Aevis Victoria SA (SWX:AEVS)
Switzerland flag Switzerland · Delayed Price · Currency is CHF
12.65
+0.05 (0.40%)
Sep 11, 2026, 5:30 PM CET
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Earnings Call: H2 2025

Apr 2, 2026

Summary

Turnover grew 13.5% year-over-year, driven by acquisitions, with NAV per share up 7.8% and strong free cash flow supporting deleveraging. Healthcare margins improved in the core business, and the group targets a 23% EBITDA margin mid-term, while expanding integrated care and real estate activities.

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the AEVIS Victoria SA publication of the 2025 annual results. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. You can write questions via the webcast by pressing the question mark icon and entering your question during the session as well. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Antoine Hubert.

Antoine Hubert
Executive Chairman of the Board, AEVIS Victoria SA

Thank you very much. Welcome to the presentation of 2025 annual results. We just published our annual report this morning. I'm here with Fabrice Zumbrunnen , CEO of AEVIS VICTORIA, and Michel Keusch , CFO of AEVIS VICTORIA. As you know, AEVIS VICTORIA is an investment company focusing on service to people. Our investment, if you take a look at this slide, our main investment, Swiss Medical Network, and VIVA, our insurance product that we have with Visana. They represent 59% of the investment. MRH Switzerland, our hospitality, and Batmaid represent 19% of our investment, infrastructure, so our 30% shareholding into Infracore and Swiss Hotel Properties represent 22% of our investment. This year, 2025, if we can highlight some events, was the takeover in December 2024 of Spital Zofingen .

This was the fourth public hospital that Swiss Medical Network has acquired. The first one was in 2012, Hôpital de la Providence in Neuchâtel, and then with Hôpital du Jura bernois, the two hospitals of Saint-Imier and Moutier, and now in 2024, Spital Zofingen . This has triggered important growth within Swiss Medical Network. Michel Keusch will go into detail. This also confirmed that Swiss Medical Network has the ability to work together with the public sector. I will hand over to Michel Keusch for the fiscal year 2025 performance. Michel?

Michel Keusch
CFO, AEVIS Victoria SA

Yes. Hello. Good morning, everyone. I will run you through the 2025 figures. A lot of different moving parts. I'll try to be concise to show you actually how the development was during the year. To start with, on this first slide, you see the AEVIS Group consolidated figures where you see a good development of turnover plus 13.5%, obviously driven by acquisitions. On the other side, you will see a resilient EBITDA and declining EBIT. This is obviously related to the moving parts from one year to the other when it comes to sale of participations. That's why it's more interesting to look at the different parts, which we're going to do now later on, to look at all the different participations. Last year, obviously, we sold a stake in Swiss Medical Network.

Obviously, this creates some EBIT and EBITDA, and as a result, this year, we don't have this, hence this decline, but which is not representative of a bad operating performance. It's simply that we are lacking this development, this profit from last year. The next slide is maybe a bit more interesting. This is how we are going to show you AEVIS VICTORIA more and more in the future to focus on the NAV, which is a good reflection of the s um of the parts. All the different parts, some of them are in cruising speed, some of them are in ramping mode, or some of them are maybe loss-making but still have value. It's more interesting to look at the sum of all these different values in the portfolio and to see how this is developing.

Here you see this year, the NAV per share is up 7.8%, reflecting that the group is continuing to create value. The second interesting KPI is to compare this NAV with the current share price, and we see that the discount is at the highest level ever, actually close to 50%. The third KPI is the LTV ratio, looking at the debt at the AEVIS VICTORIA level, at the holding level, and comparing with the value of the participations. You see here a very sound LTV ratio of about 7%, stable year-on-year. Now, more interesting, looking at the different participation. On the next slide, you see the healthcare segment. This is the biggest part of the group, Swiss Medical Network.

You see strong revenue development, +22%, obviously related to the acquisition of Spital Zofingen and Centro Medico. On a pure organic basis, you see at the bottom it's still 2% organic growth. Increase in EBITDA resulting from this development. You see that the margins are declining, not massively, but still going from 16.6%-15.9%, when it comes to EBITDA, which is a key indicator, and slightly down for the EBITDA margin. How can we explain this margin decrease? I propose to go on the next slide, where we see the split between the underlying business on one side, the blue part of the pie chart, and the gray part, which is the two acquisitions, Spital Zofingen and Centro Medico. You see the split in terms of growth, also in terms of margins.

