Welcome to the Vimian Group Q4 Report 2024. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO Patrik Eriksson, CFO Carl-Johan Zetterberg Boudrie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, this is Patrik and thank you for joining us. We're going to jump straight into it and start with some of the highlights for the fourth quarter results that we just reported. We delivered an all-time high revenue for an individual quarter in the fourth quarter with strong organic growth that is well ahead of the animal health market. Our cash flow from our operations were very strong as well in this quarter and it corresponds to a cash conversion ratio of 115%. We also increased our operating profit during the quarter and we're very pleased to have incorporated and consolidated the animal dental business with iM3 starting on October 1st this year, last year and they have made a great start and a good contribution to Vimian in the first months that they're in. So now turning to the quarter in more detail.
We delivered 27% revenue growth which led us to this record sales of EUR 104.9 million. We continue to see double digit growth of 15% organically with exceptional performance from our Specialty Pharma unit. We look at the adjusted EBITDA. We grew 9% in the quarter compared to the fourth quarter in 2023. But remember that that quarter in 2023 benefited from a EUR 1.5 million capitalization of our R&D expenses that was related to quarters one, two and three in 2023. If we exclude this one-time impact of the higher capitalization rate in Q4 2023 the adjusted year-over-year EBITDA growth for us was 17%.
We start to look at the margin bridge here. As you can see, our margin came in at 23.4%, and we wanted to show this bridge here. The impact of the R&D capitalization is about half of this margin walk, and we end up with a like-for-like margin for 2023 at 25.6%. We had a one-time impact from Specialty Pharma where we wrote off a customer receivable of a one-time nature that will not be repeated that impacts us with 90 basis points. And then we have a margin.
Decline in our MedTech business driven by two items. The first one is we decided to make investments in the fourth quarter to grow our market share in the orthopedic U.S. market to gain share there, and then that had a margin impact, and then secondly we've incorporated now iM3 as you recall when we announced that the margin profile iM3 is a little bit lower than the fleet average of Vimian and when we combine it, we'll get this margin impact as well. The rest of our group had slight margin improvement in accretion, and that was predominantly driven by our Veterinary Services group.
We now turn to Specialty Pharma that had a simply exceptional organic growth of 22% in the quarter. It was primarily driven by very good growth across each of our different therapeutic areas. Especially three out of the four were just stellar. The contribution that came from Specialty Pharmaceuticals and Specialized Nutrition was exceptional, and in our Specialized Nutrition we ran a couple of sales campaigns in various states out in the U.S. for the first time that proved to be very successful.
In 2024, about a third of our growth was generated from our cross-selling initiatives and this number has been very stable throughout the year and we continue to see great benefits from the cross-selling programs. Our underlying margin development was stable year-over-year, and when we include the higher levels of capitalization as we highlight a little bit and the write-off of the customer.
If we exclude these two and adjust for it, the EBITDA for Specialty Pharma grew by 23%. Now turning to our MedTech business.
We l ook at the total revenue for MedTech which include our acquisition of iM3. We grew 41% in the fourth quarter. We will start to include iM3 in our organic growth number in the fourth quarter this year, and we're off to an amazing start. As I mentioned previously, we reported 4% organic growth and we continue to see challenges in the U.S. high-end surgical market. Our EMEA and APAC region, which constitutes about one-third of our orthopedic business, reported slightly lower organic growth in the fourth quarter, but delivered high single digit growth for the full year. We completed 52 in-person trainings throughout the quarter and we had 855 participants in those and had as many participants on top of that participating in various virtual trainings.
As we mentioned earlier, we've taken some investments in the U.S. to gain market share and to drive growth in 2025 and these investments include intensified education programs, sales and marketing initiatives. We see an impact from the consolidation of iM3 on the margin for MedTech as well and we report an 18% Adjusted EBITDA growth for this segment in the fourth quarter. As we had talked about a year ago when we talked about our AOP program, the annual ordering program in the year. This quarter is the last quarter that we will continue to make reductions in the AOP program and we expect this to have a slight negative impact on the revenue for MedTech in Q1. We fully expect to deliver full growth for the full year. Now turn to the Veterinary Services business. Again, a very strong quarter with 16% organic growth.
We reached 8,400 members here by the end of the year and continue to cement the position as the global leader in service platforms. The strong profitability that the team has shown here is driven first by the great growth that we see and also we've had opportunities for a very positive mix.
