Good morning, everybody. I hope you have also a lot of energy like I do. I enjoyed a lot, you know, yesterday evening, to meet all of you and to have some chats. I'm Marcel Imwinkelried, I'm the new CEO of Siegfried since 1st of September, and the purpose of today is, first of all, to introduce myself, that you know who is taking care now of Siegfried. Secondly, also to share with you the updated strategy of our company, and then later on, to give you more insights about our company, about our people, and about our technology. Let's start with a safety moment. In operations, we always starting with a safety moment, and just in case, if you would have an incident, then please don't run away.
Stay together, and our site head, Marcela López, will take care and guide us to the assembly point, which is just one hundred meters in front of the entry. Let's go shortly through the agenda. We'll start with the strategy update of EVOLVE+, what's behind the plus. Afterwards, Reto will take care and will give you some explanation about our sustainable value creation, followed by a short break, and also then to give you afterwards insights about drug substance and drug product with the technology which we have in place, and after the launch, you have also then the opportunity to touch such new technologies which we have in use, and also to learn more about other topics. Marcela will take care and introduce her site, which she's leading.
Here we are in Barberà del Vallès, in one of our flagship sites within our company, and after the introduction, we will go for a plant tour that you can get in touch. Please ask question also to the people. You will see how engaged and how committed our employees are. For the colleagues, because we are taking care, and we wanna give you the opportunity, and you are so important for us, that for the colleagues who wants to join and to want to get the update, you know, from the Lonza, the third quarter qualitative update, you can stay then here in the auditorium, and you have the chance then to dial in and to hear more.
We'll close out at four o'clock our meeting, and then according to the arranged transportations to the airport or to the hotel, we will close then the day. About EVOLVE+. EVOLVE, our strategy, is proven to be really successful. I will come later on that, but I would like to introduce first myself. I grew up in the southern part of Switzerland, so I'm a man from the mountains. I have a wonderful wife and four daughters, and all of them, they have diabetes. They rely on myself and on the health industry that they are getting their medicine on time in full. So there is no need for you to ask me about my purpose. I know why I'm standing up in the morning and why I'm working now since decades for the health industry.
I'm a climber, I'm ambitious, I'm a skier, and also I like to hike. The nature is giving me the power to make the moves and also to be fully engaged in my work, what I'm doing as well on a daily basis. Before I joined Siegfried three and a half years ago, I was working for sixteen years in Novartis, so I understand also the needs of our customers, what they are looking for, what they are requesting, and what can really make the difference at the end as a CDMO supplier. I was really excited when I joined Siegfried three and a half years ago. I met a strong team, an engaged team, with a strong expertise, the winning spirit, and a can-do attitude.
Over the last three and a half years, I was able to build up the Drug Product network, because prior to the acquisitions of these two Novartis sites, and one of them is here where we are sitting now, we were below the critical mass. We crossed now the critical mass, and we were successfully able to growth. Let's reflect shortly where we are, what we have achieved over the last several years, and also what kind of performance we did. First of all, we were scaling up significantly over the last years. We have now, in the meantime, 13 sites worldwide, 8 sites for Drug Substance, 5 sites for Drug Product. We are delivering to more than 500 customers worldwide.
We are acting in three different continents, which is an advantage, because due to the macro political issues, and nothing you can nowadays predict, we have really now the option, which we can offer to our customers, to have two supply points from Europe or from US, which is, by the way, highly appreciated. The turnover which we are generating are two-thirds from drug substance, small molecules, and one-third from drug product. If you're looking at the right side, the numbers, it's really impressive. We were able to grow over the last five years, top line by double-digit. At the same time, we also strongly improved our bottom line over the last five years as well. How we did it? I think predominantly, we were doing the funding by ourselves through cash generation. That's also the reason why the leverage is quite low.
And what's in for you, for our shareholders at the end, if you are looking at the total shareholder return, which is also quite impressive as well over the last five years. The prerequisite for that was really the EVOLVE+ strategy, and the ultimate goal of this strategy was really to scaling up. Why? Size really matters. That was the reason why we are putting this strategy in place to ramp up. 10 years ago, we were at the third group, at the peloton group, and now we are at the leading group, at the break-away group. You need to have such a scale to have the power to offer a broadened technology together with the expertise and capabilities. As you can see, it's still very fragmented, and it was even more fragmented five years ago. Consolidation happened and will further happen, also in the next five years, 10 years.
We were one of the players which were really shaping that up, this pyramid, and we will do further. Also, in the future, we will not change. We are not complacent, we are still very ambitious to further growth in the future as well. We have now built up to the scale-up effect to contribute and to have a fair chance to participate on the three biggest growing customer markets. Drug substance and drug products, small molecules, we are playing already a leading role in there. Also, the growth outlook is nice, good, better than expected when you're looking back ten years ago. In the meantime, we are also able to play an important role, and we are well-positioned for the large molecules as well. Not drug substance-wise, but drug product. For large molecules, we can provide our service, and we did quite successfully that.
Just to give you two examples, like the COVID-19 vaccinations for BioNTech as well as for Novavax. Through the acquisition of DINAMIQS one year ago, we are also now playing in the new drugs, new modalities, and there's also cell and gene therapy. With DINAMIQS, we have now also the opportunity to offer, you know, from early development stage, early phase, and as we investing currently also in a GMP facility, we will be ready also to commercialize these products by end of next year. You can have the best strategy, but you make the strategy happen. And this is also one of our secret of successes. We are extremely ambitious. My team, but also personally, I'm really ambitious. I want to move the needle.
I want to go forward, and this was really the one of the key foundations, what we have in our DNA, to move forward. With our mission, and we are doing that really with a foundation of mastery of science, and we are really an innovative company, we are able to support the new entities of our customer up to the industrial scale. We are one of the most trusted partner. Just one quote. One week, you know, on a yearly basis with the customers, you have always review meetings. How is the relationship? But also you are looking back, how is the performance? Safety-wise, quality, supply, are you delivering on time, in full, cost-wise, and you are reviewing that on a yearly basis with one of the customers.
One of the biggest ones, and the biggest player in the originator business, we had such a meeting one week ago, and they told me, "Marcel, you are the most trusted partner for us, because in all dimensions, you are number one. We can really rely on you, how you are delivering, how you are bringing the products to the market, and on time in full. The deliveries are always like a Swiss watch, accurate. It's a pleasure to work with you." I want to hear more often such quotes. I will come later on that. Why we are able to do so? Of course, with a strong team. At the end, you need to have committed people, fully engaged people, which are always thinking on a daily basis, how can I improve my work? How can I do better?
How can I improve or increase the yield of our products? How can I reduce the throughput time? These are really the chain which makes the difference. Together with excellence, and excellence, we did a lot over the last three and a half years, and it's also very close to my heart, and that's something what I've learned over the last 16 years before I was joining Siegfried, to become excellent what you are doing in all dimensions. I was remediating sites, you know, which were under the warning letter. Believe me, I don't want to go back in such situation. What you need to do is really to be accurate. You have to develop crystal clear plans, and also execute accordingly. Discipline in organization, in operational organization, is absolutely key. We developed a lot.
We are very increasing our excellence dimensions, like in quality and also supply, significantly over the last two years, and we are getting now the feedback from our customers. We started in drug product, but we are now doing and copying that also in the drug substance cluster as well. All what we are doing is with passion, the passion to win. At the end, that's also the differentiator compared to the competitors. You need to be more flexible, you need to be more faster, you need to understand the requirements of the customers to fulfill their expectations. Everything what we are doing is with full integrity towards to our customers, but also internally. You need to rely on each other, and you need to believe on each other. Quality in our industry is a strong foundation, what you need to have.
It's a must. Many of the originator companies, they are spending CHF 1-2 billion for research and development activities, and at the day when they are getting the approval from the health authorities, you need to be in a position to deliver the drugs within 24 hours to their warehouse of the wholesalers. That's a must. Every day counts, and quality, just to give you an example, we have a tremendous track record over the last decades. No issues at all, but here also, to be from my learnings from the past, here, you need a little bit to be paranoid. If you are relying, you know, on the history in the past, it's not given that you will be successful for the future.
The last two FDA audits, which we had, one in China, in our Nantong site, and the other one in Grafton, the new acquisition, which we did in July, we got a clean paper. A clean paper means zero observation. What is this telling to me at the end, as a CEO of Siegfried? Two things. First of all, as you can imagine, for the US FDA, sometimes now, due to the geopolitical stuff, they are looking quite tough at the quality in all regions. So it was really highlight that our colleagues in China were passing this audit without any observation. And secondly, Grafton, we closed out the deal by first of July, two months after the FDA was knocking on the door. "We wanna review your quality systems.
We wanna review your quality mindset and how compliant you are." They passed it also with any observations. At the end, for me, our due diligence is really strong. We made it very detailed, but we knew, you know, what we are acquiring here. Sustainability, this will be also one of the topics later on, which we will dig in more in detail. Reto Suter will give you more insights about that. It's not only that we are taking it, this is one of our, our fundamental values, because it's needed from or requested by the customers. It's our own strong belief that we have to take care of our environment. Evolve Plus, I think everybody's now curious what's behind the plus. As already outlined, Evolve was really successful. It was the prerequisite to scale up our company and to have the power for the future for additional growth.
The cornerstone of EVOLVE+, which is in the gray zone here, will remain. Why should we change a winning horse? Doesn't make sense. We were so successful over the last seven years, we will maintain. We will take care and further improve our growing in the existing core. Opportunity-wise, optional-wise, we are looking to enter and grow in new areas, as we did, as an example, with DiNamiQS one year ago, but now we are adding, we have now the scale, the size, to look at the add-ons, and here we have two dimensions. The YX, where we are talking about new technologies, broadened technologies, where we are looking at, where we will expand, and at the XX, where we are looking for more Swissness. That's what I bring in as a new CEO in Siegfried, more Swissness. To be more accurate, strive for excellence.
A promise is a promise and will never be broken. To be more flexible, to be faster, to be more responsive to our customers. When we are looking at the technology at the left side, the add-ons, I'm not talking about the funny new technologies. We still have opportunities to complete our technology portfolio in drug substance as well. We are looking forward, we are evaluating currently what else we should do for advanced production technologies. Bridging technologies. Due to the fact with the scale up and also the organic growth, we were able to broaden our technology platform to go for end-to-end approach. This is also in line with the acquisition of Grafton, where we have acquired a site which can start from the clinical early phase development stage. Now, to fulfill, we are looking to even more strengthen both technology platform, drug substance, and drug product.
