Good morning or good afternoon, everyone, depending on where you're based. It's a pleasure to welcome you on behalf of DKSH. As Sandra said, my name is Till. Very happy to have with me today Ido Wallach, our CFO, and Stefan Bütz, our CEO. As usual, before the start, please have a look at the disclaimer of the presentation regarding forward-looking statements. For those who do not have the presentation in front of them, you will find them on our webpage in the Investor Relations section at dksh.com. With that, I would like to hand over to Stefan.
Good morning and welcome everyone to the presentation of our half-year results 2022. Looking at today's agenda, I will start with a recap of our strategy and provide you with some macro scenario in Asia Pacific. After that, I will talk about the highlights of the first half of 2022 and detail the progress in our four business units. This will be followed by the financial update from Ido. Then I will focus on two of our key areas, ESG and digitization, before we move on to the outlook and end today's webcast with the Q&A session. Let me now please reiterate our strategic focus. During the first half of 2022, we continued the disciplined execution of our growth strategy and our unique selling points are intact. We have an asset-light, very resilient, and cash-generative business model.
We drive our business to consistently expand our leading positions in our industry. We continuously strengthen our culture, which is built on entrepreneurship, trust, and empowerment. We progress well in terms of margin accretive growth, leading to improved financial results. We continue to fulfill our promise of delivering growth in Asia and beyond, and creating sustainable values for all our stakeholders. We do this through operations, M&As, and consistent dividend distribution. With this strategic backbone, we delivered good half-year 2022 results despite challenging headwinds, and we are positioned for further value creation. On that note, let us please take a closer look at the macroeconomic scenario in Asia Pacific. On a global scale, organizations have been faced with challenges ranging from rising inflation, the war in Ukraine, supply chain interruption, and the implications of zero- COVID policy and renewed lockdowns, especially in China and Hong Kong.
The weighted GDP growth rate in our market in the first quarter reached an overall 2.7%. China, just this morning, announced 0.4% for Q2. Higher commodity prices from supply chain disruptions and rising energy prices have also raised inflation across Asia, but at lower levels compared to the U.S. and Europe. When it comes to COVID restrictions, you see the situation in different markets at the bottom chart. Also, the overall situation in Asia improved since its peak in the third quarter of 2021. It is still clearly not back to normal, and the restrictions levels are high when compared to Europe and the U.S. However, for the next quarter, it is expected that the COVID situation will gradually improve. Let me now move on to the highlights of the first half of 2022.
Overall, we built on our success in 2021 and continued to deliver good results in 2022. This pleasing performance was mainly due to the great commitment of our wonderful teams across regions and our strong operational performance based on growth despite all headwinds and lockdowns and improvements in profitability. We picked up momentum on the M&A side, continued our digital transformation, and made good progress in terms of sustainability, as well as building an ever better company by focusing on diversity and employee engagement. Not only the past six months, but the past two years plus demonstrated that agility and resilience are not only buzzwords within DKSH, but integral part of our business model and the fuel that keeps us moving forward, successfully fulfilling our purpose and delivering value to our stakeholders.
When putting all that into numbers, net sales grew at constant exchange rate by 3.7%, reaching CHF 5.6 billion. EBIT increased by 19.9% at constant exchange rates to CHF 153.3 million, which was driven, by the way, by all four business units. While the EBIT margin expanded by 30 basis points from 2.4%-2.7%. Profit after tax was up 24.5% at constant exchange rate and reached CHF 105.7 million. Further, earnings per share increased by 23.4% to 1.58 CHF per share. ROIC increased by 170 basis points to 20.4%, and free cash flow declined due to temporary higher inventory levels, reaching CHF 72.1 million.
Particular with four bolt-on acquisitions in our Performance Materials business, Victa Food in Italy, Refarmed Group in Switzerland, as well as Georg Breuer and JB Food System in Germany, we strengthened our position in the specialty chemicals and ingredients distribution industry in Europe. We have a solid project pipeline for 2022 and beyond, and we will continue to seek new M&A opportunities in the still very fragmented market to accelerate our growth with financial discipline over time, which brings us to the next slide, where I would like to explain our M&A approach a bit more in detail. Financial discipline is a key word when it comes to our strategic approach to M&A. We only buy companies with strategic value and sound financial profiles that we can expand over time.
