Q4 2021. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and afterwards, there will be a Q&A session. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO Fredrik Ullman and CFO Henrik Halvorsen. Please begin your meeting.
Thank you very much. Let's move to page two. Welcome to Vimian's Q4 Conference Call. I'm Fredrik Ullman, CEO of Vimian, and with me here today, our CFO, Henrik Halvorsen. We'll just go through a short presentation and then open up for questions. Looking back at 2021, it's been a historical year for us at Vimian. We created the group early 2021 and completed the IPO in June. Since then, we've accelerated the pace of strategic M&A to enter new markets and complement our product offering. We've delivered 143% total revenue growth and 16.5% organic revenue growth ahead of our targets on both these dimensions.
As you can see in the report, the group's margin in the quarter is slightly lower, and we are, of course, all aware of these drivers, and we will go into that today. In general, I'm confident in our business, underlying performance, and also the investments that we are doing right now will create tremendous value in the future. If you look a little bit into 2022, we see positive momentum in most businesses and significant white space in the animal health market to go after. Of course, we're all in the midst of a global crisis with a lot of uncertainty with the Ukraine situation. We are deeply concerned about the situation here, and especially concerned for Ukrainian people.
We've just donated SEK 1 million to a humanitarian organization active in Ukraine to support families, children, and of course, on a personal level, we've also, many of us, supported. From a business perspective, we have around EUR 700,000 in annual sales in Russia and Ukraine, mostly in Russia, no employees or suppliers, so a relatively limited dependency on also oil and gas. I don't see major business risks right now, but of course, there is a lot of uncertainty with the situation. If we move on to page four. The quarter was a strong revenue quarter. We also increased further our pace of M&A. We've entered new key geographies and added new complementary products.
We saw strong organic growth in our largest segments, MedTech and Specialty Pharma, offset by declines in Diagnostics COVID sales and also our Veterinary Services business. As expected, the positive revenue impact from COVID is now phasing out, impacting organic growth in the current and also the coming quarter. Veterinary Services stands out negatively in the quarter, and the performance is not where we would like it to be. We have a good plan and a good momentum to improve that segment. I'm confident that we will recover, and the margin that we see in this quarter is not what we expect in the coming quarters. If you look at the Q4 margin, it is lower than previous year, and Henrik will go through that in more detail.
In very short, we have invested in the organization to drive growth and M&A. For instance, in our MedTech business, we are investing to move into Eastern Europe and Latin America. We also have a dilution from some of our new companies that joined Vimian during the year. Also in MedTech, we have a sales pattern that we explained in Q3, where a lot of high- margin products are sold in Q1. We then expect to see a recovery here in Q1. What gives us comfort is that our gross margins are very stable or even increasing in certain segments, which indicates that our market position remains strong with intact pricing power. When you look at our margin, it's not a structural issue.
It's really that we are focusing on both M&A growth, obviously, but we also strengthen our organization because we've grown a lot more than what we had anticipated when we did our IPO. Of course, when you do 17 acquisitions in a year, you also have to make sure that your organization can make the most value out of that. I'm very confident in the business and that we will create a lot of value going forward. With that, I would like to hand over to Henrik to go through the Q4 financial highlights.
Thank you, Fredrik. Turning to page five. Before we jump into the financials, I just want to remind everyone that we acquired the outstanding 50% of Nextmune in November of 2020. What we see here in the reported numbers for 2020, both in full year and the Q4 , is only December numbers for Specialty Pharma segment. We had a very strong growth in both the quarter and the Full Year 2021, with 74.4% growth in the quarter and 143.3% in full year. We'll go through the breakdown of this growth a bit later on.
We had EUR 48.7 million of revenue in the quarter and EUR 12 million of adjusted EBITDA, corresponding to a margin of 24.7%. Fredrik commented about that a bit before, and I'll also provide more flavor around that, further down in the presentation. Looking at the full year, we ended up at EUR 1,073.3 million of revenue and 30.8% adjusted EBITDA margin. We have a strong Operating Cash Flow in the business of EUR 41.4 million and a cash conversion of 71%. If we look at leverage, defined as net debt over EBITDA, we are at 2.5 times, at the end of the year.
Turning to page six , we want to provide you a bit of a better understanding of the change in the margins between the Q4 of 2020 compared to the Q4 of 2021. If we look at it's down by 9.2 percentage points from 33.9% to 24.7%. 1.4 percentage points of this is due to business mix, just the relative growth of the different segments. 4.4 is made up of the MedTech segment. The margin is largely in line with what it was in Q3 already. Some comments on this. We had a very strong Q4 in 2020 with margin volumes really taking off after COVID lockdowns.
The organization was not strengthened enough to cope with that. We have invested in the organization to accommodate these volumes, but also to be able to drive future growth organically. We do have the seasonality of the annual order program, where a lot of our customers order their full expected need for the year already in Q1. This drives up volumes and margins in Q1, typically, where the remaining three quarters are slightly lower. In 2020, I mean, we actually didn't have the annual order program due to COVID, so this also impacts this. We spoke a bit about this in the Q3 report.