Mainly, I'm looking forward here for spray drying and micronization. We have these technologies already in place, but I want to strengthen these technologies and also to expand in these technologies. The third basket are aseptic technologies. We are anyway already in the transformation in some of our sites to move to the more demanded technologies like prefilled syringes and cartridges. We will accelerate this transformation in the near future. With such a broadened technology, which we can now offer to the customers, and also we are adding new customer opportunities and baskets, we have to strengthen and also then the commercial organization and adaptations. In the past, very often, we were starting at phase two B and three in the clinical stage. Now, we will start at the preclinical stage, phase one, and offering the entire service.
This means also we need to adapt our commercial excellence as well. Our organization and also the people and how we are approaching at the end, you know, the customers' needs, needs some adaptations. This will help us at the end to widen our funnel, portfolio funnel for the future. And mid- and long-term, this will help us even to ensure a bigger growth. With development excellence, next step is to provide the expertise to our customers. We have already strong development organization in place, but we will strengthen further. And operational excellence, this is one of the key instruments for us to provide an improvement, you know, in the bottom line, to maximize the output and also the utilization, and to make sure that we are using the economy of scales. We can do that internally by organic growth, the investment in-house.
But we have also the opportunity, what we did in the past, very successful, is accretive M&A activities. We have a very successful track record. All of these assets, which we have bought over the last 10 years, are strongly contributing to our growth. I will just share with you three examples. One is BASF, because all of this acquisition which we did was with a distinct purpose, not just because the option was here on the plate. We are reviewing many on a yearly basis, potential acquisitions, transactions, but we are really bold what we are doing. It needs to be a distinct purpose, which is fulfilling our needs for the future.
The BASF sites were key to scale up the drug substance, small molecules, to become the leader for drug substance, small molecules, to get additional capacity, but also capabilities with one of the sites in Evionnaz, in Switzerland. The manufacturing sites here in Spain, El Masnou and in Barberà del Vallès, were both for improving our capabilities and also the scale-up for solid dosage forms, and to have the chance to play in a new niche in the ophthalmology market. And with biotech, with DiNamiQS acquisition, this was the entering into the new modalities and the cell and gene therapies. This will remain also for the future. This was one of the cornerstones in the past, and will remain one of the cornerstones also for the future.
This is a catalyst when we are looking at our EVOLVE+ strategy to even accelerate the growth and to become complete. Amazing! Isn't it amazing what Siegfried is now able to provide? What kind of service we are able, with the capabilities which we have now in our network. There are not so many companies who are able to provide such a service. That's the reason why you need to have a size, a big size. Size really matters, and this is a differentiator. For our customers, we can now really offer them a combined end-to-end service from early stage drug substance, small molecules, up to final dosage forms, drug products. Independent, if it's a tablet or if it's a syringe, we can do the entire service.
If you are getting everything from one hand, then of course, you have less interfaces, you can shorten the development time and also improve the quality. We are able to afterwards also to help them, and what we are doing already successfully, the life cycle management as well. For the big and large pharma companies, this will lower their complexity, and especially for the small and mid-caps. Very often, these kind of companies are research companies. They don't have the expertise for development and also commercialization. They like to have a reliable service provider from the phase one activities up to the commercialization. We are able now to offer that. For us, what's the benefit for us? I think it goes also together first with the customer. We're building up a strong relationship already at the early stage.
From the preclinical phase one activities up to the commercialization, which is taking, obviously, usually five years, but if you are really working on this successfully, then you can imagine that they... And like Siegfried's tech and also the capabilities to commercialize, they will not move away. They will rely on us also for the future. Side effect is cross-selling and is, of course, a differentiating factor. We have already molecules where we are providing the full service. There are customers; they are giving us now molecules to do in parallel, drug substance development as well as drug product activities, and last but not least here, this is one of the strengths of Siegfried. We are nowadays already very diversified.
We have not a risk that we are not diversified enough, and with the EVOLVE+, we will even more become diversified for the future. At the end, this is a really a resilience model then for our business as well. Now, the next question could be: Is there a demand from the customer point of view? Yes, there is a demand. You have two different customer segments. Large pharma. We have strong relationships with big originators since decades, since two, since three decades. We will keep them happy for sure. We wanna further strengthen our relationship. One of these strategic customer which we have in place, I was meeting them three weeks ago, and we have relationship since two decades, European company. He was telling me, "Listen, Marcel, you know, what's a real great partnership of originator and a CDMO company like you?
You are going through years and decades, and you are always together, and you are working very successfully together in great times, but also in some challenging times as well. That's the real partnership." I was working for a big company before I joined Siegfried, an originator company. You can imagine such companies, they have a landscape of CDMO, of hundreds of them. They need an army of people to manage this CDMO. Every day, one of these CDMO suppliers has a flu. There's a new escalation, quality issue, supply issue, and you need to manage that because the landscape is too big, and then you're not able to really to rely on, on so many players and to have the right governance in place. They're looking for a consolidation. They stick on the CDMO partners, but they're looking for the real ones.
That's happening as we speak in the past and even further also in the future. Small and mid-sized pharma. Here, we have a big opportunity to increase our customer portfolio, starting much earlier with them to provide the service. They will get all, all out of one hand from Siegfried. For them, it's a reduction of the time to market, but also really essential, they need to rely on such service providers. They have the expertise to find new molecules, but they don't have the expertise to develop these molecules and up to commercialization. They cannot build that up by themselves at the end, you know? It's costly, it's risky to do so for the development, but also to build up the commercial production. It's not a surprise that Moderna and BioNTech made it.
We are in a really, in a big change, if you're asking me, in the health industry. Twenty years ago, if I'm looking at the IT industry, it was very similar. Prior to that, you know, there were the big players, and afterwards, the innovation came through small companies. We see now the same also in our industry as well. To be even further, the most trusted partner for this demand of large, small, and mid-cap, we are looking forward to become more complete, even to further strengthen our value proposition to them. We have identified three fields where we have opportunities to improve and to expand. One field is in the API drug substance field, where we are looking and evaluating currently, what kind of additional technologies we wanna bring in. Secondly, bridging technologies to make a stronger link between drug substance and drug product.
Two weeks ago, I was in the biggest fair of the CDMO industry here in Europe, in Milan, and I had many interactions with companies, and all of them were asking me, "Marcel, do you have micronization and spray drying in place?" Yes, we do, but the demand is even more coming more and more through. So we need to adapt that as well, despite that we can already offer it. And FDF, mainly injectables, where we are anyway in transformation, you know, from the technology, the older ones, ampoules, to expand our technology portfolio towards to prefilled syringes and cartridges. The reason, the triggering points, why the big pharma and the small and mid caps are looking for a service provider who can act as a one-stop shop, are requested by both.
However, the reason is different, and scale really matters, because not many companies in the CDMO industry can provide this end-to-end technology office. EVOLVE+. Now let's move to the Swissness. Commercial excellence. What's behind that? I think we need to adapt our go-to-market strategy. We can widen our customer portfolio, but small and mid caps, they have different requirements compared to the large pharma, and how to approach them, it's also different. The large pharma companies, most of them, they know us already, but the small and mid caps, we have to approach them. They need to understand us. They need to know what kind of capabilities we can offer to them. So we need to be better suited for the small and mid-sized companies.
We will keep for sure and never give up a strength, what you have at the strong relationship with large pharma, but adaptations are needed. Development excellence. We are already in the journey to improve our capabilities there. We started, and this was in sync, you know, the acquisition of Grafton was already in sync with the strategy, which I have just shared with you, to close the last gap, which we had from the early phase up to the full commercialization. Development. Here, also, the companies, and they're asking for really to reduce the timelines. When you are looking at the entire time pillar, it's one of the requests of our customers: Can you do that faster? Time to market is a key factor for them to generate, at the end, at a much earlier stage, the revenues.
Combining drug substance and drug product solution from one hand, this is also what we are working now very closely within our organization, to close finally also the activities there. Operational excellence is the key contributor of the margin improvements. Also, what Reto was sharing with you during the half-year results, you saw that we made it up, also bottom line-wise. Different options to do that. One is also in quality, with many principles which you can bring in, which I've also learned, by the way, from Novartis, which I was working there. You can really improve the reliability. With the bigger networks which we have now in place, we are able to scale up our platform. It's helping us with a higher utilization, at the end, resulting in a much better cost base as well. And operational excellence is something what we have in our DNA.
You need to think every day how you can improve the stuff, what you are doing. And this will also help then to be more reliable and to have a much better quality. Quality to come back, which is really close to my heart. My family is relying on us. To become better, we are also listening to our employees. We are going always on a quarterly basis for a Glint survey to understand what can we do better, because just with a fully engaged organization, you're able to move, to move forward, to move upwards. But also, we are going, and we did a customer survey to understand where we are already good in and what we can further improve to fulfill their requests. Commercial excellence. As I already outlined, I think we are looking now also to approach new small- and mid-cap companies additionally.
We need to adapt our organization, but first of all, we need to identify by a proper segmentation, what are the needs of the different customer segments? Small versus mid versus large, they are requesting different needs. We have to take care also of the location of these customers. There are different needs as well. Some of our customers, they're asking, "I want to have two supply points, one in US for the US market, one in Europe, second one in Europe for the European market and the rest of the world." We are able to provide that, and we need to listen to them, what they are looking for. After the customer segmentation, we need to do a prioritization. The prioritization means we cannot approach thousands of customers. We need to understand which customers really make sense to approach, which we wanna have-...
For which we are going for large, we will keep, and the small and mid, we have a clear plan in place how to approach these new customers. Coverage. If you are going down to the small and mid caps, you need to define how you are approaching them. The go-to-market strategy is different. If you have a key account manager, what we have, who is taking care of existing large company, there is a different interaction between the customer and ourselves, compared to a new business developer who needs to approach new companies, which maybe don't know yet Siegfried. This means the strategy, how we are approaching these different customers, is also an adaptation of what we have to do.
And the last step is then to define the target operating model, that we have a clear understanding of the organization, how we build up the governance, how we are doing then also the steering activities, how we are tracking the achievements compared to the goals which we have defined. We did that already for two segments. Martin Kessler did it together with our colleagues in Zofingen for DiNamiQS, for the new site in Schlieren. And we did that also for drug substance. And the last step, what we are now doing, is for drug product as well. Development excellence. We are already in a journey here since four years. The acquisition of Grafton was to put in the last puzzle piece, which was missing for the end-to-end offering for drug substance.
Now we can provide the full service end to end. We should not underestimate also the investment which we did in Evionnaz, because Evionnaz, together also with Zofingen, are taking care after phase one, phase two A, taking from Grafton or also directly from some customers, the molecules, and bring that up through phase two B, phase three to commercial scale. We have invested in Evionnaz in a new R&D center, where we have the integration in two weeks from now. Drug products, we have two development center, one here in Barberà, where we can offer also the entire development service from preclinical to launch and life cycle management for OSD and inhalation. We did the same also in our sister site in El Masnou, which is just 16 kilometers away here from Barberà. Also, we can offer the same.
