Welcome to the Vimian Group Q4 report. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the speaker, CEO Carl-Johan Zetterberg Boudrie , CEO Fredrik Ullman. Please go ahead.
Welcome to Vimian's fourth quarter and full year earnings call. I'm Fredrik Ullman, CEO, and with me here today, Carl Johan Zetterberg, our CFO. As you saw this morning, we announced an issue in kind to finance the acquisition of Bova in Australia, and we're very excited about this acquisition. I'll tell you more about that later in the presentation. Taking a look at 2022 as a full year, as you know, 94% of our group is focused on companion animals. 2022, we faced an unprecedented year with war in Europe, inflation, etc. Our market, though, continued to grow and show resilience, but of course, with more normalized demand versus the peak levels we saw in previous years.
On our part, we delivered strong total growth thanks to successful execution of M&A. We had above 11% pro forma organic growth in our companion animal businesses, which gives you a good idea of how the vast majority of Vimian is trending. We also achieved several key milestones on our journey. We entered new markets, we added a new therapeutic area to our Specialty Pharma division. In MedTech, we integrated acquired product lines and are now offering the full MedTech portfolio in all geographies. Towards the end of the year, we also launched two new tech platforms, one in allergy and one in diagnostics. We also advanced our innovation pipeline in allergy, diagnostics, and orthopedics. We professionalized and structured our ESG agenda with ambition to take a lead in our sector.
All in all, I'm very proud of the operational milestones we achieved, as well as the strong total revenue and EBITDA growth that we have achieved in 2022. Going into 2023, we put a strong focus on organic growth, operational leverage, and cash flow improvements. We look at selectively at M&A as well, of course, but really focus is going to be on organic growth and profitability and cash flow. Just briefly looking at our global footprint, that remains in line with the third quarter, i.e., roughly half of the business in Western Europe, 44% in North America, and 9% in rest of the world. Now looking into the fourth quarter.
In this quarter, we saw similar trends as in the third quarter with strong growth in the U.S., while Southern Europe was slower due to the macroeconomic environment. We also continued to see the impact of the phase out of COVID sales and diagnostics, which will end by the end of the first quarter of 2023. During this quarter, we focused really on the integration of acquired companies and our initiative to accelerate organic growth while staying cautious to not take on additional cost. We were very active in the fourth quarter, hosting a number of trainings and also attending large trade shows in the U.S. and in Europe. In December, we completed the management transition in Movora and appointed Colleen Fisher as new co-CEO.
Colleen comes with 20 years in leading positions in the MedTech sector on the human side and is a really strong addition to our team. Now looking at the first months of 2023, I'm really encouraged to see that we're off to a good start with good growth in most businesses. With that, I would like to hand over to Carl Johan to look at our financials.
Thank you very much, Fredrik. In the fourth quarter, we grew with 55%, achieving EUR 75.5 million in revenue. Organic growth in the companion animal segment that accounts for more than 90% of our business was a solid 6.7%. We have seen continued good growth in many areas of our business. Reported organic growth is somewhat held back by phase out of COVID sales in diagnostics, as well as slower market development in South Europe. Adjusting for COVID sales, we report organic growth in all our segments in the quarter despite a more challenging macroeconomic environment. For the full year, revenue increased to EUR 281.3 million, a growth of 62% compared to 2021.
For the full year, organic growth was 3.7%, with around 12% pro forma organic growth in our companion animal business. The FX Tailwind, mainly the relation between U.S. dollar and euro, continued in the fourth quarter, supporting our revenue growth with 4.2% in the quarter, which is in line with the full year impact as well. The Adjusted EBITDA increased by 50% to EUR 18.0 million for the fourth quarter. This is equal to an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 23.9%, which is slightly below same period last year due to consolidation of acquired entities and strategic investments in new offerings and market development. In our legacy business, we see a stable or improving margin and good pricing power in the market.
Our gross margin, excluding the consolidation of acquired entity GlobalOne, which gives us a different business mix, have increased with roughly 1.3 percentage points in the quarter and 1.6 percentage points for the full year. For the full year, Adjusted EBITDA was 73.4 million EUR, which is an increase of 37% compared to 2021. We have a strong track record in the last couple of years, reaching a pro forma revenue of almost 300 million EUR in 2022. Since 2020, we have tripled the business through organic growth and continued strategic acquisitions. Revenue growth have also supported strong profit increase.
Since 2018, EBITDA had increased with 105% in average per year, which exceeds the annual revenue growth, reaching a pro forma EBITDA of EUR 86 million at the end of the year. We're actively driving several organic growth initiatives and synergies within and between our segments and acquired entities to drive continued strong revenue and profit development. Back to you, Fredrik, for some further insights on the business segment development in the quarter.
