Hello, and welcome to the Getinge AB Audiocast with Teleconference Q4 Results 2021. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded. Today, I am pleased to present Mattias Perjos, CEO, and Lars Sandström, CFO. Please go ahead with your lead, please.
Thank you very much, and welcome everyone to today's earnings call. Lars and I look forward to taking you through the last quarter of 2021. In order to do that, we can move directly to page number two, please. Let's begin with the key takeaways in regards to performance for the quarter. As expected, the net sales declined year-on-year, as we had a strong deliveries of ICU ventilators in the Q4 of 2020. Basically everything else in our business is growing. I also wanna take the opportunity to send a big thanks to all my colleagues, and especially the ones who work in supply chain for a job really well done throughout 2021, and especially in a very hectic Q4.
We've managed to live up to customer expectations and really made sure our life-saving products were delivered on time in service of the patients. From an order intake perspective, we saw a 6.4% organic increase with growth in all business areas and all regions. Adjusted for currency, our order book is actually more than 20% larger today than one year ago, which is, of course, very nice momentum going into 2022. The improvements in the business continued to have an impact in higher gross profit and EBITDA margins and also strong cash flow, which means that we strengthen our already solid financial position, and we continue to have room to make selective acquisitions and at the same time increase our dividend by one-third to SEK 4 per share.
We can move over to page number three, please. We take a step back then and look at some of the key activities and other events in the quarter. In terms of our offerings, at the end of December, we announced the acquisition of Talis Clinical LLC, a US-based leading innovator of cloud-based software solutions for emergency medical care. Talis Clinical's offering is designed to support and document care throughout the perioperative care process, but we also have a presence in obstetric care, intensive care, and in ECMO therapy.
This will be a great complement to the offering that we already have, especially in Acute Care Therapies, and we look forward to working closely with our customers and continue to expand this business, even if the starting point means that it's not expected to have a material impact on the group's sales and EBITDA in 2022. On the topic of acquisitions, after the end of the quarter, we made a minor acquisition of Irasun GmbH, which is based in Munich. Through this acquisition, we broaden our portfolio with the innovative solutions for ECMO, for surgical perfusion, and cardiovascular healthcare overall. This acquisition has also not been expected to have a material impact on the group's sales and EBITDA in 2022. It's more for the longer term.
Also very happy to announce that we have two new business area presidents starting first of April, and they will join the Getinge executive team. It is Elin Frostehav and Eric Honroth, and both of them will take office 1st of April this year. Elin has been appointed the President, Acute Care Therapies, and she currently works as Vice President of Critical Care, which is part of the Acute Care Therapies business area in Getinge. She's been driving, among other things, a successful ramp-up of ventilators during the pandemic, and I'm very happy to welcome her to the executive team. Elin succeeds Jens Viebke, who will, from first of April, be responsible for our research programs and M&A activities going forward. He will continue to report directly to me.
As you already know, these are really key areas for us, and I'm confident that Jens will do a really great job there, just as he has done already with the Acute Care Therapies. Eric Honroth then has been appointed the President, Life Science. Eric is currently president of North America region for Getinge, and he's been with our company since 2018. Before that, he has a combined experience of about 20 years in different global leadership roles in the medical device industry. Eric's ability to create customer value has served him well in previous positions, and I'm sure it will continue to serve him well in this role as well. This is really a business development and expansion journey that we're on in Life Science.
Eric succeeds Harald Castler, who after a long and successful career at Getinge has decided to retire. I could use the whole conference call talking about the achievements of Harald in terms of what he's done with Life Science. I guess in terms of numbers, it's already quite obvious for everyone. A big thank you to Harald. We have completed the capacity increase in regards to beta bags. Harald and the team in Life Science have been working hard during 2021 to expand the production capacity of DPTE beta bags by establishing production in Merrimack in the US to meet the increasing demand that we continue to see in sterile transfer.
I'm very happy to say that in December, the new production line in Merrimack, it was in operation, and deliveries, commercial deliveries will begin now in the Q1 of 2022, and we expect volumes to gradually increase during the year. I also want to comment on the MDL mesh litigation settlement. During the Q4, we entered into the previously communicated MDL litigation settlement agreement regarding surgical mesh implants, which enables us to now focus all our efforts more on future improvements of our business. Consequently, we have made a concluding provision of SEK 600 million to cover the cost of the settlement, and this is reported as an item affecting comparability in Q4. Payments are expected to be made during the first half of 2022.