You see clearly that the two acquisitions together have EBITDA margins of 9.3%, which is way below the level of 17% we have in the underlying business, hence the dilution. However, if you look at the underlying business development, you see that year-on-year we improved from 16.6% to 17.2%. This is the key element for us, that on one hand, our underlying business is continuing to improve year after year. This is our first indicator. The second indicator is that acquisitions, this is the history of the group, are always coming in the group with a low level of margin, and this is how we create value. Because we try to buy acquisitions at a reasonable price, reposition them, and then create a lot of value.

The dilution per se is actually a good indicator because it shows that value will be created. A second way to look at the business on the next slide 11, is to look at the split between hospitals and ambulatory. Why is it important? Because most of our peers are focusing on the hospital side. We have a very proactive strategy to invest in ambulatory, which is a low-margin business for the time being, but it's a strategic business, and we'll talk about it later on. Fabrice will talk about integrated care. Ambulatory is something we need for the development of integrated care. It's also something we need to be prepared for the EFAS new system, which will be from 2028 onwards. It's a strategic investment.

We think margins can go up in the ambulatory part. It's a question of time. For the time being, you can see this as a self-inflicted pain that we have. You see that margins in the ambulatory is 6.6% EBITDA, which is also strongly diluting the margins for the division. If you look at purely hospitals, you see that this is continuing to improve. We are now moving from 19% last year to 19.7%, so a very, very pleasant development. I'm switching to the hospitality business. Here we have a very good trend during 2025, organic growth of 4.5% and margins improving. EBITDA moving up 50 basis points from 23.1% to 23.6%. Very good development in all of our hotels, mainly in the Zermatt destination, but also in Zurich, for example, where we have very pleasant developments.

The next slide shows the business which is related to hospitality, which is the real estate segment for the hotels, so Swiss Hotel Properties. Here we see the market value at about CHF 900 million, +2.3% year-over-year, which is actually quite a good performance because at the same time we have sold some non-core businesses. We have some divestments, about CHF 11 million. Despite those divestments, we still have an increase of the value of the portfolio, which is related to revaluation. EBITDA is very strong, +52%, but this is obviously reflecting the sale of non-core assets, which have increased more than proportionally the EBITDA. Margins are otherwise always pretty stable at about 90% EBITDA margin. You see that thanks to those divestments of non-core assets, we further improved the LTV.

Going from 46.5% to 45.4%. A decrease, obviously, in the LTV is something which is positive. That's why we have an improvement on the ratio, even if you see the dot going down, but it's to be seen as a positive. Next slide. Less important in terms of revenue contribution. Obviously, it's still not a big segment at the group level, but this is the segment where we put all our ventures, all our startup operations. It is obviously by nature still loss-making. This is the segment where we have mainly the Nescens brand and also the Genolier Innovation Hub. This is still detracting about CHF 11 million EBITDA for the whole year. Both businesses have a very good business plan.

We are very confident, but we're still on the ramp-up phase, so still detracting EBITDA at the group level. Lastly, our Infracore stakes. This is not consolidated, but we have a 30% stake, where we see also a very pleasant development for the market value of the portfolio, CHF 1.4 billion at 6% year-on-year. Strong EBITDA margin and an LTV, which is very solid at 44.5%, very conservatively financed. As a summary of all that, on the next slide, page 16, you have a summary of the cash flow statement and the balance sheet. I just put on the right side the key highlights to make it simpler.

What you see is that we had a very strong free cash flow during the year, CHF 129 million, obviously influenced by divestments of real estate. This strong free cash flow helps strong debt repayments. At the bottom, on the balance sheet, you see that this debt repayments had a positive impact on all the KPIs and all the ratios. Leverage ratio is further reducing from 53.4% to 49.9%. The equity ratio is improving slightly at 29.1%. If we put the equity-like loans in there, we have an adjusted equity, which is even higher. The real equity ratio is about 33%. You see on the net debt level, a reduction of CHF 113 million.

On the next slide 17, this is just a quick snapshot to show you the breakdown of the debts, which since last year we show this now every time we publish results to show you that this level you see at the top of the chart, CHF 865 million, which is the net debt for the whole group, is broken down in the different silos. You have CHF 164 million at the holding level, then CHF 261 million on the Swiss Medical Network part, CHF 10 million for MRH, nothing or CHF 1 million for the others, and CHF 405 million for SHP.