We have acquired some companies with a different financial profile, including Advetis & Freelance, and now also Kahuvet this side of year-end. Consolidating this has an impact on the margin, and the financial profile. Veterinary Services account for 1.8 percentage points of the change in the margin. If we look at Veterinary Services in the quarter, we are at a 15.9% margin. As Fredrik mentioned, this is something that we think we can do better in this segment, and we'll work actively to achieve this.
If you look a bit of the main drivers of this in Veterinary Services segments, we've invested a lot in the organization and other capabilities, including M&A, where we think we can drive a lot of growth in Veterinary Services as this is still a fragmented market. We have launched organic entries into three new markets in Latin America and Eastern Europe. This brings on costs upfront, and we expect. We have high expectations for these markets going forward, but it will take some time until they break even and turn to profit. We have renegotiated some contracts which has an impact in Q4. This should be temporary and should recover earlier next year or this year. We've also consolidated clinics through our co-investment program.
Fredrik will talk a bit more about the co-investments in clinics later on. Two things to keep in mind here. They typically have a different financial profile from the Veterinary Services segment, excluding the clinical investment. We are actually showing a loss in that part of the business right now as we're building up central capabilities to build this part of the Veterinary Services business. We've broken out those numbers for your benefit in the report, and that has an impact of course. We have central costs this year, which we didn't really have last year. That amounted to EUR 0.8 million on an adjusted basis in the quarter. That also has an impact of course.
Diagnostics has an impact of 0.5%, and this is mainly reflecting the less COVID volumes in the quarter. Last but not least, we have Specialty Pharma, which contributes positively to 0.7 percentage points to this. This is actually then only compared to December numbers in 2020, but we have good development in Nextmune and the Specialty Pharma segment, both in Q4, but also if you look at it compared to annualized 2020 numbers as if we would have consolidated for the full year, and Fredrik will mention more about that when we go through the segments. If we turn to page seven and look at the growth, we're very happy with the growth that we've seen both in the quarter and the year.
74.4% in the quarter and 143.4% in the year-over-year. In Q4 we saw 9% organic growth. MedTech is the key driver of this. This is offset a bit by the declining COVID-related sales in Diagnostics, where we had a negative organic growth in the Q4 as we did in Q3 as well. Specialty Pharma also contributing positively to the organic growth, but then only the month of December here. We have 65.3% acquired growth in the quarter, and that reflects the very strong M&A agenda that we've run in 2021 with 17 acquisitions. Fredrik will talk more about that later on.
Of course, also the impact from acquiring Nextmune in 2020. If we look at the Full Year 2021, we, as I mentioned, 143% total growth of which 16.5% was organic growth, so above our target of 15% for the group. Phenomenal acquired growth, 127.9%. Same drivers as in the quarter really from Nextmune of course impacting, but also very strong M&A agenda during 2021. We also had a slightly negative impact from FX in the year, mainly driven by US dollars in the MedTech segment.
If we turn to page eight, we wanted to provide you with a better understanding of the financial profile of Vimian now as it looks considering the very active M&A agenda in 2021 and also coming into 2022. What we've done here is we've pro forma adjusted the numbers to show you what it would have looked like had we closed all acquisitions on 1 January of 2021. If we do that, we have achieved a revenue in 2021 of EUR 214.7 million. That's up from 1 73.3 %, sorry, EUR 173.3 million reported. If you compare it to a annualized pro forma number for 2020, we're actually up by 56%. Very strong growth here.
If we also add Bova and Advetis, which were finalized in Q1 of 2022, they were rather large transactions for us. They add another EUR 24 million of annualized revenue. We are at close to EUR 240 million total revenue of the group and up 73% compared to 2020 pro forma numbers. If we look at adjusted EBITDA of this, we are at the end of the year at a level of EUR 66.8 million, 31.1% margin. The margin is down a bit compared to the reported EBITDA margin of 33.5%. That just reflects the impact of consolidating these acquisitions as they have had a slightly different financial profile.
If we also include Bova and Advetis, we are at EUR 73 million or slightly above and a margin of 30.7%, adjusted EBITDA. With that, I'd like to hand it back to Fredrik to cover the segments.
Thank you, Henrik. Let's move to page nine. Our largest segment, Specialty Pharma, continues to deliver outstanding results with strong revenue growth in existing and acquired businesses. This is a result of investments that we've done in product development and brand recognition. Really all geographies and therapeutic areas are delivering solid growth and high margins. The team has also been very successful at welcoming new entrepreneurs and successful companies to the group that has actually expanded both our channels, geographies and the product offerings. If you look at the December organic growth of 8%, which is the only month accounted for in the company report organic growth, it's slightly softer, but that is just due to phasing between November and December.
If you look at really the pro forma organic growth in that segment for the quarter, it's in tune of 25%. On the innovation side, we entered in Q4 a very exciting partnership with Angany for the development of a new vaccine for allergy. That's a complete new technology that we got global licenses for. If you now turn to page 10 and look at our MedTech segment. Also here we saw very strong growth across all product categories and geographies with 25.4% growth in the quarter and 25.6% in the Full Year 2021. We're also on track on delivering on our commercial synergies here by combining the product portfolios of all companies and going to customers with a broad offering.