This part of our business is now preparing for new market entries. So we're reinvesting some of our margins in 2025 into further growth in this segment and you should expect our margins to normalize in this business and be more like the first half of 2024 going forward than the second half that had exceptionally strong margins.
If we turn to the adjusted EBITDA growth for our Vet Services, it was a remarkable 35% in the quarter. Now turning to the Diagnostics business, we're very pleased to see that this part of our business have now returned to double-digit growth, 12%.
This is d riven by some launches of new products innovation that we've had in the pipeline. The team have worked hard to turn the business around and we're pleased to see some of the fruits of that hard labor. We also want to note here that the livestock market continues to be unpredictable, but we're optimistic about this business and we think about Diagnostics as a growth business for 2025 also. Before we leave this slide, just a quick comment to say that the commitment to diversifying this group into more companion animal continues and we are committed in 2025 to continue that investment in launching products of this size and nature, Point of Care for the companion animal segment of Diagnostics as well. So you can expect us to have the same sort of margin profile that we have shown so far.
With that said, I want to thank you for your attention here. I'm going to hand the mic over to Carl-Johan who will go through our financials in a little bit more detail.
Thank you very much, Patrik, and hello everyone, and as Patrik said, let me give you some further comments and details on the financials for the fourth quarter.
Adjusted EBITA in the fourth quarter was 24.6 million EUR, which corresponds to an increase of 9%. This represents a margin of 23.4% and as outlined by Patrik in previous slides, the reduced year-over-year margin is driven by quarterly effects in Specialty Pharma and MedTech.
We report an operating profit of EUR 12.5 million, a significant increase from last year's result of EUR 2.7 million. Items affecting comparability clearly continue to impact the quarter with a total of EUR 6.2 million. This is mainly costs relating to acquisition activities in MedTech and Specialty Pharma as well as continued high level of legal costs in the U.S. patent litigation.
In the U.S. patent litigation, the main hearing in the process is happening now in February which will drive high legal costs impacting items affecting comparability also in the first quarter.
Net financial items was EUR 2.5 million and consists of three main components. First, finance expense of - EUR 4.2 million with an average interest rate of 5.3% during the quarter which was offset by EUR 0.6 million of interest income. The second element is the quarterly discounting impact of - EUR 1.9 million and a positive impact of EUR 4.5 million from probability adjustments on contingent considerations which in the quarter mainly relates to an adjustment for Bova Australia.
Lastly, a positive impact of EUR 3.4 million from non-realized FX effects on the valuation of debt.
The income tax expense for the quarter amounted to EUR 2.4 million at an effective tax rate of 16%.
In total, this resulted in a net profit for the quarter of EUR 12.5 million with an earnings per share of EUR 0.02 for the quarter.
Looking at the cash flow for the first quarter, cash flow from operating activities reached EUR 24.4 million in the fourth quarter, an improved cash generation compared to the same period last year as well as p revious quarters of this year.
Net working capital amounted to EUR 100.1 million at the end of the quarter, equal to 25% of revenue, an increase from EUR 80.8 million at the end of September which equaled 23% of revenue. The majority of the increased working capital is a consequence of the iM3 acquisition and the rest of the increase is mainly a result of lower accounts payables. Our efforts to reduce inventory in MedTech have continued to yield results with further reductions in the fourth quarter. Cash flow from investing activities of EUR 30.5 million primarily reflects timing effect from financing of the iM3 acquisition and litigation receivables as two of the sellers have fully paid their settlement.
Cash flow from financing activities of -EUR 29.8 million as we have continued to pay down debt in the quarter.
At the end of the period, net debt amounted to EUR 221.9 million, which is an increase from EUR 140.3 million at the end of the third quarter due to the acquisition of iM3. External lending of EUR 215.9 million, which is approximately EUR 24 million less than at the end of the third quarter. As we have continued to repay debt in the quarter, leverage in the quarter equaled 2.0x compared to 1.3x at the end of the third quarter following the iM3 acquisition.
With this financial review of the quarter, I would like to hand the word back to Patrik for concluding remarks before we open up for the Q&A.
Thank you, Carl-Johan. Well, looking back in 2024 we delivered a 13% total growth, 9% organic growth and 9% adjusted EBITDA growth. Despite a challenging market situation for the U.S. surgery market, our cash flow was significantly higher this year. We delivered EUR 58.1 million in cash from operations and that corresponded to about 70% cash conversion for the full year. All in all, 2024 was an eventful year for us here at Vimian. We laid the foundation for our next phase of growth in the journey here and I'm really pleased that we set new financial targets, we had a successful rights issue, we strengthened our balance sheet, we prepared ourselves for more accretive M&A and we made an entrance in the fast growing market niche of veterinary dentals.
