BioGaia Q1 report for 2025. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the Q&A session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing #5 on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to CEO Theresa Agnew and CFO Alexander Kotsinas. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Teresa Agnew, CEO of BioGaia, and I'm here with Alexander Kotsinas, our CFO. We are here to report on our Q1 2025 results. For Q1, our sales were SEK 366 million, which was a decrease of 1%, so relatively flat to last year. This was mainly due to lower sales in Asia-Pacific as well as Europe, Middle East, Africa. Specifically in Europe, Middle East, Africa, our sales decreased by 23%, and this was mainly in France, Central Eastern Europe, and South Africa. We did see a nice increase in certain markets such as Italy, where we are returning to growth. In Asia-Pacific, we saw a decrease of 19%, and this was mainly in China, and it was also due to some order fluctuations where we had significant orders in Q4. While the Americas increased significantly by 42%, we saw strong growth in the U.S.
That was fueled by additional marketing investments that we've been doing. We also saw strong growth in Canada as well as in Brazil. Our EBIT was SEK 97 million, which was a decline of 32%, and our EBIT margin was 37%. We did have some launches. What we always like to report is when we launch our products into new markets. You see here a number of launches in Morocco, Nicaragua, Vietnam, China, the United Kingdom, and Hungary. We do have a sub-brand called BioGaia Farax that we are continuing to launch around the world, and China was one of our next markets this quarter. We also had some key events. In January, January 16th, we announced that we were going to be taking our business direct in France.
We did terminate the agreement with our partner in France, and we will see some temporary sales fluctuations due to this, but now we are positioned in France for long-term growth, which we'll talk about as the quarters unfold this year. We also announced in March, on March 20th, that we do have a new anchor shareholder, which is Anatom Holding. Anatom Holding had already acquired shares last year, and they are a Switzerland-based investment firm. They have experience in health and ingredients markets, and we are happy to welcome them as our anchor shareholder. I also want to take this opportunity to thank Peter Rothschild and Anwel and Rothschild Investments.
Peter Rothschild is the founder of our company, has been with our company for 35 years, and we really appreciate everything he has done as the founder, and we are sad to see him go, but we know that his contributions will be remembered forever. We will have more announcements about Peter in the future. In May, actually earlier today, we announced that we are taking our sales direct in the Netherlands. Actually, the Netherlands is one of the European markets that we did not have a business either through a partner or direct distribution. Now we will have direct sales, and we are primarily doing this through online channels, local marketplaces such as Amazon and Bol. More to come on this in the future since we are just starting, but this is an exciting opportunity for us.
A little bit on the sales per segment, our pediatrics segment did decline by 8%, and we saw these decreases mainly in Europe, Middle East, Africa, so it was Eastern Europe, France, as well as Asia-Pacific, mainly in China. In our adult segment, we saw an increase of 26% for the quarter, and this was primarily due to increased sales of Prudentis as well as Gastris. That was mainly in the U.S. and also Protectus tablets, which was mainly in Hong Kong. Currently, our pediatrics represents 74% of our business for Q1. If you look at by region, as I said previously, Europe, Middle East, Africa declined 23%. That was mainly in France, South Africa, Eastern Europe. Our sales were negatively impacted in the quarter with our decision to start selling direct in France.
We do see some fluctuations in sales when we do take a market direct, so that is expected. Sales were positively impacted, though, by a royalty agreement extension that we had as well for Europe, Middle East, Africa. Sales were positively affected, like I said, in Italy, so we are returning to growth in Italy. For Asia-Pacific, as I said previously, our sales decreased by 19%, which was mainly in China, and that was due to some quarterly variations for orders. In the Americas, as I said, we increased by 42%, driven in the U.S., Brazil, and Canada. In both the U.S. and Canada, our sales on Amazon increased significantly, as well as through some of our wholesale channels. Now I'll turn it over to Alex to take you through the specifics on the financials.