Drug products, sterile fill and finish, that's our Hameln site in northern part of Germany. Still some opportunities, what we will do, and we'll also expand then the formulation for early phase one and phase two activities in the near future. Operational excellence. Here, we made tremendous progress, and you saw already the results also in the bottom line. More will come. I can already share that with you, but it starts with the economy of scale. With the scale-up, which we did, we are able now really to improve our cost base by a higher utilization and really take care of the profitable growth. Reliability. With principles like lean principles, Six Sigma principles, or also from supply point of view, we have introduced in our drug product cluster, also the class A of Oliver Wight principles there as well.
We see tremendous progress over the last two years. Also, the quotes which are getting back from the customers are really motivating us to go for the entire rollout of our in within our company. This is helping at the end also for to increase the speed, how we are developing, how we are moving the production, and also at the end, the flexibility, how we are responding to the needs of our customers as well. Network product allocation. Already mentioned, you know, some customers, they have the and they are really in favor to have two supply points, also due to business continuity reason. But we like also to do our product allocation by ourselves, because we can really put and allocate the product for the best fit within our network.
It depends on the needs, also on the utilization, which we are striving for, to maximize at the end, output and the cost base. Operational excellence is a DNA. Here, really to take care, that's something what I bring in as a new CEO in Siegfried. Digitalization will come and is also part and a twin of operational excellence, and we will just share afterwards also some examples regarding operational excellence activities. Sustainability. Sustainability is one of our strong belief, and a very nice example, which was triggered, to be honest, was due to the Ukraine war two half years ago. Due to the risk of energy shortage, we were looking how we can reduce the demand of energy.
In the meantime, over the last two half years, we have implemented more than 100 initiatives in all of our 13 sites. We were able to reduce 18 gigawatt hours per year. This is quite tremendous. That's exactly the consumption of a small city in Switzerland, like Zofingen, with 12,000 residents. This is the reduction of a small city for energy consumption of a small city. It's not only... That's a great achievement related to sustainability, but you can imagine also for the bottom line, and the margin, it was also a strong contributor as well. Another example with a new technology, 3D printing, where we are printing spare parts. We are producing our spare parts nowadays by ourselves in the drug product sites. You will see afterwards, during the showcase, which we will present to you, how the new technology can be used.
In the past, very often, we had an unplanned break, breakdown, a shutdown. The line was not running for hours. Sometimes when we were lucky, of course, and had the spare parts in our shop, we could restart immediately, but if you didn't have the spare part in your warehouse, in your shop, then you had to look at the suppliers to get the spare parts from them. We had some longer shutdowns then, which were impacting, at the end, our output. Nowadays, we are producing that on time, real-time, when we need such a spare part in-house directly. Don't ask also about the cost reduction.
You will see also an example. It's not only the time where you are not losing the production output, but also, you know, when we are doing that, you can improve also the setup, and to become more reliable at the end, also in the production. Digitalization for Siegfried matters, and here an example where we are using digitalization is in the throughput time. What we are doing with digital tools, we are doing a value stream mapping. We are looking which kind of process steps you have. Very often, you don't know how many process steps you have. I'm not talking about the main ones, the adding value ones, but where you are moving the goods from what, place A to place B, which is just waste.
You can reduce, and with this prerequisite, with these tools, we were able to reduce significantly the throughput time, and the result out of them are the free cash which we are generating. That's the answer to the question, why we made it up in the half year results to improve the free cash? And believe me, more will come. And this will not have any impact on supply. It's just how you are planning, how you are executing, and how disciplined you are. Now, let's talk about the value levers in the past. It's impressive, if you are looking back over the last three years, the sales growth, we were able to increase by more than 50%.
We doubled the margin over the last five years, and with operational excellence, and with this mindset, and with our capital efficiency, we were able also to improve this lever as well. In the future, and now you will ask, of course, what will be the value drivers also in the near future? We will rely on the cornerstone of EVOLVE. This is proven to be successful, and we will maintain. We are doing now the add-ons. One is the technology offering, which we will extend, expand. To add, together with the commercial excellence activities, we will be able to even growth more in the sales growth. With the commercial excellence, development excellence, and also operational excellence, we will maximize and improve our margin expansion, and with operational excellence, we will contribute further on the capital efficiency.
As a catalyst, and to accelerate our strategy, we will use the accretive M&A activities in the future like in the past. This is our strategy for the future, to be more successful compared to the past. Thanks a lot for your attention, and now I would like to hand over to Reto Suter, who will give you insights about our strong and sustainable value creation.
Thank you very much, Marcel. It's a pleasure now. Good morning, everyone, to also show to you how this adjusted strategy, EVOLVE+, will lead to a strong and also sustainable value creation in the years to come. Let's go. I usually don't speak or comment about my share price or share price developments, et cetera, but sometimes looking back a few years is actually quite helpful. Siegfried share price has nearly tripled over the last five years, and we have done so in a quite adverse macro environment. You remember, we had the outbreak of COVID in early 2019, which led to huge sickness rates here at the sites, to supply chain disruptions, to inflation. In early 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and we saw an energy crisis unprecedented. We saw total disruptions of commodity prices and, again, another wave of inflation.
Siegfried share price has shown a significant resilience against that macroeconomic headwind. We also have not been shy to benefit from the opportunity set that COVID has provided. In late 2020, we have announced the first contract with BioNTech, followed by a second contract of Novavax, and we have been able to put in place, in record time, an operational setup, which was then able to manufacture and to produce these really important COVID vaccines to the world. Later in the cycles, so now, we have been able to overcompensate the fading out of the COVID vaccines and have replaced them with organic growth. We also have been playing M&A quite strongly in these five years, so we played two times the existing core. Firstly, with the acquisition of the two pharmaceutical manufacturing plants in Spain. Here, Barberà was acquired early 2021.
And then, secondly, just a few months back, we have acquired the site in Grafton, this early phase development CDMO in the U.S. The third acquisition was in the area of new technologies. So in May 2023, we were really happy to announce the acquisition of DiNamiQS, our play in biotech two point zero, cell and gene in viral vectors. So this is what we did in the last five years, and now with EVOLVE+, we have the blueprint on how to repeat that in the years to come. Of course, the share price development was also backed by the development of major financial KPIs. You see here on this slide, net sales, you see two profit aggregates, core net profit and core, core gross profit and core EBITDA, and you also see the development of our operating cash flow.
The net sales was driven by increase in demand, specifically for API and also intermediates, and of course, the sales component also includes some M&A, mostly the acquisition of the two Spanish pharmaceutical plants, which is, to some extent, with much more to follow, actually, in the years to come. However, the two acquisitions in Grafton, as well as DiNamiQS, is not yet included significantly in these numbers, so it takes a few years for these two acquisitions to come through. If you look at the CAGRs of sales and the CAGRs of the two profit aggregates, it's clear that we have been able to grow profitably, and this is what we want to continue to do.
The operating cash flow has improved, significantly improved, actually, but remember, it was manufactured in an adverse macro environment, which means, and you know that, obviously, the supply chain disruptions and other things have put a burden onto our net working capital and also our cash generation. Looking at the sales evolution and the business mix, you see that both clusters have contributed to the growth over the last five years. And if compared to mix, you also see that the proportion of drug product as a percentage of total has increased. And going forward, we will continue to seek also a more balanced revenue distribution between the two clusters. Growth has come from both ends, so organic as well as inorganic. On an organic side, we have been able to overcompensate the phasing out of the important COVID-19 revenues in the drug product segment.
And we will continue to improve the utilization in our network and also expand that network. M&A played a key role in these five years. We built up capabilities, but also capacities through M&A. Important to us, the M&A knowledge is by now really deeply ingrained in our organization. We have colleagues amongst us which have now worked on four or even more transactions in the past.... And remember, it's always the same people working pre-closing and post-closing. So it's the same people doing due diligence, deal structuring, which are then also responsible for the post-merger integration, which we handled really well in the past. When speaking about resilience, in the past, of course, we also need to touch upon diversification, because this is the main treatment method which leads to resilience. And Siegfried today is highly diversified across many dimensions.
We are diversified in terms of clients, not only in terms of key client risks, but also in terms of the composition of our client portfolio. We are diversified relating to products. The top products account only for 5% of revenues, and we have the balance between exclusives business as well as multi-client business. But it goes on. We're also diversified across technologies, so have the ability to offer end-to-end, and we're also diversified relating to life cycle exposure. That diversification actually has much increased with the latest acquisition of our early phase CDMO in Grafton, the Siegfried Acceleration Hub. So you see, Siegfried is executing and running a well-hedged portfolio of investment and growth options. I would like now to shed some light on how the capital allocation process works internally, so relating to CapEx only.
As all of you rightly observe, and sometimes also question or criticize the amount of money that we spend into new investments and how we run that, so let's shed some light on that, and I will start on the left-hand side. On the left-hand side, you see the process. It starts with discussions with clients, and from those discussions with clients, we basically identify capacity demands in the various technology platforms in the periods to come. Then portfolio management kicks in. We have emphasized that project management, when we did the decision to invest into our Minden plant. This was a significant investment, and it was clear to us that we could not just take fresh money and allocate it for fresh capacity, but at the same time, we needed to take care about the existing products in the existing equipment.
So we took care of the tail end of the current manufacture portfolio. The next step is debottlenecking. Debottlenecking offers the best capacity for the least amount of money. You remove one bottleneck in the process and then get access to so-called hidden capacity. And we continue to do that on each and every site in our network. And the result then from that process is the net required capacity per technology platform for the periods to come. Step number one. Step number two is we provide that capacity gap, that demand for capacity, to our local organizations in the two clusters, and it's then up to them to come up with individual business cases for individual investment projects. They need to hand that in in a very standardized format. These projects are analyzed alongside financial criteria, of course, but these projects also include ESG criteria.
Based on these proposals, we then decide where, in which—for which investment project we get the biggest bang for the buck. This is then where the investment is allocated to this relative node in our network. Just anecdotally, the manufacturing building for drug substances in Minden, we had three projects to choose from, and we chose the one which gave us the highest value for the least amount of money. This is how it works. You see here our investment projects. You know all of them, and we have had quite a heavy CapEx cycle from 2021 to now. We have also informed you that starting 2025, this will come back a bit to low teens. Important message here is that all of these projects are actually already done. Barcelona will be operational really soon.