Early November, we launched our full service offering under the Movora umbrella in Canada, and we did the same here in January in the U.S. That means that we're now going to market with one sales force and one order fulfillment team selling our full orthopedic portfolio, driving both growth and cost synergies in those two regions. That's a key milestone realizing both of these synergies in our MedTech companies. The intent is to do the same in all countries, either organically or with M&A. So that is what we're doing also with Advetis in France and starting to do with Freelance in the U.K.
We will do the same with Kahuvet in New Zealand and Australia. Now on the organic growth side and investment side, we entered Japan in 2021 by hiring three sales reps there. That has been one of the highest growth markets, of course, from a lower base, but we are seeing phenomenal organic growth there and a very rapid return on investment. It's really an example of us being able to drive tremendous value even with organic investments. Although it does weigh a bit on margins initially, we're seeing really nice and very fast returns on investment here.
As Henrik said on the EBITDA side, the lower adjusted EBITDA margin is reflects similar trends as we saw in the Q3 , with the sales of high- margin products skewed to Q1, but also of course investments in the organization as we have moved from, you know, owning three companies to seven companies by now. I think what is important to look at here is the profitability on a full year basis, and that is still, you know, a robust 32.7% in this business. If we then turn to page 11. As expected in Diagnostics, organic growth declined by 13.6%. This is reflecting the decline in sales of sample preparation instruments that were used by some of our vet customers during Q4 2020 for COVID testing.
The COVID-related sales in Q4 accounted for around 20% of sales, and that percentage has been declining during the year. We expect these COVID-related sales to phase out fully during the spring of 2022. If you look at PCR and ELISA technology for veterinary applications, that continued to deliver solid organic growth in the quarter. Looking at the Full Year 2021, the diagnostic business delivered robust organic growth of 13.3%. Now, this business is somewhat volatile because of the infectious disease nature of the business, so it has some volatility between quarters, really due to regional disease outbreaks and different situations in different countries.
The overall underlying momentum is positive, really driven by regulations, more testing, avoidance of new zoonotic diseases, reduction of antimicrobial resistance, and focus on preventive care and One Health. If you look at the margin in this section, the Q4 margin is a bit lower than the same quarter last year, higher than Q3. The slightly lower margin here is really due to the uplift in COVID-related sales during last year. We're actually quite happy with this level of EBITDA margin in this segment right now. In diagnostics, we also have a relatively strong innovation agenda. In November, we launched our prefilled SmartLab campaign, including a subscription model, saving labs both time and money, and we're seeing quite some interest for that value proposition.
As you might remember, we entered a partnership with a company in Denmark called AeroCollect, with a completely unique technology for air sampling, non-invasive sampling in production animals, where we collect air samples in farms. That has now commercially launched, and we have a number of customer validation trials running in different regions. If we now move to page 12. As mentioned before, in our service business, we're not satisfied with the reported decline in organic growth, but we do know what the drivers are, and we are confident that the performance will improve. The declines reflect really the limited number of recruitments during the two years of COVID restrictions.
As we mentioned before, this is a very relationship- based business where we go and meet the veterinarians and offer the services that enable them to focus more time on the pets. It's been difficult to recruit new members for two reasons. Why? One, because of travel regulations, but two, because veterinarians have been so extremely busy during COVID times that they've had also limited time to actually focus even on their business performance. There's also another factor around the tough comparatives in 2020. As Henrik mentioned, some short-term negative effects from contract renegotiations with certain suppliers. On the positive side, member growth accelerated in the Q4 with actually more members joining during Q4 than during the first three quarters combined. We will need to be patient to see financial impact of that.
We have also taken the decision to launch Vet Family in three new markets in Latin America and Europe. We have hired two highly experienced regional managers, so we're planning launching that during 2022. As Henrik mentioned, we strengthened the M&A capability here for our co-investment program. The margin here also stands out negatively and is really below our expectations. Looking ahead, I'm confident that will recover as the performance recovers. On the clinic side, we have now co-invested in six veterinary clinics in the Nordics, and I will tell you a little bit more about that later in the presentation. If we move to page 13. As I mentioned before, it's been quite an amazing year for M&A.
We added EUR 53 million in annual sales, so that is way ahead of what we had anticipated in June at our IPO. The pace further accelerated actually in the Q4 with nine of these deals being signed during the Q4 . Just to put that into perspective, we did 20 acquisitions during the first five years. Quite a high pace with very exciting opportunities. I think it's really the result of creating the group, creating much more visibility and having a good, strong track record, creating value for these entrepreneurs. If we move to page 14, 22 has only started, but we have done two very important deals, adding additional EUR 19 million annualized revenue to the group. We continue to see increased inbound M&A opportunities to grow our ecosystem.
Our pipeline is now also I mean continue to be very strong, with many high-performing animal health companies across the globe. On multiples, what we've experienced historically is that the larger transactions tend to have a higher valuation, while the smaller transactions still are traded at historical multiples. It's hard to predict the future, but we haven't seen a major change right now, and the reset we've seen in the public market has not translated into private market yet. If we move to page 15, I'd like to give you just a quick note on Global One that we acquired.
