Welcome to BioGaia Q4 report 2022. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. I will hand the conference over to the speaker, CEO Isabelle Ducellier. Please go ahead.
Good morning, welcome to our interim management statement, quarter four, 2022. I will as well comment on the all year 2022 prior to the annual report release plan on March 27th. In a nutshell, I will say that we have a strong Q4 with a 33% growth in sales, and one of the best year of BioGaia, at +31% sales increase, which allow us for the first time in our 32 years history to pass the SEK 1 billion mark in turnover.
Despite the global cost increase, we've been able to maintain our EBIT at 33%, even if the Q4 are being a bit lower in EBIT margin as it was last year, and that's mainly due to the fact that it's a very intense activity in term of marketing and sales campaign. The OPEX increase somehow always a bit more in Q4 than the rest of the year. Looking at key events, I just would like to focus on the launches. We have 16 launches during the last quarter of 2022. Worth mentioning the opening of one new country, Botswana, and that is via our South African distributor, Ascendis. Ascendis has been bought by a big pharma group called Austell. We can already see their willingness to extend our reach to Africa.
We start with Botswana, but we do believe there will be new opening in Africa coming with our new distributor. If you look at the product launch, you could see 5 launch of Prodentis, and that is totally online with our focus. We focus on both mother and child and oral health, and we see a lot of our distributor now going into the oral health sphere. Sales per segment. We always say we want to increase the adult and have a kind of 30%, 70%. As the pediatric keep increasing faster, we're still at 80/20. Having said that, it's pretty great news.
We know the uncertainty out there, we are kind of happy to have our drops this year and be dependent on 80% of our turnover on the pediatrics because that's a must-have product for parents who have colicky babies, crisis inflation or whatever. I mean, I don't think that will be very important. They will go anyway to their pharmacy or to Amazon to buy their drops. That kind of protect us to when it's a bit more complicated out there. Having said that, the adult health on the year basis increased still by 30%, that's mainly thanks to Gastrus. Here, I mean, our distributor has been, I mean, trying hard to launch Gastrus. I am thinking about France in more specifically, now it starts to pay back.
Okay, the pediatrics represent 44% increase. If we go to the region, starting with Q4, EMEA, I would say 1 word, it's really recovery after all the trouble we have had during the co-pandemic time. We are at +52% for the year, +51% for the quarter, and that's mainly thanks to South of France and partly to Eastern Europe. Italy in the south end, and that's where we suffered the most during the pandemic, is back big time, and so is France and Spain. Recovery for EMEA. Regarding APAC, I think that's the first time I see a quarter with minus. Doesn't mean that we don't believe in APAC at all because we do believe in APAC.
This year, our two main markets are China and Japan, and these two markets has been really suffering from COVID restrictions. On one hand, if we take Japan, the consumer could not go to the dental clinic, and that's our main sales are oral products. China, people, I mean, were on lockdown at home, so they could not order, and we've been suffering as well. Now with the new relieve of the restriction, we don't see any reason why 23 will not be great again. I mean, we have been used with double-digit all the time in APAC, so that's just a one-off. I have to flag here as well that we had as well a slight delay from Sanico, our Belgium supplier for the blister for Prodentis in Japan, which didn't help.
Now they are in the order book for next year. Fantastic Americas, +57 for the year, +79% for the quarter. Even if you look at the domestic US P&L, Q4 was, and you cannot see there, but I can disclose it, at 11% increase, and for the year, a +5%. Fantastic Americas, and it's mainly due to the US, thanks to the integration of Everidis of our distributor, and as well, Chile, which has always been a big country for us, with the consumer really using probiotics. It's a very mature probiotics market in Latin America. Gross margin per segment, here as well, slightly, if we can call it a decrease, with -1% for the adult, and -1% for the total.
Very high if you compare, I mean, we are at 76% for the quarter and 73% for the year. Now I'm passing over to Alex. We're going to go through the financials.