The litigation against the insurers that we have initiated will continue in order for us to receive the compensation to which we believe we are entitled. I also wanna highlight the milestone agreement in the quarter. During Q4, we signed an agreement with HealthTrust in the US, a leading GPO, for its portfolio of sterile goods handling and operating room products in Surgical Workflows. This agreement, it's really the result of focused efforts over a long period of time by the GPO team in the US and several other colleagues around the world. It's expected to provide a solid platform for long-term growth in the North America region for us. We can then move over to page number four, please.
If we look at the order growth in Q4, we had an increase organically of 6.4% in the quarter. From a net sales perspective, we had a 9.6% organic decrease. As I mentioned previously, the positive order growth momentum from previous quarter continued in Q4, with growth in all regions and business areas taking us to the 6.4% organic number. This is due to a combination of comeback effects outside of the Critical Care space and a new and higher normal level for ECMO therapy and products for development and production of biopharmaceutical drugs.
From a regional perspective, EMEA and APAC order intake is growing strongly as a result of good performance in all business areas, while Americas growth was not as high as a result of tough comps for ventilators in late 2020. As I mentioned, net sales decreased really as expected due to the challenging comps that we had from Q4 2020. However, the organization delivered really strong growth in APAC and especially in East Asia. We can move over to page five, please. Based on what I just said here, we have the following outlook for 2022, saying that the organic net sales growth is expected to be at the upper end of the 4%-6% range for the full year.
We can continue then to page number six, please, and look at the top-line momentum of the group. Order intake amounted to SEK 7,629 million in the quarter. In Acute Care Therapies, we had a 4.4% organic increase. Order intake remained strong in ECMO therapy products. Growth in order intake for ventilators was negative, but recovered a little bit towards the end of the quarter as a result of the new pandemic wave. But if we adjust for orders in Critical Care, where you find the ventilators, order growth was actually in the high single digits for Acute Care Therapies overall. When it comes to products for planned cardiovascular intervention, this increased in the quarter as well, despite the ongoing pandemic. That's also good.
When it comes to Life Science, we had a 7% organic order intake increase in the quarter. We saw a very strong organic order growth in sterilizers. While sterile transfers and bioreactors did not fully reach last year's record-breaking order intake in Q4, the order book going into 2022 is much larger today compared with one year ago. We also saw significant growth in the US and large parts of Europe, while challenging comps in China had a negative impact on order growth in APAC when it comes to Life Science. If we look at Surgical Workflows, we had a 9.5% organic growth in the quarter. Or organic order growth in all categories and regions.
The order book was, in Surgical Workflows, more than 30% larger at the end of the quarter compared with the same period one year ago. Order intake was particularly strong when it comes to digital solutions and products for operating rooms. We can then move over to page number seven, please. Net sales amounted to SEK 7,987 million in the quarter. In Acute Care Therapies, we saw a 22.1% organic decline, as expected. The decrease in sales in Acute Care Therapies is mainly due to the challenging comps in ventilators that I've already addressed. If we adjust for this, the net sales is actually up more than 10% organically in ACT. We have continued strong growth in ECMO therapy products.
Cardiovascular intervention products continue to grow organically compared to 2020, but we still see that it's being negatively affected by the ongoing pandemic. When it comes to Life Science, we had 29.1% organic growth in the quarter. Organic growth in net sales continued to be really strong across the Life Science product portfolio as a whole. Bioreactors developed most strongly in the quarter, growing more than 70%. Net sales also increased in a healthy way when it comes to service and spare parts, which I believe is a good sign from an overall business perspective and also in terms of access to customers despite restrictions imposed by the pandemic. We saw growth in all regions in Life Science with particularly good development in Asia-Pacific.
In Surgical Workflows, we had a 4% organic increase. Net sales here increased despite the challenges linked to the pandemic and the ability of hospitals to receive deliveries. That's really good. Operating room products developed the strongest with an organic growth of over 6%. We can also see that the organization's focus on the customer offering a service and consumables continues to contribute positively. When it comes to currency, there was a minus SEK 7 million effect. There was 0.1% negative impact on net sales for the group in the quarter. We can then move over to page number eight, please.