Evionnaz, two weeks from now or in the year to come. This relates to Minden, where we will see first revenues in 2025. And Schlieren DiNamiQS, the commercial capacity, which will come on screen towards the end of 2025. So for us, these investments actually are not a burden. These are options for additional and accelerated growth going forward. I showed you the development of operating cash flow over the last five years, but obviously, being a cash-driven company and being ambitious, this was not enough for us, which is why we have launched a project called Falcon, with the target to release additional high double-digit CHF million from net working capital into cash from now to the end of 2025.
We leave no stone unturned, so we cover and analyze all the levers, starting from raw material, not ordering too early, not stocking up too much, to accounts payable and accounts receivable. Of course, this is somewhat the easiest part. But this time, we also touch the really challenging part in between, which is the link between finance, manufacturing, and then supply to client. So all of our teams are currently working hard on that middle part, and it's going well. It's challenging, because you basically touch the core of your manufacturing planning. But through that, we will actually be able to speed up throughput times quite a bit and release significant amounts of net working capital back into cash. Leverage.
Over the last few reporting cycles, we have been able to reduce leverage both in a static view, way, so looking at net debt and its development, but also from a dynamic point of view, so net debt divided by LTM core EBITDA. Over half year, we were down at CHF 366 million of net debt, at a leverage ratio of 1.3, which, you know, in a very easy calculation, gives me around CHF 600 million of non-dilutive debt capacity going forward. However, please be assured, we will always be committed to very sensible levels of leverage, also, going forward. In the past, in the last 12 years, we have never relied on external funding for our growth path. So all of what you have seen was executed on own capital or then on equity-linked instruments, so no dilution for the shareholders.
Now, obviously, we will not, would not shy away to also tap into equity or equity-linked. Should a larger, more transformational transaction come up, which would create significant value for all of us, then we could tap into equity instruments, of course, too. So also on the EVOLVE+, we will continue what we did in the past. We will continue to tap into and allocate capital for growth topics, both organically as well as inorganically, so we continue to deploy capital into M&A. And maintenance CapEx will always support also operational excellence topics. We will remain very disciplined relating to payouts. We will continue to delever, and we are committed to a sensible leverage ratio. And all of that combined will lead to a flexible and strong balance sheet, which will allow us to execute on our strategy, also going forward.
That said, Siegfried's journey goes on. We will continue to deliver profitable growth, and we continue to invest in our global network. We will continue to optimize our portfolio of projects, products, and assets, and also execute alongside the new, new dimension of commercial development and operational excellence. That said, we confirm the outlook for twenty twenty-four. We expect the sales growth in the low single-digit % range in local currencies and the core EBITDA margin at or above the levels of twenty twenty-three. We also confirm the positive midterm outlook, continued profitable growth at or above the market, which, for the avoidance of doubt, excludes M&A, as in the past. We will continue to stepwise expanding the profitability, as in the past. Capital expenditure at low teens and cash generation increased. Let's switch tack.
Sustainability, one of the core values at Siegfried, and sustainability is important to us, which is why we have deeply embedded it also in the strategy EVOLVE+, as just shown. We believe that progress on ESG will deliver value for all of our stakeholders around our company. And based on a materiality assessment, we have decided on three relevant focus areas for the Siegfried group of companies. Action item, the focus point number one is environmental sustainability, because it's environmental sustainability which directly translates into operational efficiency and also cost benefits. Second focal point is the customer perspective. We will collaborate with our customers and our suppliers as well to deliver more sustainable products and solutions. And the third focus point is our people, the strongest team, where we will focus on culture, integrity, and of course, also our people. How is sustainability organized within the Siegfried group?
It was important to us that we don't just put that effort into a box somewhere in our organogram and leave it there in the vacuum, but we wanted to have it firmly embedded in our governance structure. Which is why we have already, in 2021, established the Corporate Sustainability Board, which is responsible for the execution of all sustainability-related topics, and which is then allocating tasks, responsibilities to all of the global heads in the various departments. All of the functional heads are also represented on the Corporate Sustainability Board, and the board reports, as it should be, directly to the board of directors and the Strategy and Sustainability Committee. For more operational matters on sustainability, of course, also, the Executive Committee is kept in the loop.
The board is led by Luca Dalla Torre, who is our general counsel and also a member of the extended exec comm. There is a strong link between remuneration and non-financial target achievement. So the short-term incentive plan, the STIP, includes ESG targets in various dimensions. We have environmental targets, so waste, recycling management. Of course, we do have social targets, health and safety, most important for a manufacturing entity, but also governance targets. So this year, specifically, the focus was integrity in our supply chain, as well as reporting on non-financial matters, ESRS. The weights of these ESG targets as a percentage of total are today at up to 15%, and this number is currently under review by our board of directors. Let's now go through the various focus points. The first is environmental sustainability.
On this slide, you see how operational efficiency and sustainability actually work hand-in-hand. Through a footprint reduction, namely through, as Marcel has explained to you, the reduction in energy consumption, combined with a switch to more renewable energy sources, we could decrease the energy consumed substantially. We also are able to do process optimizations, which means that we have a close look at chemical synthesis routes and manufacturing processes. We also introduce new process technologies. And when we combine these two, of course, it leads to a much more efficient deployment of our resources, which leads to less cost, which leads to a higher margin for us, and actually also a happy customer as the footprint is, has been heavily reduced. This is how it works. 10% energy saved, Marcel has elaborated on that.
As an update for 2024, you know, if you project the situation at half year 2024 to end of year, we'll be able to shave off an additional 3% through all these projects which are ongoing. Our share of renewable energy is increasing. It's now over 70%, and it will continue to increase going forward. Whenever a contract is up for renewal, we strive for renewable energy, of course. With all of that, Siegfried is delivering on our commitments to lower our carbon footprint. We're on track to achieve our targets relating to Scope 1 and 2. So from 2020 through to 2023, we have reduced the tons of CO2 equivalents by 32%, an immense number.
We're well on track to also achieve and are on track to achieve our net zero ambitions, and the SBTi validation will actually take place at the remainder of 2024. You know that there's an increasing scope and focus now on Scope 3 emissions, and it will not come as a surprise to all of you that Scope 3 is dominant in our industry. 87% of our emissions come from Scope 3, mainly from the manufacturing and the production of our input materials. Siegfried has here started to engage with suppliers and also customers in order for a reduction of the footprint alongside the entire value chain. So that said, the focus areas for 2025 and beyond in the different scopes are quite clear.
In Scope 1, we will continue to invest in the decarbonization plans on the various sites, on drug substances and drug products. We will also be exploring new technology, high temperature, heat pumps. Basically, a heat pump on steriles will provide us process energy in a really efficient way. We are also exploring green hydrogen and biogas as possible sources of reductions. Scope 2, as mentioned, increase the portion of renewable energy, and in Scope 3, continue to seek the collaboration with suppliers as well as customers. This we can only solve together with our suppliers and customers. And of course, it's clear we need to prioritize the efforts here. The discussion with customers is a good switch now to the next area that I quickly want to touch upon, which is the step-by-step analysis of all of our product-specific ecological footprint together with our customers.
When framing the topic, we, in a really early phase, decided to focus on the so-called Green Chemistry principle, an established framework, which is used widely in the industry. And you see all of the different focal topics around this circle... We have now taken these Green Chemistry principles and have put them on an ecological footprint dashboard for each and every product that we do. This is proprietary; it's an analytical tool, and it identifies for each of the products the levers where the most efficient sustainability improvements can be effected. And this is then a really excellent tool for discussions with our customers where to focus the decarbonization for that product going forward. So much for the theory. A little bit of practical examples to illustrate what the experts in our field can really do.
Example number one is a complete redesign of one specific product, where our experts have redesigned the synthesis route, being able to reduce the number of chemical steps involved from 17 down to nine steps. The result of that was that we have been able to reduce raw materials as well as energy consumption by over 50%. Happy customer, but obviously also happy CFO, as we saved these costs and relied much less on equipment and also people. Second example, enhanced distillation techniques for one product enabled us to increase the yield, while at the same time also reduce the waste of that specific product. We at this point in time, for these type of analytical methods, we also use computer simulation to allow us for a speedier analysis.
Example number three, it's my favorite, it's the pervaporation membranes, which in an easy way, actually serve the purpose to take out waste out of a liquid. And through the use of these membranes, you can actually reduce the waste produced in that manufacturing step by a factor of fifteen. And of course, you also save energy on the way there. So these are practical examples. Many more of them take place each and every day at each location around the globe. Now to people. We want to build the strongest team, and we obviously need to be able to provide to our people a safe and also supportive environment. Integrating people is important, so the Siegfried Academy, as a tool, was introduced many years ago, and it serves the purpose to develop our people and also to develop our team leaders.
By now, many hundred team leaders at Siegfried have received leadership training, and you can feel that in every day's work. It just makes us better. Siegfried Academy also supports the individual development and the needs that each one of us at some point in his growth path has. We are also committed to diversity. Of course, we are an equal opportunity employer relating to individual growth, wages, social benefits, recruitment, and of course, also training. This has reflected in a growing number of women at all levels, board, management, also non-managerial positions. Thirdly, as a manufacturing company, health and safety and the provision of a safe working environment is really important to us, and many efforts have been in that area, so I'm really happy, all of us are really happy to report that this also reflects in the numbers.
So the last time, injury rates has been reduced by more than 50% since 2021. Integrity, which is, by the way, another corporate value of the Siegfried Group, is important to us. Full integrity program in place. More on that on one of the later slides. So today, Siegfried is unique, differentiated, and also a competitive employer. We employ, as you know, 3,900 people across seven countries. We are unique. Remember Marcel's family. We produce safe drugs, ensuring the continuity of treatment for millions of patients worldwide. We're differentiated, so we provide a workplace that fosters individual growth and also development, but we also want to enhance a culture which promotes a healthy and safe work environment.
As one anecdotal evidence, in 2023, we had 2,300 unsafe situations reported, and each one of these situations has then been analyzed, and a corrective and preventive action plan has been developed to avoid such situations going forward. An example, this could be an oil spill on an area somewhere, which, if not taken away and removed, could lead to a slip of someone with a resulting injury. The 2,300 cases translates to one case reported for every 3,500 hours worked. We encourage people to report these incidents as often as possible. But Siegfried today is also very competitive. This is our DNA. We have a reward system which truly rewards excellence, and a compensation model which aligns the interests of all stakeholders around our company. So integrity, what did we do?
We, as of today, have a group-wide integrity program, publicly available code of business conduct, mandatory onboarding education for each and every new employee, specific one-to-one trainings for all of the managerial staff... and of course, a non-retaliation policy in place. We have training platforms with changing focus areas each year, and we by now have established speak up channels, which are increasingly accepted, which is why we have higher numbers of reported cases. You see the statistics on the right-hand side, so increasing numbers. The light blue number is the Siegfried curve, but still below the medium benchmark. It's the team which makes a difference every day, and I hope you will get some of this feeling also today, later when you meet the people here at Barberà.