This is a company that enabled us to enter the fast-growing niche animal health market, and gives us access to a nationwide retailer network in the U.S. and Canada, where we over time aim to sell our entire non-prescription portfolio in the Specialty Pharma segment. This company grew exceptionally well in the Q4 with 115%. If you turn to page 15. Sorry, 16. We also acquired a company called Bova. It's a leading Specialty Pharma company for companion animals in the U.K. This is a very exciting acquisition, really marking a key milestone in our strategy to add new therapeutic areas to our Specialty Pharma segment.
Here we see continued high growth potential of the company, both in the U.K., but also future expansion into other European countries and the U.S. as we can leverage Nextmune's commercial infrastructure. If we move on to page 17, I would just like to give you an example also of how we create value when we integrate a distributor as an M&A target into the group. In May, we acquired a company called Advetis in France. It's a French orthopedic distributor. When we acquired the company, our own brands, being BioMedtrix, one of our brands, and Advetis own brands accounted for around 30% of their sales. Now, since the acquisition, we have gradually been able to bring in our own products, thanks to our broad portfolio, and also replace some of the third-party brands.
Today, own brands make up 50% of total sales six months later. When I say today, it's at the end of 2021. This helps drive faster growth, but also improves profitability since our own brands carry 20-35 percentage points higher gross margin compared to third-party brands. Even though acquiring distributors initially has a negative impact on our group margin, it's extremely valuable to quickly strengthen presence in key markets, and over time, improve those margins. Of course, when you look at return on capital deployed, it's a really nice way to create high returns. That is also the rationale for us making the recent deal with Kahuvet in New Zealand, Australia, where we intend to do the same. With that, if we move on to page 18.
As we get back to post-COVID normality, and what I mean with that is we're actually able to go and visit customers, we do start to see good momentum in the Veterinary Services segment. Our strategy here is to grow on two dimensions. It's recruiting new members and increase the value we create for each of those members. If you look at the number of members, they have increased from 2,500 to 3,000 during 2021, and most of that being achieved in the Q4 . To increase the value for our members, we successfully launched what we call the new pro membership level in Sweden and Norway, and built a new tiered membership model ready to roll out in more countries during 2022.
What we do with that is really to create an offering that better caters to our members' different ambitions and needs depending on size and growth. It also creates more value for our strategic partners and suppliers we work with. As part of the top tier, we offer clinics that are looking for a strategic partner the opportunity for co-investments. With this pro membership, we actually seen very strong momentum towards a higher conversion to these higher- value memberships in the last quarter as well. If we move on to page 19, I'd just like to give you a little bit more sense for the clinic co-investment program we announced during the Q3 and the strategic rationale for Vimian in doing so.
Really, the three core benefits of doing that. It's really to support our members and drive revenue growth as we build closer relationships and offer more services. It also grows our revenue base for our suppliers and drives better compliance to our contracts. Last but not least, it also creates a strong platform for testing new services and product offerings within that family, but also for our other verticals. In 2021, we invested in 6 clinics with unrealized sales of EUR 5 million. We expect that program to grow aiming at between EUR 20 million and EUR 30 million this year, predominantly in the second half of the year. We partner really with high- quality clinics in the Nordics and continental Europe. With that, I would like to hand back over to Henrik.
Thanks, Fredrik. Turning to page 21, looking at the income statement. We've already discussed very strong growth in revenue and EBITDA. We had EUR 48.7 million in Q4 this year versus EUR 27.9 million in the Q4 of last year in revenue. If we look at the operating profit, it increased to EUR 4.1 million in the quarter, up from EUR 3.8 million in the Q4 of last year. This also includes item affecting comparability of EUR 4.7 million this year, compared to EUR 3.9 million last year, which fully burdens these numbers. If we look at the profit measures in 2020, that is still impacted by the acquisition of the remaining 50% of Nextmune.
If we look at the Q4 profit measures of this year, profit before tax of EUR 1.9 million and profit after taxes of EUR 2.0 million. There was a positive tax booking in Q4, and that reflects internal invoicing in the group of central costs that was not fully allocated in Q3. Turning to page 22, I mentioned the cash conversion earlier on, and we have a very strong cash conversion of 71%. That's up 23 percentage points compared to last year, highlighting the strong cash generation in the business. If we look at the cash flow, we have strong cash flow from the operating activities, and that's mainly driven by strong growth. With this growth also comes some build up of net working capital.
That also consumes a bit of cash in the year. If we look at the cash flow from investing activities and financing activities, that largely reflects the very strong M&A delivery in 2021. We end the year at EUR 55 million of cash on hand. If we turn to page 23, looking at net debt and leverage. We are at net debt position at the end of the year of EUR 168 million, which then of course includes the cash position of EUR 55 million. Leverage defined as net debt over EBITDA was at 2.5 times at the end of the year, and that's up from 1.3 times at the end of Q3.
That reflects additional financing, external financing to finance acquisitions during Q4. If we turn to page 24, quickly looking at current trading, before we go into that, to follow up a bit on what Fredrik mentioned on Russia, Ukraine at the beginning of this call. We're of course deeply concerned about the situation in Ukraine and our thoughts are with the people there. We as a company have very or relatively limited exposure to the region with around EUR 700,000 of sales in 2021. We're currently halting all shipments to Russia, and we have around EUR 150,000 of receivables outstanding to the region which is at risk for us as a company. Rather limited credit risk there.