If we look at the margin development then, we can see that the adjusted gross profits in the quarter decreased by SEK 406 million- SEK 4.15 billion in the quarter, where a positive FX effect accounted for SEK 35 million. For the group as a whole, the gross margin improved despite the lower volumes compared to Q4 2020, mostly thanks to higher factory absorption and the overall productivity improvements that we've talked about for several years now. They're clearly generating strong benefits for us. When it comes to Acute Care Therapies, the gross margin improved by 1.4 percentage points despite the lower volumes. Here we had strong absorption in production combined with a favorable business area mix, contributing to the improvement.
For Life Science, the adjusted gross margin decreased by 0.2 percentage points as a result of mix effects. As you already know, we have significant customer demand when it comes to our high margin DPTE-BetaBag. We do run the factory in France at 100% capacity, making it a little bit hard to increase the output that much in the short term. This will be taken care of going forward through the new production line in Merrimack, where we expect to ramp up gradually the output throughout the year. In Surgical Workflows, the adjusted gross margin increased by 4 percentage points as a result of higher volumes, a good contribution from increased productivity, and also a favorable mix inside the business area. With that, we move over to page 10, and I hand over to you, Lars.
Thank you, Mattias. The adjusted EBITDA decreased by SEK 94 million compared to the same period last year, while the margin increased by one percentage point to 21.6%, more than offsetting the impacts on the lower sales of about 10%. Adjusted for currency, gross profit had a zero point negative impact of 0.1 percentage point on the margin there and due to the lower volume and very different BA mix compared to last year. As mentioned by Mattias, both ACT and SW had improved EBITDA margins in the quarter. OPEX is down SEK 237 million year-on-year, but this positive development could only partly offset the negative volume effect on the margin year-on-year. The OPEX contribution to the margin is consequently minus 1.3 percentage points.
As you can see, we continue to have lower levels of depreciation and amortization due to assets rolling off the balance sheet. Consequently, D&A adjusted for FX is impacting the margin by +0.3%. Currency had a positive impact of 2.1 percentage point on the margin, mainly due to revaluation of operating receivables and liabilities in foreign currency. This is affecting other OPEX by +SEK 125 million year-over-year, mainly due to negative devaluation last year, with a negative impact of -SEK 112 million in that quarter. The impact in the P&L this quarter was actually +SEK 13 million.
As you know, we stay away from guiding on future FX impact, but we can say this, if the closing rate in December would stay on throughout 2022, we would have a support of around two to three percentage points on net sales compared to the average rates in 2021, given the year mix we expect. All in all, this resulted in adjusted EBITDA of SEK 1,723 million, and the margin increased to one percentage point. Over to page 11, please. Free cash flow continues to be strong, even if you don't reach last year's level that was impacted by the high level of operating profit and prepayment.
This year, working capital had more of a normal seasonal pattern with increased receivables after high year-end deliveries, not fully offset by reduced inventories. All in all, the free cash flow amounted to SEK 1.3 billion in the quarter. This is a result of a healthy operating profit in combination with continued good focus on working capital. Working capital days continues to be well below 100, and we are now at 88.2 days, down more than 40 days from the peak in Q2 2018. We also see a continued strong operating return on invested capital, where we are at 19.4 on a rolling twelve-month basis. We expect to reverse the trend, the long-term trend on this, but net sales have started to move more into normal territory. Just move to page 12, please. Getinge.
was positively impacted by the free cash flow, down to SEK 3.6 billion. This was after the payment made regarding the acquisition of Talis Clinical in Q4. If we adjust for pension liabilities, we are at SEK 0.2 billion. This brings us to a leverage of 0.55x EBITDA. If we adjust for pension liabilities, the leverage is 0x EBITDA at most. Cash amounted to approximately SEK 4.1 billion at the end of the quarter. Let's move to page 14 and overview, Mattias.
Yeah. Thank you, Lars. I will just briefly summarize the key takeaways for the Q4 before we move to Q&A. We have a very good activity level and progress on strategy implementation resulting in high customer satisfaction, healthy organic growth in all business areas and regions, which makes us expect organic net sales growth to be in the upper part of the 4%-6% guidance range that we have issued when it comes to 2022. Margins also continue to improve, and we expect to be close to the same adjusted EBITDA margin for full year 2022, despite the unsupportive BA mix that we have already highlighted a couple of times.
