Earnings Call: H2 2019

Mar 4, 2020

Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Annual Finance Analyst Conference here in the VITOR hotel in the middle of Zurich for all of you who are with us despite of the coronavirus. And welcome also to everybody at our live stream in the office or back home. Of course, we will inform about the consequences of the coronavirus to our company too, But we have also prepared some other information for you. And I think the best is Wolfgang would start immediately with that. Thank you. Thank you very much, Peter, for the kind introduction, and welcome to those brave ones of you actually being with us here in Zurich. But of course, a warm welcome also to our dear friends in the conference call even though we can't see you here. But I'm sure you will be able to and you will actually ask questions at the end of the presentation. So we start with the first slide actually, building a leading fully integrated CDMO player, which is the same title that we used before. Why? Because that's still what we are doing. The news today, of course, refer to what happened in 2019. And here, we are actually happy to be able to report a robust sales growth and higher margins for the full year. Safe Harbor statement, please read carefully, take note and because we are going to make forward looking statements, so be aware, please. The agenda that we prepared for you actually starts with an executive summary, status and outlook provided by myself. Then I will hand over to my dear colleague, Rito, CFO of the company, who will actually look back on 2019 and provide detailed facts and figures. Then it's me again, looking forward, looking ahead on 2020 beyond, talking a little bit about markets or the environment we are operating in as a company, then about strategy, our core beliefs here, size matters and in the end, discussing outlook for the company before we will welcome questions from all of you. Executive summary. Successful as a global team. In other words, we delivered upon what we promised a year ago, which is on the top line end, robust growth up to CHF 834,000,000, which is a plus of close to 5% in Swiss francs and almost 7% in local currencies, upper end of our guidance. We also managed to increase our core EBITDA up to CHF 141 plus of above 10% against the previous year and also increased the EBITDA margins or profitability by 1 percentage point to now almost 17%. Core net profit amounted to almost CHF 66,000,000. The core part is important. We introduced that to you already for the half year results, and actually, Reito will give more details on that later. Based on that, the board will propose to our annual general assembly an increase of the cash distribution from CHF 2.60 to now CHF 2 80. And this Annual General Assembly is going to take place in April, hopefully. We did provide for a backup date in June in case that we can't have that meeting in April. So let me give you some high level highlights in terms what we did in 2019, what we achieved as a global team. 1st, we continue to invest into technology and capacity, a multipurpose train with a special chemical technology, high pressure hydrogenation for those of you interested, is going on stream as we speak in our new production building 425. We are right now constructing a micronization facility on our site in Evianna, which will be taken into operation mid of 2020. And we also strengthened our approach to the biologics drug products market by investing into a new R and D building, new R and D labs on our North German site in Hame. These are all important we need qualified, motivated people, which is why we also invested into software, so to say, people. And actually concentrated all our training activities in what we now call the Secret Academy and actually increased spending in these efforts. These Secret Academy is not only for, let's say, a small group of people leadership development, that's also included because it's important for our ambition to actually really exploit our full potential as a company, but is available to essentially all employees on all levels because we need excellence on all levels. Next part is we have been subject to critical eyes as every year and being inspected continuously by customers, many governmental authorities and in 2019, more often than ever before by the U. S. FDA administration, they have been with Siegfried 6 times. In Minden, Irvine, in Unain, even twice in Soffing and most notably also in Nantong. And some of you might remember, we have been talking about that in August during our half year report that we actually successfully passed that inspection with no action indicated, which means actually no formal observation, which is a great result for a site which has been accepted just 5 years ago and for the 1st U. S. FDA inspection ever. Just 2 days ago and really right on time, I guess not by coincidence, Vetho and our General Counsel, Luca Dalla Torok actually signed a revolving a new revolving credit facility, which further increases our financial flexibility at actually better terms. Last part, outlook on 2020. Despite uncertain macro environment, white elephant in the room, I guess, a coronavirus, we still expect low single digit percentage growth of sales at local currencies and a modest improvement of the core EBITDA margin. This is effect purely related to the spread of the coronavirus. Our midterm guidance, our strong conviction of the business model, our conviction that Siegfried is a great place, a place of opportunity