If we look at the beginning of 2022, we have good organic growth, but in all segments really. We will still see the impact of COVID-related sales phasing out in the Diagnostics segment. We have very good performance also in the acquired companies. Fredrik mentioned the Global One, the acquisition of Specialty Pharma, that's also going well. We're happy to see that these acquired entities also live up to our high expectations. We continue the investments to drive organic growth with also new market entries and also M&A capabilities throughout the group as we see M&A as a strong value lever for us.
If we look at the different segments, Specialty Pharma continues to see the robust trends that we saw in 2021, driven by commercial initiatives. As mentioned, also Global One performing well so far. We're very happy about that. MedTech segment has had a very good start to the annual order program this year as well, with a lot of new customers signing up. We expect to see the margin uplift that we expect to see from the annual order program. Keep in mind that the Q1 of 2021 was a very tough comp for us. We also have the new acquisitions consolidated in that segment, as Fredrik mentioned earlier.
Diagnostics segment, we see a similar trend as in Q4. We have good underlying performance, but the COVID-related sales continues to phase out. In Q1 of last year, we also had a backorder filling in the Q1 , driving high volumes in Q1 of 2021. Veterinary Services, we already discussed a bit. We expect to see improvement from a low margin of Q4. We expect that to grow a bit in Q1. We're of course excited about the new market entries and the prospects for that segment, even if we're not satisfied with Q4 performance. With that, I'll hand it back to you, Fredrik, to wrap up.
Thank you, Henrik. Yeah. If we move to page 25, just to summarize the full year, I'm very excited about what we've achieved and what the team has achieved this year. We completed our IPO in June. We delivered 143% total growth. We have, you know, targets of 30% total growth and 15% organic. We delivered 143% total growth and 16.5% organic.
Of course, due to the way our reporting works, I think the best way to reflect this, if we look at really what we owned at the end of 2020, that those businesses generated EUR 138 million in 2020, and they've grown actually above 16.5% organically this year. And when we look at what our companies now generate, we're at EUR 243 million, including what we've acquired already this year. So almost 75% growth there. When we look at our EBITDA, we were at EUR 45 million pro forma 2020 in EBITDA. We are now looking at everything we own today generated EUR 73 million in 2021.
On top of that, we said that we would do quite a bit of M&A. We've done almost as many transactions despite an IPO in the last 14 months than we did during the first five years of the group combined. Overall, very happy. Of course, there are some challenges. We are a newly formed group, and we are growing at a high pace, so we have to invest in the organization to keep up that pace. Of course, we're very excited about the space that we are in. There are so many opportunities to grow, both organically and with M&A. The composition of the group has changed quickly. Of course, the mix also changes the financial profile.
Every single investment we do, be it organic or M&A investments, we all see them having very attractive investment profiles. When we look at our target of EUR 200 million EBITDA in 2025, we're actually ahead of the curve on that metric. Overall, very happy. Yeah, despite some challenges, of course, in some segments, but 80% of businesses is Specialty Pharma and MedTech. Both of those are performing extremely well. We know about our challenges in Diagnostics, but the underlying business there is also performing very well. We have the challenges we mentioned in the Veterinary Services business as we navigate out of the COVID two years of COVID, but also there, I think, we're going to.
We have a good plan to get that into a good shape again. With that, I would like to open up for questions.
Our first question comes from the line of Rickard Anderkrans from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Right. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. First one on the pace and more near-term outlook on the M&A side in light of your target 2.5 times net to EBITDA here in relation to your target of typically running below three times. How should we view the M&A outlook, you know, obviously coming out from a very transaction-intensive year here?
Sure. I can take that. Hi, Rickard. I hope all is well with you. In terms of the near-term M&A outlook, nothing has really changed when it comes to pipeline. I think we're still excited about the pipeline and our abilities to identify attractive targets to acquire. I think as always, it's difficult to predict exactly when and how much M&A will be materialized. I think we also had a good performance towards the end of last year. A lot of the projects that we worked on, we're very happy to have finalized that in a good way. When it comes to our leverage, yes, we are at 2.5x at the end of the year.
We're of course always looking at the balance sheet and the financing of the group. We do have a target of 3x leverage that we should not go above that unless we can go temporarily above it to finance acquisitions. Then we also need to see a, you know, quick way down back down below three. We're continuously monitoring that and thinking about how to finance acquisitions as they come along.
All right. Thank you. You know, you mentioned it in the presentation as well, but there has been a number of margin dilutive acquisitions. How should we think about that dynamic in relation to your medium- term 35% EBITDA margin target? Because presumably, you know, most targets coming ahead will also have likely, you know, similar margin dynamics here.
Yeah, I think that it's we do not have a rule saying that we should acquire companies that have 35% or higher margin. I mean, I think if we look at the few transactions that we communicated this year, we have very high margins in Bova and more of the distributive margin in Kahuvet. As Fredrik mentioned, in the example of Advetis, we're also working actively, of course, to increase these margins. I think we can create a lot of value around that. I think that we've also tried to be more transparent around the financial profile of the acquisitions that we do. You all of you can also understand how it will impact the Group.
