Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Medmix Half Year Results 2023 Conference Call and live webcast. I am Alice, the conference 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. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Sheel Gill, Head of M&A, Strategy, and Investor Relations of Medmix. Please go ahead, madam.
Thank you, Alice. Good morning, all, welcome to Medmix's Half Year 2023 Results Call. Today with me in the room is our CEO, Girts Cimermans, and our CFO, Jennifer Dean. For this call, Girts and Jennifer will go through the half year results 2023 presentation that is on our website, following which we will take questions. If you'd like to ask questions, please dial in via the phone number that was in the registration link. As always, I want to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement on slide two. The presentation may include forward-looking statements containing risks and uncertainties. These statements are subject to change based on known or unknown risks and various other factors, which could cause the actual results or performance to differ materially from the statements made in the call.
Having said that, it's now my pleasure to hand over to Girts.
Thank you, Sheel, and good morning, everyone. I am very pleased, together with Jenni Dean, our CFO, to update you on Medmix's progress in the first half of this year. If you read our press release, you will have noticed an increase in information and analysis compared to last year. This presentation follows the same trend as I shall explain. First of all, I want to say how proud I am of our team's achievements in the first six months of the year, and I want to thank them all for their ongoing loyalty and hard work. On slide four, you can see our first half highlights. Those of you who have followed Medmix since our IPO in 2021 will be aware of the extraordinary external challenges we have had to deal with over the past 15 months.
Today, I can say that the low point is now behind us and we see clear signs of recovery. Given that our business does not display significant seasonality over the two halves of each year, we have shown in each of the bubbles a comparison of first half 2023 results, not just with the first half, but also with the second half of 2022. Analyzing consecutive six-month periods gives a better idea of current business trends. Whether you look at organic revenue growth or profit growth in first half of 2023 versus second half 2022, you will see double-digit growth rates at both the group and the business area level. The negative year-over-year development for healthcare revenues and for group-adjusted EBITDA is disappointing but not surprising. The first is linked to the other, as we shall see later.
I'm especially proud of the non-financial highlights on this slide. The commissioning of our new plant in Spain, the shipping to Spain of the assets previously utilized in Poland, and the first customer deliveries from Valencia. Before getting into the detail of the five market segments, let me start with a brief overview on slide five. The negative development of dental was the driver of the disappointing healthcare business area year-on-year revenue growth. Apart from a tough comparison with the double-digit growth seen at dental in first half 2022, unusually high dental customer inventories dampened sales volumes. We now believe that customer inventory destocking is likely to continue into the second half of this year. With dental growing slightly versus second half last year and seeing encouraging developments since the start of second half, we believe that we have passed the low point.
By contrast, drug delivery and surgery both delivered the record half-year revenues and double-digit organic growth versus both the first half and the second half of 2022. The industry market segment declined organically as expected, still limited by production capacity, but it made a good recovery versus second half 2022. We expect a capacity increase from the upcoming ramp-up of the new factory in Spain to catalyze second-half revenue growth. Here, too, we believe that we have passed the low point. The other half of our consumer and industry business area, the beauty market segment, benefited from a full pipeline of customer product launches, as well as strong fundamentals, more than compensating for the industry market segment.
On slide six, you see the first of several charts with consecutive six-month data, starting with the first half of 2019, before COVID, through to the first half of 2023. Given our relative short history in the stock market, we felt it would be helpful to put our recent performance in historical context. This chart shows group and business area revenue development. After the dip in second half 2022, first half 2023 group revenues grew 12% organically, and were it not for adverse exchange rates, would have beaten the record half year group revenues reached in first half last year. Consumer and industrial business area revenues were the driving force behind group revenues in the first six months of the year, with healthcare as a drag factor, temporarily held back by dental customer destocking.
Our acquisition of the Universal Plastics business in Spain added 1% to group growth. You might recall, the main reason for this acquisition was to have local experts in the country to accelerate the creation of an alternative to the Polish factory. The following five charts look at the revenue development of our five market segments over the same half-year periods, starting with dental on slide seven. We had seen the effects of customer destocking already in second half last year, primarily in the U.S., after the record revenues and 16% organic growth in first half 2022, in a market that is growing around 2%. We were not surprised when destocking continued into the first half of this year, with first half 2023 revenues matching second half 2022.