The cash flows are strong, and we have a solid financial position overall, enabling us to increase the activity when it comes to M&A in a strategic and selective manner. So all in all, this makes me looking forward to the coming quarters with further improvements in line with our strategy and in order to deliver more value to hospitals, clinicians, and to patients. Once again, thanks to all my colleagues around the world for a really great work during 2021. With that, I open up for questions.
The 1st question is from Erik Cassel of Danske Bank. The line is now open.
Yes, good morning. Three questions if I may. 1st, on your capital markets day, you guided for relatively flattish organic growth in Acute Care Therapies in 2022. I was just wondering if this picture has changed, since, or is this still your best assessment? In Surgical Workflows, you are stating now that the order book is more than 30% higher than the same period last year. I was just wondering if you currently see any problems where customers are not able to take deliveries due to Omicron or personnel shortages or anything other than that could impact net sales or deliveries in the first half of 2022. Just lastly, on the cardiovascular side, what kind of trends you have been seeing in January? You seem to be doing relatively well despite Omicron in December. I'm just wondering if things have changed now during the last month, basically. Thank you.
Yeah, no, thank you. Tying back to the Capital Markets Day outlook for Acute Care Therapies, we can say still from a volume perspective, the outlook is rather flattish here, so the growth will come from other parts of Getinge in 2022. From a margin perspective, though, things look maybe a little bit better than we expected at the Capital Markets Day, I would say. That's the only small change compared to November last year. When it comes to Surgical Workflows, it's correct that the order book is 30% higher right now. I wouldn't say that we have any material issues in terms of customers being able to receive deliveries and so on.
We do expect though that this whole supply chain situation, both when it comes to availability of materials and components from suppliers, but also when it comes to logistics operations, that it would be another six challenging months ahead of us here. We don't guide on terms of the order book materializing to net sales. No significant disruptions right now, but we expect to continue to work hard on this for the next six months, basically. When it comes to product for cardiovascular elective surgeries, we see a rather okay development, I would say, given the Omicron wave that's been going on. We do expect this momentum to pick up further as the Omicron wave subsides, hopefully during the next months or so.
Okay. Thank you. Just a follow-up question on ventilators. You said that you saw a small increase in orders in late Q4. I'm just wondering if this was delivered in Q4, or should we expect maybe a slightly higher delivery rate of ventilators in Q1?
I will not guide on exactly the delivery patterns when it comes to the ventilators. The pickup is small. It was more of a reversal of the negative trend from the beginning of the quarter. There, you shouldn't read too much into that. When it comes to ventilators, for 2022, we expect back to a normal pre-pandemic year. That's our base scenario.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from Rickard Anderkrans, Handelsbanken. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Can you start off with helping us a little bit with the sort of sustainability of the margin trajectory here for Surgical Workflows, you know, already well ahead of its 2025 target here? What's the trajectory for ramping up sales costs? And can you help us a little bit there?
Yeah. It's a really great development for Surgical Workflows in the Q4. It doesn't materially change the message from the Capital Markets Day. That we've said for quite some time now that once we get back to pre-pandemic levels in volume, this should be a double-digit EBITDA margin business. So we expect that to be the case. Having said this though, I think it's really great to see that all the productivity work that the team in Surgical Workflows has been doing now for several years, and especially intensified during the pandemic, is really paying off quite clearly in the Q4 results. Say we enter with a very strong order book and also with a really great level when it comes to productivity systems.
All right. Thank you. It's very helpful. The final one from me. Can you give us some flavor on your, the sort of the trajectory and ability to offset inflationary pressure here, the price increases, and also if you can comment on the risk you see for component shortages here?
A little bit of color possibly. I think like everyone else, we do experience both disruptions that we've been able to mitigate so far. They haven't had a material impact on our operations, and hopefully we can keep it that way. The team has done a great job so far at least. We do see increases in component prices and material prices. If you look at the great work that has been done in the group in different categories, a lot of these benefits have been offset. We could see that that's kind of baked into the results of the Q4 as well. This will be a continuing fight, I think.
We are able to pass on a lot of the price increases as well. It's a rather complex environment though, depending on which category you look at, from a geographic perspective and so on. You should keep in mind that we have both products that are under longer-term contracts. We have some that are priced, you know, per tender and so on. It's very difficult to give kind of a general picture on this. If you look overall from a Getinge perspective, we've been able to pass on to customers a significant part of the increase. We expect to continue to do that and at the same time continue the actual work with suppliers.