With that, I'm very much looking forward to a cup of coffee, and I'm sure all of you feel about the same way. So we pause here for a break until eleven A.M. sharp, where we will reconvene in here, and during this time, we will also pause the webcast. Thank you very much.
Thank you for coming back. Happy now to go for the last presentation, where I will share with you some insights of Siegfried, of both clusters, drug product and drug substance, but also to get a little bit more familiar with our company.... Let's start with the global CDMO market. This market is really huge. Yes, there is an entire huge industry which are working to evaluate, you know, how big is our industry? What's our, the trajectory, you know, for the growth in the future? You will find different numbers. We are based here on a quite solid consensus, but it doesn't matter if the market size is one hundred and forty, one hundred and fifty, one hundred and seventy billion. Why? It doesn't matter.
The conclusion is, we are privileged to work in such an industry, such a big market, and also under consideration that we are one of the top players in there. And with under consideration that we have a revenue of less than CHF 1.3 million, you can imagine how big our opportunities are for further growing. Very simple like this. If you're looking then, when we are differentiating between drug substance and drug product, let's start with drug substance. It's still by far the biggest ratio what we have in here. Small molecules, by far the biggest market, drug substance, and we are leader in that. We have now seven competitive sites worldwide, located in three different continents. We are fulfilling the requests of our customers. We are able to do so. Large molecules, obviously, drug substance, we are not in yet there.
it, it was always something which we were looking for as an opportunity to enter there as well, but due to the high barriers, entry barriers, and over the last several years, it was totally overheated. We were looking at many assets, but we were not willing to go for such multiples at the end with a high-risk investment, with a low probability of success. Some of our competitors, they were really struggling at the end. We are not going on this path. We are going on the Siegfried path.
If something will come on our plate, and we are actively looking at that, which makes sense also to enter in the drug substance, large biologics, we will go for it. If we have a solid business case, if we see the probability of growth is given, and then we - that we can also participate on this market as well.
Cell and gene, we entered, as already highlighted several times, with DiNamiQS last year. I think a smart acquisition, what we did there. Quite small, but really scientific-based. We are acquiring now small and large companies. We were successful, and now also with the investment to go for the GMP commercial facility, we will bring these products up to commercial phase. Drug products, oral solids, we are sitting in one of our key sites here in Barberà del Vallès, and we have all capabilities and technologies here in place. Entire portfolio, capsules, tablets, you will see also highly actives, which we are able to manufacturing here. There are not so many competitors are able to do so, and inhalation as well. Inhalation is a niche.
It's somehow also, let's say, Champions League, because the particle size and the scientific stuff in there is quite challenging. Injectables, we have two sites, one in USA, in Irvine, in California, and the other one in the northern part of Germany, in Hameln. We have a strong expertise, and also we have all relevant technologies in place as well. You will see that also during the showcase, where you can touch also our products as well. We have another site, that's very close to here, El Masnou. This site is famous for ophthalmic products, drop containers, eye drops, but also sterile ointments, and the business is growing much better than we have expected, because also new drugs are getting the approval, and we are able to support these new drugs. Drug substance. That's our heritage, small molecules. That's where we are coming from.
That's the history of Siegfried, more than one hundred and fifty years. We are really strong. We are really a leading company. We are really well-positioned in this market, well-known as the experts to bring these products up to commercial. It's our key strengths, and we will rely on these strengths. We will need not give up the strengths for this market. Many companies are struggling because they are going for wishful things, new markets, new technology, and they're forgetting where they are coming from. You need to know where you are coming from to understand where you wanna go. We will rely on that also for the future, and more will come. I will share also how the outlook look like for drug substance, small molecules. The growth is still nice, good, and much better than thought ten years ago.
When you are looking back ten years, what was the trajectory for drug substance, small molecules? The growth rate was much lower. Everybody was thinking, you know, large molecules will compensate, will substitute for many of the disease. This didn't happen. And also now, the outlook is much better. If you are looking at the reports from the big companies, pharmaceutical companies, somehow it's like a revival of drug substance, small molecules. They are investing now also even more than expected in the research activities. There is a strong pipeline, a healthy approval rate for the new drugs, and we can really answer and fulfill their requirements. Just to bring that in the entire context, then also with small molecules, large molecules, new modalities, we have now a fair chance really to participate in all of these three fields. As already outlined, small molecules is still the biggest market.
Large molecules is increasing, is getting more important for sure, and that much a little bit in the earlier stage are the new modalities and cell and gene therapy. We can provide service for all of these three markets. If you are looking at the FDA novel drug approvals, two-thirds are still coming from small molecules. Now, you can argue to me, "Yeah, listen, Marcel, but the value of the new entities for large molecules are even higher." I agree. However, if you are looking number-wise, how many new drugs are coming through small molecules, and how we are positioned as a leader, the probability that we will win and that we have won the small molecules new drugs is even higher. Small and mid-size players are becoming more and more important. These small and mid-size caps are the driver for the innovation.
The majority is coming from them for the novel drugs, and that's also the reason to make the link to our EVOLVE+ strategy. We have a big opportunity to capture in this customer market more, but they are looking, and that's the response from our end, to start at the early phase, to give them the full service, what they are looking for. We need to address that also by the right go-to-market strategy. Some of them, they still don't know us. They have to get familiar that we are the right partner, the most reliable partner, the most trusted partner. We are adapting ourselves now. We are on the way, and we have a clear plan how to address that. With the size of our network, we can really provide the full service.
If you're looking at the left side, it starts with preclinical and early-stage development activities. It starts with Grafton, which was the last missing piece, with which we have accomplished by July this year, and with the three other sites where we can start from phase two, phase three, the two sites in Switzerland, Zofingen and Evionnaz, capable people, very experienced, proven history, and with Nantong in China, we can provide this service. The third part is that the drugs are already developed up to phase two B or phase three, or already fully developed, and there, we can also do direct technical transfers to the other locations as well. For commercial, with the network what we have, we can provide the different requirements of the customer.
Also, post-COVID, but already prior to that, some originator companies, our most important companies, were asking us eight years ago, "Listen, macro political stuff is uncertain. I need to have a second supplier. Currently, Siegfried, you are the only ones." We responded to them, "We have the second supplier, no problem." We established for them supply point in U.S., a supply point for Switzerland, for Europe, and even a supply point from China.... They don't need to go to a second CDMO. We can offer this business continuity model by ourselves. Lifecycle management. Some customers, they have the preference, you know, to have different supply points. Maybe a U.S.-based company wants to have America first from U.S., or also then to have a second supply point somewhere else, like in Europe, but they want to have two. We can offer that.
But if the product is getting out of patent, then the cost will become more, of course, relevant. And we can also give them the opportunity to allocate this product to a more cost leadership site, where the cost really matters. For us, we have the big benefit at the end that we can utilize and maximize, you know, our utilization for the entire network, which is impacting positively our cost base. Now, let's move to a total different area, to drug substance, cell and gene therapy. Of course, the trajectory of growth is even higher. And of course, as all you know and we know, there are currently some companies struggling, especially small ones, to get the funds. Also, when we are working now with these companies, we are going for a full check. We are checking about how they are funded.
We don't want to go into risky relations. We are looking because we have a strong expertise by our scientific guys, which are looking what's the probability of success of this molecule. And then we will offer and get in a relation with the customers which... And molecules, which make sense. The potential from the innovation point of view is huge. And of course, this kind of drugs has already a proven track record, you know, for rare disease. If you are looking now in the portfolio at the early phase, now it's more given and the probability now that also some molecules will come for more broadened disease as well. This would be a big change then also for this technology as well. With the acquisition of DiNamiQS, we have a fair chance to contribute.
We have strong scientific guys in there, and we have already won some projects, not only with small ones, but due to the expertise which we can share, which we can present also with big companies here in Europe and worldwide. These guys, they are talking different approach. They are talking at this. They need to talk about the same when, scientist to scientist. And this is given to build up the trust at the early phase and to bring that commercial. We are offering currently viral vectors, but we are looking also, as we speak, to expand our technologies also to lentivirus as well. This would be the next step. We're looking and working on that. More will come. This site is based in Schlieren, close to Zürich.
Location is also very, very in a very good spot, because in Zurich, there is the universities, the ETH is there, but also where the site is located, it's really a cluster of biotech. For us, the advantage that we are able to recruit strong people, we have recruited talented people also because we are at the right place. We can offer end-to-end service now. We are in touch to commercialize these products as well by end of next year when our facility is ready to use. And as already mentioned, we have contract in place. This will come in the near future as well. Let's move to drug products. And here, I would like to give an overview about the different dosage forms. Let's start with OSD and inhalation. We can produce common tablets, capsules, which are still the most prominent dosage forms. High potency, more difficult.
Here, you need really to protect the people from the drug substance. And you will get a flavor, how difficult is it to do? We have a double barrier concept, really, to protect our people, to make sure that they are not exposed to these highly active ingredients. Inhalation and powders, special technologies, champions league to make this. Ophthalmology, mainly bottles and tubes. That means Drop-T ainers, which you have most often already used, or also sterile ointments, creams, but also specialties in there are suspensions. Not everybody can do that. That's also a strength of us, that we can differentiate ourselves compared to the other ones. It's not like a common cream, which you are using on a daily basis. The consistency of the content is really difficult to maintain during the lifetime. You need to have special.
Special knowledge to be able to produce and to keep that. Prefilled syringes and cartridge. Here we are already in a transformation also since several years. We are moving away from ampoules, in the past several years ago, to liquid vials. We have heavily invested in liquid vials, which is helping us also from the quality point of view, to be fully compliant despite that the regulatory barriers are coming up by the MAA. Maybe you have heard the Annex 1 requirements, and for me, it's just a question by when the U.S. Health Authority will follow. We are ready for that. We don't have a problem related to that. Good news is that many or some of our co-competitors are running away because they didn't properly have done the recapitalization.
We did it over the last years, so we had already the discussions with the health authorities, with the EMEA, and they are in line and approved our actions to fulfill the requirements. For some other companies which we did which didn't make a proper capitalization, they are now in front of a wall of a huge investment, which would be needed, and they are coming to a conclusion: it doesn't make sense, we have not anymore a business case. We will further expand in prefilled syringes and cartridges. Currently, we have two sites where we have this technology dosage forms in place. It's in Irvine, in California, and also in Hameln, but we have also the option in El Masnou to expand further in these sterile technologies as well. I'm sure my site head, Yvonne Perez, is happy to hear that.