Yes. Thank you, Isabelle. Just to summarize, our revenues were SEK 274 million, which were growth of 33%, as mentioned by Isabelle. Organic growth was 5%, the EBIT was SEK 71 million versus SEK 53 million one year ago, growth of 34% in line with the growth for the sales. Regarding the margin, we had an EBIT margin of 26% versus 26% the same period last year, earnings per share were SEK 1.38 versus SEK 0.38 one year ago, and strong cash flow at SEK 94 million versus SEK 56 million one year ago. Move over to the sales bridge. As mentioned before, we have a total growth of 33%, which composes of currency growth, currency related growth of 14%, acquisition 15%, and organic growth 5%.
As Isabelle pointed out, our organic growth of 5% is lower than in previous quarters, and that is partly due to the negative effects we have seen in Asia of the COVID restrictions that were actually later lifted. The situation will improve, definitely in Japan and China. Also, we had negative effects of some orders which were moved to the first quarter, compared to the fourth quarter, so some periodization effects. Underlying, we are not worried about the growth or Asia specifically. Moving on to our costs. Our costs were growing with 29%. The whole growth is basically explained by the acquisition Everidis. If you exclude Everidis, our costs only grew 1%.
If you look at the sales cost, you can see that basically all the cost growth is within sales and that is then Everidis. R&D costs are actually declining if you exclude the subsidiary MetaboGen and BioGaia Pharma, and that is due to some effects of clinical studies that where you have certain variations between the quarters. Move to the group P&L. Like we said previously, we had a sales growth of 33%, OPEX growing 29%, and thereby EBIT 34% growth and a margin of 26%. We also have some smaller one-offs in the quarter of approximately SEK 2 million, so the adjusted EBIT margin was 27% versus the reported 26%.
If we move on to the cash flow, like I said before, we had a strong cash flow in the quarter. Cash flow from operating activities increased with 67% to SEK 94 million, basically due to then the improved operating profit and also positive changes in working capital over SEK 6.6 million. That leads to a cash flow for the period of SEK 89 million, versus minus SEK 43 million last year. During last year in the first quarter, we acquired Everidis. That is why you see the cash flow from investing activities in the last period, minus SEK 19 million. That leads to cash at the end of the period, SEK 1.488 billion. We included the balances just for reference. With that, we hand over to Isabelle for concluding remarks.
Thank you, Alex. I will repeat what I said almost in my introduction. A strong Q4, fantastic year 2022. We are passing the SEK 1 billion sector turnover for the first time. It's a very nice milestone for the company that we're going to celebrate. I think that's basically the result of 4 years of implementing our four-pillar strategy. I look at all my presentation I did when I started, I mean, basically the four pillars, omnichannel, brand building, uncompromising science, and efficient product supply, that we've been implementing them from 2019 and now we are seeing the results. We are very satisfied and we will continue with these four pillars. There is more to come, but always on these four strategic direction.
The region EMEA recovery, APAC, that has not been the APAC year, but it's going to be APAC next year, so I'm not worried at all. Americas has been impressive. I mean, 79% for the quarter. That's really I think we can see that we could really leverage on the synergy to have acquire our distributor. I'm very happy to have now Everidis is part of BioGaia Group that will help us as well now with the opening, which is on since January 1st in Canada, where we can here as well leverage some synergies from the to Canada. Here as well, very promising for next year.
Despite this inflation which you work for 23, where now we've got inflation and at the same time economic stagnation, which is kind of unusual economic situation, we are very confident because our main product is a must-have product for consumer. We do think that we see a lot of resiliency, and therefore we will be protected. 75% of our P&L will be protected for next year. Even if the perfect storm will be even worse than planned, we have a good control of our costs. We have a demand which is there and strong, so we can maintain our long-term financial objective of 34% margin. Thank you, and I will be happy to take your question.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Mattias Vadsten from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning, Mattias Vadsten from SEB. I think I will start with three questions. I mean, sales very strong, despite uncertain times as you mentioned, as well as COVID disturbances in China and Japan. Looking at 2023, obviously I think pediatrics, as you say, will remain resilient. Can you comment more on the adult health segment and what you have seen so far there? I mean, and what you expect here going into 2023, some more flavor would be good.