We have a multidisciplinary course of action, with all levels of the organization being involved, ranging from the M&A committee to the business unit and support functions. That means M&A, HR, legal, finance, et cetera. Our designated M&A team is suited in Europe as well as in Asia-Pacific, which are both important footholds for us. No, sorry, it's a mistake. Okay, let me now continue with an update on our business unit, starting with Healthcare. The results in Healthcare show organic growth and a good improvement in the EBIT margin. The main reasons for that positive development are twofold. From an internal perspective, our leaner structure, targeted acquisitions, and higher share of value-added products contributed a great deal.
From an external perspective, the gradual normalization of markets and the catch-up effect of the business after post-COVID played an equally beneficial role. Patients have started returning for non-urgent procedures, and there was also a higher demand for COVID-specific medication. Lastly, on the M&A side, we acquired Acutest, a Malaysian in-vitro diagnostic provider in Malaysia, at the end of May, thereby further enhancing our medical device business in Asia. Let us now turn to our Business Unit Consumer Goods. Here we continued to capitalize on our leading position in Asia-Pacific and recorded double-digit EBIT growth. The favoring factors for this positive development continued to be the result of our transformation process, namely a leaner and more agile organizational structure, the ongoing rationalization of the client and product portfolio, and consistent strategy execution. Net sales remained largely unchanged compared to last year.
Product price increases at a reasonable level, lower sales volumes combined with lockdowns, as well as supply chain disruptions in some Asian markets, basically balance each other out. In addition, we continued optimizing our client and product portfolio with a focus on profitability, and we witnessed temporary out-of-stock situations due to delivery delays in some of our key markets. Moving on to the business unit Performance Materials. We recorded double-digit net sales growth. We benefited from a positive sector demand in Asia-Pacific and Europe, further expanded our life science and industrial portfolio. EBIT increased by 7.5%, and excluding Japan, EBIT was up 16.5%. In addition, we successfully signed four value-accretive acquisitions, as just mentioned before, taking further steps towards consolidating the specialty chemicals distribution business, especially in Europe.
I'm confident for future growth opportunities in our Performance Materials business, which is characterized by our scalable business model, strong business development pipeline, and the further consolidation potential. Overall, we will continue to strengthen our leading position in the specialty chemicals and distribution industry. Ending our business unit deep dive with Technology, I can say that we achieved a good performance in the first half with strong organic growth and EBIT margin expansion. What boosted the results was an increased demand for scientific instrumentation and precision machinery. In addition, we increased our share of services and consumables in the business. We are confident that the business will continue to rebound from the pandemic and deliver a strong second half of 2022.
With the acquisition of the DNIV Group in Singapore, a major player in the distribution of semiconductors and electronics in Asia, we strengthened our presence in this dynamic growth segment. Overall, the business unit is on track with its focus strategy of building resilience and deliver growth to exceed pre-COVID levels. With that, I hand over now to our CFO, Ido Wallach, who will walk you through the financial numbers in more detail.
Thank you, Stefan, and welcome also from my side. I'm very pleased to provide you with further details of our 2022 first-half results. Let me start with net sales. We grew organically by 3%, an important achievement given the volatility in the speed in which Asian economies are coming back from the pandemic. For perspective, the Q1 GDP growth weighted to our markets was 2.7%. We therefore confirm our long-term GDP plus growth objective. It describes our ambition to grow faster than economic growth in the markets where we operate. We do this by winning new clients as well as winning market share for our existing clients. M&A has been a highlight once again, contributing plus 0.7% to our growth and mainly from the consolidation of our 2021 deals.
As mentioned by Stefan, in 2022, we have accelerated our M&A even further. We already signed 6 new acquisitions. Cumulatively, they will contribute an annualized net sales amount that runs ahead of CHF 150 million. Combining organic and M&A, our net sales growth at constant exchange rates was 3.7%. This growth has been adversely affected by -1.7% from the strengthening of the Swiss francs during the period. Moving on to EBIT development. We are very pleased with our EBIT results. Organically, we grew double digits by 17%. All four business units contributed to this growth, evidencing the strength of our four-legged portfolio. Sales growth, strong focus on high gross margin businesses, and cost structure optimization have all combined to deliver an overall EBIT margin improvement of 30 basis points.