Thank you, Carl-Johan. Looking at the Specialty Pharma vertical, here we delivered a full year pro forma growth of 15%, which is in line with our target. That I think is a testament to the strength of that business despite the macroeconomic environment we experienced in 2022. In the fourth quarter, we continued to see strong growth in Europe, U.K., and U.S., although somewhat affected by a softer market in Southern Europe, as we mentioned. We are monitoring that demand very closely. When we look now at January and February 2023, it looks stronger.
We see a continued strong performance in our specialty pharmaceuticals, Bova UK, and also specialized nutrition GlobalOne in the quarter, who will come in as organic growth in 2023 or in the first quarter of 2023, both with strong innovation capabilities and a large share of sales from new product launches. Here we also delivered a margin expansion in the legacy parts of Nextmune. The reported margin you see here is the result of the mix effect driven by the consolidation of GlobalOne, which stands for 25% of the segment sales in the quarter. We completed a small but strategically important acquisition of our Scandinavian distributor in the quarter, which was key to consolidate logistics and optimize supply chain in Scandinavia.
Our sales and marketing teams were highly active in the quarter, completing the launch of our new allergy test in the U.S. It's a platform called PAX, first molecular diagnostic platform in allergy, that was very well received. We were hosting the big allergy awareness week for vets also in Europe and attending several congresses. In the spring, we're preparing to launch direct distribution of our dermatology portfolio, ICF, and nutrition product lines in France and Belgium, and we're preparing for more than 50 new product launches this spring. Overall, I'm very satisfied with the performance of our Specialty Pharma business. Looking at Bova Australia, we're excited to proceed to the closing of this acquisition.
It's the second strategic milestone on our journey to build a global leader in specialty pharmaceuticals, which is a fast-growing segment in animal health and one of our fastest growing businesses. Bova has an attractive growth and margin profile, which is accretive to our financial targets. We're also happy to deepen the relationship with Nick Bova, who joined us in January last year when we acquired his U.K. business. He's a very strong entrepreneur and who is very excited about our journey and will play an important role in our team. With the issuing time we propose today, we align incentives with all our shareholders and secure strong commitment from Nick, who is also eager to increase his stake in Vimian. Moving on to our MedTech vertical.
In Movora, our orthopedic business here, we delivered solid growth both full year and in the quarter. A slower European market stopped us from delivering in line with our 15% target. We see continued good growth in the U.S. with high case loads in clinics and busy surgeons. We had a major veterinary surgery congress in the quarter, which was very successful with more than 200 new sales leads. Our acquired distributors are growing fast, like in Specialty Pharma, we delivered an EBITDA margin expansion of 2.1% in this business. In Movora, we've also integrated the acquired products and now offer the full brand portfolio across all geographies.
We now have a very strong position as a global leading provider in veterinary orthopedics. Moving on to our services business. Also VetFamily and VerticalVet delivered solid growth in the quarter and full year. We continue to focus on our new tiered membership model and ensuring good strategic partnership agreements with our suppliers. We had strong member growth with more than 300 new members in the fourth quarter. As we mentioned before, one of our organic growth initiatives was to enter Brazil and also Belgium. We launched those two countries in September, and we're off to a strong start with more than 210 clinics now onboarded organically since we started. In veterinary services, we saw an EBITDA expansion of 2% in the quarter.
I have to say, the new management team here has come together in a very, very strong way. We have recruited some key talents. As we have acquired heiland.com, our tech platform, B2B e-commerce platform, that we're looking to expand both in Germany but also internationally. Our diagnostic business. Here we continue to see the impact of phase out of COVID. As I mentioned, that will still last in Q1 2023. We expect it to be phased out. In Q4 2022, in Q4 2021, it was 20% of sales. When we look at the core livestock business, we're seeing growth. We're actually seeing that the market conditions are improving.
In the beginning of 2022, this business was heavily impacted by the Ukraine War, as a lot of exports from Germany were going to Russia and Ukraine. We're now seeing growth in other regions of the world. In this segment, we focus really on new growth segments in producers preventive health to enable the reduction of antibiotics use and also on companion animals, including equine. We continue to work on our cost reduction program that we launched in the fall. We're expected to generate savings of EUR 1.5 million in annualized savings by end of 2023 as we consolidate our production footprint. We will see the full impact of that in 2024. Moving on to our M&A, the M&A side of the business.