Driven initially by a post-Covid surge in patient treatments, dental customer overstocking was further provoked by concern about supply chain bottlenecks as global markets reopened and geopolitical tensions increased, as well as by customers purchasing ahead of successful, successive inflation-driven price increases. Our latest market intelligence suggests that these destocking effects are likely to continue in the second half, but there are some encouraging signs that an end is not far away. As a result, we do feel that destocking will have worked its way through the system between now and year-end. It will not be possible to pinpoint with any accuracy the precise timing when this will happen.
Given the importance of dental to the healthcare business area, 60% of business area revenues, the importance of healthcare to group profitability, half of group BA gross profit, as well as the impact of dental volumes on overhead cost absorption, we have decided to adopt a more cautious approach to our full year 2023 profit margin guidance. More on that later. Let's now look at drug delivery, one of our star performers on Slide eight. Please note that this business did not exist within Medmix before the second half of 2020, when it included only three months. The market segment delivered strong double-digit organic growth in first half 2023 versus both first half and second half 2022, thanks to stronger device revenue and winning new projects. Strong growth will continue as several projects are being launched over the next 18 months, translating into device revenue growth with attractive margins.
With the launch of our auto-injector, PiccoJect, last year, we have gained access to the fast-growing market segment for large molecule biologics and are receiving strong interest from existing and new customers, including large pharma and biotech companies. Since the acquisition of Haselmeier, we have invested heavily in our commercial team, increasing our opportunity pipeline and almost doubling our revenues in the process. This all gives us confidence in a long-term future revenue and profit growth of not just the drug delivery market segment, but also the Medmix groups as a whole. On slide nine, we turn to the surgery market segment, another star performer. Here, too, we saw strong double-digit organic growth in first half 2023 versus both first half and second half 2022, with record half-year revenues.
One of the key drivers of surgery growth is the successful conversion of tissue banks to our products, along with the launch of various new products. As we look into our commercial and innovation pipeline, we are confident that this market segment's strong growth will continue for the foreseeable future. The beauty market segment on slide 10 experienced unusually strong growth in the first half of the year and achieved its highest half-year revenues since 2018. The segment benefited primarily from several major customer product launches, which had previously been put on hold due to COVID. Our own innovations, notably the micro universal applicator, added to this excellent performance. I'm also happy to see that our investment in a state-of-the-art facility in Germany is starting to pay off, attracting new orders from large customers and new independent accounts alike.
After this flourish of customer launches in the first half year, we expect the pace of growth to continue in the second half, but at a more moderate pace. The industry market segment, on slide 11, has been forced to take a backseat over the past 15 months. Although revenues continue to be limited until our new production facility in Spain reaches full capacity, we are confident that we have passed the low point. You can see this in the organic growth of 6% versus the second half of last year. What is truly amazing is that we were able to maintain our momentum despite the forced closure of our largest factory. We relocated industry production to several sites temporarily and commissioned a new enlarged site in a new country with a new workforce.
Throughout that time, not only did we retain all significant customers, but we were able also to gain new customers in the process. Looking at a different sub-segment, transportation is performing strongly, fueled by EV outputs and the recovery in airspace. Construction is also performing well, aided by favorable weather, while electronics continues to underperform, but a recovery is expected to start during the second half. We are excited by the prospect of full production capacity at our new Spanish plant. We expect the industry market segment to take back its traditional driver role during the second half of this year. Over the next two slides, given its importance to the group over the coming months, I would like to spend some time providing a comprehensive update of the relocation of industry production. Moving now to slide 12.