M&A added 2.9% to EBIT growth, growing disproportionately larger than its 0.7% contribution to net sales. Our M&A deals are margin accretive, and this will remain our strategy going forward. Similar to net sales, FX had a negative impact also on our EBIT, measuring -3.3%. To wrap it all up, we are proud to underline that at CHF 153.3 million, EBIT in this first half year is the highest ever first half EBIT record in our company's history. Let us move on to review cash generation. As you know, an important part of our strategy is our asset-light business model. We typically lease our offices, we lease our distribution centers, and we even lease our transportation fleets when the latter are not fully outsourced.
In recent years, and consistent with industry practices, software and IT equipment are also increasingly leased and outsourced. As a result, our capital expenditure in the first six months of the year remained at low level of 0.5% of net sales, equivalent to CHF 27.3 million. For the remainder of 2022, we expect CapEx to remain stable at 0.5% of net sales. Free cash flow in the first half of 2022 was CHF 72.1 million, compared to CHF 107.2 million in the same period last year. As anticipated in our last call, following two consecutive years of growing cash well ahead of profit, cash conversion reached 68% of PAT. A figure that is only twenty-three million shy from our long-term target of 90% conversion.
This small shortfall, equal to less than half a day of sales for DKSH, is mainly driven by the volatile global supply chains and strong growth in Performance Materials business units. Those effects require us to temporarily increase inventory, an increase that has been largely offset by continuous improvement in trade receivables. Let us move on now to the balance sheet. It remains very strong, and I wish to highlight three things. First, the net cash position at the end of the first half was CHF 306.3 million, CHF 37.8 million higher compared to the same period last year. An increase that comes despite the increased dividend of one hundred thirty-three point two million paid out earlier this year. Second, working capital, measured as trade receivables plus inventory minus trade payables, is at CHF 964.3 million.
3.6% lower than last year, despite 2% sales growth and higher inventory. Measured as a percent of the previous twelve-month sales, working capital is down by 30 basis points to 8.6% when compared to last year. As mentioned, the increase in inventory levels has been more than offset by the accelerated collection. It is evident in the reduction of trade receivables to an historical low. This is the result of the collaborative and relentless efforts of our multifunctional business teams. They all share the deep understanding of the strategic importance of our strong balance sheet to our business. Third, our equity ratio is at 34.1%. It provides us with ample room for leverage. Leverage that we will engage at the right opportunity to grow our platform through industry consolidations.
Before we return to Stefan to elaborate on our future prospects, let me provide you with some financial indications. In terms of M&A, we estimate that our recent acquisitions will contribute around 1% to net sales in 2022. On the FX side, assuming that current rates prevail for the remainder of the year, we expect the full year FX impact within -1.5% to -2%. Tax rate, we estimate it will remain within the mid-range of 27%-29%. Capital expenditure is expected to remain at 0.5% of net sales for the full year. With that, I would like to thank you for your attention and hand over back to Stefan.
Thank you, Ido, for the details on our financials. Having talked about our results, I want to take some time to dive deeper in two of our strategic focus areas, namely sustainability or ESG and digitalization. We continued making solid progress on our sustainability journey. Just recently, we have published our fifth sustainability report that illustrates how we brought our sustainability value to life through our established framework, focusing on the three pillars: our people, our partners, and our planet. With regard to our people, we continued focusing on the development of our employees and achieved a 70-point score in our latest employee engagement survey, which benchmarks very well with leading large global multinationals.
Focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion, we also increased the share of women in senior leadership positions from 27% in 2020 to 29% in 2021, with the goal of reaching 33% in the future. In terms of our partners, we officially joined the United Nations Global Compact, the largest corporate responsibility initiative in the world. This milestone not only demonstrates our belief that sustainability is about collaboration across industries and markets but also underlines our ongoing commitment to responsible business practices. Regarding our planet, we have achieved our climate target ahead of time through reaching a reduction of our own greenhouse gas emissions by 40% last year. As climate change is nothing to settle for, we took this as an opportunity to aim for a new interim target and reduce our emissions by 65% until 2025.