We signed 13 acquisitions in 2022, and now our focus is really on the integration of these companies and to realize the benefits of working closer together to drive organic growth and operational leverage. We're still open to M&A should the right opportunities arise, but our primary focus is really on getting most out of what we own, and that means organic growth, operational leverage, and cash flow improvement. With that, I would like to hand over to Carl-Johan again to go through the financials in more detail.
Thank you very much, Fredrik. As said, let's look at the financials for the quarter and for the full year, in a little bit more detail. The strong revenue growth in the quarter result in a reported revenue of EUR 75.5 million, which is significantly above the EUR 48.7 million reported for the same period last year. For the full year, the revenue increased to EUR 281.3 million, which is also significantly ahead of previous year with an increase of 62%, primarily driven by successful execution of the M&A pipeline and continuous organic growth. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 50% in the quarter to EUR 80 million, and the operating profit improved strongly from EUR 4.1 million- EUR 11.4 million, equal to an operating profit margin of 15.2%.
The operating profit includes items affecting comparability, which in the quarter have been impacted by the reversal of legal costs related to the VOI litigation of EUR 5.5 million. High net financial items of -EUR 29.9 million is the reason for the pre-tax loss. The net financial items consists mainly of three different elements: financing costs of EUR 2.8 million, reflecting increase in interest rates, adjusting for contingent considerations of EUR 24.1 million, and negative exchange rate impact of EUR 3.0 million. The higher earnout-related costs reflects upward probability adjustments of future earnout payments following very strong performance of acquired companies, including Bova, GlobalOne Pet Products, and AdVetis. The tax expense for the quarter was EUR 2.6 million, despite a negative pre-tax profit.
This reflects partial reversal of deferred tax assets, with a conservative approach to deduct compensable losses in Swedish entities, as well as non-deductible expenses related to earnouts. The underlying margin development in the quarter was healthy for the group. We reported Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter of 23.9%. Which is slightly below the same period last year, but primarily driven by a mix effect, including GlobalOne Pet Products in our financials, which is a successful and fast-growing business we acquired in December 2021. We have shown strength in protecting gross margin despite increasing costs with high inflation. Excluding the mix effect from acquired companies, our gross margin have increased with 1.3 percentage points compared to the fourth quarter last year. Our Adjusted EBITDA margin improved in both MedTech and veterinary services year-over-year. Also, Specialty Pharma improved its legacy margins.
The margin in diagnostics is negatively impacted by the phase out of COVID sales, as well as exceptional scrapping related to raw material and semi-finished goods, also related to COVID sales in the quarter. The cash conversion in the quarter was strong at 110%, which is an increase from 82% in the same quarter last year. The year-to-date cash conversion is 57%. There is a variability between quarters driven primarily by the annual order program in MedTech and acquisitions. The operating cash flow equaled EUR 22.8 million in the quarter and EUR 46.7 million year-to-date. The cash flow in the quarter was supported by a positive change in net working capital driven by lower inventory levels in Specialty Pharma.
The inventory levels are still high with the buildup of inventory in MedTech ahead of the annual order program in the first quarter of 2023 as well as acquisitions. Cash flow from investing activities decreased compared to last year to EUR 31.2 million in the quarter, given a lower acquisition pace in the market and increased focus to integrate recently acquired entities. Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the fourth quarter was EUR 42.2 million, slightly below EUR 55.1 million at the end of last year. The net debt as per the end of the fourth quarter was EUR 257.5 million versus EUR 340.9 million at the end of September. This equals a leverage, so the net debt last twelve months to pro forma EBITDA of 3.0 times.
The change in net debt is mainly attributable to repayment of debt using tranche two of the share issue approved by the AGM on October 3. In total, the direct share issue raised proceeds of SEK 1.5 billion, of which the second tranche of EUR 86 million was completed early October. I would like to give the opportunity now in the fourth quarter call to give you a short update on the patent litigation dispute that we communicated on January 13. Since we booked a claim related to VOI patent dispute, to give you a brief update. As said, we communicated on January 13 this year that the jury in Middle District of Florida decided VOI had a willful infringed patents and that Synthes should be awarded $59.5 million in damages.
We have booked this amount as other current liability in the fourth quarter and the contractual indemnification protection that we have as a non-current financial asset. We strongly disagree with the jury's verdict and are preparing for various outcomes and will assess all legal options, including an appeal. We believe that an appeal has strong basis. The judgment itself can be announced by the district court at any time during 2023. Given that the jury found willful infringement, the court also has the ability to enhance damages. Should we decide to appeal following the judgment, it is anticipated to take 12- 18 months and could require us posting a surety bond, which we are planning for.