Yes, thank you, Mattias. Indeed, resilience on pediatric, I've already commented that. For the adult, I think Prodentis will not suffer that much because he has well addressed a need. When you have bleeding gums, there is not that many solution out there. Having said that, it's more nice to have than a must-have. You might consider then, well, cool, you don't need to buy product and you bleed a bit and that's nothing serious. Some consumer that might have some difficulty to pay for the bill might postpone the purchase of nice-to-have product to focus on the must-have product. That's why, for 2023 we don't see super big increase on the adult portfolio.
If we take the gut health portfolio with Gastrus, here we've launched massively. We had an extensive scientific tour in Latin America. We can already see the first result of this relaunch. We have two studies ongoing for Gastrus that we do hope will be published in the beginning of 2023. We know here as well that when we got a good result on clinical trial, and we always hope to have it, you never know, but we have great hope for that, then it might as well influence very positively the sales. Having said that, yeah, that will be easier on pediatric to generate higher sales than on adult.
Good. I think that's good flavor. The next one, I mean, contribution from M&A was up quite substantially in Q4 versus earlier in the year. It looks like a clear step up for Everidis. Are there any seasonality here or, you know, should we expect this part to continue to be strong going forward here? Or, yeah, can you give some flavor there on how you see it?
I mean basically the U.S. market domestically, is not as buoyant as it was. We take market share. That's very good news of the U.S. market because we were expecting the global probiotics market to increase faster than it is, and that it will probably in 2023 be. Our sales are increasing faster than competitor, and that's very significant, especially if you look at Amazon, if you look at Walmart.com or Target, our market shares are increasing. Even if it's slightly more expensive to do business in the U.S. than to do business in Europe, I mean, I see U.S. being a, a big contributor to our growth next year.
Perfect. That's good. Then I don't know if you can comment on this, but I will ask you anyways on what the price impact, what that was in Q4 and what you expect from that in 2023. I assume it was a limited price impact here in the fourth quarter, given that you raised off the turn of the year. If you could give any comment on that.
I mean, we are monitoring our cost a lot. We have a lot of focus on cost for 2023. We look at every single part of our costs so that we could decide whether we should have a price increase to consumer or not. We've been passing a pretty big price increase in 2022 that will be fully implemented in January 2023. For the time going up since we have worked, I think thanks to the fact that we have a strong resiliency on the pediatric. We have the possibility to increase again our prices to our distributor, meanings to the consumer in 2023. We have not taken that decision yet because there is no need because we have control over our costs.
If it would be necessary, we will do it in 2023 again.
Okay, very good. I'll jump back to the queue. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Kristofer Liljeberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Good morning. I wonder if you could comment about what you see when it comes to demand from distributors here in early first quarter. As you know, I have been a bit concerned about the potential or risk of distributors having stocked up ahead of the price increases. Have you seen any signs of that?
Yeah. Good morning, Kristofer. When we decided to pass the price increase, that's the first thing we say, "Okay, now we are ready to check on the order book, and we don't want any distributors to stock instead to be able to buy at the old price, obviously." We know exactly who has the tendency to do that. I can assure you that there is no such a situation massively. I mean, a bit in Eastern Europe, where we might have perhaps SEK 10 million out of the whole year on stock up that they should have bought perhaps in 2023 and they bought it in 2022.
It's not massive and there is in nobody's interest to stock a probiotics product because you want to have, I mean, the 18 months on shelf with living bacteria. If not, the pharmacy will not buy you. Our distributor, they can't have, I mean, big stock of, I mean, living bacteria. I don't think we can, I mean, I'm almost sure that we don't have any artificial stock up out there.
Okay. Do you expect... Of course you have the price increase here in Q1, but at the same time it's pretty difficult year-over-year comparison. Do you think is it realistic to assume that you would grow volumes in Q1?