Going forward, we will continue to improve our sustainability performance across all pillars of our sustainability framework, focusing on diversity, responsible procurement, waste management, and green energy. Another important area for us is digitalization. Here, our e-commerce sales continue to grow strongly, building on our successful track record, while our e-commerce business has increased net sales by 20 times during the last five years. We continued our proven omni-channel approach with pan-Asian coverage and a presence in top marketplaces. Driving digital business models and leveraging data and analytics will remain our priorities in this transformation. We are confident to further benefit from Asia-Pacific's digitalization, a region which is home to the fastest developing internet market in the world, as well as to a young, digital-savvy, and increasingly prosperous population. To conclude, let us now focus on the outlook.
Based on the resilience and diversification of our business, we expect EBIT growth in 2022, despite the economic uncertainties. As usual, we assume the following three indicators for this estimation to hold true. GDP growth in Asia-Pacific, foreign exchange rates similar to current levels for the remainder of the year, excluding any unforeseen special events. We remain very confident about Asia's long-term potential. With our great and highly committed teams and our long-standing partnerships with local industry players and our pan-regional approach, we are in a beneficial position to capitalize on the unique opportunities in this dynamic region. We are well-positioned to benefit from favorable market, industry, and consolidation trends. With that, I thank you all for your attention and invite you now to address your questions in our Q&A session. Thank you.
The first question comes from Gian Marco Werro from ZKB. Please go ahead.
Good day, everyone, and congratulations on the strong first half-year results. Three questions from my side, please. The first one is in relation to your costs. The personnel costs increased significantly while you could really reduce your other operating costs relatively to sales also. Can you maybe provide us with some more details there, please? Second question is also in relation to Japan. There, I saw that you mentioned also some issues that you had, especially in the Performance Materials business, that also impacted your growth there. Can you maybe provide us with some details also on the issues that you just faced in the first half within Japan? The third question is also in relation to the margin improvements in the Healthcare segment.
Can you provide us with some details there? The dynamics also, maybe the product, and category shifts also. Thank you.
Okay, yeah. Thank you very much for the question. Let me go ahead. In terms of the pack cost, what you see here, 40% of that increase is driven by M&A. Then obviously this year we have ASR adjustments in there as well as you know, good bonus accruals based on the 20% increase in operating EBIT, as you mentioned before. Last but not least, you know, we also try to hire better people in due course, which cost a little bit more than maybe what we had in the past.
Regarding Japan, you know, we have two significant customers there in the pharmaceutical area who had quality issues in their production, and they had to close their facilities, and one is also running into, you know, financial challenges. That was a huge drawback on our, you know, strong market position in Japan. Secondly, I think the comparables were also pretty high from last year. Regarding healthcare, yes, we made some, you know, very good progress. We delivered some, you know, solid growth, considering the situation out there and, with a leaner structure, the additional acquisitions we had, and then especially, you know, a higher share of value-added products.
That means more full-service contracts as well as more advisory services, own brands business, as well as medical device business. You know, we were able to show significant uplift in margin enhancement.
Great. Then maybe just as a quick follow-up from all those margin drivers, how much was really now sustainable going forward? Or is there also some shift or support in relation to COVID, healthcare materials, for example?
Yes. I mean, it was also supported slightly by COVID vaccines as well as adding some, you know, COVID medications and testing equipment. You know, looking at the global COVID story, I think that will continue to go on for a while. I think I also did mention before that at one point of time, this COVID vaccination will move to a normal vaccination product like a flu vaccination, and where we then also will start to make some money on, and that is also to some degree already reflected in our H1 numbers. Sorry.
Thank you.
Thank you, Gian Marco.
The next question comes from Nicole Manion from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I think most of them actually have just been picked up in the previous round of questions. Maybe just one on Performance Materials. Obviously, some of your peers in that space been reporting very strong growth as well, but maybe a little bit more skewed towards the kind of the pricing side. Could you remind us of what dynamic you're seeing in terms of split of volume and price and how you maybe expect that to develop and unwind from here? Any certain kind of detail on that would be super helpful. Thanks.
