Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Half-Year Report 2024 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing s tar and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Alexander Hagemann, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, and a very warm welcome to all of you who are in the call. I'm very glad that year after year we have a growing community that is tuning into our webcast. And as usual, Peter Neumann, CFO, and I will present the half-year results to you, followed by a Q&A session. So, how does Cicor look after the first half of 2024? Our overall strategy has not changed, but we have sharpened our focus even more. What you are seeing today is a company where we are turning the ideas of our customers into highly advanced electronic solutions, mostly in three core markets. You will see that again later, that the three markets we are served are much more balanced than they used to be.
It is simply said about a quarter of the business each in the medical and aerospace and defense sector, and about a third in the industrial sector. With that, we have reduced our dependence from the more cyclical industrial markets and increased our focus on those sectors, medical and aerospace and defense, that are showing continued structural growth. So, here on the left is the one important pillar of our strategy. The second pillar is also unchanged: the building of strategic customer relationships, where Cicor is much more a partner for the long term, very often 10 or 15 years, and will not be replaced by competitors. So, we are building a moat around our business, and the business relationship is extremely busy. We have started in 2021 to add the third pillar to our strategy, which is the market consolidation through M&A.
And here, again, I'm extremely pleased that we can present more progress to you. The business model is continuously evolving. We are a manufacturing partner to our customers, and that we are for a very, very long time. So, production continues to be the driver of revenues. However, to further strengthen the relationship with our customers and also to reduce any potential pricing pressure, so to gain more pricing power with our customers, we are starting the relationship earlier and earlier. Strengthening our product development capabilities is and will continue to be an important pillar of our company development. One of our acquisitions, Evolution Medtec, was done for exactly that purpose. Our footprint is constantly evolving with acquisitions that we are doing.
We are very strong in our home markets, and we are even stronger now in our home markets with market leadership in the United Kingdom, with having developed a very strong position in the German market, the largest market for advanced electronics in Europe, and with consolidating our strong Swiss market position. In the manufacturing footprint, we have added a site in the south of China. That actually is a very positive development for Cicor because we are able to support our European customer base also with local supply in China for China. So today, our footprint is made in Asia that way, that we manufacture in China for China and in Southeast Asia for the world. This has been a very exciting and very busy first half year for our whole team worldwide.
We have seen in a very difficult environment where we have a clear recessionary trend and peers are reporting strong sales declines. We have been able to fight back and register only a very small decline in organic sales, and that was much overcompensated with growth mostly from acquisitions. The stability and in the future also further increase of margins, operating margins is a priority, and we will continue to have that as a priority and work towards higher margins. The increase in free cash flow and net earnings, which Peter will explain into more detail, are really an extremely positive development, especially the free cash flow that we were able to generate as a business, which again, Peter will explain in detail later, has strengthened our balance sheet and really made Cicor a stronger business.
Now, as I mentioned, compared to last year, the share of industrial business has declined, whereas we see absolute growth in medical and very strong growth in the aerospace and defense sector. Today, you see an extremely balanced business, a business that is more robust and a business that is more able to fend off effects from a recessionary environment. While we continue to be focused on our mostly European customer base, supplying them both in Switzerland, the rest of Europe, and in Asia. Now, reporting on our two divisions, EMS, Electronic Manufacturing Services, that division continues, according also to our strategy, the growth driver. And it's a growth driver, gaining market share and with leading profitability.
Gaining market share, especially in our key markets, is important because we have built platforms, especially in the medical and aerospace and defense sectors, that are difficult to beat, where more customers are attracted to Cicor, where we can realize the type of margins that we want. Cicor is in EMS, in the meantime, roughly number 10 amongst the European peers. In medical, the medical market number four, and in aerospace and defense, even number one. Sorry. Net sales have increased 16.5%, which is consisting of a 6% organic decline, some negative currency effect, of course, and then a strong contribution from the acquired businesses: STS Defence, Evolution Medtec, and TT Electronics IoT division. I'm really happy that the EBITDA margin has increased. We have added 20 basis points, and that is despite the largest acquisition, which for now has been dilutive in margins.