Of course, as we talked about in this presentation, we're also doing some investments in future growth, which has an impact on the margin short- term. You know, we see the target as more medium to long- term, as you say. You know, we are comfortable to deviate from that in the shorter- term for the right investments and also. That's both organic investments and acquisitions, I should say.
Maybe just to add on that, Rickard, I think that the way we think about it is really our you know highest priority is to generate high cash flow. Of course, we set ourselves a margin ambition because I think it's healthy to have a strong focus on profitability. But some of these deals that are margin dilutive are highly attractive deals. And when you look at an Advetis where you buy you know let's say just you know as an example you know you buy SEK 1 million in EBITDA, and you can bring it up to SEK 2 million over a year. I mean, that's a pretty nice investment if we can you know pay a low multiple on that. That's really how we look at investments.
It's really return on capital deployed on all those investments. Then we have our general focus on high profitability over time.
Thank you. Just a final one from my side. Could you add some commentary around, you know, potential supply chain disruption and cost inflation? That seems to be basically communication you've been sort of managing that fairly well so far. Anything you would like to highlight there?
So far, we haven't had any supply chain disruptions. We had that in Diagnostics in 2020, but in 2021, we haven't seen any. Cost inflation, we do see some, you know, salary inflations in the U.S., but we've also been able to pass that, you know, push that onto customers as well by increasing prices. The only place where we've seen it, one orthopedic company that has had a slightly higher material cost. It's one of the smaller ones. I would say relatively limited impact from supply chain disruption or inflation.
Thank you. That's all for me. Thank you for taking my question.
Sure.
The next question comes from the line of Hassan Al-Wakeel from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple, please. Could you please expand on your outlook commentary in the release around organic initiatives weighing on margins in 2022? Are we to expect margin expansion in 2022, inclusive of Bova and Kahuvet, which I know are slightly diluted in aggregate? Could you perhaps talk about the dynamics by division? Secondly, to what extent did Omicron flatter Indical sales? Could you perhaps talk about the phasing of that 20% of Indical that you said was COVID related? How that, you know, what that number was Q3, Q4, and maybe what it looked like in Q1 of this year? How we should think about the overall organic growth profile for Indical this year, given the core business is demonstrating solid growth.
Dynamics of organic investments and the Diagnostics, yeah?
Exactly.
You wanna start, Henrik?
Yeah, sure. I mean, on the organic initiatives that we launched, I think we've spoken quite a lot about some of them already, for instance, in the Veterinary Services segment where we're going into three new markets organically. So that's, I should say quite an important investment for us, and we see a lot of potential on that. So we, you know, we're not really giving margin guidance, but I think that it will take some time until these initiatives pay off fully. And when it comes to, well, I mean, what happens is really you establish local presence, you build up a local team and marketing capabilities, et cetera, and then you start to roll out the service.
That takes a bit of time to turn a profit. We're confident that it will. On the Veterinary Services segment, I would also like to highlight again the impact of the co-investment in the clinics. If we look at the other segments, I think if you take MedTech, for instance, we see a lot of potential in markets where we're not. We've done an organic entry into Japan, where we see from a low base, but very strong growth numbers. We think that we can roll out that in other parts of the world as well. We will do some of these investments also this year.
When it comes to the other segment, I think that the Diagnostics segment has built a very solid base now to continue to expand. There will probably be some organic investments there as well. A similar dynamic in Specialty Pharma. Important to keep in mind that we always want to do the value creating investment. You know, also important to keep in mind is that the base business is still scalable. As we grow that will also come through with a, you know, high- margin contribution on the bottom line. I mean, we don't expect all segments to have decreased margins this year because we're doing investments, but we don't expect all of the scalability to flow through in the PNL either.
I don't know if that was answer to your question, Hassan.
That's helpful color. I guess in aggregate, should we expect margin expansion for this year versus 2021? As I said, I know that some of the larger deals are dilutive, but just in aggregate, could we go as far as say that you should expect some margin expansion getting closer to that medium-term target?
I wouldn't assume that too much because as we have a lot of these margin dilutive deals actually happening towards the end of 2021, they're not having a Full Year impact in 2021, but they will have a Full Year impact in 2022. Even though the businesses we own in 2021 might have margin expansion, I think that I wouldn't like to overpromise on increase in margins for 2022, given the product mix.
Okay.
Okay. On Indical, your other question was around the COVID-related sales of Indical. As you remember, Q1 2021, we had this backfilling, back order filling of in Q1, which we said also then was exceptional or not something we expect to repeat. If I look at the dynamic for Indical in 2022, what I do expect is a Q1 that will see compared to Q1 2021, a decline, a significant decline. If you look at the last quarters, we see, you know, good progress. We do see these COVID-related sales to phase out here in Q1, Q2.
Our expectation for the full year is, you know, probably single- digit growth in that business, where we're probably gonna see negative growth in the first half of the year and positive growth in the second half of the year.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Sure.
The next question comes from the line of Kristofer Liljeberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Coming back to the discussion previously about the margins, I have two. One specifically on the MedTech business. If we consider that you had a very strong start of last year, but a weaker ending, you think it's positive to keep MedTech margin flat year-over-year in 2022? If not, how much should be expected to go down? On the group level, considering the previous question here and you mentioned about the dilutive effect from acquisitions. If you could take the pro forma EBITDA margin instead as a starting point, I think you said it was around 31% if you included the latest deals you have done. Do you think that's a good indication for where the EBITDA margin should be in 2022? Thank you.