This is a very busy chart for which I make no apology, as so much has been achieved over the past 15 months, and we have many ambitious goals over the next year and a half. As you might remember, in May last year, we announced the suspension of operations at our manufacturing site in Poland as a result of sanctions levied by the Polish government, who wrongly assumed that Medmix minority shareholder, Viktor Vekselberg, would have control of Medmix Poland. At 12,000 square meters with some 60 machines, 200 molds, and 15 automated assembly stations, this was by far the largest manufacturing facility for the industry market segment. Not wanting to waste time, we had already started the mitigation phase of this project the month before, with the overarching objective of maintaining customer loyalty and trust and continuity of supply.
We immediately set up a task force, which became the central coordination point of industry production. Raw materials and machinery intended for Poland were rerouted to Switzerland, where an additional 10,000 square meter of warehousing space was rented. We rapidly set up production in Haag in Switzerland, Shanghai, China, and Elgin, U.S., as well as its several third-party manufacturers. This required rapid acquisition and installation of machines at the various sites. The mold management team that usually purchases around 50 molds per year, had to purchase and qualify an additional 80 complex molds, not just for the temporary production sites, but also for the new plant in Spain. The Haag workforce had to be increased dramatically to cope with the increased workload, especially for hand assembly. This was all completed in four months instead of 12 months.
Sales personnel spent most of their time on demand and sales planning, and still do, with senior management frequently joining high-level customer meetings. Almost in parallel, we started the relocation phase with a team set up to relocate production to Spain, identifying key personnel, processes, plant, and equipment. The Universal Plastics business formed a bridgehead, but given the scale of the new plant, new facilities were needed, involving search, negotiations, and planning permissions. The former Polish production management transferred to Spain. They oversee the design and construction of the new plant, as well as the recruitment and the training of over 300 skilled Spanish workers. This preparation took six months. The contract for the new facility in Valencia, close to Universal's factory, was finally signed at the end of 2022. It was an empty shell with just walls and no floor.
In just five months, from January to May 2023, the new enlarged facility was completed with a live SAP system ready to receive the Polish assets. When these assets were finally released in April, it took us just 14 days to ship everything from Poland to Spain. A truck was leaving Poland literally every three hours. As of the end of June 2023, 20 machines have been installed at the Spanish plant. Over the next few months, the focus will be on reinstating full production capacity. In fact, the final future-proofing phase began almost in parallel with the relocation phase when the factory plans were first conceived. You understand why we describe this project as everything, everywhere, all at once.
Once the remaining machines are transferred from Haag to Valencia, and the Universal business has been integrated during the second half of this year, the focus will be on increasing efficiency and restoring margins. By now, I hope that I have convinced you that we can move quickly, to mitigate the force majeure. Of course, we don't want to rely on our fast reflexes. We have designed the new plant to be a showcase facility, using technologies that can be easily upgraded to constantly optimize its effectiveness and efficiency. To guard against new unforeseen events, we have installed a state-of-the-art safety and fire suppression system, have duplicate molds stored in Haag for all key products, and have designated three backup production facilities in Haag, Switzerland, Atlanta, U.S., and China.
After the detailed update, I just wanted to leave you with some images on slide 13 of the new Spanish facility taken during the construction phase and at the end of June, with the cranes, first machines, and new workforce. Quite literally, there was nothing there at the start of this year, not even a floor, and today, we're already able to produce many of our complex industry products. The bare minimum to complete such a project would be 12 months, and more usually 18 months. We did it in just six months. Finally, a big thank you to the entire Medmix team for all the sleepless nights they had to endure in all disciplines and locations, and at all levels, without whom none of this would have been possible. Last but not least, on slide 14, we have continued to make good progress against our ESG commitments.
At the group level, we have now achieved a 70% reduction in our own carbon footprint versus where we were in 2019. On this slide, you can see two concrete examples of sustainability-focused innovation. In the beauty market segment, we have introduced innovative Shadow Printing technology. According to our own internal calculations, it allow us to save up to 25% of the CO2 emissions for new products compared to using traditional lacquers. We can save a further 8% by Shadow Printing instead of hot foil stamping. In the industry market segment, we launched a new addition to our sustainable GreenLine product range. A cartridge system that uses up to 100% of post-consumer recycled plastic, that reduces our CO2 emissions by 38% compared to the old polypropylene cartridge. We reached a new milestone by being accepted into the United Nations Global Compact.