That's the best picture I can give on this part of the situation.
All right. Thank you. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
The next question is from Ed Ridley-Day, Redburn. Your line is now open.
Thank you very much. Good morning, and congratulations on a great year. Looking back to Surgical Workflows, maybe to put the question a different way. Due to the work you've done in the last couple of years, as you say, you've accelerated growth a little, you've seen excellent operating leverage. Can you give us more color on perhaps the product areas or regions where you see top-line improvement in Surgical Workflows? That would be my first question. Certainly, the U.S. GPO win is certainly interesting. Can you remind me where you are with the other major GPOs in the US, and with Premier, Inc? That'd be helpful. Thanks.
Yeah. When it comes to the 1st part of your question, when it comes to the top-line dynamics of Surgical Workflows, we've seen throughout the pandemic, infection control has been affected a bit less than if you look at the surgical workplaces as part of SW and also the digital part. We can see the opposite pattern right now with great momentum when it comes to digital health and when it comes to Surgical Workflows. Geographically speaking, it's rather broad-based. Difficult to call out any particular area, I think, over the longer period of time at least. It's very, very nice to see a broad-based comeback.
There's some resilience when it comes to infection prevention and good growth in the other parts of Surgical Workflows. On GPOs, I can't give you on this call any granularity when it comes to the contract situation with the other GPOs. That's something we will have to come back on. We haven't disclosed that earlier.
No, fair enough. Just a quick follow-up. Can you remind us what your market share in the US in infection control?
Well, in infection control, it's the part of Surgical Workflows where we have fared the best over the years. I would have to go back and look at these slides exactly, but we have a stronger market share in infection control compared with the Surgical Workflows and digital health.
No, great. Thanks so much.
The next question is from Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson, Carnegie. Your line is now open. Kristofer, your line is now open. You can ask your question. Maybe your line is on mute.
You said Carnegie?
Yes.
Okay. It's Kristofer from Carnegie. Sorry if I couldn't hear you. Three questions from me. 1st, could you comment on the plan to further expansion of the BetaBag production and whether you have taken a decision if this will be China or France? 2nd question is if you have hedged away part of the positive FX impact on sales. My final question is if you could remind maybe how much extra boost over normal that you have from ventilators in sales in the Q1 2021, and it would be helpful if you could give a similar figure for the Q2 as well. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Kristofer. When it comes to the 1st question on BetaBag, we have not decided where the next step in expansion will be. That's a decision I think for the first half of this year. No, we haven't put the foot down yet. When it comes to ventilators, the previous number for this year was 13,482 ventilators. In Q4 we had 2,822, which is almost 6,000 less than back in 2020, and it's also a little bit lower than 2019. I don't off the top of my head remember the numbers for Q1 and Q2.
I have to go back and look at that. When it comes to the FX, I'll pass that question to Lars.
Yeah. Well, the question there on our hedge, I can say that we have not hedged very much at all going into 2022.
Did you say cost could impact 2%-3% or around 3% in current OPEX?
Yes. As I mentioned there, compared to the average rates that we had in 2021 compared to the, sort of, the closing rate at the end of 2021, there is around three percentage point impact on top and given the geo mix and the currency that we have in our revenue. After year end here, you all know what has happened, but how to give guidance and then our view on the future currency rates are. That is not for me to do. It's more for you to you know that even better than I.
Great. Thank you.
The next question is from Victor Forssell. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the questions. Circling back to one of the first questions here today. You commented on rather flattish volumes for ACT. Also, you know, that workflows will be a bit more challenging the coming six months from here. Just trying to articulate here what that means in terms of net sales here in first half of the year. Does that mean that we will expect even stronger Life Science sales here or any sort of healthcare would be interesting to hear?
Thanks for the question. We don't give guidance on a quarterly basis here. We will remain with the 5.5% for the full year. I did not say that it was going to be a particularly challenging first half year for Surgical Workflows. It's an ongoing hard work when it comes to supply chain, but we don't know yet if it will have an impact on the first half. So far it hasn't really, but it's a daily fight. We refrain from giving guidance on a quarterly or half year basis.