It's important to look at it this way because you see that actually half of the debt is related to Swiss Hotel Properties, which is purely mortgage lending based with a very, very solid LTV ratio of 46.5%. On the other side, on the Swiss Medical Network parts, the debt can be broken down between hospitals and ambulatory hospitals. This is what we look at. This is how the banks are looking at for our covenants. Here we have typically net debt to EBITDA ratio of about three times on the operational debt. This part is obviously completely benefiting from this deleveraging that you see now year after year in our business.

Lastly, before I give the word to Fabrice, a quick word on the sum of the parts, which shows you what you mentioned before, that looking at the different parts of the business, you have an equity value per share of CHF 26.15, which shows a discount with yesterday's price of about 51%. I will now give the word to Fabrice, who will give you an overview on the strategy and also give you an update by division.

Fabrice Zumbrunnen
CEO, AEVIS Victoria SA

Thank you, Michel. Good morning, everyone. In this part of the presentation, we would like to make an update on our healthcare strategy. Last year, Swiss Medical Network could pursue its unique path in the healthcare market, Swiss market. As you know, our industry faces many challenges with escalating costs, rising chronic diseases, aging population, and we are really convinced that our way of doing things, transitioning from a fee-for-service to a true value-based care, is the way to go and the right strategy. In the next slide, you see what covers our ambition. We have a very unique offer with insurance offering on one side, this ambition of continuum of care, which enables us to cover every aspect of the patient journey.

Obviously, the AEVIS footprint, as you see at the bottom of the slide, is not covering every aspect of this continuum of care. With collaborations, we are able in now three regions to have a very unique capitation model and with very good results. In the first year in the Réseau de l'Arc , we could achieve a very strong result of 11% optimization of costs. Next slide, please. You see there are three regions. By the way, our recent acquisitions of Centre Médical Bienne and Hôpital du Jura bernois enabled us to enlarge our footprint with integrated care regions, and we are now preparing the next region in the Bern area, so a city, a new region for you.

As you see, we were able with the right amount of agility to offer in different settings, our capitation model or unit model, covering really all the aspects of the patient journey. We think that with this ambition, next slide, please. We will be able to generate new revenues. You see on the right side of the slide our initial business plan. We are really following this year by year. We are perfectly on track. Next year, we will, as last year, double our members, our memberships for VIVA. We will exceed 10,000. Let's say even 14,000, 15,000 members. It will be the breaking point for our business model. Now, on the other side, healthcare infrastructure, we could communicate yesterday. No, the day before, a very important step for us.

This is a very interesting slide that we are showing now over quite a long period of time. We really think that there is a strong sale and leaseback opportunity in the Swiss market because of the credit crunch with the eviction or the disappearance of Credit Suisse, but also with the reality of the Swiss care health business, and we are very happy to acquire the hospital in Horgen. This is a unique positioning, the only hospital on the southwest side of the Lake Zurich, a very solid hospital, and we are very happy that we were able, with Infracore, to acquire the real estate, that is to say, building and land, and this is a promising step, and we think that we will have other opportunities in the future.

I will hand over to Michel for the outlook.

Michel Keusch
CFO, AEVIS Victoria SA

Yes. Coming back to the outlook, as you know, and we discussed this morning for the hotel business, we are not giving an outlook. The year started well, but it's obviously a segment where we don't have the visibility, so we're never giving a precise outlook. However, on the Swiss Medical Network side, we are giving an outlook both in terms of growth and margins. In terms of growth for the model, you can expect 2%-3% growth per annum on an organic basis. It could be more, but we try to stick to this as a guidance. For the margin, we should have a very good development for the next couple of years. As you see on this chart, on the left side, you have the starting point, which is what we just reported for 2025, EBITDA of 15.9%.

From this level, we should go to more than 20.5% for 2026. Now, this could sound or look aggressive, but there are reasons to explain that. You see on the chart the three main elements that will help us move from 15.9% to 20.5% in 2026. First, we have the normalization of electricity costs. We had hedging in place until the end of last year. Those have now expired, which means that we're back to the spot prices, which are massively below the prices we were paying, and I think we've at least saved CHF 2 million on that basis. The second element is the cost optimization programs. It's several programs that we put in place last year. All the costs incurred by these programs were charged on the 2025 exercise.