Our first act was to sign the seven UN Women's Empowerment Principles, whose overarching goals are to empower women in the workplace and to ensure gender equality. I am proud to be literally the odd man out in Medmix's women-dominated executive committee, and proud that a woman runs our dental and surgery market segments, representing quarter of group revenues. This is scratching the surface, and there's much more to be done on all levels of our organization. With that, I will hand over to Jenni, who will take you deeper into the drivers of our first half performance and give you some indications of what you can expect in the second half. I will come back at the end to share our outlook.
Thanks, Girts. I first want to share with you our usual KPIs on slide 16. Despite the short-term impacts of dental destocking and limited industry production capacity, the group was still able to deliver first half organic growth, and on a year-on-year and sequential basis. On a sequential basis, business area gross margin improved by 50 basis points, but lower volumes had a negative impact on overhead absorption and consequently on group gross margin, which declined by 60 basis points. In absolute terms, also on a sequential basis, both gross profit and adjusted EBITDA grew at single, high single-digit rates. Net income in first half 2023, as well as comparisons with both first half and second half 2022, continue to be distorted by one-time non-operational expenses related to the industry market segment.
Planned higher investments related to the new plant in Spain have increased capital expenditure to 14% of revenues in the first half of the year, where it is expected to stay for the rest of the year. This has had a negative impact on free cash flow. Despite profit pressures, our net debt ratio has remained at comfortable levels. On slide 17, healthcare business area gross profit is showing a clear recovery, despite the ongoing impact from customer destocking in the first half. The dental market segment, being 60% of business area revenues, has a disproportionate impact on business area gross profit. The lower volumes from customer destocking has been the factor behind the lower gross profit over the past 12 months.
Having said that, sequential BA gross profit and gross margin are both up significantly by 10% in absolute terms and by 160 basis points. As Girts mentioned, we expect customer destocking in dental to unwind during the rest of the year. As dental revenues normalize, this should drive an overall improved product mix within the business area. Likewise, on slide 18, in the consumer and industrial business area, we are seeing a gross profit and a gross margin improvement on a sequential basis, with absolute profit up double digit and margin up slightly. The focus in recent years within the beauty market segment has not been just on growth per se, but also on the quality of that growth, we are seeing improved margins starting to come through.
In the industry market segment, after the second half 2022 low point, we are starting to see improving margins, though they are still constrained by short-term inefficiencies, such as the high cost of hand assembly. Looking forward, we expect industries to be the decisive factor in the business areas profit recovery from increased production capacity in the second half of this year and from greater production efficiency in 2024, as the new Spanish plant continuously ramps up. Our adjusted EBITDA on slide 19 is still not where we want it to be. However, we are encouraged by the positive sequential trend, with a 10% increase in absolute profit and a steady 20% margin versus second half 2022.
As explained, the margin pressure is temporary and has been coming all from dental and industry, both of which are expected to recover over the coming months for the reasons already explained. On slide 20, our adjusted EBITDA bridge highlights the negative impact of margin and mix that could not be fully offset by price increases, and which was driven by lower dental volumes, both in absolute and the mix effect, as well as industry-related costs. In the callout box, you can see the key items in the change in non-operating expenses, which relate primarily to the industry market segment and our recovery. Moving now to slide 21. As in the second half of 2022, one time in items continue to have a significant negative impact on reported EBIT and net income.
We have broken out the key items in non-operating expenses from which you can see the ongoing impact of the relocation of industry production. Finally, on slide 22, as we walk from net income to free cash flow, the biggest negative income impacts come firstly from working capital, reflecting our decision to maintain high inventories and safeguard continuity of supply. Secondly, from the CHF 20.2 million CapEx related primarily to our footprint and the new plant in Spain. Neither of these factors are of an enduring nature, though they will likely be present also in the second half of 2023. With that, I hand back to Girts, who will discuss our outlook before we take your questions.
