations? Maybe you can just shed a bit more light on that topic. Yeah, what that sort of means.
What I can say. We had, or we have the company, which is called FamiCord Therapeutics, which was established in 2020 with the aim of development of, let's say, CAR-T product, own CAR-T product. At the time, completely different times, we had money for new investments. Also, CAR-T was a very hot topic. It's still a hot topic. We realized after five years that actually we are too small probably to develop that product by ourselves. That will cost us too much. You invest in new things to get return in a reasonable period of time. After, you know, let's say verification of a couple of years, we got to the conclusion it's simply too risky. We have good results. We started a clinical trial. Patients were there and they were cured with our CAR-T. Simply, we'll go further. We'll need money.
At the same time, as I said before, we should focus on core business because we see better returns and faster returns in terms of money. How much? We've been burning between EUR 1 million- EUR 2 million per year in this company. Not that much for a biotech project. The reason is that we got a grant from the National Agency of Medicine in Poland of EUR 10 million for roughly 50% reimbursement ratio. We are burning more, but that was compensated by that grant. That grant is still there. You may say that we are improving our results by between EUR 1 million- EUR 2 million if you compare to the last three, four years, depending on the year of comparison. The company will continue. Minority shareholders declared that they will support it. Yes, they will raise capital likely in Q4.
We will drop with our shareholding, but not to zero, but below 20%. We will continue simply as a, you may name it, a financial investor.
Thank you very much for the presentation. I wanted to understand better, is there anything which could drive the demand for putting blood or placenta or any other biological means into a database beyond the current levels? Looking at the scale, right, the more you scale, the more viable your business model will become. What is your vision for demand going forward five years plus?
I mean, as I mentioned, we have two changes in the Board, right? First of all, we established the position of Chief Medical Officer, right? Thomas, who used to lead commercial parties, is now in that place. He's a medical doctor. The reason we established that is not artificial. We have to trigger more therapies in Europe. We are not talking about, let's say, full-scale clinical trials, which require billions actually or hundreds of millions to get the registered drug with the chance of 5%. It will be simply successful. We found out that the major issue we have in terms of, particularly in Germany, is that if the family is aware of the service, it's asking friends, fellows, doctors, and midwives. Who is the doctor they ask? Gynecologists. There are almost no applications of stem cells in gynecology.
Gynecologists are referring to those other doctors who may say a word, hematologist, transplantologist, neurologist. Here in Germany, particularly, is very limited use of stem cells besides the use of bone marrow. Bone marrow, peripheral blood is used, but nobody thinks these are stem cells. These are stem cells, but you say bone marrow. We realized that there are plenty of doctors in several countries interested in doing something, but they don't know how to do it. At the same time, there is an enormous amount of money in grants from the European Union available also in Germany and in other countries. They don't have time to prepare these grants. We like to replicate what we did in Poland, that we are helping the doctors. We write the grant, yes, 80% of the content, and then hospital or university asks for money.
The chance of getting is 20%, 30% is high. If you request, I don't know, 10 grants asking for EUR 150 million, the hospital will get out of that something, yes, statistically. These doctors are starting using stem cells in treatment. Awareness is built. That will take time. In Poland, when we have now opponents saying, oh, stem cells are gone, that was a story 20 years ago, we have allies. Sorry, I'm a professor. I'm using stem cells in my clinic. Don't tell me. Maybe you are not using. We don't have it in Germany. We like to have it here in the UK and Spain because these are the countries. The UK is the most developed biotech market in Europe, right? Spain is also in biology. It's really very well. Challenging therapies. They are very well developed. We need to build it up.
Then, indirectly, we will influence the demand for banking because I can tell you that from our client's perspective, it does not matter whether this is cord blood, cord tissue, cell, placenta. Stem cells should treat people today, not scientifically, yes, not papers. We believe that will bring results, but that will take time. We need to change the attitude. If you compare to what's going on in Taiwan and Korea, it's completely different, yes.
One question. Could you explain how public banking compares to your penetration rate?