Regarding any financial impact, our view is that we have through the purchase agreement for the acquisition of VOI, contractual indemnification protection up to $99.9 million that covers damages as well as procedural costs and interest. Soon as the judgment is announced, our full focus will be to analyze the outcome, prepare for an appeal, and ensure we get the fair ruling as part of the process, as well as to limit any impact on our operations. From a commercial perspective, we have already phased out the concerned product, we don't foresee any negative impact on sales. We will continue to update the market as more information becomes available. Giving you a little bit updated view on the market, which is something that been requested that we update you on sort of historical, current, and future anticipated market development.
We have worked to collect available data from variety of sources and also bought a fresh market report from Grand View Research. The addressable animal health market was approximately EUR 56 billion in 2022, with growth normalizing after a post-pandemic peak. The sector showed resilience despite the weaker macroeconomic climate and grew with approximately 5% last year. North American Pacific showed solid growth, while Europe was a bit softer, held back by especially Southern Europe. We see that the fundamentals in the market remain strong, with growing number of pets, the continued humanization of pets, and growing awareness of available treatments as well as medical advancements driving innovation. As a consequence, and according to the Grand View Research Report, the market is forecasted to grow at approximately 89% on average per year until 2030.
A short update on current trading, as we've been through the first two months of the quarter, first quarter of 2023. The year have started positive with growth in high single digits despite the continued macroeconomic turmoil. Our price increases is being implemented in most of our markets to continue to protect our gross profit margin. This has in general been well understood and well perceived by customers given the high inflation environment. During the first quarter, we will continue to have negative impact from the phase out of COVID sales. For the first quarter of 2022, approximately 20% of the revenue in diagnostics was related to COVID sales. From the second quarter of this year, this effect will almost be removed.
Our annual order program in MedTech have been very successful, with even more customers joining the program to secure supply and facilitate their business. This will result in pulling up some of the business from the second and third quarter, compared to previous year. This year impacting revenue positively in the first quarter, but with a timing effect of cash flow as customers in the annual order program, they pay for the annual order deliveries throughout the year.
During the second half of last year, we have continuously strengthened our finance organization and finance processes, giving us the ability to produce our financial reports in a more timely manner in the coming quarters. This is why we have updated our financial calendar, and as a first step, the next report will be pulled in a little bit and released on May fourth. With that sort of concludes the financial update and summary for the quarter, I hand back to you, Fredrik, for a summary and wrap-up.
Thank you, Carl-Johan. Just to summarize, 2022 was a challenging year, but we saw that our market and business is resilient. We successfully executed on a broad M&A pipeline and delivered strong performer organic growth in our combined animal businesses. We consolidated companies with different financial profiles and made investments to accelerate growth, which was reflected in our margin. We're also seeing those investments starting to pay off. We achieved several key milestones, new market entries, new therapeutic areas, rolled out our MedTech portfolio in all geographies, launched new tech platforms, and we strengthened our ESG agenda. Overall, I think we've become a stronger company, a much stronger company during 2022. Now, looking at 2023, as Carl-Johan mentioned, we are off to a good start. Of course, times are still uncertain.
We need to closely monitor demand and ensure cost control. I have a very clear ambition to re-accelerate organic growth through innovation and sales excellence, also by allocating investments to our high-growth geographies and segments. I see five key areas for this year. In Specialty Pharma, it's really continue to grow that with plus 50 product launches across therapeutic areas. We're gonna roll out existing products and services in additional markets and channels, and of course, continue to address the white space through education. In MedTech, we'll focus on growing total market size through education as well, and work on operational excellence while we explore other areas of MedTech beyond orthopedics.
In veterinary services, we'll continue to expand our service offering to more independent clinics, upgrade and recruit new members, and make sure we succeed in new geographies while we digitalize the offering by investing in heiland.com, our new B2B e-commerce platform that we will roll out in more geographies. In diagnostics, we are penetrating the producer segment via precision farming initiatives, and we're also launching a new AI, artificial intelligence-enabled technology for equine and production animals, and we're actually launching that in collaboration with Nextmune and VetFamily, and we will launch it in companion animals end of this year, early next year. Of course, we continue to accelerate our ESG agenda with a focus on our people, the animals, and our planet. With that, I would love to open up for a Q&A session. Thank you very much.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Adela Dashian from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. My first question relates to the comments regarding current trading, especially the organic growth being in the high single digits range. Could you give us some more details regarding that number? Is it broad-based? Does it also cover the diagnostics division, or is it mostly related to the companion animal sector or segment?