Thank you, Teresa. First of all, just to summarize the financials, we had a sales decrease, as we heard, of 1% to SEK 366 million. Our gross profit increased with 1% due to a higher, slightly higher gross margin of 73% versus 72% one year ago. Our earnings before interest and taxes decreased with 32% to SEK 97 million and a margin of 27% in the quarter. In terms of the sales, we had an organic growth of minus 4% and a currency effect of plus 3%, and all in all, the decrease of 1%. If we look at our gross margins, we had gross margins of 73% versus 72% in the same quarter last year, an increase with 1%. In terms of distribution between the segments, pediatrics had a stable gross margin of 75%. However, adult gross margin increased from 57% to 67%.
This increase was mainly due to some mixed effects, geographic mixed effects, but also partly due to a previous price increase that we did. If we look at our operating expenses, they were at SEK 171 million versus SEK 123 million one year ago, an increase of 40%. If we look at the line items for the OPEX, we see that sales and marketing increased with 18%. This is mainly driven by increased costs for our subsidiaries due to the large increases we are having in sales and marketing and the things we are doing there. It is also partly also due to some of the startup costs we have in relation to France, which is not yet generating any sales. Sales and marketing costs were flat or actually down 10% at SEK 23 million. This is mainly due to phasing of our clinical study costs.
We will probably see these costs increase eventually. Administration costs were down 20%. This is mainly due to that we had a one-time cost in the same quarter last year for the litigation and the termination of the distribution agreement in Italy. Excluding that, our costs were sort of flat. We have a big change in what we call other OPEX. This is mainly losses in receivables, exchange rate losses in receivables. We took a cost of SEK 24 million in the quarter versus a gain of SEK 12 million in the same quarter last year. All in all, this leads to an OPEX of SEK 171 million. We do not have any adjustments in the quarter. However, as I mentioned, we did have an adjustment last year due to the distribution agreement litigation in Italy.
If we move on to the profit and loss, just to summarize, sales were SEK 366 million, OPEX SEK 171 million, and an EBIT of SEK 97 million then, a decline of 32%. All in all, this leads to a margin in the quarter of 27% versus 40% in the same quarter last year. However, if you then would exclude the other OPEX line, which is the exchange rate loss on receivables, the margin was 33% in the quarter. That currency effect explains a lot of the decrease in the profitability in the quarter. In terms of the cash flow, the cash flow reflects the lower profits, and we have an operating cash flow of SEK 36 million. We had very low investments in the quarter. This was more due to timing effects. They will increase going forward, obviously.
In the quarter, they were low, and we had a total cash flow in the period of SEK 33 million versus SEK 41 million one year ago, a decrease of 19%. Cash at the end of the period was SEK 1.25 billion versus SEK 1.6 billion one year ago. With that, I hand over to Teresa for some concluding remarks.
As we said, for Q1, our sales declined 1%, so sales were relatively flat versus last year. We anticipate to get back to growth in Q2. Our sales did decrease in Europe, Middle East, Africa. We saw the decline in France due to our termination of the distribution agreement. We also saw a decline in sales in Eastern Europe and South Africa. We also had strong results in Italy, in Finland, and also in Belgium. In Asia-Pacific, we saw a decrease of 19%. That was mainly due to weaker sales in China and also some sales in Japan due to order variability. Just as a reference, the same quarter last year was exceptionally strong. We were comparing to a strong quarter last year. We also had very strong results in Australia, Hong Kong, and Indonesia throughout Asia-Pacific.
In the Americas, as we said, we had excellent performance with growth of 42%. The U.S. and Canada both demonstrated strong growth in sales of pediatric products, as well as higher growth of our adult products. In Latin America, we had double-digit increases with strong development in Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and Colombia. As Alex said, our operating expenses grew by 40%, and our EBIT margin came in at 27% for the quarter. Thank you, and we will open now for any questions.
To ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Mattias Vadsten from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a few today. The first one was if you could talk a little bit more about France, maybe. So any potential to quantify how much it was out of sales in 2024, maybe? You know, were there any sales in France this Q1? Also, if you could speculate a little bit when France could get back to the previous levels. To squeeze in one on Italy as well, just sort of where are we in Italy now versus historical normalized sales levels? That's the first one.