TT Electronics, you see that in the report, has been acquired at a very modest valuation. It has been historically a lower margin business. I'm very happy to say that after one quarter with Cicor, we already see a significant margin pickup, and the business is moving very fast to fulfill Cicor's margin requirements. STS Defence has been a business contributing very strongly from day number 1 to the margins. So the focus in that division now, after three acquisitions in the first half year, is the rapid integration of the operations, especially the three sites from TT Electronics, and as mentioned already, the alignment of the margins of the TT sites to the expectations that we have. As stated before, I am absolutely confident that already by year-end, we will have made significant progress in that direction.
To understand the margin better, it needs to be remarked that we have a one-time effect of roughly 0.8 percentage points of overall Cicor revenue, a negative one-off effect due to accounting procedures during the acquisition. This is a one-off. This has reduced the operating margin and is then not repeating in the second half or at any time in the future. Let me spend two minutes on these acquisitions. We are acquiring not only to make Cicor larger and more profitable. We are acquiring to make Cicor's strategic platform ever stronger. Being a strong supplier to our customers with an offering that is difficult to beat, this is our priority. And let me explain what these three acquisitions are contributing. STS Defence. STS Defence in the south of England is a tech and engineering provider for mostly communication control systems in aerospace and defense.
It is a business that is extremely strong in engineering. About one-third of the revenue is product development revenue. Very important on our path to transform Cicor from an EMS company to a true CDMO, a contract development and manufacturing organization. So we have expanded our platform in the U.K. market, and we have, in the addition of excellence in engineering and excellence in manufacturing from Axis Electronics, significantly strengthened our exposure in the market. That acquisition was followed by Evolution Medtec. By revenue, a relatively small operation in the low single-digit million CHF range in Bucharest, which is very capable and totally focused on device development for the medical market. And that can be complex medical products up to Class III devices, so devices which have a life-sustaining function.
Through that acquisition, and as mentioned in an earlier part of my presentation, we are further strengthening our position as a CDMO, in this case, to the medical market. We have doubled through this transaction our engineering resources for the medical market. The third acquisition, the carve-out of three manufacturing sites from TT Electronics, is very important as it provides us with additional customers and also additional manufacturing capacity. The sales of the business is roughly GBP 70 million a year, and it's, as mentioned, a profitable business with fast increasing profitability, however, with significant capacity reserves. That has allowed us, number one, to become market leader in the important and growing U.K. electronics market. It has allowed us, number two, to obtain the European market leadership in electronic manufacturing services for aerospace and defense.
Number three, it has added an excellent manufacturing site in Dongguan, China, to serve our European customers for their China demands. Let's not forget the smaller division, the Advanced Substrates division, which today is contributing 10% to group sales. The AS division is a clear technology leader. We are operating in niches that are very relevant for the medical and the aerospace and defense markets, and that provides strong functional solutions for our customers. I am really happy that we are able today to show significantly improved sales and operating margins compared to last year. The organic sales that we are seeing is positive. It is coming from new customers, one, in the medical market and also increasing delivery shares with existing customers.
The increase in EBITDA margin is mostly the result of the successful completion of a multi-year operational excellence program at our printed circuit board site in Boudry, Switzerland. That is now, again, a very robust site. It's ready for the future, really strong with a strong customer pipeline. So I couldn't be happier with the development of that division. We are focusing for the rest of the year on continuing to grow the business organically and increasing profitability further. With that, I want to hand over to Peter to discuss financial results for the first half. Peter.
Thanks a lot, Alexander. Let me lead you through some of the more details of the financials.
Ladies and gentlemen, please hold the line. The conference will resume shortly. Thank you. Please hold the line for the conference. Okay, sir.
Perfect.
We were not able to hear you for a few minutes.
Yes, I went on the microphone of Bruno. So let me start. Thanks, Alexander. Let me start with a small reminder. We announced on June that we changed our accounting policy. With 2024, we will offset Goodwill from acquisitions directly against equity. Previously, Goodwill was amortized. We are really moving there to a Swiss common standard and are now more comparable to IFRS accounting standards. The alternative KPI, core EBIT, and core net earnings is therefore not anymore required. And on the right side, you will find the impact as previously announced. All results of the half-year reporting are hence following the new policy, and historical numbers are restated on a comparable basis. So longer-term view, Cicor achieved in the first half of 2024 highest-ever revenue in EBITDA results and continues its strong margin progression.