Okay. Yes. I mean, obviously the market, you know, was still driven in H1 by some good growth opportunities, but also by supply chain interruptions and shortcoming of some materials which, you know, increased prices, you know, significantly. Normally, we are very well able, you know, to pass on those, you know, those price increases. As we stated, excluding Japan, the EBIT uplift would have also been 17%. I think right now we see a little bit more that the market is getting to, you know, to normal levels. I would expect that, you know, H2 is, you know, a little bit softer than what we have probably seen in H1.
We will continue to still deliver, you know, some solid growth and EBIT margin enhancement here in PM.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Nicole.
The next question comes from Pascal Boll from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everyone. Just to follow up here on Performance Materials. So is it now this 15.7% organic growth primarily driven by pricing or higher volume? Because it doesn't seem that you have been very specific here with your answer just right now. On Consumer Goods, can we assume that the portfolio clearance will be ended by 2022, or do you believe that will run into 2023? You also mentioned with your press release that volume came into pressure due to higher pricing. Do you believe that will continue into H2 2022 and probably also in 2023? What impact do you believe it will have on volumes? Finally on free cash flow, do you expect the normalization in H2?
What is the inventory risk that you cannot sell your inventory going forward? Maybe one question on medical tourism. You mentioned that some of your patients have started to use non-urgent treatment. What is the long-term case here? I mean, medical tourism was also driven by Chinese customers as far as I know, and as it seems right now, China tourism will be down for longer. What recovery path do you expect? Thank you.
Thank you, Pascal. This is Ido, and maybe I can start answering your questions, and Stefan will chip in gradually. On PM, we really have mixed results across countries, whether it's volume or pricing growth. There are markets in which we see very strong demand for volumes and that translates into also value growth and there are markets in which it is the opposite. Overall, it is probably half and half. What you see also in the margin is impacted a little bit by the logistics costs, which as I'm sure you know, are going up. On the CG question on portfolio acceleration, it is clearly going according to plans. As you can see from the continued EBIT growth results.
We expect that by the end of this year the vast majority will be done. It's gonna be a regular process going forward as by definition, especially the fast-moving consumer goods elements here is fast moving and brands and trends change year on year. On the free cash flow our target is 90%. We're a little bit short, as I explained before, of these targets, but expect to be there at the end of the year, also at 90% of PAT and also in the long-term future as well as midterm.
Of course, if occasionally there is opportunity to increase working capital for to win a significant business and we will not hesitate to do so, if this comes at the right moment. But by and large, you can expect 90% of PAT. I think the last question, unless I missed one, was about medical tourism, and maybe I'll hand that to Stefan.
Yes, I think there was another question in terms of inflation in consumer goods hitting volumes. Let me take that one first. Yes, I mean, normally, you know, a normal low inflation rate of 2%-3% is just being placed to the market and we just push it through, and normally you don't see any volumes effect. If the inflation is significantly higher. In a situation where, you know, people are faced with significant price increases across the board, not only in food or in fast-moving consumer goods at one point of time, then yes, they do switch to cheaper brands or t,hey do switch to, you know, very, very basic food.
In some areas we see that, and that is obviously slowing growth down a little bit in FMCG. Regarding the medical tourism, this is twofold, Pascal. On the one hand we have some over-the-counter brands, which you're exactly right, very often are being bought by, you know, Chinese tourists in Thailand and Chinese tourists, I mean, they will not come to Thailand for a while, I guess. I mean, overall, the situation with tourism is, you know, pre-COVID there were around 40 million tourists per year in Thailand. I think this year they expect, you know, close to 10 and the forecast is that by 2024, you know, they are back somewhere around to 25 million. Gradually, it will come back.
I think China might be a little bit more challenging looking at the zero-COVID policy they pursue over there. The second part of the medical tourism business is the surgery business and that business is coming back slightly and is also an above-average profitable business for us.
I think there was also a question on the subquestion in the cash flow on the quality of the inventory. It is very high. Actually, our aging and excess is historically low. All this inventory that you see is a very fresh one and very sellable.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Stephanie Scholze from Mirabaud Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello, everyone. I have a follow-up question on the Consumer Goods side. I mean, can you maybe give us a split or quantify a bit the negative organic growth? How much was driven by lower volume, and also how much was driven by the fading out of some of the SKUs? Can you also give us an indication on how much was price increases? This will be one question. A second one would be on your corporate costs and digitalization. You mentioned that digitalization is going forward. How much did you spend on digitalization, and what can we expect in terms of additional spending on digitalization? You talked about the out-of-stock situation.