Thanks, Jenni. You have probably already understood the reasons behind our revised profit margin guidance as we have gone through this presentation, but let me summarize on slide 24. For full year 2023, we expect unchanged year-over-year organic revenue growth of 5%-7%. By definition, this assumes double-digit year-over-year growth in the second half. Given our strong business momentum, we believe this to be realistic, especially given the easier comparison with the second half of last year. We have, however, lowered our guidance for adjusted EBITDA margin to around 22%. For us, the main question mark is on dental customer destocking, which we currently think will unwind before year-end. If destocking persists until year-end, it is unlikely that we would achieve our original 23% objective. For this reason, we have adopted a more cautious approach.
Having said that, we are confident of a robust increase in adjusted EBITDA in the second half and an even stronger margin improvement relative to the 20% that we achieved in the first half. Just to confirm, we currently expect that this dental destocking effect will unwind by the end of this year at the latest, that 2024 starts unencumbered. For us, it is a timing factor of when, not if, dental destocking unwinds in the second half of 2023. Our longer-term outlook is based on unchanged fundamentals with an organic revenue CAGR of around 8% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 30%. Thank you for your attention. Jenni and I will be pleased to take your questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question comes from the line of Patrick Rafaisz with UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I have three questions, please, and I'll start with the first one. In dental on and the destocking, can you talk about monthly patterns, order patterns at your customers throughout H1? Was the effect bigger in Q1 or Q2, or was there progressive deterioration? Where would you see sort of the normalized revenue run rate for dental excluding the destocking effects currently? That's the first question.
All right. Hi, Patrick. Look, yeah, when we look at the first half of this year, we see the ordering patterns at for the first four months of the year at a similarly depressed level as we saw in the second half last year. We've seen the trend starting to reverse or let's say. Let me correct myself. We see increased run rate on orders starting from May and continuing into June. Now time will show, now it's vacation season, so dentists, OEMs, traders are having little bit low season. Let's see how the run rate develops in July and August. You know, this is based on these higher run rates. We believe that the destocking is slowly coming to an end.
Also having discussed, you know, with our main customers and analyzed what stock level they have currently on hand, that gives us additional confidence. In general, the run rates, you know, it's fairly linear business. Yeah. If you look at our dental revenue of give or take CHF 130 million, it's fairly linear, so there's no seasonality in that.
That's great color. Thanks. Just one brief follow-up on the. Do you have any sense at your main customers, how big the excess inventory was at the beginning of this year?
Right. It's, it varies a lot, you know, and our head of dental segment, she really took her time and spent time with all of our major OEMs. The inventory on hand that they had was ranging somewhere between three and five months on average. Yeah. I mean, some of them had lower, some of them still had higher levels of inventory.
Yeah. Okay. Okay, normalized inventory levels would be around two-three months, you think?
two, three months, yes.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, that makes sense. The second question, beauty. Very strong growth, you explained what's driving this. I'm just wondering, how should we think about, let's say, 2024, 2025, once these bigger programs phase out? Should we assume conservatively that the beauty business could go into contraction organically in the next couple of years? Also related to this, can you provide any additional color on the acquisition in China, which you just closed a few days ago, in terms of contributions for the second half? Can you talk about the contribution of the microbristle applicators?
Certainly, with pleasure. Look, yeah, I mean, the growth that we see is to a large extent all the pent-up product launches that did not happen through the COVID years. Basically, if you look at average lifetime of the cosmetic products on the market, it's on average three years. Yeah, so what we'll see is probably we're gonna see a lower amount of new projects coming in, yeah, because now it's a wave of new products coming into the markets to the consumers. Probably, you know, within the next 12 - 18 months, the amount of new products will be developed is going to be less. Yeah.
I would not necessarily say that there will be shrinkage, yeah, but more that the growth of the beauty segment would return to normal pre-COVID market growth, which is around 5%-6%. Does that answer the first part of your second question?
Yes, absolutely.
Okay, good. Yeah, on the M&A in China, we closed the acquisition, so we're very happy to have the Chinese company on board. The previous owners, they still retain some shareholding. They will remain in the company as managing directors, and continue driving the business, because that was our intention. You know, we want this business to retain the entrepreneurial spirit that they have. That's the reason why we found this company interesting. We want to give them a high degree of independence and really go after the projects in China and also in Southeast Asia, go after them and grow. It's a product portfolio that they have is also complementary to our product portfolio for our, I would say, legacy, beauty segment.