and a place with a lot of potential is unchanged, which translates into the second statement here, midterm outlook confirmed. Profitable growth in line with market with the ambition to outgrow including value accretive M and A. So unchanged. Siegfried is intact as a company, of course. Let me briefly give you some details on coronavirus, how we have been affected and how we assess risk. We see essentially 2 risks, and I'm sure most of you have similar thoughts, similar analysis in your companies, maybe somewhat different as at least most of you are not manufacturing companies. But let me briefly share some thoughts and insights on how we approach that. 1st level of risk is, of course, I mean, keeping our plants running, right? And here, I'm actually happy to be able to report that so far, no Siegfried employee has been positively tested for coronavirus, 1st and foremost, most important, yes? And of course, with our Nantong facility in Jiangsu province, we have been affected by coronavirus. China Central Government decided to actually extend the Chinese New Year holidays by 1 week mandatorily, and I think rightfully so, for essentially any company in China and that affected Secret as well. So the Nantong facility has been down 1 more week and started to ramp up on, I think, 10th February as compared to the 3rd February as originally planned. It took some time for our people to actually come back from holidays. Some had to stay in Lubei province because that's where they were coming from. And in the 1st one and a half weeks, we have been at 50, 60 people. It actually took us until 24th February before we have been again at 90% of our personal headcount in Nantong. But the site is now essentially fully operational again, still at 90%, but things are working well right now. So still means we lost some productive time, probably something in the range of 2, 2.5 weeks. 2nd level of risk is not so much related to our own operations. It's more related to operations of our suppliers. So we, of course, have complex supply chains, and we have suppliers in China. We most likely have suppliers not from China, but themselves sourcing from China. So complex world, obviously. And our procurement department did the analysis, different levels first, looking ahead 3 months and really purely at Chinese suppliers directly delivering to Siegfried for productions starting in the next 3 months. Then we are rolling it out right now towards June 2020, and we will now also include, let's say, the 2nd level analysis, which refers to suppliers themselves not being in China, but potentially sourcing from China, right? So what we saw here to give you some flavor and which, of course is also reflected in the adjusted guidance is there will be delays, namely we have identified 5 intermediates, which will for sure be delayed. We don't know exactly for how long, but that's just a fact. That's one data point. In order to provide you a second data point to get a better feel for the risk or the not so high risk. We at Siegfried source approximately 1500, 1600 raw materials from all around the world. Only 5% of these 1500, 1600 raw materials not value weighted come from China directly, only 5%. And for only half of this 5%, so 2.5%, we don't have a second SOX, right? So what we see here is, of course, not nice to have delayed shipments from customers, which will have an effect on revenue generation also in terms of when certain revenues will occur. But still, it's not so bad risk diversified, I would say. And also for this 2.5%, where we have decided to go for a second source, these are, of course, the most valuable, most important raw materials, which is why we defined them as raw materials for which we need a second source. What helped us to be good prepared actually is the fact that in 2017, Chinese government went hard on implementing environmental law and shutting down Chinese suppliers, which was the latest point in time when we started to actually carefully look at critical raw materials and actually establishing a second source. That's a little bit background on how we look at coronavirus as a company. Maybe some more facts, which might be interesting for you also with regard to your own operations, with regard to things that we implemented at Siegfried to manage risk on the employee level. I mean, the first warning went out on 27th January, restricting travels. And we escalated according to a crisis plan, which actually goes back to the SARS crisis of 2,003, And we escalated step by step. Our reference point for our own decision making, our own assessment of the situation are the world, the WHO, the BAG Bundesamtruzuntite and the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, right? That's the guidance that we use for our own assessments. Right now, we decided not to have meetings with many people, CEO session, which was supposed to take place tomorrow in Soffing and me speaking about the year and what's going to come, will not take place, unfortunately, because it's a great event. And also for me, the opportunity to say thank you to the people having achieved this good result in 2019, but we didn't do it because there's no reason to actually increase risk. So meetings at Siegfried are more and more transferred into the virtual world, conference calls, and we try to limit number of people participating. We're still happy that you're here. You're not 1,000 people. So that's supposed to be the executive summary, and I now happily hand over to Reito, who will guide you through details