If you look at 2024 and take out the CHF 1.7 million M&A-related effects, we would be at 11.5% and really demonstrating, again, the margin progression. I think this chart also nicely shows that Cicor is able to grow profitably with a balanced organic and inorganic strategy over the longer run. Now, some more details on the half-year results. Book-to-bill 0.87. Order backlog remains still around one year. Alexander provided also some perspective. Reported growth 16.1%. This is set together of an M&A contribution of 22%, FX had -1.5%, and an organic sales decline of 4.4%. EBITDA developed in line with sales growth. As mentioned, excluding M&A one-timers, we would have been at 11.5%. EBIT increased by 13.1%, slightly below the EBITDA growth, mainly because we had some increases in intangible assets and linked amortizations with acquisitions.
Net profit jumped by 53%, 54% rounded, reaching CHF 11.9 million, reflecting the strong operating results as well with the positive financial results for FX and the normalized tax rate. Then finally, very important, our free cash flow, excluding acquisitions, was CHF 21.1 million. Really, free cash flow delivery is really critical in our growth strategy as funding mechanism. If we dive into the divisions, EMS clearly the vast majority, 90% of net sales. You can see here over the long trend of margin development. Into this division felt as well the three acquisitions we have done in Q1, so STS, Evolution Medtec, and IoT Solutions. Then AS, where you can see that we have in the first half very, very strong results. It's a combination of growth and then the operational improvements and the operational acquisitions program that we executed in our Boudry site.
Some more words to the P&L. Record sales, record EBITDA, and net sales jumped up 54%. More in detail, you can see that Cicor is moving more towards the CDMO. Most companies have on a consolidated basis lower material percentage of revenue and higher operating expenses. If we take an example of STS, then we are really looking at a holistic engineering systems integration company. Overall EBITDA margin stable, but we have CHF 1.7 million step-up. What is the step-up? Swiss GAAP FER requires us to evaluate all net assets at the time of business combinations at fair market value. That means that work in progress inventory is valued at fair value including some of the profit, and as we sell it out, our profit is lower. It is a one-time effect, as Alexander mentioned. We will only see this only shortly after the acquisition is closed.
Yeah, but I mean, excluding this, we would have been 11.5%. The financial results improved as the Swiss franc weakened versus end-December values against most currencies at the beginning of the year. So while we had towards last first half 2023 of CHF 1 million, this year we had helps of CHF 2.8 million, so a swing year-over-year of CHF 3.8 million. And this is also driving improvement in the tax rate as these gains are on the corporate Swiss holding entity.
Some words on sales contribution. You can see here, acquisitions closed in Q1 contributed CHF 44 million, FX CHF -3.1 million, and then you see the EMS that showed a decline and AS that had a strong growth as previously shared. Cicor continues to have a very strong balance sheet. Our balance sheet also shows the focus of Cicor to optimize our invested capital in delivering free cash flow.
The net debt increased to CHF 79.6 million due to the executed Q1 acquisitions offset by the strong free cash flow delivery. Leverage is at 1.5, still giving us significant headroom for further acquisitions. Equity ratio is at 31.4. After the accounting change in the previous accounting standard, we would have been at 35.8%. We still continue to have financial room to go for further acquisitions. Free cash flow, CHF 21.1 million. It's a combination of operating activities, strong net income performance, proven working capital management, and moderate CapEx levels of 2.4%. It's nice to see this free cash flow. It's also the basis of our growth strategy.
Here, you can see also how much we paid net cash across all the three acquisitions, CHF 51 million outflow, and you see this compares with actually already 40% of this we have funded through operational cash flow that we delivered in the first half. I know you may have heard this one. Our teams, and we really like return on invested capital. It's a magic formula. Grow revenue in absolute, improve profitability, and manage invested capital. Managing invested capital in our business means improving net working capital while maintaining moderate CapEx levels. One word, with the accounting policy changes, we also adapted the ROIC definition and moved to a very simple rolling EBIT divided by net invested capital formula, net invested capital being equity plus financial liabilities. You can see we maintain excellent momentum and continue to drive ROIC as part of our operational financial excellence program.