So, all in all, very positive finish of the year, and then maybe if we were to look at our priorities going forward, we remain positive of the overall health market, and it continues to grow. The underlying growth trends with humanizations of pets. The aging pet population remains very strong, and there's millions and millions of untreated animals out around the globe where we have an opportunity to treat them, and that represents a long-term growth opportunity for us. We live in a world where there's geopolitical uncertainty, and we continue to monitor those very carefully. We're an entrepreneurial company and an agile organization, as you know us, and we're well equipped, I believe, to very quickly adapt to the new circumstances and adjust to it.
So far we know we see limited exposures to the various different geopolitical things that are being announced every day. Looking ahead, we will continue to drive strong organic growth. We'll work on our operational improvements really to create a fully scalable business. We'll deliver on our people agenda and we'll continue to execute on our M&A pipeline. In the near term, we are preparing and focusing on the uplift to the main market and we have a target and ambition to be able to complete that at the end of this quarter. I'm excited about the year to come and I'm very pleased to conclude that we are well positioned to drive growth and profitable growth for 2025 and beyond. With that, I'd like to thank you for your attention so far and operator, please open up for the Q&A section of the call. Thank y ou.
If you wish to ask a q uestion, 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 Adela Dashian from Jefferies. Please go a head.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. A couple from me. Can we just maybe start on the write-off that you mentioned being temporary in nature? Can you give us some background on what led to t hat?
Sure and good morning, Adela. I guess you're referring to the accounts receivable write down that we conducted in Specialty Pharma in the q uarter?
Yes. You're r ight. I'm sorry.
Yes. That's related to one. Yeah. And that's related to one specific customer, where there's no issue from a customer point of view. This is a healthy customer, but unfortunately this relates to historic events where our delivery and sales documentation wasn't up to standard for this customer and our processes were not in place.
And as a consequence, we couldn't fulfill the obligations from the customer's point of view and get paid for the amount that we sold. And as a consequence, we've taken a cautious approach and written down this total receivable of these products to this c ustomer.
Okay. All right. On MedTech. You're mentioning that we should expect a continuation of similar patterns from the leveling down the AOP system i n Q1 this year as well. But you didn't say anything about expectations on orthopedics in 2025. And when I take the growth experience in Q4 of 4% and couple that with some, maybe some additional headwinds from the AOP. I mean, what? I know you don't give us guidance, but how should we end up with positive growth for the full year?
That would entail, I'm assuming, high single digits for MedTech for the remaining q uarters?
Yeah. So thank you for the question. In the first quarter, we're going to do the last AOP adjustment, and I would think about the first quarter as a slight decline in organic growth for MedTech in the implant part of that business. Although we do think for the full year. This is a growth business for sure, and it will recover in the second, third and fourth quarter and come back to market plus rates in terms of g rowth.
And then, if I can also ask, on the investments that you've undergone to increase your market share within the orthopedics business?
What's the rationale behind that? Were you seeing that you were losing market share, or is it more taking advantage of a weak market and growing your market share versus what it has been p reviously?
Yes. Thank you. We wanted to see a lot of white space, as we've talked about before in this market. And we wanted to run some tests if we could decouple our growth from the market growth. And the way that we did that in Q4 was to increase our level of investment in the marketing activities, starting with significantly more training and education activities. As we reported, we trained 1,600 people in the fourth quarter alone in this part of our business. We coupled that and paired that with sales activities and incentive programs on that, both for our customers and for our own team, and then backed that up with very strong marketing. We had a higher presence and a more intense presence at trade shows in the fourth quarter and paired that with a lot more both online and offline marketing to support it.
All these three activities altogether had a margin impact i n the fourth quarter. If you think about the margins in this business going forward, you think about them being better in Q1 than they were in Q4, but not quite as good as they were in Q1 last year. That's how we're kind of modeling that going forward in the first q uarter.
Got it. All right, I have a couple of more questions, but I'll just ask one final and then get back into the queue on this legal settlement. With the main hearing happening in February, do you expect deliberations to start right away or is this going to continue to be a prolonged p rocess?
It's a very good question. We're continuing to follow kind of the pace of the legal system and the proceedings that are happening now, should end up with a verdict in court, and that is one way to conclude this.