Okay. Thank you for the question. In France, we did see some sales in Q1 for our partner. We are starting to see sales now in Q2, so we're starting to ship product. I would say, you know, we will see more sales coming in in the back half of the year because there are many customers who have stock currently. That would be the expectations on France. We have started shipping product as of now, and we will start to see more sales coming in the back half of the year. In terms of Italy, we feel really good about the rebound that we've had. Our sales are very strong to our partner, as well as our sellout in the market is also very strong. We are gaining market share in the market, winning versus the competition.
That also makes us very hopeful for the future for Italy.
Okay. So was France like 2%-3% of sales in BioGaia 2024, do you believe, or is that a reasonable assumption?
We don't really comment on the exact sales we have in each country, but I mean, France was a substantial part of our EMEA sales. It was one of the larger markets in EMEA previously in the previous year. The sales we had now in the first quarter was very small, actually, very, very small. It was one last order from the previous distributor that we had to fulfill, so to speak. The negative effect is quite substantial in the first quarter.
Thank you. The next one, if you could help us a little bit on, you know, talk a little bit how important the U.S. is out of the group sales currently. There is sort of a general run-through perhaps as to how to look on tariffs for BioGaia. I guess everything you sell is subject to the tariffs as of today, but maybe some commentary there.
Yes. The U.S. sales is very important to us overall. It's one of our largest markets. It's doing extremely well across the various channels, online channels as well as offline channels. We actually recently got distribution in Walmart for our Protectus drops. We got distribution for Prudentis in CVS, which is the largest pharmacy chain in the United States. We're expanding distribution at a current retailer Target, which is a mass market retailer. U.S. is doing very well for us. How we look at the tariffs, we have a current tariff. We're classified in the U.S. as a food. It's a low percentage, a small tariff. We have not seen any tariff increases yet on our business. If we were to have tariffs impact us, as you know, our products are very premium.
Consumers are willing to pay for our products because they have efficacy and safety. We would anticipate that if we were to take a price increase, consumers would be willing to pay. At this point, you know, we do not know what is going to happen with tariffs. We have not seen tariffs yet, but that is our overall outlook.
I agree. Thank you very much. What sort of the last question is really, what makes you confident to get back to organic growth in Q2? Is there any specific reasons here?
I would say some of our order variability that was impacting us for this quarter is one of the factors. I would also say our growth that we're seeing in some of our markets that are important, such as U.S. and Canada. I would say that's the main areas.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Matthias Hegblom from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Matthias Hegblom from Handelsbanken. Thanks so much for taking my question. I have two, please. You spoke about return to growth in Q2. I was wondering if you would be willing to maybe help me understand the magnitude of the growth. Should we think of double-digit or more modest? Related to this, are there any timing of orders in Q2 that we already know of or anticipate that explains the return to growth? Is it more dependent on the underlying growth that you foresee in important markets? I have a follow-up.
Yeah. So we do see orders from our partners. You know, we do know in Q2 that we do have some healthy orders across some of the partners where we had lower orders in this quarter. We do not share specifically numbers, but we do think it will be modest growth overall. We do anticipate, you know, in the back half of the year, we will be continuing to grow in our prioritized markets. Q2, we will get back to growth.
Okay. And then secondly, common incoming investor feedback is how to think about this volatility in between quarters. You know, certain quarters you get overwhelmed by the strong growth, and then you get disappointed. You know, maybe taking a step back, how should I think about 2025 overall when we summarize in February, whatever, 2026, when you report? Will this be perceived as a normal year? Or, you know, how should I think about perhaps not next quarter, but more of a medium term, the year as such?
Yeah. I mean, I would say for overall for the year, we would consider this a normal year. We do have order variability in the quarters. It's the nature of our business because we do have distributor partners that will place large orders in one quarter, and they don't place large orders the next quarter. They are preparing for different events, whether it be when they change packaging across our product line or specific promotional events, such as in China, you know, around, you know, Chinese New Year, things like that. That timing shifts depending on when that is. Also, in China, you have things like Singles' Day because we have a big online business. We do see quite a bit of order variability from our partners due to various things happening in their markets, but also just due to their order patterns.
Some tend to order more in one half and less in the other half. I would look at this overall as a normal year.
Thank you. Final question for me. Very strong growth in the quarter for Americas, up 42% on a reported basis. You single out both U.S., Canada, and Brazil. It seems to be fairly broad-based. If you would have to point to one particular market that helped you reach this growth, which of the three would that be?