It does include everything. As I mentioned, the diagnostic business will still see negative impact on growth in Q1, and we expect that to be to diagnostic to have a positive growth as of Q2. Despite the negative impact from diagnostics in Q1, we expect to see single digits growth. High single digits growth for the group.
Got it. Okay.
That is also because, as I mentioned, Adela, Bova and GlobalOne that are, We have now owned them for more than one year, so they will be calculated into the organic growth as of Q1 as well.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Just taking a look at the Adjusted EBITDA bridge, it seems like the most material negative driver was the margin decline when you consolidated GlobalOne. Could you please touch on some of the initiatives you're undertaking here to make sure that the synergies flow through this year from the business and help margin expansion going forward?
Yeah. GlobalOne Pet Products has a slightly different margin profile, but if you look at absolute EBITDA growth, it's growing strong. It's a mixed effect. Of course, as that business grows, margins will improve as well organically through operational leverage. We are taking... The key measures we are taking is to focus really on organic growth to get operational leverage, and we're very cautious on cost. The area where we're taking out costs is primarily in Diagnostics, where we're consolidating the production footprint to improve margins. We've also reduced the SG&A there. I don't know if that answers your question or was your question just related to improving the margin of GlobalOne Pet Products?
No, no, that definitely answers my question.
Okay.
Then finally, if I could just ask about veterinary services. There you've spent or invested quite a lot during 2022. Do you feel like you've done enough there or, is there additional investments that need to be taken within that specific vertical?
Actually, we've strengthened the... We have a very strong team in place. We're not expecting to increase the investment there. We expect that team to deliver strong growth in both the legacy business and in the digital business going forward. We have a... No, we're not expecting to increase. What we've actually done is to... We started three initiatives, Brazil, Belgium, and Eastern Europe. Once we saw that both Belgium and Brazil were really taking off quickly, we reduced our investment in Eastern Europe. We have everything ready to launch there, but we're gonna hold off on that, and we're focusing on Brazil and Belgium to start with, also to protect the bottom line.
All right. Interesting. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Kristofer Liljeberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Three questions. First, could you comment on how much sales you had from GlobalOne and Bova separated in 2022 and what growth rate they have in Q4 as you ended the year? Second question is on the overhead cost, if you could give some flavor on the run rate going forward, and the same for financial costs, which were a bit lower than I expected, at least in the quarter after the share issue. Would you say that the underlying cost of EUR 2.8 million you had in the quarter, is that a good level now for 2023? Thank you.
Carl Johan, do you want to take those questions? ?
Yeah, sure. Sure. Morning, Kristofer. If we start with sales of GlobalOne and Bova and underlying growth in both, we haven't disclosed sort of specifically the detailed numbers of Bova and GlobalOne, but they are the significant parts of our Specialty Pharma business. They have grown significantly, both of them during 2022, and we do see continued positive trends. When it comes to GlobalOne specifically, we have said that GlobalOne is roughly 25% of sales in Specialty Pharma for the fourth quarter, and where we've seen double-digit growth in both Movora and GlobalOne during 2022 and in the fourth quarter. Your second question on run rate in operating expenses going forward for 2023.
I think as Fredrik said and commented a little bit specifically on veterinary services, I think that comment is relevant in general. We have, during 2022, done selective investments in the business. We are now in 2023, given the sort of financial or macroeconomic turmoil, I would say, making sure that we are very cautious and prudent when it comes to costs and very selectively increasing costs. We do have some investments where we will have the full effect from an operating cost perspective now as we enter 2023, we don't see that we are making significant increases in new investments. With that said, it's a good proxy to see that the run rate that we have roughly during Q4 is a relevant sort of target for us for 2023.
Based on that comment, I would imagine that you expect the Adjusted EBITDA margin to improve 2023 versus 2022.
Yes. As Fredrik commented before, one of the key focus areas we have for 2023 is to drive Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. Yes. Your final question on sort of the financing costs. I would say yes, but with uncertainty, since it is still an uncertain environment, and we do see interest rates increasing, and I think the latest estimate is they could continue to increase. With that said, if we look at current interest rates, yes, that so is a relevant level, but unfortunately, I can't predict what would happen with interest rates going forward.
Okay. What interest rates did you pay in Q4?
of course, interest have increased a little bit. I would say we're looking at interest rates between 4%-5% for Q4.
Okay.
For cost, financing cost.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Rickard Anderkrans from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
All right. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. First one, if you could add a little bit the commentary around the capacity for organic deleveraging here in 2023. Do you have sort of a, you know, vision or target in terms of the leverage, ending in 2023? That's my first question. Thank you.