We have opportunities to grow and to expand. Vials. Vials remains most popular sterile packaging form, and despite, I think sometimes there are some discussion, and it will come later on the different dosage forms, what's the pro and the con for each of these dosage forms? Ampoules is declining. Nowadays, it's more or less a generic dosage forms, and new products are not launched anymore in ampoules. We still have some ampoules in place, also branded ones, important drugs, but we have changed a lot from ampoules to the new technologies over the last years, and we are still doing, we are investing in Hameln to make this change as I speak. We are serving the most popular routes of administration. If you are looking at the FDA approvals, it's half-half, the split between oral dosage forms and also steriles.
What's new, what we see from our end, that the innovation is coming more and more also now in the ophthalmics as well. From looking back over the last 10, 15 years, not a lot of new novel drugs were approved for ophthalmics, but for me, the signs which I see, it's more and more will come. We have oral solid dosage forms in two sites. One is in Barberà and the other one is in Malta, and the mission of these sites are different. In Barberà is the center of excellence here to provide the new drugs, to launch the new drugs, work very closely at the early stage from the development activities up to the commercialization with the customers.
For the life cycle management, if a product is getting out of the market, we are moving these products then to Malta, which is a site who has the cost leadership. Maybe you are asking what kind of products you are producing here in Barberà. Don't think we are producing and introducing new products like tablet painkillers. Here, what we are producing and introducing are really high-end products, like three-layer tablets. You will have also the chance to have a look on that. Very difficult to make. That's Champions League. Not many companies or locations can offer that. Where you have two different APIs, usually, you are blending, you are mixing and blending them, and then you are pressing that to a tablet. Here, the technology which you are using is totally different.
First, HP API, then you have in the middle the other API you need to press, and then the first one as a three-layer. New technology. Of course, it's also interesting, not only from the scientific point of view, but also from the price point of view. Injectables, Hameln and Irvine offering also from the early stage development up to commercialization. The same also inhalation and ophthalmology, I've already mentioned as well in El Masnou, where we are also heavily invested over the last three and a half years as well, to provide the end-to-end service for this kind of products. Already mentioned the challenging and difficult to make manufacturing molecules, but these kind of products are not gen med products anymore, you know, for cardiovascular or for diabetes, where you are talking about billions of tablets to produce. These are really specialties.
This means the volume is smaller, more difficult to make, but you have then to work also on the flexibility. You need to be master in setup and cleaning to reduce the production time and still to have a strong cost base. We are, and here in Barberà, we are mastering that. What are the trends? Solids, despite that many new drugs are also launched now in new dosage forms, will maintain as the most important dosage form. That's my strong belief. If I'm asking you, or if you would ask your kids: What do you prefer, to take a tablet or do you wanna get a painful syringe? What you will choose? That's one view, and that's the reason why the pharmaceutical industry, if possible, always going towards to this technology.
It's not only related to that, because as soon as you have to handle with a device or something like that, mistakes can happen, and especially with device, even more mistakes are happening. This means at the end, also, when I was working for 16 years in a big pharmaceutical company, the most complaints you are getting for dosage forms, where a patient or an administrator has to handle something. Maybe they are not applying that in the right way, but then, of course, you are getting a lot of complaints. High Potency is growing, that's for sure, because many of the originator companies, they are focusing more and more also from gen med to special treatments, like oncology, to cover cancer.
For them, also, from the bottom line point of view, it's more interesting to go in this direction, and of course, with Barberà, we have a solution and the answer to this demand. Poorly soluble, complex compounds. What's currently happening? The bioavailability of the new drugs are becoming more important. The new drugs, solid drugs, are more complex. This means they are asking for new technologies. In Milan, when I was there two weeks ago, they were asking me about spray drying. All customers are asking, "Do you have this expertise and this capacity, this technology in place?" Yes, we do, but more will come, and we too, to make sure that we can offer the entire broaden technology, we will strengthen our capabilities, and we will expand on these technologies. Ophthalmic drug manufacturing.
Here, I have already highlighted, you know, that also we see a innovation movement. You will see also then in a showcase, preservative-free products, which are coming more and more, the demand is increasing, and here we have also the answer to the customers as well to fulfill. It was not so the most hyped market in the past, and this was also helpful for us at the end because many of our competitors were leaving the market. There are not so many competitors still in place who can really support the new drugs and the new technologies. As we talk here in El Masnou, the growth over the last three half years since they are within the Siegfried family are much, much better than we thought and what we have calculated in the business case. It's one of the underlying growth driver. More to come.
Injectables, obviously, many of the new drugs are launched with these new technologies, mainly with prefilled syringes and cartridges. And also Annex 1 I have already mentioned, this is increasing the bar from the regulatory point of view. Diversification is also becoming more important to them for the future. And compliance-wise, when we are looking between the different dosage forms, liquid, while you need to have a physician or somebody else who's really filling then the syringe and then to applying to the patients. Why are the pharmaceuticals eager to go for auto-injectors or also for prefilled syringe?
Because from the risk that somebody is handling that in the wrong manner is more given if you have a liquid vial, where you have to fill the syringe, compared to ready-to-use prefilled syringe, where you can directly just take it out of the box, and then you can apply it to the patient. That's the reason why the trend is going this direction, and that's also, by the way, why when we are talking about GLP-1, more and more these kind of drugs are going in this direction. The population is getting older, and with this, the population, especially also then the older one, due to the chronic conditions, the demand for injectable products is increasing. There is a huge hype currently for biologic drugs, especially for GLP-1. Are we able to provide the service for fill and finish?
Yes, we are. And we are interested in, too. Are we able to supply drug substance, the peptides? Also, I was asked several times in the past, we are not able to provide this drug substance for the GLP-1 customers. As I already mentioned, you know, with the auto injectors and with the prefilled syringe, it's more easy to handle, it's more safe to handle, and also the adherence for the delivering of the drugs is much better. Because if somebody has to fill the syringe, it's not always given, you know, that you have the right amount of drug at the end in the syringe. That's the reason why it goes in this, and the pens and the auto injectors are becoming more and more favored. Regulatory standards are increasing, which is good.
We are in a well-positioned place because we did our job in the past. We have recapitalized our lines. We have isolators also in use. We will not go for all machineries related to isolators because there are also different needs. Some customers, they want to have isolators. For them, it's a prerequisite. For some other customers, they are more often. And if also the costs are significant, important for them, you can also fulfill the Annex 1 requirements by other technologies like the RABS technology, which you need to upgrade. The same picture like for drug substance, also for drug product, we can start from the early phase. Either we can go for a direct technical transfer to the sites, or we are going through the development centers here in Barcelona, in Barberà for OSD Inhalation, in El Masnou for Ophthalmology, and for sterile and injectable in Hameln.
Same setup, what we can offer also due to business continuity for dual supply points for Barberà and Hameln, where we have a backup for each other, and we are still working on that also for the molecules to offer that and to bring that in place for the customers, as well as for El Masnou for the OSD, because we can also produce the OSD dosage forms in Irvine, in California, and also steriles in Hameln. What's our roadmap? Where are we looking forward to invest in the near future in these different technology forms? Tablets and capsules, we wanna grow, but not with common molecules, really with specialties. What I have just shared with you. Difficult to make. Inhalation capsules, we see the market. It's relevant, but I think it will be stable also in the future for us.
Ophthalmics is growing, significantly growing over the last three and a half years, and if you are looking at the pipeline, what's coming next, even more, so we are investing, as I speak, in El Masnou quite heavily to expand our capacity. Prefilled syringe and cartridges, for us, a must-win, so we are investing there as well. The market is growing. We will respond to these requirements. The same for vials, liquid vials, and ampoules will decline, what happened also for the future. Development capabilities also to be in sync with the EVOLVE+ strategy. We are focusing and strengthening our capabilities for the development activities from the beginning of the clinical phase one up to the commercialization. I come to the last slide now. I would like to summarize as follows: The cornerstone of our strategy, EVOLVE, remains. We will further scale up on the growth of the existing core.
We will look at the opportunities meaningful to enter in new growth areas. We will adapt in two dimensions. Due to the successful implementation of EVOLVE+ strategy, we are now in a position, really in a position to the scale, which really matters with the broaden technology, even to expand this technology, to complete it, to be in a position to serve the customers from the beginning, if they wanna bring, develop, and commercialize these products. A key differentiator to be successful at the end, and to strengthen our relationship with the customers, will be the excellence part. I want to bring in more Swissness into our company. Accurate, reliable, deliver what you have promised. With operational excellence, we will also make it up what we did, what we start now, from the margin point of view, to further improve as well.
I will not do that by myself. I'm really ambitious, and I'm doing that together with my executive colleagues and the entire organization to make this happen. We will make it. There is a difference between wish and will. We will. Thanks for your attention. Now, give us one minute. We need to rearrange the stage, then that we can start right after with the question and answers.
Good. A warm welcome also from my side, particularly to those online who I have not been able to meet. We will now start with the Q&A session. As always, for those online, you can ask your question via the Zoom. The link is directly below the webcast window. Let's get started. Who wants to go first? Yes, James, please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking the questions. It's James Vane-Tempest from Jefferies. Three, if I may please. I can take them, one in turn. Slide 7 had segment market growth, I think of around 6% in small molecules, 9% in fill finish, and 37% for new modalities. So should we take away that the growth can accelerate over time as the mix changes? And you say you want to grow above market, but what would it take for you to sustainably grow above 10%, example, or, or would that be too ambitious?
Yeah, I think it depends, and it depends also on the ratio where we are in. You know, so we are at the early phase, you know, with the viral vectors. Despite that, the growth trajectory is really, really high. We are in the early phase as well there, so we have to look how we can overcome that. We have a plan, but I think really to make that up, first of all, we need to have a commercial production there in. You know, the development activities will not change significantly our P&L. So this will take some time. Small molecules, we are confident to be at the market growth or even better, and also with steroids, large molecules. I think we are well-positioned, but we are not in the drug substance there.
So I think that's at the end, the average why we are giving this guideline.
Maybe adding to that, if I may. Obviously, in the latest part of the presentation, you also see the growth rate by individual technology. Now, obviously, what you can do, if you want, is to, you know, apply the Siegfried way to these individual growth rates. I can do that for you. As a result, you will end up somewhere, you know, a tiny shade below 6%. So that's where we see the market in our current composition still.
My only second question is, you said more operational excellence is to come, but how should we think about that from a margin perspective and the cadence with it, which this is expected to come through?
Yeah, I think one is really to unleash our full power. We have a lot of potential here, you know. One - just one example was really to free up the cash, where we are on a good way, but also from the cost perspective, you know, to increase the output as well for the entire group. Process change. So more will come there, and we are freeing up, and this is helping us also to absorb, if you're looking at the margin, strong contributor to keep our cost level at a very competitive level.