No. Understood. Sorry if I misinterpreted that. Just on the ACT margins, I think you commented as well on that margins were a little bit better than expected. Could you provide some granularity on what you foresee there, at least in terms of that statement? What's the driver?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. It was only relating back to the Capital Markets Day, longer-term target for ACT, where we had a lot of questions after the Capital Markets Day. I just wanted to reconnect there. We can see because we did say at the time in November that we wanted to come back once we had kind of closed out 2021, where we would have a better visibility of the situation. We can see now that the long-term margin guidance for ACT that we gave at the Capital Markets Day was maybe a little bit shy. I think there is more resilience in the business than maybe we expected from a margin perspective back in November.
Yeah. Thanks. Understood. Just finally, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts now on the aftermarket opportunity for Critical Care. How you see that play out already in 2022, especially given the placements that you made in 2020 of your ventilators? Thanks.
I think that's one of the more exciting opportunities that we're working on now. We have a significantly bigger installed base than we did two years ago. A bigger portion of the installed base is connected as well. We have a completely different possibilities to work with customers when it comes to the digital part of our offering. Everything from predictive maintenance and to remote monitoring, further on, remote support when it comes to decision making and so on.
That's an intense part of the work that we're doing now together with the product experts in the business area and with our global sales team to make sure that we really have an intense dialogue with customers on the opportunities that this presents. We continue to be positive about the business split when it comes to Critical Care. That we are going forward, we will have a larger portion of both service and spare parts, but also software upgrades and some of the digital solutions that we offer. Like we said at the Capital Markets Day, this hasn't changed that much since then. This is something that we will see a gradual improvement from now and for several years to come.
Just follow up. You can confirm there that indeed you have an invoicing opportunity this year that from the 2020 installed base due to the warranties?
Yes, that opportunity will start to materialize. That's correct.
Okay, thanks a lot.
The next question is from Erik Cassel, ABG. Your line is now open.
Hi. Morning, everyone. Many good questions asked and answered already, but I have some housekeeping ones left. So you mentioned in the report that sterile transfer and bioreactors did not reach last year's order intake. But could you possibly provide some more color on the performance in sterile transfers specifically? And then also how much of the capacity for 2022 that is covered by the current order book. Then secondly, could you briefly explain the relatively low sales cost this quarter? Is that, for example, driven by lower sales bonuses or something else? And then lastly, a question for Lars on the revaluation effect in OpEx that provided quite a nice boost to your EBITDA. You mentioned that very briefly in the report, so just interested if you could provide any more information on that effect. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Maybe Lars, we can start with your question, and I come back to the others.
Yeah. Now, when it comes to revaluation, it's normal, as in all companies you have internal flows, you have in different currencies than your reporting currency. Then when every closing, you revaluate those. We had large impact last year when the Swedish krona was weakening there, where we then had significant impact in the quarter. Also high volumes when it comes to the balance sheet, very much connected to the high volumes of ventilators. That was the main reason for the impact last year. This year it's actually balances have been decreasing, and also the currency movement much smaller. There is very little impact in the result of this, of 2021 Q4. The main impact was actually last, in 2020 actually.
Thank you, Lars. When it comes to the sterile transfer bit, I just wanted to remind everybody that there is some lumpiness when it comes to order intake of this business. Several of our customers place larger contracts for longer periods of time. That's the reason for the lumpiness when it comes to order intake. Our outlook when it comes to sales and the picture we gave at the Capital Markets Day hasn't changed in any material way. We do expect continued strong growth when it comes to our sterile transfer offering, partly driven by continued vaccine program rollout, but also more and more from business related to normal production development of biopharmaceutical drugs really.
We stand by the picture that we gave at the Capital Markets Day when it comes to this part of the business.
All right. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Craig McDowell, J.P. Morgan. Your line is now open.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is around the order backlog and, in particular, in Surgical Workflows. How should we think about the margin on the backlog? Contracts that you'll deliver on in 2022 were signed six to 12 months ago when input costs were at a very different level. Is there any hedging or mechanism in those contracts that protect you against this, or do you have to swallow the inflation in your margin? Then secondly, thanks for the indication on the currency impact to sales. Based on year-end spot rates versus 2021 average, can you comment on the impact of currency to EBITDA margins in 2022? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for your questions. I think that they're both currency related, so I'll hand those over to you, Lars.
Mm-hmm. Well, when it comes to our offering and the order backlog, our sales organization work very extensively to ensure that they have that covered when they do offering to the customers. We monitor and track the development in raw materials and also other impacts. When doing offers to customers that it is sort of handled in the pricing in the offering itself. I think we are rather well in line with on that. The 2nd question I missed a little bit. Could you please repeat?