That allows us also to have more opportunities of pull-through. You know, if, our Western customers, especially the independents, you know, that they're looking for one-stop shop. If they're looking for something beyond mascara, beyond face, lip and face, we could offer them more opportunities and more solutions. Similarly, we could offer our mascara brushes and microbristle applicator for Chinese and Asian market. We're very excited. It's a great company, a profitable company, fast-growing company, and we're very, very bullish about the future. On MBA, continues to be very successful. We have, I think at least three new product launches coming with the microbristle applicator. I believe two of them are with a brand belonging to LVMH. Third one was, Jenny, do you recall?
Sisley.
Yes, it's Sisley. Exactly. Very, very high interest in the market. Right now, the sales is still fairly low. It's about 2%-3% of beauty sales, but obviously growing from zero, yeah.
Okay. Okay, that was very helpful. Thank you for this.
It's marginally positive as well, I forgot to say.
For beauty, I assume, for the segment, not for the group?
For beauty, yes.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Good. The last question is just a clarification. If I look at the regional mix development, the U.S. declined year-on-year, I assume that's dental. Is that correct? Secondly, I noticed China revenues, I know it's small, they also declined quite significantly. What was driving that?
Yeah. Absolutely correct, Patrick. U.S. is dental, mostly because most of the large dental OEMs, or let's say, OEMs and dental material industry are U.S.-based. That's what's driving that. When it comes to China factory mainly supplies electronics segment. What's been happening the past 12 months, you know, with all the price hikes, et cetera, there's less demand for consumer electronics. Also, you know, many of us were buying second laptops, second screens during the homework at COVID lockdowns, the renewal time or cycle has not come yet. That's probably the key driver in the slower performance in China, and because the factory supplies mostly electronic segment.
Okay. Yeah, super. Great. Thank you very much for this.
Thanks, Patrick.
The next question comes from the line of Christoph Schweizer with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, Girts, Jenni. I've also a few questions. First, maybe, you know, starting off on, you know, on drug delivery. Could you actually kind of, you know, speak about, you know, specific customer wins you had, you know, with PiccoJect, or whether that's too early? Also, I think I noticed when I lately, you know, looked up your slides, you know, you expect midterm, you know, some revenue contribution from an obesity client or product, you know. Could you maybe elaborate on that, you know? That would be my first question.
Yeah. Hi, Christoph. Thanks. Thanks for the question. On PiccoJect, we do have one customer that we signed up end of last year, that product should come to market towards end of 2024 as device revenue. In the first half of this year, we do have signed three new projects, out of which two are for PiccoJect. One is a PiccoJect reconstitution device, that probably is gonna have a little bit higher project revenue, as we will need to adapt the auto-injector for reconstitution. The second one is the conventional PiccoJect. Molecules, unfortunately, I cannot disclose. Only thing I can say is that those are two new molecules that are not yet on the market with originator companies.
The third project that we are working on, that's new for the first half of 2023, is working with a larger generics company, a project for D-Flex that would probably be their platform pen for all upcoming product launches. Also very, very interesting project.
Hmm.
So.
Also the obesity comment or indication, how should we read that?
Yeah. On obesity, there is not much change since our 2022 earnings release. We do have one project with a originator company, a U.S. biotech, for obesity. We have one project with a generic company for a reusable plan. We have about, give or take, 20 projects in the pipeline with GLP-1. Smaller companies and also larger companies.
Okay. Good. Sounds good on this one. Just was hoping, you know, to get a bit more insight into your gross margins development, you know. On healthcare, you know, is it fair to assume that, you know, kind of the whole drop, you know, is basically dental and that, you know, kind of actually the gross profit improved, you know, for drug delivery and surgery?
Yes, that's correct, Christoph.