I think in the MedTech segment, I think what we should consider that we also acquired Kahuvet in Q1, so not reflected in any of the numbers in 2021. That is a rather sizable acquisition with the distributor margins. I mean, that will of course just by adding that to the underlying MedTech business will have an impact. Apart from that, you know, I think we are at a level that I see as more sustainable, but it depends a bit on the speed of our investments.
Yeah, I mean, what is nice in MedTech when we're looking at the overall, you know, gross profit margins, they're very solid and they are stable. And we are growing very strong. Yeah, I'm not concerned about that. I mean, there is no structural change in the margins in that space. As Henrik said, there is a product mix with Calibeth that you should take into account.
The reason I'm asking because it's rather difficult, I think, to forecast this because you have this very big seasonal positive effect in the Q1 . At the same time, we've seen a weakening in the last two quarters, a bit difficult how much is seasonality and how much are the underlying investments. I think it would be helpful if maybe you could give some more indication on that.
Yeah. I think it's fair to say that the margins will not be as they were, you know, extreme in Q1 and maybe also a bit lower than expected in the other quarters. I think I would expect to see less of a, not such a, how should I say? not exaggerated, but such a big swing in margins quarter- to- quarter. There will be some because of the AOP program. There will be some of these, that type of pattern also in 2022.
I think, you know, if we take out the impact from acquisitions, from my perspective, I don't expect any big margin decline in the MedTech segment. Rather, I think we're growing 25% organically this year. A lot of that is also in our existing market where we should see scale benefits. I don't see a big margin erosion in the MedTech segment in 2022 if, you know, factoring out acquisitions which can have a mathematical impact on it.
Okay. That's helpful. Maybe a rather similar question on the group and using pro forma as a starting point for costing 2022.
Yeah. I think the pro forma levels that we discussed on page eight are relevant to think about in the future as well. I mean, do keep in mind that, for instance, central costs will have an impact in 2022 as we first of all didn't really establish it until Q2 or late Q2, and we're scaling it up a bit. We're not doing anything massive, but it will have an impact. At the same time, we're also expecting to see profitable growth in the segment. I would say it's a fair baseline.
Very good. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Peter Verdult from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Peter Verdult, Citi. Two questions for Henrik. Firstly, of the 19 deals you've done through 2021 in Q1 this year, how many of the previous owners, key managers have stayed with Vimian or are you managing those centrally? Just want to get a flavor there. Sorry, just to harp on about or go back to guidance. To get the margins, I mean, if I take the slide on pro forma, EBITA, had all the acquisitions been with you since day one, you know, that's SEK 73 million of EBITA. Now that is the same level as what consensus is at the moment for 2022.
I just wanted to get a sense of whether we should, one, be getting excited that for the first time, consensus expectations are too low, or more likely we need to better reflect your signaling on significant investments being made. I just basically want to get your comfort level around the current consensus, which has you doing about SEK 250 million in net and SEK 73 million of EBITA in 2022. Thank you.
I think on the first question on the 19 deals, I would say, absolute majority of them have stayed on.
All of them.
Yeah, maybe even all of them. I'm trying to think here, but I can't.
I can't think of any that has not stayed on with us since.
That's in line with how we've done it historically. We're also very keen on, of course, the owner staying on. We can do, you know, succession acquisitions as well, but, you know, it requires a bit more planning. I think of these. I can't think of anyone who hasn't stayed on.
Good to hear.
When it comes to the question on consensus, I mean, you're right. The levels for 2022 doesn't imply a lot of growth on our end. We do have our growth target of 30% of which at least 15% organic and, you know, that's something we aim to achieve. That, yeah. I mean, that would imply that consensus could come up a bit then. You know, keeping in mind, of course, all the comments that we had during this call around margin and the growth prospects.
Sorry, Henrik, just to be clear, sorry to put you on the spot. It sounds like you're very comfortable with the absolute consensus number? Forget the margin, but consensus has got about SEK 73 million of EBITDA in 2022. Is that a number you feel comfortable that Indien can generate based on the business you currently have?
Yes. I mean, it doesn't imply a lot of growth, right? We're comfortable with that.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Svante Krokfors from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Svante Krokfors from Nordea. Thank you, Fredrik and Henrik, for the presentation. Some of the questions have been already answered, but I would like to address a few, three more specific, the annual ordering program in MedTech that you didn't have in 2020 and impacted 2021 clearly. How should we put that into perspective for Q1 2022?
Yeah. I think we, if I'm not mistaken, we did flag in the IPO roughly how much that was in Q1 of 2021. It does have a significant impact on the Q1 in the MedTech segment. As I mentioned on the current trading slide, we have seen good performance of the annual order program also this year with a lot of new customers signing up. We're quite happy with that.
I guess the answer to you, Svante, is if you take out the addition of Kahuvet, and also Advetis & Freelance, then you should see a similar pattern in the rest of the biz that we already owned a year ago as you saw in 2021 in terms of quarter-to-quarter variations.
