Welcome to this Q&A webcast hosted by BICO. In today's call, we will shine some light on the following topics: information about the leadership change, brief presentation of newly appointed President and CEO, Maria Forss, brief update of the Q2 report and the goodwill impairment. This will be presented to you by BICO's Chairman of the Board, Rolf Classon, President and CEO, Erik Gatenholm, and CFO, Jacob Thordenberg. If you wish to ask questions, just post them to the right in the section named Ask Your Question. By that, I will hand over to Rolf.
Thank you, Isabelle, and thank you for joining us, and welcome to the call this afternoon. My name is Rolf Classon, and I am the non-executive chairman of BICO since the annual meeting in May of this year. Before that, I had very closely followed Erik Gatenholm and BICO for quite some time, and I am, I can tell you that I'm very excited and enthusiastic about joining BICO and the BICO team. I have spent my entire working career in the pharmaceutical and healthcare and life science industry, so I have, as a customer, I have seen the impact that BICO's product had on developing new products and, and new drugs. It's with great, great interest that I joined BICO.
Shortly after I joined, Erik Gatenholm approached me and wanted to discuss different aspects of his working situation, some of it related to healthcare issues in his family. Later on, he also raised the issue with me, if he really had the right profile and background for BICO in the next phase of development. We discussed this back and forth. I raised it with my colleagues on the board, and we concluded after a few sessions and after some discussions, that maybe this was a good time to listen to Erik and to consider a leadership change. By the end of June, we actually started a search, and what we were looking for was someone with a profile, with a stronger commercial, operational profile.
That search, we found a number of candidates, and at the end, Maria Forss, who has been for the last 10, 11 years with Vitrolife. She has been with the company and been part of scaling that company from around SEK 300 million up to where they are today. Maria has been running currently, the single biggest business unit in Vitrolife, the Consumables area, with very impressive growth and performance. She has both the commercial experience, the track record of building a global commercial organization, and she has a leadership style that Erik, myself, and our colleagues on the board thought is the right profile and the right kind of background and experience in the next phase.
As impressed as I was with BICO and with Erik and the company he had put together, and the amazing product line that we have with fresh, differentiated, unique, very innovative products servicing the pharmaceutical and biopharma industry and the academic sector. I was equally impressed by Erik's maturity and how he himself, as a major, as our single largest shareholder, came to the conclusion and raised with us that maybe for the benefit of BICO, its employees and its shareholders, now maybe was the time, in a seamless way, to transition into a new CEO. Maria accepted. We offered her the position late yesterday after a board meeting. We announced that immediately upon that decision. She will start no later than November 27th.
That depends a little bit on discussions with her current, employer, Erik, of course, will be with us as President and CEO until that moment. Once Maria has joined, Erik has also promised that he will continue to dedicate time to BICO and will continue to serve as a senior advisor to Maria and, to the board. It's a situation with a refresh and a strengthening, of a CEO with a different profile, but with all continuity also, with Erik and his vision, for the company now and going forward. With that, I would like to hand over to you, Erik.
Thank you, Rolf. Before I start commenting on the report, I can just add my view on what Rolf just said. I initiated this discussion with the board, and the timing for the new president and CEO for BICO is just right. I'm grateful for the tremendous work the entire team has done over the years, building this company and getting it to the size and level it is today. It's sincerely been an honor serving our customers, investors, shareholders, board of directors, and the team members. Of course, I must also give my greatest appreciation to Rolf. He has been an extremely supportive chairman throughout the process, of course, then in the near term, I will focus on helping the leadership transition here at BICO.
With that being said, to start off, it's pleasing to see that the bioprinting and the Biosciences business areas showed strong sales growth in the quarter of 14% and 21% respectively, compared with corresponding quarters last year, especially given that it's a slower market at the moment.
We're also delivering stable growth margin of 71.4%, excluding effects of inventory write- down of SEK 42 million Swedish crowns. We've also signed an agreement to divest the Berlin facility for EUR 21 million, which will strengthen BICO's financial position, and it's expected to generate a positive cash flow contribution in Q4 2023. As also announced yesterday, we have a one-off non-cash flow item affecting EBIT and EBITDA, resulting in effective EBITDA of SEK 94 million Swedish crowns and an effective EBIT of negative SEK 830 million Swedish crown in Q2.