I mentioned operating net working capital. First half, we are at 29%, which compares to 35% first half 2023 and 30% at year-end 2023. So we will continue to drive this down. Longer term, we are targeting to go over the coming years back to 25%, giving us again an opportunity to further deliver free cash flow moving forward. Key figures per share. This is important to disclose so that we are all clear around the movements and the treatment of the mandatory convertible bond. You see here that our earnings per share, including the mandatory convertible bond, jumped from 1.74- 2.69, so +5 4%. More in detail, you can see that we increased treasury shares, and you can also see that the conversion of the MCB has started. The conversion, the optional conversion, has started January 2024 and goes until January 2027 when the mandatory conversion will happen.
You can see here that from CHF 1.267 million, we are now at CHF 1.99 million, so around 67,000 MCBs converted, that reflects around CHF 3.2 million in terms of value. The rest is not yet converted. Some perspective on earnings per share. Now, based on the previous chart, you know that we look at the dilution, including MCB, that is the orange line, and you can see here that we have shown a very nice progression over the last years, reaching now CHF 2.7 per share. And while we had some FX helps from the guidance with the outlook that Alexander will give, you can see also that we predict some stronger EBITDA and stronger operational performance in the second half. We closed three M&A transactions in the first six months, especially in the first quarter.
For STS Defence, we had a consideration of CHF 30.7 million and a proportionally high goodwill of CHF 21.3 million, reflecting the profitability, integration, and service capabilities. Evolution Medtec, relatively small, but helps us to move towards a CDMO and expanding our medical and engineering offering. And then we had the IoT Solutions, the carve-out from TT, where we even had a negative goodwill of CHF 7.5 million as we paid less than the fair value of the assets. These companies are now fully integrated and reporting our financial results, and we disclose the preliminary purchase price allocation as shared here. Overall, it also shows our M&A capabilities as we executed them successfully at moderate transaction costs, transaction costs being less than 4% of consideration. I want to hand over to Alexander for the outlook moving forward.
Thank you very much, Peter.
First of all, let me apologize for maybe some strong background noise. I'm right now here at Farnborough Airshow, where I'm very happy to report to you just some of the trends that we see in the market. You may have heard about the numbers issued by Boeing the other day, giving an increasing forecast, 3% increasing forecast for commercial jetliners that are manufactured and sold between now and 2044, where the number was going up from 41,000- 44,000. So we are seeing a very healthy demand in the commercial aviation sector, and that is something which is supporting also our business. If we look at the defense part of the market, we are seeing an enormous demand to reestablish a security architecture, especially here in Europe after 30 years of underinvestment into security, especially by large nations like Germany.
However, we have also experienced, and we wrote that in the shareholder letter, some short-term negatives as some of these projects are delayed due to technical realization problems at our customer site. Happy to report that we are seeing an improvement, an increase for the second half. So some of these programs that should have kicked off earlier this year are actually now kicking off. And that is one of the tailwinds for Cicor moving into the second half, where we see continued strength in aerospace defense, where we see a very robust business in the medical sector, and we expect a return to growth also in the more cyclical industrial sector. So we do expect in the second half an expected increase in order intake, especially after the summer break, so from September onwards. I mentioned the integration of newly acquired companies.
Absolutely at the focus of my colleagues in the management team, Peter, Marco, our COO, and all our local managers. We are making good progress, and today I see already month after month the positive margin progression, especially of the businesses from TT Electronics. And all that together leads to a higher guidance than we previously communicated, with a small increased bandwidth of sales. So we increased that by CHF 10 million for the full year to now CHF 470 million-CHF 510 million. And we can narrow down a bit the EBITDA forecast now roughly CHF 50 million-CHF 60 million. So we definitely expect that margins should develop positively. So with that, I would like to finish my speech and Peter's presentation and would like to open the floor for your questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session.
Anyone who wishes to ask a question or make a comment may press star and one on the touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Patrick Steiner from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Patrick Steiner from Kepler Cheuvreux. Three questions from my side. Firstly, a follow-up on your new outlook. I mean, what kind of signals do you see that indicate order intake growth in the second half of 2024? What sectors, what geographies are we talking about? It should be the first one.
A second one, is there any further M&A activity planned, or do you focus more on integration for the rest of the year? And a third one is more like a perspective question. What level of operating margin do you think is realistic to achieve sustainably going forward, and what are the main levels for Cicor? Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Mr. Steiner. Very good to hear you. So let me start with the first question. What signals do we get? We are getting signals from cyclical sectors. For example, those parts of our industrial sector that is related to building activity, so smart building applications, smart metering, etc. Here, we have seen end of the last year, early this year, reductions of customer forecasts, continued efforts to reduce inventories.