Very well. First of all, we are also running public bank, yes, in some countries, yes, that we are accepting donations. These samples are registered in the global registry. There is no competition between public and private banks. Why? I mean, if someone is like, OK, you are using public transport, but at the same time, people are using cars. You can do it if you can afford it. The difference between public and private bank is obviously that if you donate the sample, you lose it forever because you cannot take out the donation. It might be that you need your sample, but it's not available anymore because someone else took it. The problem of public banks is they lost financing because health care systems now in the world are under big pressure. The new therapies are more and more expensive.
Also, the medical doctors and medical staff are requiring more money and so on. There are restrictions in, let's say, funding of public banks. Also, the way public banks are, we should understand how the procedure of use of stem cells is constructed in most of European countries. If you need stem cells for a routine therapy today, there is a price the health care insurance system is paying to the hospital. There is a fixed budget, let's say EUR 150,000. All the procedure, everything. Public bank, when it releases the sample, charges the hospital between EUR 25,000- EUR 50,000 per sample. The hospital prefers bone marrow or peripheral blood because the price is EUR 5,000 or EUR 6,000. It's not using the sample from public bank because they have samples available from living donors. This is the problem why public banks are suffering. Why they are charging EUR 25,000- EUR 50,000?
Because they are too small to offer this cord blood for a lower price. You need the scale. If you take the blood from a private bank, you pay nothing because it was paid by the parents. There are pluses and minuses in both. I think that actually everybody should bank, even publicly. There is obviously no money because the system does not have money for that. There is a lot of discussion. There are a lot of discussions how to improve the entire system, but there is no easy answer. I mean, there was a trial in Qatar. They wanted to collect from all the patients to keep it. They resigned because of economic reasons. I don't see competition, yes, honestly speaking. Public banks are not happy with private banks. Why? Because when a public bank is collecting the samples, they are throwing away 80% of the samples. Why?
Because they like to have the best samples. Why do they like to have the best samples? You think that this is for the patient? No. This is because they have a high chance to sell that. If the sample is too small, the other public bank, we offered it at better quality. They are destroying good samples to be able to sell. They are competing against each other. There are two winners, Barcelona Stem Cell Bank and Anthony Nolan from the UK. They are massively best in Europe, yes, because they reached the scale. In Germany, public banks are gone. They don't have money. The largest in Düsseldorf, no more collections. José Carreras, no more collections, yes, money. Brutal true, yes.
I have a question about the electricity costs in your business. I think it's one of the main portions or main cost drivers. As we have the situation in Europe that the electricity prices are still at a high level in comparison to the pre-crisis level, what would you say is the percentage in your average product? That's the first question. The second question is, are you allowed to transfer placenta or stem cell samples from one to the other country?
Second question is easier. With the exception of Germany, it's pretty easy. I mean, in some countries, although there's a freedom of flow of goods, you need a permit within the European Union. To obtain that permit is rather easy. We have examples even with Switzerland, which is not the European Union. Overall, after a certain bureaucracy, you can easily transport samples across European countries. Germany is different. In practice, it's very difficult to operate in Germany, for example, with outside laboratory. There is no one doing that, actually. This is a barrier we think is in our favor because if you like to get to Germany, in fact, you have to invest in Germany to establish an entire structure in here, which is good for us as a monopolist, obviously.
From a practical point of view, obviously, it is not helping because sometimes we may be considering to have too many laboratories. It does not matter whether it's placenta, cord blood, or cord tissue. Here, regulations are more the same, with the exception of Germany, which is much more strict. Regarding costs, there are two things. I will first start with the prices for the clients. We have a completely different price structure depending on the country, yes, because we are simply selling at the price which should be affordable for the society. Obviously, if there is more competition, competition is also setting the prices. Then obviously, it's a cost question. What happened with the cost over the last five years? One thing which definitely is challenging for us is growing demand for salary increases. The cost of people, in our case, is important. We are a services business.
We have pressure for salaries, particularly in Eastern economies, because average salaries are growing 7%, 8% per year. We are not fully able to compensate the growth of salaries with the growth of our services. We are growing the prices of our services, but not in line with the growth of our personal costs. Fortunately, administrative costs are rather fixed. The cost of goods are, yeah, more or less in line with inflation. I don't know whether I answered the question fully.
Electricity. Maybe we can follow up on that.
No, electricity is not a problem. It's a minor cost.
Minor cost.
Electricity is...
Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Jakob. The next presentation here will be Nynomic. Thank you very much.
Thank you.