Yes, we will grow volume in Q1. We will grow volume in Q1 and we will grow volume in 2023. I don't think it will have an impact. Now they know the prices. It's almost implemented everywhere. We are running as well price elasticity to be careful to see how the consumer is reacting. We monitor the RSP and we have a, I mean, constant discussion with our partner regarding their as well their margin because they have to live and we have to live. I don't think it will have a. We would have seen the impact of the price increase already if it would have been massive for Q1. I see still Q1 growing.
Okay, that sounds very good. When it comes to new products, you mentioned Prodentis in the US, but I didn't hear you talk at all about Pharax and Prodentis KIDS.
Mm-hmm.
Could you say how those products are going?
Yeah. Thank you. That's a very nice question. Pharax, we launched it in I think five markets under 2022. We had a workshop here at the office actually last week with 15 European markets. We intend to have a full rollout of Pharax in Q1. The, and, we have as well, decided to run a new study, so to build on our data. We are, we're very optimistic for Pharax. I would have thought we could have launched more in 2022 of Pharax in more than country than we've done, but it's coming now. Regarding Prodentis KIDS, here, it's launched in the US, and, according to the CEO of BioGaia USA, that's one of the stronger launch ever there have been they saw.
For the first time we are attending dental congresses, they are sampling massively. The dentist and especially the hygienists, they are extremely interested. For them it's totally new. The consumer, they are not really informed about how can bacteria probiotics have an impact on your oral health. It's always like that. It was the same before we got health. We started to talk to the physicians, then we convince the physician, and then they convince the consumer. With the oral health, we are at the same stage, but like 10 years after, where we have to convince the physician here, in that case, the dentist, that, I mean, your bacteria in your gut could help you in your mouth.
Then they have to pass on the message to the consumer when they go to the dentist. We are in early time of oral health with probiotics, but this area is going to be very big in the year to come, because every time, and that we see all the time, a consumer I mean, is trying Prodentis, then it works so well that, I mean, you secure the consumer for life. That's coming.
When you mentioned or talked about in the slides, about Prodentis in the U.S., that included the kids version as well then.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah. In the U.S.-
Uh-
Yeah, we have, we have three product. We have for the normal adult. We have as well for the pregnant woman. We have for kids.
Okay.
We are looking at as well having perhaps Prodentis for babies as well.
Okay. Given it seems you're very optimistic now about the new products, but I guess you're still dependent on the Colic Drops.
Yeah.
For how long do you how many years do you think it will take until within pediatrics that the drops are less than half of sales?
That I don't know, because basically the whole we've just scratched the surface. Even if it's 80% of our sales, there are plenty of baby out there that don't know that there are colic product for them. The consumer worldwide is not super aware about probiotics still. We have massive job to do in term of education. I don't see the drops product decreasing at all or, so it's difficult to say percentage-wise in five year on, where are we going to be, because I think it's going to continue to grow massively.
Okay. Maybe three very short questions. First, Japan, were there still restrictions, COVID restrictions with dentists in Q4? I wonder if you could give a figure for online sales proportion of total, as you have given before. Finally, what do you expect with operating cost in 2023? That's all for me, thank you very much.
Okay. Japan, I mean, they are starting to release now the COVID restriction. I mean, I see the order book for Japan, it's really back on track. For Japan, for us, the name of the game next year will be to succeed in our omnichannel strategy. To be honest, today, Japan is mainly still the dental clinic. We started the project with Amazon, and the Japanese consumer is looking on Amazon to buy BioGaia, and they buy it from other countries. Now we are building a strong Amazon case for Japan, and our plan is to be able to grow online in Japan on Amazon and on our e-commerce. We have opened a new e-commerce, which is doing much better than what we thought.
That's has to be checked, and the increase are going to come online rather than offline. Coming to the online total on net sales, we've reached 25% of our total sales are online as we speak. It was 28% last quarter. It's 24.5% this quarter. On the all year perspective, it's 25% of our total sales are online. Regarding our operating costs, we keep a constant eyes on costs, and we have reinforced our procurement department to be stronger in our negotiation so that we can have a full visibility of the costs evolution for next year. Therefore, I think we have a pretty good I mean, visibility about the operating costs.