with regard to facts and figures in 2019. Thank you very much, Wolfgang. Welcome everybody also from my end, people here locally, the brave ones as well as the people who participate electronically via the web call. Very happy to take you through another year of profitable growth at Siegfried. You see that we have been able to increase sales by 4.9% in Swiss francs and 6.9% in local currencies. So that's quite a gap, 2% difference due to currency effects. So we have already seen it coming at the half year numbers, quite a strong currency headwind, and it was especially the euro, which has depreciated strongly against the Swiss francs, obviously hurting our top line. Maybe a word on currency positioning overall, so currency exposition on the margin, etcetera. We have worked hard on that and actually quite successfully managed the natural hedge, so balancing cost and revenues in local currencies. So we have been able to limit the impact on our margin quite well during the whole of 2019. You see that we have a strong growth in the drug substances business, which grew by 7.2% and even 9% in local currencies and an only small growth in the drug products business, which grew by 0.5% in local currencies just as announced at the half year results. It's worthwhile thinking back 5 years and have a look at Rock Products and the developments since 2015. It grew by an average of 7.5 percent CAGR on average since then, including this year 2019. And all of us are convinced that the drug products business will continue to follow a positive and successful trajectory going forward. So that gives you the revenue split for 2019, 77% in drug substances, 23% in drug products. Maybe a word on what's to expect in 2020 in these 2 business lines and everything obviously included in the guidance just explained by Wolfgang. In the Drug Substances business, the ongoing regulatory discussions around controlled substances introduced a certain element of uncertainty, especially to our U. S. Business. And in the Drug Products business, it's fair to say that our decision, which we have in December to concentrate our oral solid dosage form business, OSC business in Malta, will obviously introduce a certain softness to these type of revenues for 2020 as well. And again, as you already know, the first half of twenty twenty will be weaker, softer than the second half of twenty twenty. This is my favorite slide. So a lot of bars. And it explains you what the introduction, the core translations do to my P and L. As mentioned by Wolfgang, we have introduced that concept with the half year numbers mid-twenty 19 and have actually adjusted for special effects already before using the typical Swiss way of before and after special effects. Now with the core concept, we put that in a much more structured financial markets. So how does this waterfall chart work? Let's start on the left hand side. You see the EBITDA as calculate under our accounting framework, which is Swiss GAAP explain these in just a second and arrive at the core EBITDA. Taking back depreciation brings us to core EBIT, and the further few adjustments bring us then down to the core net profit. So you see a number of 5 dark blue bars, which I will explain into great detail just shortly, which affect these core adjustments. The light blue bars are just normal elements out of the P and L. These 5 blue bars, they come in can be grouped into 2 different effects. The first effect, which was already included in the half year numbers, relates to foreign pension plans and obligations coming from foreign pension plans, especially in Germany, where we see 3 effects. On the one hand side, on the Swiss GAAP fair, I'm obliged to include all of these pension effects as a part of personal expenses, so as a part of operating expenses, so above the EBITDA line. And what I do with the first adjustment is that I take the CHF 2,000,000, which is just the net interest on these pension obligations. I take these out of the operating expenses, where I think they don't belong to and put them into the financial expenses. So you see that bar actually twice, the €2,000,000 as between EBITDA with GAAP Faire and core EBITDA. And they will reappear as an expense in the net financial result. So 2 of the 5 explained. The second effect, and I'm still with the pension obligations, it's the largest one. It's the CHF 30,100,000. This is now directly caused by a change in the technical interest rate used to value these foreign pension obligations. If you value these pension obligations, it's a function of 2 things. On the one hand side, you have a portfolio of obligations sitting somewhere in the future. And then secondly, you have a technical interest rate, which is used to value these future obligations, calculate the present value to today. Now as you have seen, the interest rates in the euro land have declined significantly throughout 2019. And this technical interest rate came down 100 basis points from 1.9% to 0.9%, which has actually increased the value of these obligations. Again, on the Swiss GAAP fair, this charge of the 30.1%, which I have to stress that is a technical charge and which is noncash, all of the effects I discussed here are noncash. The 30.1 had been had to be included as personal expenses on the Swisscalfe. So the 30.1 we have eliminated as not related to our business at all as purely technical, as purely non cash. So 3 of the 5 explained. Now and I'm still with the pension obligations. This increase of the pension obligations also had actually a favorable effect on the tax line, created a tax income. How funny is that? And obviously, that tax income we have eliminated as well. That's this minus €9,000,000 additional tax expenses that we have created. 