Whereas over the past, I would say, eight weeks, we are seeing some quite urgent demands from customers to increase deliveries. So that's a very clear sign that our customers are almost done with their efforts to reduce inventory levels. And that couldn't be a clearer indication, really. And the second signal is what I mentioned already, that some delayed programs in aerospace and defense are now kicking off. So on the M&A side, I'm really happy to say that the integration works very well. And the integration does work very well because we have strong operational teams that are taking on the job. We are having a very strong organization now amongst our MDs in the U.K. We have a very strong engineering team and local Romanian team doing the integration of Evolution Medtec.
We have already fully integrated the TT site in China into our Asia operation and one of the two sites in the U.K. The other U.K. site is taking a bit more work, but that will not be too difficult. And therefore, I can say it's absolutely manageable what we do. Therefore, I do not want to exclude any further acquisitions in the second half, but I don't expect anything imminent in the coming weeks. Your third question on operating margins, let me just reiterate that we have provided a midterm target of 10%-13% EBIT margin, 7%-10% EBIT margin. That remains unchanged. But when I refer to what Peter just said, we had, excluding the one-time effect from acquisition, already 11.5% margin in the first half.
Now, we, of course, work to improve that further, so we feel very comfortable with the 10%-13% range, and I hope that we will be able to move towards the upper range in the near future.
All right. Very clear. Thank you very much.
Most welcome.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one. Star followed by one. The next question comes from Reto Huber from Research Partners. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon, gentlemen. Maybe the delayed projects in defense that are now gaining momentum, how will they impact your business in 2025?
Of course, we are not able to provide a guidance for 2025. This would be much too easy.
But it should suffice to say that out of the 4.4% negative organic growth, that the delay in these A&D programs had a significant, not dominant, but significant share. So we are talking here really a couple percent of sales. So it is relevant, but not dominant.
Okay. But generally, we are talking about the recurring revenues that we will see over the coming years.
These programs typically have a duration of three to seven years. They also have a latency. So once we take the orders, sometimes it is a very quick sale. This is some special situation. We commented about that on STS Defence. But typically, we receive the order, and then about one year later, we start to manufacture. And then this is lasting for three to seven years. So yes, these are projects.
But if you look at the order book and the strong order intake of the past few years, we can expect a sustained positive development in that market for the next three years.
Okay. Very good. And then maybe the TT IoT Solutions that you are integrating, you're saying that the margin has already picked up. How is this possible? How does the margin improve at that company that you've acquired?
We have looked very carefully during the due diligence at the cost structure of these businesses. And we have realized that under the ownership of TT Electronics, very high SG&A costs and corporate costs were levied on these businesses. We are running all the aspects of the business much leaner. And so we have a pretty immediate pickup of margin due to the reduction of SG&A costs.
Then we see positive sales trends and operational improvements that we are driving. But the immediate impact really is from reduced SG&A costs.
Okay. Very good. Thank you.
Very welcome, Mr. Reto.
The next question comes from Bernd Laux from ZKB. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to start with a simple one for Peter probably. You had a much lower tax rate thanks to the financial result, if I understand correctly, for the first half of the year. For the full year, is a neighborhood of 30% in terms of tax rate still an adequate number, or should we have a different view on that? The second question probably also to you is regarding the purchase price allocation step-up, the CHF 1.7 million.
Am I right to assume that they've been found in the material expenses line so that actually the gross margin improvement has on an underlying basis been even stronger in the first half of the year than what the numbers show? And the final question for you, Alexander, is it clearly appears that the company is taking market share. Can you maybe shed some light on new customer or a new project wins or new products that you deliver in the current or next year that will spur growth going forward? Thank you very much.
Yeah. Let me take the first two questions. Thanks a lot for the question, Mr. Laux. Appreciate the tax rate. I think your assumption to be the 30% is a conservative but good assumption. We are not giving a detailed guidance, but I would expect something between 25%-30%, obviously.
And then on the PPA step-up, you're absolutely correct. These are work in progress and material that are reevaluated at the acquisition. So the material expenses would have been even lower if you would adjust for this PPA step-up.
Thank you.
We have a follow-up question.