Okay. On the industrial and consumer side, maybe could you break out, you know, how strong the increase was in the beauty business? You know, so that we get a bit of a sense, you know, kind of, you know, about the extent, you know, of this, you know, gross margin effect, you know, in these two business lines within.
Only thing I can say at this stage is that the gross margin, level of beauty is increasing, due to mix and also the microbristle applicator. Unfortunately, we cannot give more details to that.
Okay. Okay, fair enough. Then just, you know, was wondering, you know, kind of on this, you know, high cost manual assembly, you know, in the industrial segment, you know, how meaningful is that actually, kind of as a hit, you know, which, you know, is obviously temporary and will go away? Is there any way, you know, we could quantify that?
Yeah. I'll let Jenni answer on that.
Thanks. I can't really break it down. It is only one element of it. I mean, if you think of the hourly rates in Poland versus the hourly rates in Switzerland, ultimately it's, you know, three, four times at least, depending on what we're talking about. Ultimately, Spain, as you rightly point out, will rectify that. It's not just that, it's also the outsourcing we've done in Switzerland. It's the additional freight, the additional warehousing. It's, it's quite difficult to break it down, but all of these elements will unwind during the next 12 months. Yeah.
Okay. Maybe one last, point I had on CapEx, you know. I have a bit difficulty reconciling your 14% of sales, which will be somewhere in the high CHF 30 million, you know. I think, you know, you had, you know, a net CapEx of CHF 20 million, you know. What's actually the difference?
Yeah. I think it depends where you're looking in the financial statements as well. At the end of the day, we have invested significantly in both of the plants, but we haven't yet cashed out all of the CapEx. I think this is causing part of the disconnect there. We've put a lot of orders in place to make sure that we can really deliver to this accelerated timeline in Spain.
Both plants, meaning Valencia and.
Atlanta. Sorry, yeah.
Atlanta. Okay, so we should, you know, stick to the 14% of sales for the full year as a good guide, as, you know, cash outflow for plant and equipment?
Yeah. Yep, absolutely.
Good. Thank you. I appreciate your comments.
Thanks, Christoph.
Thanks.
The next question comes from the line of Alessandro Foletti with Octavian. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. I have also a few. One, starting maybe with a detail on the beauty situation. You mentioned, Girts, that you were happy about how the German factory is now performing, that you have clients coming in, et cetera. I have thought that this is also a driver of profitability. Jennifer, you mentioned that the future margin delivery will be basically only driven by dental not falling anymore and the industry recovering. What is it, is beauty not performing or improving the margin? What does it take for that business to improve the margin?
I think both answers are correct. If you look within the portfolio, as we've said before, we don't disclose business area gross margin percentages by segment. We have said dental is definitely the leader for now. We don't yet have enough product volume in drug delivery that will change that, and at the other end is beauty. It is absolutely true that beauty is improving its efficiency with volume, with all these nice new projects, as well as the efficiencies through the investment we made in Germany. They are improving, and the quality of the projects we have booked in the last 12 months is definitely improving. It doesn't move the needle in an upward direction to the same extent as losing volume in dental does in a downward direction.
It is true, all three will have an impact as we move forward, but the impact of gaining back the dental volumes is much more significant than the improvement within them, in beauty.
Right. Understood. Thank you for that. Since we are talking about margins on the EBITDA outlook, now, you obviously have reduced it to 22%, but if I'm not mistaken, in earlier conference calls, did have the impression, or you, or I think you even flagged that maybe the 23% was kind of a challenging number. What about the 22%? Is this still challenging given that, you know, dental, it's maybe bottoming, but has been worse than expected?
I think all we can comment on there is what we wrote in the presentation and the press release, which is we cannot, unfortunately, without a crystal ball, pinpoint the exact moment dental will be fully recovered. We will fight the good fight as always. 22% is not a walk in the park, but it's infinitely achievable, as is our original guidance if things work in our favor.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
We believe 22% is achievable.
In other words, you know, to add on what Jenni said, you know, if the dental volumes recovery started in May, if that recovery continues, and if we get back to, like, our cruising altitude in July, you know, July, August, then the 23% is also reachable. The thing is, depending on the varied stock levels that we have with our OEMs, it's really hard to predict when it all will come back.