Okay, thanks. Question regarding Veterinary Services, and you mentioned contract negotiations as one thing that impacted. Could you be a bit more specific on that? I guess the fees that you get from the suppliers is quite a significant part. What's the change there?
Essentially, some of these contracts are also based on growth, and some are based on, you know, exclusivity in certain countries and so on and so forth. Depending on how much we grow, it can give us different revenues from that. As we renegotiate certain contracts for exclusivity in certain regions, it can have a short-term impact on income. I don't know if that answers your question. I can't go into too much detail on this, but that is, I'd say mainly a temporary impact.
Okay. Okay, fair enough. The last one, I mean, you have made more acquisitions and acquired more top line than you perhaps planned in the IPO phase. Did you feel that you have had to make more investments or take up more recurring costs than you anticipated before the M&A spree?
I would say not more, but sooner. Of course, when you do 17 acquisitions, you have to make sure that you have an organization that can actually cope with it. Since the number of acquisitions has happened faster, we have also needed to strengthen the organization sooner in order to cope with them. We do expect to see these resources that we expect to see, you know, operational leverage from. I mean, one example is we hired a great CFO in our Movora business in Q4, which, you know, we managed without for a while. Of course, when you start to have, you know, six or seve businesses, you have to have a strong CFO.
There are some of these we'll have to also do in 2022. When the time is right, we'll, for instance, add a CEO for our Movora business. Right now, it's run by three co-CEOs, and I'm heavily involved in that management team personally. But now this, you know, it starts to become a relatively sizable business, and then we're going to appoint a CFO at some point. Sorry, CEO at some point. And that is driven by the speed at which we're growing. Yeah. I hope that answers the question. It's not. I think it's a natural thing to do, and it's the right thing to do because we wanna build a very, very successful company long- term. And...
Maybe just to add to that, Svante. We, as you said, maybe we've done more in less time than we planned. Fredrik mentioned we've almost done as many in the last 14 months as we did in the five years building up Indien to what it is today, going into 2021. That comes also with strengthening some of the local teams to make sure that we can onboard them. The dynamics of the market has not really changed for us. It's still a very fragmented market where we see a lot of exciting companies that we would like to welcome as part of the Vinnova family.
We're also building up more capabilities on an M&A perspective, well, partially in the verticals or segments, but also in centrally.
Okay. That's very clear. That's all from me. Thank you, Fredrik and Henrik.
Thank you, Svante Krokfors.
Thank you, Svante.
We have just one final question from the line of Patrik Ling from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, guys. I just have two quick questions left. First of all, when it comes to Indica and Diagnostics, you said that 20% of sales in this quarter was related to COVID-19. Was that the right way to interpret you?
20% in the Q4 of 2021, yes.
Yeah. Okay. If that declines sales for COVID-19, is that better margin or lower margin than the rest?
It is slightly lower margin than the rest, especially equipment. Now, in 2020, it was a lot of equipment sales, with very low margin. In 2021, it's been more reagent sales. Those reagents have slightly lower profitability than the rest of the reagents in the portfolio.
Okay. If you lose, going forward, the COVID-19 sales, that will have primarily an impact on top line and maybe a slightly positive impact on margins. Is that the way we should see it?
Well, I mean, you're also taking out-
Yeah, exactly.
You're also taking out volume, right? Which leads to less fixed cost absorption. Please do keep in mind, especially looking at Q1 of this year, where, as we mentioned, we had very high volumes last year also due to backorder filling.
Yeah. That you need to take out completely. We said it was about SEK 2 million in Q1 last year that was backorder filling, so that I would just take out completely. I would rather look at the historical two to three quarters to give an idea of where we may end Q1.
Okay, good. The second question on Vet Family. I mean, I was kind of surprised of the margin here in the quarter. When you go forward here, I mean, you say that you recruited during the year 500 new members, where the majority was now in Q4. How long will it take for you before you start to see that actually becoming a profitable business?
I think it is a profitable business, but you mean how long it takes until they contribute to revenue?
To revenue margins. Yeah.
Yeah.
Revenue and margins for the new members.
I would say, I mean, you have to differentiate between the markets that we're already in and the new markets. The markets that we're already in, I mean, they contribute not from day one, but relatively soon, at least, with revenue and at limited additional extra cost. The new markets that we've entered, that will take longer.
Exactly.
You have a positive effect from new members, expected short- term. I think historically, when we've entered, for instance, Holland, which is a very profitable and good market for us today, it took us about a year to get into black numbers.
Okay. You mentioned the three new markets. Could you highlight which ones you're talking about?
Yeah. Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, and Czech Republic.
Okay, great.
We're taking it.
But-
You know, step by step. We're not kind of loading the P&L. We're taking it step by step and, you know, as we see momentum pick- up, we hire. We're not, you know, going all in on investments.
Okay.
We, as always, will continuously evaluate our investment, and if we don't see the potential materializing, then we're ready, you know, to reconsider, of course.
Okay. Okay. Great. I think that was all for me. Thank you very much for taking the questions, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you, Patrik. Thank you.
As there are no further audio questions, I'll hand it back to the speakers.
All right. Well, thank you so much for attending this audio conference today and following us. We look forward to speaking to you next quarter. Have a great day.
Thank you, everyone.
This is a conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your line.