Oh, yes, Mr. Laux. On your third question, yes, we are gaining market share. And I'm really happy to see that. And it's clearly an effect of our business development efforts of the last years of the integration of our businesses and the bundling of our capabilities. One example is a new medical device that we have started manufacturing. I think it was in the month of May. It's a CHF mid-single-digit million annual business with two more follow-up projects from the same customer. That is a product that we have developed. So a real CDMO case.
We have developed, engineered the product, and brought it to market, by the way, in a very short time. We have done that in roughly one year from start of development toward start of volume production. So the other portion is that when we acquire businesses and when we expand our portfolio of solutions that we can offer, we typically win shares with our existing customers. So our supply share is our share of wallet, if you wish, continues to increase with these customers. We also have a few new customers that we were winning as the result of the fact that we were serving our customers significantly better than others during the material supply crisis. And such a transfer of manufacturing typically takes a year or so. So this is now starting, and we are seeing growth from that area. So absolutely, Mr.
Laux, we are gaining market share through some new customers and new programs.
Thank you very much. All clear.
Most welcome.
The next question comes from Alexander Zienkowicz from mwb research. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Maybe you have already answered this before. Is there any update on your partnership with Clayens?
Very good question because right today, actually, our head of sales and COO are together with our Clayens' colleagues at some sites. We are seeing positive feedback from the joint trade shows because we are attending especially trade shows for medical devices jointly since we announced that partnership. We have several programs that are developing. However, as I've said, this takes time. This is medical products where typically it's two to four years until you really see revenues happening, which is what we said in the beginning. Don't expect immediate pickup in revenue.
This will take some time before we see it. The value proposition is well understood and well received by the market. If you are following us or Clayens on LinkedIn, sometimes you see our joint teams, especially at medical trade shows. I totally expect that partnership to grow our medical, especially medical business. But again, it takes a bit of time. I would expect some real visible contribution in 2026.
Great. Very helpful. Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from Mr. Patrick Steiner from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's me again. Thanks for asking for answering the questions. Two follow-ups with regards to the AS division. I mean, the division performed very well organically in H1. The first one would be if you could quickly explain the excellence program you implemented in PCB manufacturing.
The second one, I'm not sure my line was a bit better. I think you answered the second one already, but the second one is basically about the medical technology business. You stated that you acquired new customers. You might be able to give us some more information on this, like how many customers, what kind of product areas, and so on. Thank you.
Yes. Very, very happy to answer. Yes, the excellence program was covering all areas of the business. We were not only talking about manufacturing excellence, sourcing excellence, sales excellence, etc. It is a holistic excellence model that we have used to drive the operational performance of the company forward. By the way, a model that is so robust and strong that we are now rolling it out for the whole Cicor Group.
Again, it's a holistic view of both the core value streams of the business and also the support processes. Very good. I'm extremely happy about the work that was done there by the local team that did very, very well. If you refer to Evolution Medtec, Evolution Medtec did not have any manufacturing ability. So their business of the 25 people there was exclusively doing development projects. And whenever there was a manufacturing demand, then, of course, this could not be done by Evolution Medtec. Today, we are transforming the business in the sense that we are offering both. We are offering the path from development towards manufacturing. Customers are both established and new businesses in the med tech field, very often medical devices, some diagnostic devices, but there's also even an ability to do implants, and that across Europe. So a good business.
And again, the synergy is that we do not only have better and more engineering resources that, of course, we will use as a platform for further growth, but now we can accept more business from customers where we start with development and then continue the manufacturing relationship.
All right. Yeah. All right. Thank you very much. Sounds very promising and all the best there.
Very welcome. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would like to hand back over the conference to Mr. Hagemann for any closing remarks.
So thank you very much to all of you. It has been a very busy half year for Cicor. And maybe sometimes we are challenging all of you because of the speed of what we are doing. We can only, of course, report our results in retrospect.
The contributions from the newly acquired businesses have not been fully included because they were acquired between end of January and end of March. Of course, also some of the one-offs are in the results. So that is really giving me the optimism for the second half and the future because the businesses are getting better. The business are contributing fully now. As I mentioned, also organically, the business development is positive. So what you are seeing, you are seeing a very busy team at Cicor, but you are seeing a very energized and optimistic team at Cicor. With that, I want to thank you all for listening to and contributing to our call and wish you a wonderful rest of the day. Goodbye.
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