I think it's too early. First of all, it will take time before the verdict is done and being publicized, but it could mean that it's over at that point, and we do hope so. We have settled with three out of four. We have one seller left, and we hope to clear that as well. From a timing standpoint, this is always really hard and things take longer in the legal system in America than maybe in other places in the world. But I think about this as something that we have a resolution to before the end of this year and hopefully a lot sooner than t hat.
Okay, great. And I mean, without commenting on the legal process, I know that can be a sensitive subject, but it did seems here that you are equally as c onfident on resolving it with the positive o utcome as you have been in the past c orrect?
Yeah. Our case continues to be very strong. I think it's evidenced partly by three out of four have already settled at the full amount. Two out of these three have paid us. The third one is paying on the agreement that we made with them on a payment plan. So there is one item left here, and we're resolving that the way that the legal system empowers us to do. And we continue to believe we have a very strong case here that's u nchanged.
Fantastic. Thank y ou.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Rickard Anderkrans from Handelsbanken. Please go a head.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Following up a bit on MedTech, are you seeing any signals of improvement in the market heading into Q1 in the U.S., and I also noticed, as you called out, that the rest of the world sort of decelerated growth here in Q4 to low single digits? Anything in particular we should be mindful of in rest of the world, or should we expect sort of deceleration heading into 2025 in that part? I just wanted to check those two things. Thank y ou.
Yeah. So maybe I can start with the market in the U.S.
There was a positive signal coming out of one of the data sources that we tracked in December, but it's an index that covers only a month's worth of surgical procedures, and it's too.
We think the time period on which that's measured is too short to draw any conclusions from it. So we track this index. I mean, for those of you who recall, that same index had a very positive signal in September and then it fell back on the following month. So although we like to see positive signs, it's too early to say that the market is turning. We don't see the market further deteriorating. We believe it's bottomed out, but it's too early in our opinion to call whether it's improving or not.
For the first quarter or not. We'll get data. We monitor this very closely, and we'll be knowing a lot more in a few months here when we got a few more data points under our belt, but it's too early. I don't think it's going to get worse in the market, it might get better, but it's too early to say. Now maybe switching to your question about Europe and the rest of the world, there we don't draw the same conclusion. We think it's temporary there. It's a number of different mixed reasons why the total came in a little bit slower on growth, and remember that area consolidated for the full year delivered high single digit growth in the full year, so we think this is temporary. The reasons for different markets to be a little bit softer is different.
They're easy to explain. We think it's temporary, we think it's going to blow over and we don't see this as a systematic market issue at this p oint.
Okay, that's clear. And following up on MedTech, looking at margins, we're down quite significantly year-over-year. Can you help us think about the MedTech margins for 2025? You know a lot of moving parts here with the acquisition of iM3 and growth investments, etc. So any help we could get sort of piecing together the puzzle for the coming quarters and the year ahead would be h elpful.
Yes, absolutely, and just to give you some more color. I think as Patrik said there will be an impact if we just look short term in Q1 given the continued phase out of AOP. Having that said, both for the first quarter and for the full year, we are expecting more normalized margin development in MedTech orthopedics going forward.
We've done the investments that we, s o were needed in the fourth q uarter.
From a MedTech perspective looking at orthopedics we expect a more normalized margin pattern for 2025. Then as you pointed out of course being mindful of the infusion of iM3 in our numbers that have a lower margin than fleet average. So there's a negative mix impact from consolidating iM3 on iM3. We're clearly working to ensure that margins over time will improve for iM3 and for iM3 or MedTech dental alone we will see a like for like margin improvement over t ime.
Okay, but what's a sort of normalized margin level for the non iM3 MedTech business? I mean, w e have quite limited history, I g uess?
So what we expect for this year and if we look at the full year we expect margins to be on a similar level as we've seen in the last couple of years. Being mindful, of course there have been seasonality in previous years in MedTech that were phasing out but if you look on the full year margin in t he last few years, that's where we see a normalized margin for our MedTech orthopedic business.
Okay, that's clear. And then a final follow-up. Could you quantify the organic growth and the EBITDA margin contribution from iM3 in Q4?
Sorry, Rickard. Yes, again you said t he-
Yeah, so what was the organic growth and EBITDA margin from iM3 in the q uarter?
Organic growth from iM3? We have not disclosed that number. iM3 have contributed with EUR 10.1 million of revenues in the fourth quarter.