I'll hand over the word to Jacob.
Thank you. Well, some short comments on, on the one-off non-cash flow items affecting EBIT, EBIT and EBITDA. These items primarily relate to goodwill impairment, where we have resolved an impairment need of SEK 768 million in the quarter. After conducting an impairment test in the quarter, this is predominantly related to increased weighted average cost of capital, which is due to the higher interest rate environment. In addition to that, we have also revised earn-out liabilities, and we have done an evaluation of group earn-out liabilities and concluded that we estimate that some of these liabilities likely will not be paid out. Hence, we have reversed the liability, which has a positive effect on our EBITDA of roughly SEK 161 million.
In addition to that, we have also done additional write-downs in Ginolis, and as we have talked about in previous earnings calls in, in Q4 and Q1, we have been right- sizing Ginolis to a minimum cost base and organizational level, with the ability to still accept new orders and honor service obligations to customers. However, in connection to this done, we have now also, done adjustments to the balance sheet. We have right-sized the organization. This has caused consequences in our balance sheet and, and have now, adjusted the balance sheet accordingly to the, the development in the operations in, in Ginolis. Next slide, please.
With that, we will begin with the Q&A session. I just would like to remind our listeners that if you wish to ask questions, you can post them to the right in the section named Ask Your Question. Let's begin. We have a first question here, which I think is both for Rolf and Erik. Why is Erik leaving right now?
Well, Erik is leaving right now because he himself has come to the conclusion, and the recommendation that BICO, where we are now, would benefit from a CEO with a stronger operational track record and experience, and also a strong and a stronger commercial track record. Maria Forss has already in her current role, she has done exactly the journey that's awaiting BICO in terms of scaling an effective global commercial organization. It's a lot of credit to Erik that he himself was the one who initiated that and came with this recommendation. Erik, I think maybe you also should weigh in on why now?
Of course, I can only echo what, what Rolf says. I truly believe that someone coming in with the right experience, the right toolbox, and the knowledge of how to do this very important transition, is gonna be essential for, for the future of BICO. As mentioned in the past, I am, I'm very excited about the company and its future. I'm, I'm one of its biggest supporters, and I will continue to be in the future. I'm, I'm excited to have Maria come on board.
There was an article yesterday in the Dagens Industri about Erik's compensation, and that he will keep his CEO salary as a senior advisor. Is this correct?
Thank you for that question, and I'm very glad that you raised that. I have seen a headline flying by that claims that Erik will keep his current CEO compensation as a senior advisor. That is not correct. Erik is keeping his current CEO compensation until November 27th, when he is still the president and CEO. We are currently in discussions with Erik on his relationship as a senior advisor, and what compensation that will entail. I would also like to have our incoming CEO, Maria Forss.
Participate in that, because as chairman of the board, it's not really my role to set the compensation for an advisor or senior advisor to the CEO. I want Maria to participate in that. Erik is fine with that. The only thing I can say, I don't want, in principle, want to discuss that, the level of compensation, but it is quite likely, Erik and I has concluded, that it is meaningfully lower than as a CEO compensation. That's the only thing I can comment on that question, but I'm glad that the question was raised.
Moving on to the next question: With a new leadership change at BICO, what should investors expect from this change?
I can start, and then Erik, maybe you can. BICO has an unbelievably strong and differentiated and innovative product line that, that has been acquired over the last, last few years. I think today, that from a commercial point of view, I think we can and should be able to leverage this more and to do more. What you should, one should expect from this is, I think, a strong focus on building up and strengthening the commercial effectiveness of the, of the company. I think also, we are moving into the next phase of operationalizing and industrializing the company. Keep in mind that this company was built fairly quickly, and a number of very significant acquisition has been made that has resulted in the group that we have today.
Of course, it takes work in order to operationalize and industrialize this properly, and to get the full benefit of, benefit of it in the next phase. Erik, I, I think your perspective on this is also important.
Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more. I think that the stage that the company is in today with, again, this very innovative, fresh product portfolio that covers a wide range of segments and application areas, anywhere from tissue printing to sample preparation for a wide range of, of laboratory needs. I believe that really professionalizing the way that we work with our commercial channels, ensuring that we have the right people in the right place, and of course, having the right commercial setup to, to fully take advantage of this great product portfolio, so that we can get it into the hands of our customers.