In term of sales and marketing, we've said that we have to be cautious, so we will take it quarter after quarter. We freeze. I mean, nobody is allowed to spend the money of Q2 in Q1. We will see quarter after quarter. Situation is good, okay, you can continue to invest. Situation is bad, yeah, perhaps we should review and, I mean, when it's a bit more of spending. We are going to be pretty cautious and freeze and release quarter per quarter so that we can be online with the outside environment.
Thank you very much. I'm sorry for all questions.
You're welcome.
The next question comes from Mattias Häggblom from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you so much. With strong performance in the U.S. during Q4, can you help me understand the new U.S. sales forecast to 2027 versus the previous one? It seems that prior to FX adjustment, the financial liability has been reduced roughly 80%.
Should we assume the new growth rate for the US is now 80% lower than the previous assumption? How does these elements link together?
Yes. Hello, Mattias. Thank you. No, we will not comment on the exact forecast we have for the U.S. I mean, what we have done is basically reviewed our long-term forecast for the U.S., mainly due to the fact that we have seen a slowdown in the U.S. economy, et cetera, due to the current crisis. We have had to review our forecast that forms the basis for the estimate of that additional purchase amount that we owe. We cannot unfortunately comment in detail on the exact forecast, but we are definitely considering the changed environment in the U.S.
Is there anything else to add, compared to, just, the base, forecast for revenues? Could there also be an impact from higher interest rates or discount rates of the future liability that has influenced, the exact amount?
Yes. It has definitely. You are right about that. Actually we have made in previous quarters some adjustments also due to the increased interest rates. The increased interest rates have of course brought down that liability also. Yes, that's correct.
Can you talk about the magnitude between interest rates and underlying sales forecast? You know, which of them have the largest impact?
The larger impact is from the sales estimate, so to speak, that forms the basis of that calculation. It's not insignificant, the interest amount effect.
Good. On input costs for glass and packaging, I'm sure direct and indirect effects from energy costs and inflationary environment has impacted this. What's your view on how this component will develop and have an impact on your COGS for 2023? You know, do you have a clear view? Have we seen the worst? Is there yet more to come or, you know, what do you hear or what do you see from your suppliers?
Yes. Thank you. That's also a good question. No, we don't have a clear view, and we don't know exactly what will happen, of course. But what we can say is that, I mean, we will continue to see cost increases for our goods, for example, the glass bottles or et cetera. But I think it's too early to tell, but I mean, we do believe that the cost increases will start to decline, so to speak. Going forward, there will continue to be some cost increases, but I think the effect will slow down. How much and when it will hopefully end, that is difficult to know.
We do see, for example, for the first half where we have some visibility for the half, first half of this year, we do see of course cost increases. Like we have done so far, I mean, our ambition is to compensate for this by increasing our the price that we sell our products for to protect our margin. That is the ambition, but it's very difficult to know exactly, you know, when things will normalize, so to speak.
Good. Last question for me, still related to COGS. Could you remind me what portion of your COGS is fixed cost versus flexible cost?
Yes. I mean, the absolute larger part is the variable cost. Then there are of course fixed components also. I would say the absolute larger part is the variable part.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Mattias Vadsten from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Many questions asked now. I have one follow-up. You talked about periodization of some sales from Q4 that slipped into Q1 instead. Previously you've been able to quantify those. Could you do this this time around?
I mean, we can, but I don't... I mean, we've done, we know exactly. I don't think we've disclosed it, and I don't think it's really necessary. It's not written in the report, I don't think we can disclose it now.
Thank you very much. Have a good day.
Yeah, thanks.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Yeah. I would like to thank you all, the attendants for their attention and nice question, looking forward to talk to you soon, for the Q2. Bye-bye. Have a nice day.