Okay, thanks for taking my q uestions.
The next question comes from Marco Pires -Cox from Barclays. Please go a head.
Hi there, m orning. Just a couple of questions from me. Firstly, just following up on the MedTech business and the growth outside of the U.S. you mentioned softness in some markets there that were easy to explain. Could you maybe provide a bit more color on what was driving the softness here outside of the higher comparison base? And then secondly, if we look at the Diagnostics business, I think you said, do you expect this business to return to growth in 2025?
Maybe if you could just provide some color on your level of comfort with margins in this business versus consensus and whether you think a low to mid teens margin here for 2025 is feasible. And then one final question just on tariffs, my understanding is that you're not that exposed to tariff risk currently, but if you could provide some color of what parts of your business you have production within the U.S. I believe this is only Specialty Pharma of any verification here that would be great. Thank y ou.
Okay, thank you. I'll start with the first question. I'll let Carl-Johan cover two and three I think. So, your first question was about a little bit additional color on the European MedTech market and it's a little bit different thing. So first of all, just to frame this up, MedTech is about 1/3 of our business and Europe APAC is 1/3 of that. So a third of a third, if my math is right, is about 10% of all of Vimian. And in there we have obviously a lot of different countries. So it's a big mix. I'll give you an example of a couple things that we see in there.
We have one country where we have very strong comps that was, I think just provided a very high jump off point for this year. And their growth is therefore a little bit weaker. Their underlying growth rates are actually very good. When you compensate for that one time effect, we have another market that is t he run rates are stable, but they're a little bit lower at a little bit lower clip, but they have performed the same way throughout the quarter, and then we have a couple of areas where we think it's order timings, where some customers have probably optimized their cash flow and their order patterns and perhaps not placed those orders at the end of the year that they maybe did.
In prior years. So, you know, when you take that full picture, there's a lot of signals in here and they're very diverse in terms of how they sound and the reasons for them. So that's why we think this is temporary when we receive those similar signals, you know, in the second quarter in the U.S. all the signals said the same thing. Wherever we look, whatever data points we poked at, they all said the same thing. It's the norm. This is not what we're hearing and what we're seeing when we poke at this in MedTech today.
And maybe I covered the revenue side of the Diagnostics questions and then Carl-Johan, maybe you can cover the two remaining questions. So we do see Diagnostics as a growth business this year.
The livestock market is still volatile. We think we can compensate that with the innovation that we have recently launched and it's been well received and there is good legs and runway for those to perform well throughout 2025. And Carl-Johan, maybe you talk about the margins and the developments there.
Yeah. So margin perspective for Diagnostics. And just as Patrik said, we expect Diagnostics to continue to grow a s we go into 2025, just as w e saw in the fourth quarter. That will have a positive impact on the margin perspective where we see the margin level for the full year of 2024 is a reasonable margin level for Diagnostics for 2025 as well as we continue to invest in our companion animal, diversification in the Diagnostics business.
On your last question around tariffs, of course, very, very relevant question. There is a lot of uncertainty in this area at the moment and going f orward, we are of course monitoring this very closely and taking, you could say, precautionary steps in going through how we can work with our supply chain, our pricing, our suppliers to make sure that we mitigate any potential effects.
As Patrik said earlier on, we see limited impacts from the tariffs that's been announced, discussed last week. Two last weeks and predominantly, just as you pointed out, it's especially for Specialty Pharma where we see some potential impact from a short term perspective, as in one of the therapeutical areas, we have a larger majority of the sales manufacturer produced in Mexico. As I said we are taking a lot of precautionary steps to ensure that we diversify supply chain and work w ith our customers and work with our p ricing to mitigate any potential effects from the tariffs.
Great, thank y ou.
The next question comes from Kavya Deshpande from UBS. Please go a head.
Morning, thank you for taking my q uestions. Two, please. The first was on Specialty Pharma. Would you be able to provide us with more background on the national sales campaign in the U.S. please? Which kind of customer segments are you targeting, by what channels, and should we expect this to be an annual thing? Every Q4? My second question was around Diagnostics, what exactly were the new products that drove the inflection in growth there? Were they all livestock related or did this refer to the companion animal health side? Also, just with regards to your investments there, would you be able to provide us with more detail on where exactly these are going to support the diversification of this business? Thank you.