Okay, understood. Thank you. On the free cash flow, maybe, understand that this year is, in this sense, a bit of a transitional because of the extraordinary expenses. When do you think it's fair to assume that you can go back to sort of CHF 50 million free cash flow and maybe more than that, because the company is bigger, that you have seen already in the past?
I think the open-ended question there is how fast we can gain the efficiencies in the new Spanish facility. The lion's share of the investment in both Atlanta and Valencia is this year, so that CapEx weight will be behind us. We will still have, I would expect, elevated working capital in the machine because we want to ensure sufficient safety stocks. We don't want any misses from a customer perspective, so it will not be fully recovered by the end of the year from a working capital perspective. You can see in the presentation we have higher inventory, for example. Next year, we have quite some exciting developments in our Atlanta facility with moving surgery products insourced to Atlanta, for example.
I don't know that we will be back to full cash conversion of history next year, but definitely it will be a significant improvement.
Okay, thank you. This leads me to my last question. Can you give an update on the Atlanta ramp-up?
On track and on budget. To give you specifics, we started a similar space like Valencia. We had four empty walls and a roof. In the meanwhile, what has happened this year, the office area is pretty much completed. The manufacturing area is about 80% complete. Clean room area is completed. We're on progress, on budget, we expect the facility to be completed by end of the year, so we can apply for ISO certification and FDA.
Right, then start of production and let's say, a good capacity utilization, when can we expect that?
It will start first half next year with the insourcing of surgery products, that today are a lion's share are outsourced. Most of our surgery customers are US-based, so they're very eager to have the plant up and running and supplying them from the US. Come closer to the second half of the year, we'll start ramping up the PiccoJect production. Really hard to pinpoint exactly what percentages of capacity utilization, but let's say our CapEx investment plan is closely correlated to the ramp-up of production there. We'll not have machinery standing there idling without orders, but it's all scheduled with the production plans when we begin the production.
Okay, thank you. Maybe one last thing, more a comment rather than a question. I found the picture that you showed on the Valencia site pretty helpful. I was wondering if you can share some pictures on Atlanta as well.
Yes, we can. We can send you over some.
Would be great. Thank you very much.
Today's last question comes from the line of Daniel Jelovcan with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Hi, as well, from my side, just one follow-up. I was a bit puzzled between PiccoJect and D-Flex. I mean, I know the difference, but just to understand, you will have first sales in the second half this year. Is that with this platform pen for all, I think biosimilar drugs of this one company you mentioned, or has D-Flex several customers, or?
Yeah, thanks. D-Flex has several customers, but the launch customer will start shipping the first devices now, second half this year. This launch customer is a European pharma company for osteoporosis. PiccoJect, we expect first device revenue come in late 2024.
Yeah. Okay, this osteoporosis drug is an originator drug or it's a biosimilar?
I believe it's a biosimilar.
The PiccoJect, I guess all these 20 projects you said with GLP-1, I guess that's all PiccoJect, because most obesity drugs will be in an auto-injector. Although today there are GLP-1 which are in the pen. Just to be sure.
Just to correct the, it's not 20 projects, it's an opportunity pipeline of 20 projects. It's a mix because, you know, the originator drugs are available on the market, both as injector pens and auto-injectors. Similarly, the pipeline that we see is both, you know, with injector pens, where you can have variable dosage and auto-injectors with fixed dosage.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
That was the last question. Back to you for closing remarks.
All right. Yeah, thanks again, everybody, for dialing in. Thank you very much for your questions. We're happy to throw some additional light on our performance. As I said, we had very strong first half of this year. When it comes to dental, we see the end of these stockings, you know, as said previously, we've reached the low point. We're also extremely proud about what we've achieved in Valencia, with ramping up the factory in record time. I really want to take the opportunity once again to thank all of our Medmix team that were involved. Sleepless nights, long hours, to really focus on the customers and start the production in Valencia early as possible. Thank you very much for listening.
Thank you very much for dialing in, have a good summer.