Can you share with us what exactly was out of stock and let us know if this was just temporary and which products were affected and when do you expect the situation to be solved? Maybe in general, can you share with us, you did a little bit on Thailand, but over the next half year or 12 months, what's your view on Thailand? How is this going to evolve? Maybe we've seen China GDP numbers this morning. What effect do you think will it have on the overall Asian region?
Okay. Thank you for your questions. I'll start again and Stefan will continue as before. First of all, on consumer goods, if I capture your questions correctly, it was about which part of the organic growth was or slight decline to say was due to SKU and client rationalization versus overall markets and the impact of price increases. Well, first of all, by and large, I believe almost 100% of all the price increases we receive from our clients, we have passed on to customers in consumer goods. As we always said, that's actually an opportunity for us in this business when inflation comes.
We estimated about half of the minus 0.9% that you see is coming from overall consumption impacts and the rest from the client personalizations that we continue to see. I'd like to also underline that the consumption impact is focused in more countries than others. We've seen it in Hong Kong. We've seen it in the small business we have in mainland China for consumer goods, and we have seen it also in New Zealand to some extent. Which brings me to the questions of out of stock. There was probably delay in shipments, and there is a
Sorry, can I follow up? How much, I mean, can you quantify it a bit? How much was price increases in the first half, and how much of the growth was attributable to SKU reduction? Was it 5% price increases and the lower volumes by, I don't know, 4%, or just to give us an idea?,
Yeah. Overall, we have seen a price increase of 4%, which we have moved on to our customers.
Okay.
Okay.
The next question comes from Jon Cox from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Sorry. Oops. Stephanie, can you still hear us?
No.
Stephanie? I think she dropped out.
Yeah.
I mean, just to answer, you know, the question also for the recording, in terms of the portfolio reduction in FMCG, that was 1%-2% of the overall volume. The out of stock were primarily products from U.S. clients who were stuck somewhere in the supply chain on the way. Is this temporary, your question was? Yes, that's what we assume. I mean, what we have seen over the last couple of weeks that lead times and supply chain are coming back more to normal, and let's be optimistic that there is no setback moving forward. Regarding Thailand, I would like to move on here with your question.
Overall, yes, I mean, the GDP forecast for Thailand was also reduced from, you know, 2.7% to, you know, 2.2% for this year. Obviously, yes, I mean, China, you know, was almost 0% in H2 this year. I mean, there's upside and downsides. Obviously,, China is a major economy in the region, which does have an impact on the region overall. On the other hand, I mean, we clearly see if we look at international investments right now, that more money is being allocated to countries like Thailand, which you know makes us quite optimistic. Plus the tourism is, you know, slightly coming back.
I'd like to also complete the answer for the there was some digitalization. Over the last three years, we have doubled our spending overall on IT and digitalizations in the company that is capturing the non-BU expenses that you measure. We have, by and large, financed that with reductions in other corporate services. We intend to continue to grow our IT and digitalization spending ahead of gross margin in the years to come.
Jon, are you on the line? Can you hear us?,
The next question comes from Jon Cox from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, guys. Jon with Kepler Cheuvreux here. Just to come back to this Japan question, it obviously looks like this incident cost you about 110 basis points year-over-year. Should we be actually thinking that this business won't come back? As a result, expectations for around a 9% margin in that Performance Materials division are too optimistic, and we should be really squeezing in at 8%. That's the first question. Second question, just really on sort of more recent trading, because obviously we can still see this consumer weakness even as you look through the half, things clearly improved in Malaysia and Thailand, at least in terms of tourist flows.
I'm sure, you know, seeing what's happening in Europe to tourism generally, I'd imagine that Thailand must be getting overrun, you know, as we go through the year. Can you just talk a bit about, you know, how you saw sort of May and June trading and then maybe compare to the start of the year? Just to give us a feel of sort of like the run rate we should be expecting. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much, John, for your question. I mean, regarding Japan, there were like, you know, two factories that were suspended. I mean, obviously they are working now together with the authorities to get them back on track, as well as to shift the production capacity, you know, to other factories. That will take a little bit of time. Clearly, we are not writing this volume off. This volume is going to come back, but it will take some time. Regarding Thailand and tourism. Yeah, I think I did share the, you know, the forecasted numbers. I would not expect that Thailand is being overrun. I think that's a very optimistic view.