Thank you. I'll do the first question here and I'll let Carl-Johan handle the second one. In Specialty Pharma, we partnered with one of our largest retail partners in the U.S. and together with them formulated a program to get better shelf space exposure for our products and to create a campaign around those products. It's the first time we've ever done this in the company and it was one of the very successful trials together with this partner and it turned out to be a huge success.
We have done that in a number of different states and this is a national retailer. We did not even do it across all of America. We tested it and tried it in a number of states and we hope that we have an ability and an opportunity to do it soon again because we really like the results of it. That drove significant top line growth in Specialty Pharma in that segment and for Specialty Pharma as a whole.
Yes. On Diagnostics, and say a little bit on the innovation, what drove good traction in Q4 and also investments in diversification. If we start with the first element and the new product introductions, that's relating to innovations that we've done in especially the livestock segment that we've taken to market in our solutions for the livestock segment, where we've seen a good response from the market and a good traction on those new introduced products in the second half of the year.
When it comes to companion animal, and as we announced in the beginning of last year, we are investing to diversify our business in companion animal, where we today predominantly have one technology that we've launched in AI Parasitology and the investment that we are taking and that we started in Q2 last year and we continue to do this year are predominantly market related in sales and marketing efforts, making sure that we get a good traction in taking this product to t he market and build a strong sort o f revenue around companion animal solutions.
Thank you very much. If I could squeeze in just one quick follow-up on the Specialty Pharma question, please. Given your comp for Q1 is not too dissimilar from Q4, I mean, is this kind of organic growth that you printed this quarter the sort of exit rate that we should be thinking about for the rest of the year? Or is it, as you said, this was a trial sales campaign and you, it's more under discussion whether you'll do something like this again. Thank you.
The growth in Specialty Pharma, we've seen a good performance for Specialty Pharma throughout the entire 2024. I think, as Patrik said on the national sales campaign, that's something that we hope to replicate going forward. It was a little bit of a special element now for Q4. The organic growth in Specialty Pharma was maybe a bit stronger than what you would say is the exit rate for the business. We've seen a good performance for Specialty Pharma throughout the year and we continue to have a positive outlook for Specialty Pharma also for 2025, especially as we are very pleased with the initiative on cross selling that we have been driving through 2024 where we see a lot of additional runway in that initiative that accounted for roughly a third of the organic growth that we saw in Specialty Pharma for 2022.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Arvid Necander from Carnegie. Please go a head.
Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. Now that we're a bit into 2025, could you provide some insight on net price increases? Have you faced significantly more resistance compared to last year coming off a period of high inflation? Can you give us a feeling for the magnitude in spec pharma and MedTech specifically? I guess last year some of your spec pharma competitors were mentioning high single digit increases, including some fairly established franchises in the Derma and Allergy segments.
Is the industry now reverting to something closer to the 3%-5% we've seen historically? What are your expectations for NextMune and Movora in 2025? Thank y ou.
Yes, good morning, Arvid. I would say b ack on a little bit. What you alluded to, price increases last year was driven by high inflation. A little bit higher than what we expect to see this year. Expecting from an overall group perspective, price increases of low to mid single digit across the group. Of course, with some variation looking at different segments and different geographies. If we take US MedTech specifically, we will pursue a more cautious approach on price increases near term. As we discussed, I think at length, the US surgery market continues to be a little bit softer and I said as a consequence, we'll pursue a more cautious approach on price increases f or U.S. med tech this year.
Okay, great. Thank y ou.
The next question comes from Adrian Elmlund from Nordea. Please go a head.
Hi guys. Good morning. Just a short question for me here. How do you view the margins of iM3 going ahead? Is it possible to get the margins to reach like the segment MedTech margins or group margins standalone ? Or do y ou sort of have to make both o n acquisitions or roll ups if you will to reach more group level m argins?
As we've said, iM3, they have a different margin profile than the rest of the MedTech business and to larger than the rest of the Vimian b usiness w hile there's a negative mix effect i n consolidating iM3 into our numbers.
We will continuously improve the margins within iM3 as we continue to drive strong organic growth. As we continue to drive a different mix from a sales perspective where, as we discussed, moving more to consumables and we see scale in that business going forward. Margins will on a like-for-like basis continue to improve by iM3. Having that said, and to your question, sort of where do we think margins will end up? We're confident that iM3, they can achieve margins that are on Vimian fleet average. Of course, it depends on the type of acquisitions that we can find in the dental space. Potentially, with different type of acquisitions, we can see a different mix within MedTech Dental as well from a m argin perspective and hopefully on the positive side.