Definitely the U.S. The U.S. is performing exceptionally well. We have put additional investment into the U.S., so that is reacting very positively in terms of our marketing investment. The U.S., I would say, is the most important. It's a large market, has a lot of opportunity for increased penetration for us now and into the future.
Perfect. Thanks so much for taking the questions.
The next question comes from Kristopher Liljeberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Four questions. The first one, could we just come back to France? It's not possible for you to just give a sort of figure how much of the negative growth rate comes from the temporary effects in France for EMEA?
No, we would prefer not to quantify that. It is a substantial part of the negative performance in EMEA, but it's not the only one. I mean, we mentioned some other, you know, areas where we would have liked to see a higher or better performance, so to speak. It is a substantial part of it, like I tried to comment.
In EMEA specifically, were there some phasing effects there as well, or was that only in APAC?
There were also some phasing effects. South Africa, there are some phasing effects. We'll see that come back. There's also, I would say, some phasing effects in some of our EvoPharma markets, which is Central Eastern Europe.
Okay. I was wondering about the gross margin for adult health, higher level now for three consecutive quarters. Is that because of the price increase you mentioned or something else?
No, it's mainly, I would say, mixed effects, but it's partly due to the price changes we have made, both historically and last year. It's mainly mixed effects.
I wonder on the strong U.S. sales, if you could say something about how Prudentis is doing there.
Prudentis is doing extremely well, and it continues to do well. It grew high double digits, you know, last year. It continues to grow. We have a lot of effort in this area. We focus on dental professionals, such as dentists and hygienists, as well as consumer marketing in this area. We are really seeing this respond well. A testament to that is also CVS now putting Prudentis in distribution. Because when a large pharmacy chain reaches out and wants a product, you know, they see that it is doing well in a lot of the other channels, like online. That is a really good indicator.
Great. And just finally, the China weakness you mentioned, was that phasing effects or something else?
It was phasing effects. There is a number of things where large orders in Q4, different timing than last year for Chinese New Year, but it was phasing effects.
Great. Thank you.
Question comes from Mattias Vadsten from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hi. I have two follow-ups. One is following up on Kristopher's question on gross margin in adult health. Is this, would you say this is a new sort of normal level that we see the recent, say, three quarters or?
To be honest, it's a bit difficult to say because it depends on the future development of sales, both in terms of which products and which markets. We would hope that, of course. I mean, we have seen a lower margin historically, which, you know, we try to, of course, improve our margins. It's a bit difficult to predict, to be honest.
Thank you. Then one last for me. I guess if you compare and zoom out a little bit, compare the growth profile between pediatrics and adults. Over the, let's say, the past five years, organic CAGR for pediatrics has been 10% and just short of 10% for adults. Let's say, if you look over the next five years, would you expect a similar pattern, or are there any reasons to expect a swing in any direction between them two? I think recently we are impressed by, in particular, the adult segment growth, and that has been very strong. Anything you would want to highlight here?
Yeah. I think we can expect that the adult area will continue to grow disproportionately for us. We are putting more focus in that area, specifically around Prudentis, also some on Gastris, but very much heavier on Prudentis. We have a really unique opportunity with those products where we have a lot of differentiation in the market with our clinical studies and our clinical evidence. I would say that the disproportionate growth of adult will continue. You know, we strive to continue to grow our pediatrics business because when we have this order variability, because the pediatrics business is such a big part of our sales, that's where we see the kind of increases and decreases in the pediatrics business because of that order variability quarter by quarter.
Thank you very much for today.
Question comes from Kristopher Liljeberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yes, one more. Your comment about the tariffs. Just wondering, are you not impacted by this 10% tariff?
We have not been impacted.
We have not been impacted yet.
We have not been impacted yet. There's no, we don't know about the future, but we have not been impacted yet because we actually have shipments that we have sent to the U.S. and picked up recently that have not had a tariff.
Okay. Do you know why that is?
We don't know why. We are classified in the U.S. as a food product.
Okay. Thanks.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial Pound Key 5 on your telephone keypad. No more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you for participating in the call, and thank you for the very good questions. We will be back to speak with you again in Q2. Thank you.