Well, I would say that there will be a natural deleveraging, if y ou know, excluding M&A, there will be a natural deleveraging. Again, we have, you know, as long as we're gonna look at, we will look at M&A possibilities. It's a bit difficult. It's not that we have a target for deleveraging per se, but naturally it will organically go down. The leverage will go down organically if we don't do M&A. I'm not gonna say that we're not gonna do M&A.
All right.
I think that to Fredrik's comment also said, we did see a good operating cash flow in the fourth quarter, and also, good or decent operating cash flow for the full year. Also, as Fredrik commented before, the second important sort of financial focus for us, sort of, or third, you could say we have driving...
Continue to drive organic growth, margin expansion, and thirdly, continue to focus on cash flow and especially making sure that we have the right working capital levels where inventory have been a little bit, you know, you could say inflated, or it's been at a higher level at the end of Q4, given that we made sure that we had availability of stock in especially MedTech for the AOP program and also a little bit still for sort of managing Asia uncertainties in supply chain.
Right. That's very helpful. If you could also, perhaps comment a little bit on, you know, group-wide price increases in 2022 and what you're planning on that front in 2023.
The group-wide price increases in 2022 was around between 5% and 6%. Depending on the area, some areas a bit more, some areas a bit less. Of course, the normal price increases would be more than 2%- 3%. We will monitor the situation in terms of inflation, and of course, we'll take proactive steps if inflation continues, then we'll take proactive steps to increase in line with what we did in 2022.
Great. Great. Just a final one. You mentioned that the annual ordering program has been very strong here in Q1, and we see pull forward. Can you quantify that somehow, you know, what type of impact should we expect for Q2 and Q3 from that pull forward impact? I know it's a bit speculative.
Yeah.
interested to get a sense.
It's a bit early.
Yeah.
I would love to. I could wait for that because it's too early actually to give you any exact prediction on that. I would love to wait until the full quarter has ended before we speculate anything on that.
Fair enough. All right. Thank you for taking my question.
Sure.
The next question comes from Patrik Ling from DNB. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Patrik here at DNB. Also a few questions. First, actually a follow-up on the last question on the annual order program. I mean, even if you say it's too early to give any exact predictions, I mean, you still commented on your overall growth in January, February saying that it was high single digits. I mean, if you compare the first two months with last year, how would you say that the annual order program has worked out this far?
It's been a good start. I mean, it's. When we talk about the high single digit, that's what we're talking about compared to last year where we also had a good AOP program.
Would you say that AOP program is adding more to the organic growth this year than last year, if you just compare the first two months?
Slightly.
Okay, great. Then I also had a question regarding this industry data that you presented, which we are, of course, very thankful for. I mean, you keep your 15% plus organic growth target and still the market forecast up to 2030, according to what you presented, is only 8.5%. Could you care to elaborate a little bit on what will make you able to grow almost twice as fast as the overall market for this period?
Yeah. It's mainly driven by the fact that, I mean, if you look at the total market here, this includes both livestock and companion animal markets. It includes certain segments that are large and you could say commoditized. There are other market segments that are higher growth. We are exposed to segments that are higher growth of this market. It's just that we select segments where we see a lot of white space and we see a lot of potential to drive penetration and above market growth. Of course, there's a huge mix in that 56 billion, and some segments are high growth, some others are lower growth. That's the primary, that's the primary one. Of course, within the markets we are typically gaining market share, be it in.
Yeah.
In our Specialty Pharma, be it in orthopedics, our two largest ones, we are gaining market share. In veterinary services, we're also gaining market share. Actually diagnostics as well. It's a combination of high growth segments and market share gain.
Okay, good. Thank you. If you just would, you know, make an estimate based on this market forecast, and particularly look at the markets where you are active in, how much would you say that market is growing if the total market, including the low growth areas, is growing 8.5%?
It's a wild guess because there's no data. There's, you know, these segments have very little market data to honest. My guess is that we will grow maybe, 2%, 3% faster than the segments that we're in. You know, call it 10%, 12%, depending on the region.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The question was really about, I mean, if 8.5% is for the total market, including both high and low growth areas, I mean, if you are more exposed to the high growth areas, if you have a feeling for how much the expected market growth in those high growth markets are?
Yeah.
That should be higher than the 8.5%.
Exactly, yeah. It's. I don't have the exact number because we're exposed to, like, you know, many geographies that have very different growth profiles. As we mentioned today, North America is growing fast right now, Southern Europe, not so fast. We see strong growth in APAC, we see strong growth in Australia and New Zealand. Within those regions, you have different segments that have different growth profiles as well. It's a bit hard to tell you the exact number.