Okay, thanks. A follow-up to that maybe is like going when we look at the M& A pipeline ahead, i s the sole focus only to acquire?
Sort of bolt on acquisitions to iM3 or would you also be interested in maybe pivoting into a new platform as well?
Yes, we have e xpressed an interest to do bolt on acquisitions into iM3 and strengthen the dental presence that we have. We are continuing to cultivate our pipeline and add to our pipeline for both Specialty Pharma and MedTech in general in our Veterinary Services business and what we're really looking for there is products that have complementary companies that have complementary products and companies that can help us strengthen our geographic footprint or geographic density in markets that we're interested to enter. The pipeline is very focused to execute on our strategy for value creation. We look at Specialty Pharma, MedTech and Veterinary Services.
Okay, thank you. That was all for m e.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad.
The next question comes from Kavya Deshpande from UBS. Please go ahead.
Sorry, I just wanted to squeeze in with one more question. If possible, please, just on your outlook for the animal health market growth for this year, is it fair to assume that that's sort of remaining within 5-7% and so specifically to the companion animal health market? Thank y ou.
Yeah, that's a great question. It's a question we sometimes ask other people too.
We continue to believe that the market is very healthy and it's very strong.
Whether it's going to end up in exactly that range or not, we don't know. We don't have a better number than that, I think t hat's a fair assumption and a fair assessment today. If you think about our business, we have an express strategy to be in the niches in this business and we target niches that have a higher growth rate than the average market. So our biased portfolio should grow faster than the market. Then through the initiatives that we run, like cross selling for Specialty Pharma and white space capture through education, MedTech, et cetera, we will gain additional growth and come up to the double digit growth that we're targeting every.
Year. Got it, thank you. If I could just follow-up on the white space initiatives in MedTech, I noticed this quarter there seemed to be more of an emphasis on virtual trainings in MedTech. Is this sort of likely to be the case going forward? In the past, what have you seen in terms of the customer retention rates from doing virtual trainings and getting them on your products versus in person t raining? Thank you.
Yeah. You know, first of all, you know, in MedTech, what you really get trained on is surgical procedures. You know, a lot of the trainings that are in person would have, you know.
Components of placing implants into either models or cadaver or things like that to really get comfortable and skilled in the procedure as such. You will never see like a 100% virtual. I'd be a little bit afraid of that because I would like the surgeons to be hands on, experienced and be really good at it. Those trainings will continue. Having said that, though, the way you can prepare for surgeries like that, there are some theoretical components that are conducive to deliver on a virtual environment and that's also to meet our customers who would like more flexibility. That allows you to focus when you get together on the hands on aspect and you can cover some of the theoretical things prior to showing up.
I think it's a way to enhance the overall quality and the delivery of it and also adjust to our customers' needs for a little bit more flexibility on when and how they get t rained.
These customers pay for these trainings, right? Or are they given f ree?
Yes, you pay for all of them? Absolutely. If you find a free training, you should take it.
In our experience, these are highly value added trainings they'll provide you. The teachers that we engage in this are some of the best surgeons in the world and you equip someone with the skills to start an entirely new revenue stream in the practice. There's an enormous amount of value in the actual training series and we do charge for all of them. We're not trying to make a profit out of them. It's not a profit center for us. We also don't want to lose money on i t.
The next question comes from Adela Dashian from Jefferies. Please go a head.
Just one final one for me as well. I guess following up on the M&A discussions previously, I mean, one of your peers stated this morning that they are seeing a more favorable outlook M&A market just in general and I want to be, I guess, mindful of your current leverage ratio. Are you also seeing the potential to foreign deals to materialize being more robust in 2025, or is that a trend that really hasn't impacted you in 2024? Is your pipeline essentially more firm this year than what it was at this point last year is what I'm a sking?
Yeah, our pipeline is growing and there are a number of very interesting acquisition candidates in that pipeline. As you would expect from someone that has made as many acquisitions as we have, we always have ongoing dialogues and discussions and calculations with the targets that fits in our strategy and that have attractive valuation principles associated with them.
Great, thank y ou.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing c omments.
Thank you so much for your attention and your questions today. We concluded the year with a strong finish and we look at with excitement to 2025. We think we're very well positioned to continue to drive strong, profitable growth in 2025 and beyond. We thank you for your attention today and look forward to seeing you soon again. Have a wonderful day. Take care.