Thank you. Then my final question is, you talk about the debottlenecking to realize hidden capacity, but where do you typically see those opportunities, given you already have such established processes? Thank you.
I can maybe illustrate that as an example from a drug substances manufacturing site. You know, we are organized in trains, which means that you have reactor after reactor, and then ultimately the last step is the separation, which can be a, you know, a filter, dryer, or, you know, even a centrifuge. Now, sometimes you see configuration where you can't use one full train because you don't have enough centrifuges at the end of that specific train. So by adding one additional centrifuge, you can basically access a full train of reactors, which sit from a value chain perspective before that. And this is what I mean. By investing into one single piece of equipment, in this case, a centrifuge, you can basically access hidden capacity, which was there, but which we could not rely upon.
Now, obviously, bottlenecks depend a bit on the manufacturing plan that you have, so it's changing constantly from quarter over quarter, and you are right, you know, obviously, the low-hanging fruit have already been harvested, but there's still some hidden capacity that can be accessed through these type of things, so that's a process which, at this point in time, has not yet come to an end.
Thank you. Next question, in the third row. Charles, please.
Hello. Thanks for taking the questions. It's Charles Weston from RBC. Three from me as well, please. First of all, in aseptic fill finish, could you just put a bit of flesh on the bones in terms of the total revenue-generating capacity you have now, how well it's utilized, how much more will come online over the next year or so, given the CapEx you've put in?
Yes, I think, we have several lines in place. As we speak, we are investing and bringing in a new line, a prefilled syringe cartridge line, which will be operationally by end of next year, and we are close by to go for the next step.
Yeah, I mean, we can even frame the size of that additional prefilled syringes line. We described it as a mid-sized commercial line.
So might that take you from sort of double-digit million potential revenue-
Yes.
to triple digit, perhaps?
From the quantity point of view?
In terms of, you know-
Revenue.
Revenue.
Charles is speaking revenue.
Yeah, sure. Double digit, yeah.
Okay. And, secondly, can I just follow on from James's question around margins, particularly? Obviously, you've gone through a big margin expansion journey. You've talked about scale being a key driver of that, and now all these excellence, sort of verticals that you've got. Consensus, I think, is about sort of 50-100 basis points a year of expansion. Presumably, it won't be linear, but is that kind of achievable given the revenue growth that you're expecting?
Yeah. No, I think, you know, when you look at the history of Siegfried from a margin development point of view, you can take the periods from 2016, let's say, through to 2020, which have been largely undisturbed by any M&A activity. We had no macro crisis, et cetera. So that gives you a bit of a flavor on how we can progress the margin on an undisturbed basis, and this is reflected in the numbers you mentioned, somewhere between 60 and 100 basis points. That was the range. This is what we expect also going forward. I mean, you also need to be aware that we have other moving parts in our P&L, so we will continue to see inflation on the wages, and somehow we have to make up for that.
So some of the excellences that Marcel has mentioned, some of the Swissness, will actually be absorbed by, for example, German wage inflation, so that we should not forget about.
Okay, thank you. And my last question, please, is on the highly potent API. Can you quantify how much of your sales are currently from HPAPI?
We are doing already exposure class III, but I don't have now in mind exactly the number, what we are generating just by that.
Mm-hmm. Okay, thank you.
Good. Next question, Daniel, please. Sorry.
Thank you, Daniel Jelovcan, ZKB. Three questions, also one by one. So end to end, I mean, Lonza recently said that 70% of their biologics API customers are also booked in their new, fill and finish facility in Switzerland. Do you have an idea about your dimension currently, percentage-wise? How many of your customers in drug substance are also contracted in the other end?
In drug substance, drug product?
End-to-end, yes.
Yeah. I think here we have a lower percentage, for sure, because also with the new acquisition now in Barberà, and we are talking here about small molecules. Lonza is a different topic with large molecules. Here, where we can really offer now end-to-end solutions in three and a half years, we have started. We have now new molecules which are coming through end to end, but the percentage is quite low. So for us, a big opportunity for the future.
Of course, I meant small molecules into tableting or whatever-
Ah.
in your case.
Yes.
But it's small.
It's still small, and a big opportunity still, yeah, for us. That's the reason also why we are going now for the EVOLVE+, where we have a big opportunity, and now started, and our customers are convinced to do that in the future.
Second question, micronization and dry spraying, which you mentioned often, what's your status there? I mean, is it already quite advanced? I mean, ramp up for bigger projects. Actually, where is it going to be, where will it be, in what site?
Good, good question. I think we have that in use already since many years. So that's not wishful thinking, so it's really established. We have spray drying in use in Pennsville, in USA, and we have micronization in use in Evionnaz. What has changed a little bit, micronization, we're looking to expand because also the demands are increasing. And for spray drying, in the past, very often it was the last step of drug substance. Now, with the new, more complex products, it's very often changing from the last step of drug substance to becoming the first step of drug product. This means that you are putting on top, you know, not only doing the spray drying by the equipment, but you are also including excipients as well.
What we are doing, because here is the development center for drug product, we are investing now in the capabilities to fulfill these requests and to answer to the needs of the customers here in Barberà.
Last one, your appetite for commercial biologics plans. I mean, you mentioned it's quite concentrated, but as we all know, there is one big fish to be fried soon, and the margins are quite attractive in commercial scale biologics. So is that an area you want to look at it or...?
Sure, we do, but to be honest, I think it depends on what we see, especially for this trend in technologies. Very often, the price tags are too... or far away, you know, and then we are going not for such risky acquisitions and transactions, but we are looking for this opportunity since quite some time.
Thank you, Daniel. The next question we have, over here. Yes.
Perfect. Thank you. This is Ed Hall from Stifel. So first question, just on outsourcing. Is there any difference that you see between big pharma and mid-sized pharma on this trend? And maybe the disconnect between sort of fill and finish and on the drug substance side. I think we saw maybe, let's say, a bolus in COVID with a lot of outsourcing for the vaccines. Do you see this trend continuing to go up, which we saw in 2010? So that's my first question.
Very good question. I think the first regarding outsourcing, for in the pharmaceutical industry, for large pharma, is stable. It's not declining, it's not increasing, it's stable. That's what we see. It will continue like in the past years, but they are looking then for a consolidation of the landscape of the CDMOs. Regarding the small and mid-size caps, they need to have a, a partner who is able to provide their missing capabilities and also assets to fulfill that. That's a different story. We don't see a difference between drug substance and drug product. Also, if you're looking, like some of the most famous pharmaceutical companies which have the most promising products, what they are doing, of course, they are not going for outsourcing.
Also, when I was working in my previous company, if you have a cash cow in place, you want to control the supply, the quality. And that's, I think, the base. They're always looking to cover that by themselves, especially the large ones. And if more is coming than expected, for the best case, they are looking for outsourcing opportunities, and this is then where the CDMO players can come in.
Perfect. Thank you. And then just my second question will be on cell and gene. I think we've seen some pretty rapid yield improvements in the last five years. So, like, to what end does this change your outlook on this area? Maybe in the last year since the acquisition, do we see this structurally get a weaker market growth in the midterm?
No, I think, that's also different, I think, to many of our competitors. We are believing, first of all, in this technology. It will come. The question is, how fast? It will come through. And that was also the reason why we went for this quite smart approach, you know, not to go for a big-ticket item, really to bring that up from a strong scientific base, then to commercialize. And then also, if we're winning and developing the products in parallel to prepare ourselves to commercialize. That's what we are doing. Of course, there are many hiccups if you're talking about cell and gene. Also, many of the small companies, innovative companies, they're struggling with the funding. Now, it looks like the situation is getting better, but it's quite difficult to predict.
If I may add, from a more macro level, of course, increasing the yields in viral vectors manufacturing is a very good thing because it decreases manufacturing cost, and then that automatically also leads to a decline in the treatment cost per patient. The treatment cost per patient is currently what's hindering global and national health authorities to approve more treatment beyond rare diseases. Which means that, you know, if yield increases, treatment costs go down, and it will all of a sudden become affordable to many more areas of treatment, so we think that's a really good and actually attractive thing also for us.
Perfect. Thank you. And then just final question. Just looking at the rest of the portfolio, let's say, generic side, can we talk about the pricing here moving into 2025? How do you look at pricing going forward?
Yeah, I mean, we do 25% of our business in so-called multi-client business, which by design is generics. However, these molecules were chosen quite carefully. So these are difficult to manufacture, challenging to produce APIs. And when I look at my profitability curve, you know, and comparing the two, you don't see much of a difference between exclusive products and multi-client or generic products. And this is just as it should be, no? We manufacture them on the same equipment. If there would be a significant difference, I would do a really bad job as a CFO.
Good. Laura, please.
I'm Laura Pfeiffer from Octavian. Thanks for taking my question. I think you mentioned before, that the El Masnou site is doing very well, exceeding expectations. I was just wondering, what is your assessment of the site here, Barberà? So when you compare it to your initial expectations, that's maybe the first part of the question. And the second is, if you could give more color on the progress you're making here, with regards to capacity filling, what type of customers do you attract and what type of contracts? Thank you.
Yeah, I think, El Masnou, already you were spot on. I think that's the takeaway, and we are expanding and this is also one of the key underlying business driver also, that we were able to substitute, you know, the dip which we had due to COVID. Secondly, I think in Barberà, also now we are in a position, you know, especially to the fact when we are bringing here originators on site, they're really impressed. And they are telling me always the same: "I don't see any difference between our own sites and your site here in Barberà." And more is coming. We have won a huge contract, branded molecule with a high volume and a nice turnover. So we are really making progress. Big volumes, mid-size volume is coming through, and now we are on track.
Thank you. Do we have any other question? Finn, please.
Yes. Hi, Finn Scherzer from Deutsche Bank. Thanks for taking my questions. Two from my side. On your increasing focus on early stage, could you maybe expand a bit on that decision? So I would assume that comes with a bit of a higher risk profile. Could you speak about margin and growth profile there? And when will we actually start to see that in your operating results? And asked differently, why do you start this now? So why not earlier?
I can, I can take that question, and it's a, it's a very good one. So the reason for us to expand into the earlier phases was indeed a shift in the underlying market. While ten years ago, it was the large pharmaceutical company, you know, doing the innovation, this has now shifted to smaller and more mid-sized companies being responsible for that, that innovation. You have seen it in one of the Marimekko charts that Marcel was presenting. Somewhere between 70% and 80% of preclinical and phase I is currently in the hands of small and mid-sized companies. Now, these have totally different requirements. They don't have own manufacturing and development capacity, so for the, for the development, they need to rely on someone like us. So...