Okay.
The exact mix, and that mix changes as we take on, you know, as we make M&A investments to go into a new region, that number changes again, right?
Okay, great. The last question is, I mean, you talked about being cost conscious and, you know, scaling down a little bit on production footprint in diagnostics and reduce SG&A. I mean, maybe you can elaborate a little bit more here because, you know, you say that you're gonna be cost conscious and make steps to improve margins. You actually only mentioned diagnostics, which is really the smallest part. If you could just elaborate a little bit more on cost containment, the cost saving programs going forward.
Sure. Carl Johan, do you wanna talk about that?
Yes. No, I think diagnostics, to Fredrik's comment before, it's more, I would say, one clear example of activities that we're doing to make sure that we are the right sizing our cost structure and being cost conscious. Rightfully so, as you comment, that's one of our core segments, and we are making sure that we are. I think from that perspective, I would comment sort of two areas because we are a strong focus for us is to make sure that we expand our margins. Expanding our margins is sort of twofold. One is to make sure that we continue to extract revenue synergies, both within our segments and between our segments.
Secondly, of course, as you say, is to make sure that we are conscious on cost and that we sort of put costs in the right places. For now, 2022, as I commented before, in 2022, we did make some selective investments. A few of those examples Fredrik mentioned as well, take Brazil for veterinary services as one example where we did invest into the market, and we've seen successful start of entering Brazil, it continues to be a good growth for us. Yes, it was sort of initial investment term to Brazil. We don't foresee any other sort of large investment that we have now.
We will continue to drive the investments or focus areas that we've already embarked on to continue to drive sort of growth and limit our investments. Just as for revenues, we will continue to extract synergies within segments and between segments from sort of an operating activity perspective as well. One complete example in that area, maybe my own sort of function from a finance perspective, where we do start to see that, yes, we can start to sort of combine and consolidate finance activities also within segments and across segments to drive operational efficiency and sort of cost control. Those areas we have in many other functions and many other activities across the group.
Okay, great. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Blanka Porkoláb from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Morning, Blanka Porkoláb from Barclays. I have a couple of questions, please. The first one is, could you help us understand the rationale for the equity raise and why you have chosen to change the financing of the acquisition? Is leverage of a particular concern? My second question is, how should we be thinking about the growth from M&A this year, given you mentioned a focus on driving organic growth and being more selective on M&A? Thank you.
Morning, Blanka, thank you for as just in line with the others, very relevant questions. Just I capture your first question correctly, that was related to now, Bova Australia and the acquisition we announced, or the closing of the acquisition we announced this morning.
Yes, that's correct.
Yes. Now, I would say we are always sort of making sure that we structure, sort of find the right structures, for the acquisitions we make, and also looking at how sort of what proceeds we use, to ensure that we use the financing options that we have, what we think is the best way. Secondly, as Fredrik commented, Nick Bova is, sort of a very strong entrepreneur with a very strong business that's excited to be part of Vimian, and that we are excited to have him being part of Vimian as well. This is also an opportunity for us, together with Nick, to further align our interests, going forward with Nick becoming, the relevant shareholder in Vimian.
The second question was around M&A prospects. We have a few smaller targets that will come in, and we have a pipeline of very interesting targets that we're looking at. We're still seeing valuations that we find a bit too steep in the private segment, we wanna make sure that we enter deals at attractive valuations, so essentially we're going to execute deals when we find them attractive enough from a valuation point of view. The pipeline is there's actually quite a lot of attractive targets in there.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Kristofer Liljeberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I've three more questions if that is okay. First, coming back to this annual order program, I wonder a little bit if this strong momentum is driven by new customers or existing customers want to buy under this program instead. The question is, if you expect a larger share of the full year MedTech sales coming from the annual order program than you saw in 2022, i.e., if the strong start of the year will have a lot of negative impact on growth in the second and third quarter than you had last year. That's my first follow-up question.
I would expect it to have a slightly larger impact, a negative impact on Q2, Q3, Q4, mainly because we added a number of companies to the group during 2022. Those products are also part. They were not part of the AOP program in 2022, but they are now part of the program in 2023. That does have an impact. I guess that answers, yeah, that should answer the question essentially.
Okay. When you talk about high single-digit growth in the start of the year, would you still say that's a good, you know, guesstimate for what the full year could be growing? Even if you would have a negative impact from the annual order program, rest of the year, you would also have an easier comparison for diagnostics, for example.
Yeah. No, I Yes, I expect to see, high single-digit growth for the year.
Okay. Also a question on the growth here in Q1. How much of the better growth is coming from just price increases or price increases are higher now than they were in Q4?