Clearly tourism is coming back. They're also obviously lowered all the COVID hurdles. It's very easy right now to enter and leave Thailand. I think that should support especially the season starting going into our winters, into winters here. We are cautiously optimistic regarding the development of Thailand overall. In terms of trading, yes, you are right. I mean, clearly there was a step up from Q1 to Q2. Please, let's not forget, we sometimes forget it here so quickly, but I mean, in Q1, we still have seen significant lockdowns across Asia and significant hurdles, you know, to do business and to enter and travel, you know, in the countries.
This came down in Q2, and we could clearly see the you know trading moving upwards. In terms of COVID, as I mentioned before, you know we expect that you know the last remaining hurdles across the region continue to fall further, with the exception obviously of China and Hong Kong, which is giving us, especially in Hong Kong, some headwinds. Obviously we also recognize that the world you know today now is slightly different in terms of economic outlook and uncertainties for H2. That's where we also have to be cautiously optimistic that there is a little bit more headwinds coming from the economic outlook.
Having said, you know, all of that, you know, we are very confident that despite all those headwinds and uncertainties, you know, we will continue to grow over H2 last year at the top line as well as at the bottom line.
Just to keep coming back to this Japan issue, sorry, because well, it did make quite a material difference. When during the half did that business disappear? And then can you give us a sort of like a rough indication of the revenue on that? I guess it must be like CHF 50 million. Yeah? That means it's incredibly profitable for this thing to have such a negative impact on your margin. The question is, you know, what is your confidence in that this stuff will come back? Or do you think maybe this business has been lost?
Look, I think we always did share that, you know, different markets based on the competitive positioning of our business have, you know, different margin. We clearly have a strong position in the Japanese market. Please understand that we can't share or that we are not able to share every, you know, revenue numbers, you know, specifically to one or two clients.
Like, can you tell me when it happened? Was it Q2, or was it already start of January, or was it already even starting November, December?
Right after New Year.
After New Year. Basically, in terms of that business coming back, what is, you know, give us your best guess, like 50/50 chance, or do you think it's 80% chance but it could take 12 months or?
No, I would say clearly there is a 80%+ chance, but we will take a little bit of time. Again, I mean, you know, that's a local challenge the client is, you know, is facing with local challenges and authorities.
Yeah. Okay, great. Just a quick one on the healthcare, and obviously a great print on there, which was a positive surprise. Just wondering, you know, in terms of the development of maybe other stuff, and I'm really thinking now private label med tech type of equipment. Are you starting to see that coming through and benefiting your business? So this isn't just a one-off bounce back, but actually there's some underlying fundamental improvement in that business.
Yes, that is correct. I think we also did share that already at our capital market day, that we clearly have a strategy, you know, to further gain market share in the medical device industry and also consolidate in that market through M&A. I guess you have seen some transactions there over the last 24 months. It's a market with, you know, higher margin, you know, very fragmented, and it does definitely support our bottom line. I mean, obviously the sales are relatively low comparing to, you know, big pharma. That is one of the reasons why you say, you know, a stronger bottom line development than a top-line development.
Does that mean that, you know, I know the capital markets, so you mentioned some of this stuff, but you still tended to say, you know, we have a big competitor in that market and we shouldn't really expect the margin on the Healthcare to go up really because of the competitor keeping you honest, as it were. Now with this, can we start to think that the Healthcare margin and over time will actually start to improve?
I mean, clearly our objective is, you know, our business model is also, you know, based on, you know, economies of scale. We will increase the share of value-added services as well as you mentioned of, you know, some own brands and medical devices. That will, you know, support some continuous, you know, margin enhancement. Yes, that is what you can expect.
Great. Thanks very much.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Environment. Okay. Thank you.
Gentlemen, so far there are no questions from the phone.
On behalf of DKSH, thank you very much for dialing in. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to the Investor Relations team. Thank you very much. I'm wishing you all a great day. Goodbye.
Yeah. Thank you very much and see most of you then during next week.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.