Then once they have allocated that to one CDMO who's able to see it through into commercial manufacturing and also for product manufacturing, they will not change that in the future setup, even if that molecule or that company is taken over by a larger pharmaceutical company. So it was important for us, given that change in the landscape, to get our foot in the door in an earlier phase, in order to be able to access additional molecules for our commercial manufacturing. Also, in the future, we will do the vast majority of our revenues by commercial manufacturing. So we have not purchased Grafton for the site-specific revenues and profits. I mean, they are, as of today, negligible, and will remain negligible also in the years to come. That said, the profitability doesn't really matter in the whole thing.
We purchased Grafton for this acceleration, so for being able to introduce the additional molecule, maybe two additional molecules per year into commercial manufacturing. Now, if such a molecule would be a top 10, you can do the math, that it translates into somewhere between CHF 20 million and CHF 40 million of revenue per year. And given the time frame that it requires to move from clinical early phases to commercial of 3-4 years, that also gives you a bit of an idea of how long it will take for that acceleration to kick in our P&Ls.
Okay, thank you. And then, secondly, your interest in potentially moving into a large-scale biologics. My previous understanding was that you considered the space a bit crowded, and maybe not attractive to enter at a good price tag. Could you maybe speak about the synergies you would see with such an entrance there with your existing business? Because I think this is not really your home turf. Yeah, be great to get some color down.
Sure. I, I think, of course, we would have the same opportunity. What was mentioned also is the biologics from the colleague from the ZKB, you know, to offer them also end-to-end. It's not our hometown yet, that's for sure. Personally, I'm, I was working also many years in the, in this field as well, so I see the option and the opportunity there. But the price tag was too big. The barriers were too big, and we were not willing to pay such a price because it was totally overheated, saturated, you know, the market. And there were other companies willing to pay prices, which we are not. And I think if you're looking, we were bold in our acquisitions at the end, and these were really the cost drivers.
Some of the other cost competitors, they really were struggling with the cash at the end because it came not through what they had in their business case, but synergy-wise, of course, it would be for us a great accomplishment to also go for to end-to-end approach as well in this field.
Okay, and if you say it, it was more overheated, so is the space getting more attractive from an M&A point of view, slowly?
I don't see that yet, to be honest, because we are looking at many different opportunities, these we are reviewing, looking at that, and, and. But it needs to make sense for us. We are really bold and a little bit Swiss conservative on that, not to dream about for the moon. We are here on the Earth.
Thank you.
Thank you, Finn. Maybe you can pass the microphone just to... Thank you.
Carla Bänziger from Vontobel. I have a follow-on question on the small and mid-cap pharma companies. So first of all, can you disclose maybe how much revenues you already generate with small and mid-cap pharmaceutical companies? And, do I understand it correctly, that the early stage work will only be done in Grafton, or do you foresee also to invest in other sites in these capabilities?
Okay, me.
So, yeah. Should I take the revenue question?
Yes.
The proportion, I mean, we disclosed, is two-thirds, approximately, of our revenue from small- to mid-sized pharma companies.
Is it not only-
But-
In number of companies?
No, it's revenue-based, but coming obviously to the largest degree from commercial manufacturing for these clients.
Okay. And then I think to the second part of the question, you know, is small and mid-sized companies. Can you repeat that once more?
The question was more related to the early stage products that you are now tapping into.
Yeah.
Is that only to be done in Grafton, on the Grafton site, or do you also expect to expand that to other sites as well?
Good question. I think why it makes sense and why I was also eager to go for an acquisition is the culture, what you have, and the setup in early stage compared to late stage is different. Much more scientific based at the early stage, clinical stage, phase one, phase two-A. You are not so limited by regulatory stuff. Not under full GMP. It's much more scientific based. The culture, the mindset, what you need to have is different. After phase two-B, you are under full GMP requirements. You need to strictly follow, you know, the standard operational procedures and so on. From the mindset, you are much more limited. At the early stage, much more open-minded.
What I really wanna take care is that we are not overwhelming, you know, from this culture to try to control everything, to be strict and disciplined, because then we would strongly limiting then the activities at this early stage. The second question, are we open to expand that in Europe?
Yes, we will consider that, but let's first have a look how Grafton is evolving.
Thank you. Then, we have one more question, Tanya?
Hi, Tanya Hanslik from UBS. Just one question on if you could expand a bit about the Nantong site and how growth is going there, and capacity utilization increases, and maybe also have you, and what type of impact are you seeing from the Biosecure Act and maybe this kind of reshoring trend there?
Yeah. I mean, Nantong is now a fully-fledged member of the drug substances network, so it's not in a phase anymore where we look at capacity utilization and idle cost months after months. So that's normally utilized, still with a little bit to grow. I think on the Biosecure Act, that's a good one, and as Marcel has mentioned, we had an FDA audit there recently. So we were really curious on how the FDA would inspect us. They did so in a very professional manner, and, you know, we left that audit with a very good result, so zero observation.
That said, I mean, while we, of course, see increased appetite from client for localized supply chains, we currently don't see an impact on our operations in Nantong, which also produce fully fledged API for export to the U.S., which is why the FDA comes for a visit.
Any other question? Yes, please. Sorry.
This is Dylan from Stifel. So just two from my side. So just purely on biotech, and I can see this sort of biotech angle with a lot of CDMOs. Obviously, funding is still a little bit all over the place, and there's also a lot of sort of let's say, let's call them the Peloton CDMOs that are kind of underutilized. There's a long tail of them nowadays. Sort of, how confident are you guys, you know, coming from more of a mid-sized commercial pharma background, going into biotech, taking share there without giving up much price? And, you know, I guess I just wanna get an idea for how stable pricing is gonna be in that market, and how competitive is it gonna be to go into the trenches there?
You're referring to viral vectors now?
Not just viral vectors, but just more generally.
Generally.
I think a lot of people are going down, right? I think you said pharma is not really outsourcing more, so then sort of, you know, 70% of drugs come from biotech anyway. So that's probably where you get the most convexity, so there's also the most CDMOs targeting that area. I'm just gonna, you know, get an idea for you guys. How competitive do you guys think it is?
Yeah, I think, you know, regarding the biologics, the question is, and especially I know which customer segment you're referring to, because there was a huge hype two, three years ago up till now, and many were investing quite heavily. And it's not yet fully proven, you know. I'm sure and personally, I'm 100% convinced that these technologies will come through, but I think it was a little bit also overstated regarding the timelines. Now, what will come through by when? This is also why we are going when we are entering in these fields, that we are going with a really proper approach, you know, and not to take too much risks. First of all, we are looking not to build up from scratch because it doesn't make sense.
We don't have the capabilities and also the expertise, and exactly that was the reason why we were acquiring DiNamiQS. At the end, we were not acquiring assets, we were acquiring knowledge, and started from a long, lower base, and then to bring that up, to get the confidence level, to have contracts in place with customers, that we are able then for later on, really also then to commercialize. That is, for us, one of the preferred options to do so, to minimize the risk at the end. And of course, it will take a little bit longer, but from the risk point of view, it's much less.
The slight follow-up just on pricing: Could you just contextualize how firm pricing has been over the last, let's say, ten years? I mean, Reto, you already said something about, you know, inflation, so there's probably inflation plus type dynamic. Are we all just worried about pricing for no real reason? 'Cause ultimately, it's a small percentage of total pharma spend and biotech spend. If you could give me a flavor for that, that'd be awesome.
Yeah. I mean, we have two angles on pricing, frankly. I mean, the one on inflation, it's of course true that, you know, when we see inflated input costs, that we, one way or the other, need to make sure that we don't, you know, give up margin by leaving prices constant. There, our experience has been that you need to do two things. On the one hand side, you need to be incredibly cost conscious yourself internally, and you also need to be able to demonstrate that through the numbers to your clients, which is then basically providing the entry ticket for you to have meaningful conversations with your clients, and then, you know, the chances that you are successful is also much, much, much bigger, and with this approach, successful, let's say, in 2022 as well as in 2023.
In twenty twenty-four, the picture looked a bit different because we also saw some input costs coming down. Energy was one example, raw material cost was another example. So for twenty twenty-four, our ambition was actually to keep prices constant, because through the decline in input costs, we have seen a margin in the margins increase. So it changes a bit. So that's inflation pass on. That's that. We see that more stabilizing. The other one is portfolio management. Of course, we do this exercise where we quarter after quarter, look at the distribution of product returns. We do that in real time, and there's always a tail end. And one treatment to make a product immediately more profitable for us is, of course, a price increase.
So these discussions we have as well with customers. Then I think we have another question over here.
Thanks. Just one follow-up, please. It's Charles Weston again from RBC. Just on the midterm growth expectations, you've said at or above the market, you've quantified the market being a shade under 6%. Again, so the consensus forecast is sort of 8% to 9%, so say two to three percentage points above the market. Is that expectation reasonable? And if it is, is it also reasonable to be spending low double-digit as a percentage of revenue on CapEx? Mathematically, can you achieve 8% to 9% revenue growth with that sort of CapEx level?
Yeah. I mean, when spending CapEx, obviously, we always consider, you know, what's the yield of the marginal CapEx invested versus the current yield that we have in the current equipment for the current infrastructure? And what I can tell you, all of the projects that we have introduced to you, the new CapEx, the new CapEx that we actually invest, we invested significantly higher return on invested capital than what you see currently in my current numbers. So that's a good thing, which would actually indicate that we're on the right track there.
In terms of consensus and the guidance, for us, consensus is somewhat in line with the guidance and the messaging and the technologies where we are currently active in, and the market trends, which Marcel has introduced to you today.
Thank you. That's helpful. Just as a clarification, then, I think you said your return on capital was 19% in that last chart?
Yeah
For last year. So what's the sort of hurdle rate for return on capital on new investments?
Yeah. I mean, we have no formal hurdle rate in place, but everything that we do is significantly above this 19%.
Okay, thank you.
Do we have any final questions? If that is not the case, Marcel, do you want to say a few words about the next steps on the agenda?
Yeah, I think now, before we are going to a delicious lunch, I would like to say a big thank you to the colleagues which were attending our first Capital Markets Day. For the colleagues which were attending the webcast, I hope you enjoyed and you got some insights and more clarity about the future of Siegfried. Have a great afternoon. Have a great day, and talk to you soon. We can now close the live webcast. For the audience here now, the next steps is we are going for a delicious lunch. The people are really excited to meet you now, then also outside to have lunch together, to have discussion. Please get in touch with my colleagues.
You have the option also and opportunity to touch our products and to learn more about some new technologies which are quite exciting. And then we will meet each other in one hour sharp.