I would have to get back to you on that one. Exactly the price mix, price volume mix of growth.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, maybe I could phrase it differently. The price increases you have done, have they been gradual, or have you had a large price increase at the start of the first quarter, 2023?
I can answer that, answer it briefly, and that's why I think that sort of the price increases are, it depends on segment, and then it depends on market.
Okay
There's sort of one answer for the entire group. Depending a little bit on the price increases that we did last year and what we think is sort of in the best way to, depending on product area, depending on the exact area, how we drive those price increase, you could say for the sort of first part of the year, the price increases from a group perspective, they will be gradual. There will be sort of some positive effects from price increases gradually throughout the first couple of months in 2023. I think back to the comment on sort of the start of the year, we have seen a good underlying trend or positive trend in the business as well, if we sort of would do like-for-like comparison.
The short answer is it's been a gradual price increase. You know, in the MedTech business, we did two price increases during last year. In Specialty Pharma, we had a price increase that came into effect in parts of the business all now in February. The short answer is it's been a gradual price increase. We've done several of them during the last 12 months.
Oh, okay. Makes sense. My final one on the patent dispute, I think you commented on this, but I didn't fully understood. What's the earliest date that you could be forced to pay the damages, and what do you think would be the lag before you then will get compensation from the VOI sellers?
sorry, just to get to what is the earliest we would have to pay, and what, when and how much?
Yeah. yeah.
How long it takes?
Is this something you think will impact your cash flow maybe in 2023?
That would be a question for you, Carl Johan.
No, and also a good question. I think it's We don't want to speculate on sort of the future potential outcomes. What we do know, as we said, we have a jury verdict now we're waiting for the final judgment that we expect to happen sometime during 2023. Once we know the final judgment, then we'll see what the sort of consequences will be of that judgment. I think it's too early to speculate on what the outcome will be and the potential scenarios given the final judgment.
No doubt to that, but we feel. We are preparing an appeal. We feel like we have a strong base for an appeal for 3 main reasons. 1, our view is that the patent should never have been granted because of, you know, lack of inventive step. 2, the price is not infringing, and 3, the damage calculation is unheard of in terms of anything we've seen in the U.S. That's why we feel strongly about an appeal that we are preparing. Yeah, I think we have to wait.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Thank you.
Sure. Thank you.
The next question comes from Peter Verdult from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Peter Verdult, Citi. Just two questions. Freddy, just building on your comments on the M&A environment, just with leverage now at 3x the EBITDA, if opportunities do come up, the appetite to take on more leverage versus equity funding, would like to explore that topic with you in terms of balance sheet structure. Secondly, just high level. You know, at the time of the IPO, I think the aim was to get a 30%+ EBITDA margin at every division.
And when I look at the developments at Spec Pharma and Movora, that's fine. But it just feels that looks increasingly unlikely in the INDICAL and VetFamily. You know, I'm not asking you for midterm guidance per se, but just, you know, push back if I'm wrong. Should we really be scaling back significantly our long-term expectations for profitability in INDICAL and VetFamily? Thank you.
When we model our business for the coming five years with the current business mix, we expect that to take longer than we did at IPO simply because the business mix has changed, right? I mean, GlobalOne came in. We have invested in clinics, and we do look at absolute increase of EBITDA and return capital deployed more than on pure margin as a percentage. Due to that business mix change, we expect that margin target to come later than we had planned for in 2021 at IPO. That doesn't make, you know, GlobalOne a bad investment. I think it's a fantastic investment and that EBITDA is growing very, very quickly. And also our clinics that have a slightly lower margin, they are performing well.
The investment we're making in Vet Family, I see that we're gonna get operational leverage from that because we will drive operational leverage through cross-selling within Vet Family, but also with the other verticals as we bring on all our products to the Heiland platform, for instance. We're actually starting now also to leverage Vet Family as a sales force for INDICAL's new rapid tests in companion animals and the new AI-based diagnostic platform that we're launching. I think those investments are very sensible to do, strengthening the group. If you're just looking at the target of 35%, I expect it to take longer for us to get to 35%.
Thanks. On the leverage?
On the leverage, I think that's a difficult question to answer because it really depends on the situation. I mean, I think we have to look at each situation individually and see what makes most sense. It has, you know, interest rate development has an impact. There's many factors that play a role here, and we look at each situation independently. What I can say is that organically, I expect the leverage to go down. Also actually the Bova deal now will bring the leverage down, even you know, directly, even further. Yeah, that's what I can say at this point.
Thank you.
Sure.
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