I think this next question is also for you, Erik. Looking at partnerships, can you comment on anything in your pipeline?
I generally don't comment on pipelines, but I assume that when we refer to partnerships, we refer to our Sartorius partnership, which we're very excited about and extremely thankful to have such a strong partner in the APAC region when it comes to sales and distribution of some of our bioprinting products. I think that from that perspective, I believe things are going in the right direction. We're now training each other. We're getting application support to now start getting the products into the hands of great customers throughout the APAC region. I believe with excitement, we're moving in the right direction.
What risks do you foresee that could impact BICO Group not reaching your goals for 2023? I think this one is for you, Jacob.
First off, we haven't communicated any goals for 2023. We have our financial targets, which is that we are to reach double-digit growth on a midterm basis, so we don't have any goals for 2023. However, any risks I think I mainly see is due to the somewhat post-pandemic decline that we have seen in 2022, and also the macro environment. With that said, we're optimistic about the future.
I think we can continue with one more question here for Jacob. Looking at your sales in Bio automation, you mentioned in the report that ongoing pandemic normalization impacted negatively. When could we expect these sales numbers to increase?
Yeah, that's a good, good question. As I briefly mentioned, that the industry saw not only BICO, but saw a general increased demand in 2021 in relation to COVID. Now, in the second half of 2022, we saw a somewhat of a decrease following COVID, or a post-pandemic decline, and how long that decrease will last, I don't think that anyone will know, knows, but I think we are, as well as the industry, quite confident that we will come back to normal levels. When in time that is, I can't predict, but surely we will see the market demand coming back to more normal levels in Bio automation.
What factors have been driving up the strong sales growth in the business areas, bioprinting and biosciences? Is this something for you, Erik, to answer?
Yeah, gladly. I believe we're quite satisfied with the sales growth levels in both the business areas. They've performed quite nicely. When it comes to the growth levels and the customer segments, I believe that the academic customer segment continues to be quite strong, given the continued funding in exciting areas such as bioprinting, tissue engineering, biomaterials science. In addition, for the biosciences, there is strong demand coming from larger pharmaceutical companies. From last year, we've done a quite conscious decision to target more of the pharmaceutical segments as well as the academic segments, which I believe is now bearing fruits.
Yesterday, BICO released two major events within 10 minutes of time. Why did you do this?
Well, that is probably not the school book example of a good communication plan, and that's not, that's not what you would normally do. However, these were two very parallel work streams. The, the work stream where Erik Gatenholm and I had the dialogue that ended up with us announcing yesterday the appointment of Maria Forss, was completely independent from the other work stream that was triggered by the closing of Q2. The audit committee went through, together with Jacob Thordenberg and our auditors and financial advisors, an impairment test that is, one is obligated to do. All of this came together. We had a full, long day board meeting yesterday, and at the end of that, we, the board, decided to appoint Maria Forss, and shortly thereafter, the audit committee also recommended the impairment and the write-downs.
That made it mandatory and necessary for us to announce this. Not ideal, not what you normally would like to do, but, but those two events, independently of each other, were completed basically at the same moment. That's why it happened that way. Not ideal, but now it's out.
We have a question here about Maria Forss. When will she be joining BICO?
Well, we don't know, other than the latest she will join will be on the Monday, November 27th. It depends on discussions with, with her and her current employer and her current employment agreement. Sometimes, between now and November 27th, but no later than November 27th. I can't give a more precise answer today.
I think we're up for the last question for today that we have received, and it's about the write-downs. Can we expect more write-downs going forward? Jacob?
Yeah. We are required, according to IFRS, to conduct an impairment test on a quarterly basis if we believe that such need exists. However, how that will look in, in future quarters, I cannot say now. We have, done an impairment test for Q2 and resolved in a, write-down the as per Q2, 2023.
As I just stated, sorry, continue, Jacob.
How, how things will look for coming, coming future quarters, I, I cannot comment on that.
Thank you. As I just said, this was the last question for today. We would like to thank you for your question and for listening in. Wishing you all a great Tuesday. Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.