Yes. Thank you for the indication of the currency impact to sales. I'm wondering whether you can give the same sort of indication at the EBITDA level?
No, I will not do that. What I can say is that, as you know, we have a very heavy exposure toward the US dollar, or both on top line but also on the bottom line, that if the US dollar is strengthening versus the SEK, it positively impacts all the way through. More than that, I will not guide you on.
Okay. Just one more clarification then. I think, Mattias, you said you expect an adjusted EBITA margin at a similar level in 2022 as was in 2021. Can you just comment, that's based on FX rates at the end of the year. Is that correct?
That was meant to be an organic guidance.
Okay. That's underlying. Okay. Understood. Thank you.
Thank you.
The last question is from Virendra Chauhan of AlphaValue. Luke, your line is now open.
I can't hear a question. You may be on mute here, or it wasn't clear. Who are you letting through here?
You are the last one in the queue.
Yeah, but who is it? I think it was Luke.
This is Virendra from AlphaValue, and I have a question. Can you hear me?
Yeah. Yeah, we can hear you now. Thank you.
Yeah. I wasn't really sure if I was called on, but yes. I have a question. My question, one was on margins, which I think we just touched upon in the previous answer. Just so that I understood it correctly, 2022 margin should at least be level with the 2021 level. Is that a fair assumption? That would be the first question. The second one is regarding the recent recall that we saw with respect to the IABP, which was also a recurrence of some older issues related to that product. My question is more about how confident are you regarding the quality system in place, given that we saw this issue pop up in December?
Is there any possibility of this recall that we saw in December or was flagged in December blowing up into a bigger issue with regulatory bodies?
Okay. When it comes to the first question, it is correct that we believe that the adjusted EBITA margin organically will be in line 2022 with the outcome of 2021. That is correctly understood. When it comes to the recent recall on balloon pumps, this is related to a product that was developed and released in 2011. There has been a number of recalls historically related to this, and this is another one of those. We don't indicate that we cannot guide on what the future may bring when it comes to recall.
There are areas here that we are reinforcing when it comes to this platform to make sure there is a more stable product. That's continued ongoing work, but I really cannot guide on what you will see going forward. I want to point out, though, that it's not quality management system related, like the early issues that we had when it came to quality and remediation in this part of the business. We started already back in 2013 based on dialogue with FDA remediation program. Then we had the warning letters in 2018 related to this business, which were more than quality management system related. Now this has been a pure product related recall, and I really cannot guide whether it's the last one or whether we will see more going forward.
Just to follow up. My question is, have these kind of events in the past led to things like FDA decrees or are these two unrelated?
Sorry, I didn't quite catch your question. Can you repeat, please?
Yeah. My question is that have these kind of events in the past also led to things like FDA decrees and the remediation that we saw, or are these completely different events?
No. When you look at the cardiac assist part where the balloon pump product belongs to, we've been on this remediation journey. Just to refresh the whole journey then. When Maquet at the time entered into the warning letter started remediation in 2013, we expected when the consent decree was activated in 2015 that that part of the business was remediated. When I joined in 2017, we did a round of internal audits ourselves in the different factories, and then we found that there were still issues related to the quality management system at the relevant sites when it comes to cardiac assist.
We started remediation program ourselves with this. When we had started this remediation work, we did have FDA inspections in the two factories in Mahwah and in Fairfield in New Jersey, which led to the warning letters, under those warning letters we have been on a remediation journey and work that is still to be completed, really. I'm not sure whether you're asking about the quality management system remediation or if it's product quality related, but all I can say is that the work is still ongoing. We expect to finalize the remediation work sometime during 2022, and we should then be in a completely compliant state when it comes to our quality management system. We're also gradually working with anything that comes up in terms of customer complaints related to the product itself. Of course, we address either through a recall or through developments.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you.
There are no further questions. I hand back to the gentleman for some closing remarks.
Yeah. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening in today. Key takeaways, I would say from today's release of our Q4 report is that we have seen a healthy organic order growth in the Q4. We continue to improve our margins, and this is translated also into strong free cash flow, improving our already very solid financial position. We enter 2022 with an order book that is about 20% higher than the same period last year. Very good momentum, and we look forward to continue to work closely with our customers throughout 2022. Thank you very much.