However, you will see the benefits in 2026 and onwards. Here there will be, among others, CHF 3 million from overhead, CHF 2 million from a new IT contract, two and a half million from a new facility management contract, and so on. This will help the development of margin. The third point is the ramp-up of acquired turnaround cases. This is what I was saying at the beginning. When we do an acquisition of a diluting hospital, we see that as good news because it means we will create value. The history of the group of the past 20 years has shown that every hospital we bought has been moving up the curve of profitability, and we still have about 40%-45% of the portfolio, which has EBITDA margin below 10%.

This shows you the considerable upside we still have to improve the profitability of the division. This brings us to 20.5% for the year 2026. It's not the end of the story. From that level, we think we can go up to 23% in the mid-term with additional elements. The first one is still the ramp-up of acquired turnaround cases. This continue and will continue to be the main driver year after year for margin improvements. Second element, as Fabrice just explained, are all the effects from the integrated care. We are now reaching breakeven, from this moment onwards, you have a very scalable business model that could bring a lot of additional profitability. At the end, you always have the M&A pipeline, which is also a good way to add additional profitability.

That's why we're very confident to have this 23% EBITDA margin reached in the mid-term. On the next slide, just an illustration to show you the portfolio as it stands today in terms of the hospitals and the profitability, with the green points are the units with EBITDA margin above 20%, and all the other ones below are the ones that will continue to move up the curves. Finally, I don't know if you want to say, or I can. Just a quick word. The conclusion, as we explained during the presentation, the strategy outlook is a further focus on deleveraging, which will continue year after year. We are now in good territory. As you've seen, the real estate business is very well financed with very low LTVs, and the rest of the business is benefiting from the deleveraging.

We will continue to invest in services to people. This is our focus, we have good pipeline of projects in the three areas, in the healthcare, in hospitality, and also in real estate. As a financial outlook, hospitals, we've just talked about it in detail. Hospitality, as said, good start of the year, no specific guidance. On the infrastructure side, we have a positive performance of the tenants. This will be reflected in the improving valuations. As Fabrice was saying, a very interesting story now on the Swiss market for sale and leaseback transaction, which will add another growth element for the infrastructure business. With this, thanks a lot for your attention, we are all available for your questions.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. If you would like to cancel your question, please press three and the star key. You can also write questions via the webcast by pressing the question mark icon and entering your question. Please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question.

Antoine Hubert
Executive Chairman of the Board, AEVIS Victoria SA

I have a question here by chat. How is the See-Spital Horgen acquisition by Infracore? Does AEVIS need to participate in the financing? Are you looking at GZO Spital Wetzikon? For See-Spital Horgen, there is a financing through equity from Infracore, provided by the shareholder, MPT and AEVIS, and there is financing provided to Swiss banks for the hospital. This is an acquisition by Infracore. Regarding GZO Spital Wetzikon, Swiss Medical Network has been approached by some creditors of GZO Spital Wetzikon, and has been asked if Swiss Medical Network could envision to take the operation of Wetzikon if some investor buy the asset. We have signaled that we were supporting such a solution, and we were interested in taking the operation of Wetzikon. This would also allow Swiss Medical Network to develop VIVA in this area.

It could be a strategic move that could be beneficial for Swiss Medical Network and also for the region by maintaining primary and secondary care in Wetzikon, maintaining all the labor. There is more than 1,000 employees in Wetzikon, and Swiss Medical Network has this experience to integrate public hospital. As I said before, we already did it in the past for public hospitals. That's something that Swiss Medical Network has demonstrated. That's the answer for this question.

Operator

Okay. I repeat the phone question, how you can ask a question. Please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question via the telephone. Of course, you can send written question if you press the icon. At the moment, we have no question via the telephone. Please press nine and the star key if you would like to ask a question.

Antoine Hubert
Executive Chairman of the Board, AEVIS Victoria SA

Since there is no question at the moment, I will take profit of this time to maybe dive a little deeper into integrated care. Integrated care, as you see on this slide, the idea is to go from sick care, because we are all talking about healthcare, but currently, we are living in the world of sick care. The persons are paying premiums, so they're interesting the insurance company and the state, but the so-called healthcare world has no interest in a healthy person. That's why we think that we are working in a sick care environment, and we want to transition to integrated care approach. That means taking care of the people when they are healthy already. To do this integrated care approach, you need to consolidate the different provider, primary and secondary care.

You have to also have the ability to do some research and education, because if you want to hire the best doctors and the best people, you need to give them the ability to do research and to do education. Also, the third component is the health plan that we developed with Visana. The role model for this is Kaiser Permanente. On this slide, you can see that Kaiser has 12.6 million member. They have 23,000 physicians, some 300,000 people and 39 hospital. They are doing only 143,000 hospital stay for 12.6 million people. If you compare to Switzerland with 9.1 million people, we have 38,000 doctors, 500,000 people working in healthcare sector and 276 hospital. That triggers 1.4 million hospital stay per year, which makes Switzerland the vice champion after Germany.

We see clearly that this problem is triggered by much better reimbursement in hospital in inpatient treatment than in outpatient treatment. The VIVA that we created with Visana is an insurance product. First of all, this insurance product is dedicated to our integrated care network. Réseau de l'Arc, Vesta Santé, and Aerones. You can see that the VIVA premiums are always among the best, I mean, the least expensive premium, and also that the increase of this premium has been a lot lower than the average. You can take the Canton Bern, VIVA increased 3.9% on two year. 2024, 2025, 2026. The Bern average was 9.3%. In Neuchâtel 4.7% against 7%, and in Jura 8.3% against 13.9%. In Ticino, also VIVA is number 2. Canton Solothurn number one, our number two. Lucerne, VIVA is number seven.

CSS is very strong in this canton and has a lot of very interesting products. If you take a look at this slide, this explains how it works. The integrated care organization is Réseau de l'Arc, Vesta Santé, or Aerones. We work with every insurance with the tariff, according to tariffs. I mean, TARMED, KVG, et cetera. But we have our own population, our own member, currently slightly over 7,000. With this member, we treat them with the most efficient way possible. At the end of the year, there is a comparison between our population and the exact same population outside the system. The saving can be so calculated. This saving is shared between the insurance, which allow the insurance to keep the premium low and between the integrated care organization.

Of course, what's important also is that our population, the VIVA member, if we send these people outside Swiss Medical Network, means to Inselspital or to any hospital, these costs are included in our budget. We are responsible with Visana of all the cost for a member, and that's the big difference, and that's where the incentives are in line with the interest of both patients and provider. I have a new question. Is it your target that dividend can be paid for 2026 and 2027? How are the shareholder loans up to CHF 20 million secured? Is there any plan these loans are repaid part in full of the next year? Of course, these loans will be repaid over the next years. It is planned so. These shareholder loans are not secured and are part of employment contracts.

Is it our target that dividend can be paid for 2026 and 2027? Of course, there are good reasons from 2025 from some of our investments are triggering dividends. Dividends for 2025 will be paid to AEVIS in 2026. The result in 2026, forecasted for Swiss Medical Network and for the other division, will allow to resume the dividend policy. I just want to remember that until end of 2015, we were prohibited to pay dividends for the hospitality side because the hospitality received payments from the government during the COVID period, and these payments paid in 2020 and in 2021 were coming with the condition not to pay any dividends until end of 2025. Another question, can you give insight into the possible IPO of Infracore? AEVIS is only a 30% shareholder.

The information about Infracore and the IPO are communicated separately. We cannot give more detail into that other than we are working on this possibility to do an IPO. There's another question, which is hotel business. What impact has there been since the Iran war regarding booking? As said, there is a booking and cancellation. For now, it's neutral, so we have not seen until now a decrease in the activity. Of course, there are a few people canceling. Also people that cannot travel because of the closure of some airports. There are also new booking because I think Switzerland is seen as a safe destination, and Switzerland is open for business and also very attractive for the summer tourism. That's what we can say. We are monitoring very closely the situation, of course, and we will inform the market accordingly when we have something new.

I think I've answered all the written questions. I don't know if there is further questions on the phone.

Operator

There are no questions via telephone.

Antoine Hubert
Executive Chairman of the Board, AEVIS Victoria SA

Okay. Thank you very much for your attention. We, of course, through our investor relations, are always ready to meet and to discuss our investment and our company. Thank you very much for your attention, and have a good day to everybody.