4 down, 1 to go. I'm switching now to the second effect, which was a change in Swiss tax legislation. And the right to increase the value to recognize the value of brands, etcetera, on the top level holding and the opportunity to write this value off over a period of 5 years. Now this effect, which is not saying a lot to Siegfried, you see that extraordinary tax income in many other companies as well has created a positive tax line. So would have increased my net profit by SEK8.5 million. However, we thought this is not related to our business, and it will reverse over the next 5 years. So we have taken out this SEK 8,500,000 as well. So to effect, pension obligations and the introduction of the new tax law in Switzerland have led to these adjustments and to a core EBITDA, which is an important number for us of SEK 140.7 On this slide, you see actually the year 2019 in 5 columns and much more numbers. I would like to concentrate on 1, which is the most important one for us, the core EBITDA margin. We have been able to increase that from 15.9% to 16.9%, which is obviously a function of the increase in sale and increase in the gross profit absolute and relative and then further down in the PMW. A lot of people ask me, well, how do you do it? It is how what do you need to do in order to maintain that continued growth and also to maintain that expansion of the margins basically on all levels. And I'm happy to add some colors beyond the numbers to that. I think 2 things, external view, but also the internal view. I think from the external view, it has been absolutely great to see that the demand from the client side, our customers for our products and services is as strong as never before actually. And all of our hypotheses on the importance of growth, to which Wolfgang will allude to in just a few minutes, have been well confirmed. So that's absolutely good and great news. On the other hand side, we obviously have also been very diligently and very hard been working on internal processes. So just two things. On the one hand side, we have been doing product transfers, So moving production orders from one side to another in the network, freeing up valuable launch capacities in a number which we had not done in any of the years with Siegfried before. This has helped us to achieve this organic growth in 2019, but even more important, will be very important for the years to come to maintain that growth. And then secondly, we have also introduced new measures in operational management. So we have introduced a whole new framework. It's called operations controlling, which provides Wolfgang, Mead, the Exacom with a much, much, much tighter grip on the operational performance of the individual sites on the ground. And on that basis, we have actually taken our time to sit at the occasion of the half year numbers and now after the year has closed with all of the local management teams Under the lead of Wolfgang, with other Execo members participate, we have taken the time to sit with them, review performance, identify weaknesses, identify strength, but we have also listened to these guys. What do they need from us in order to be even more successful going forward. And I tell you, it will be a combination of these measures, which will bring Secret to an absolute new level of performance going forward. To the P and L, and that will concentrate on one line actually in the SG and A. You will see that most of the cost in the SG and A, so not directly related to buying, producing and selling products. I will concentrate on research and development. You see that this has been an increase from SEK 27,500,000 to SEK 33,300,000, so quite a significant increase. We have invested into that function. And that function is important from a client facing point of view. A lot of clients appreciate our abilities in especially that regard. As a percentage of sale, that's now at 4% of sale, 4.0%. Those of you who have listened to the half year numbers, we have been at 5.1% there. So this has come back normalized as announced. And this 4% represent an increase of 0.5% when compared to the 2018 numbers, yes, correct. Cash flow statement. Two messages here. Firstly, fair to state that the operating cash flow prior to changes in net working capital almost unchanged to last year, which tells me that cash generation as such is actually okay and stable, which is good news. However, if we calculate then the real operating cash flow, so considering and taking into account the net working capital positions, you see that we have invested about SEK 40,000,000 more into net working capital as compared to last year. Now drilling down a bit further into what has led to that SEK 40,000,000 more capital allocated to net working capital, It's mostly inventory. We have invested about €35,000,000 more into the inventory position. And that's an information which you will not find in the financial report. Within the inventory position, it went almost exclusively into the semi finished goods, which means semi finished goods is work in progress. We have long production cycles. So when a production order is not finished at the end of the year, obviously, it's included in the semi finished goods production. So that's potential for the future, which will materialize over time into sales, accounts receivable and then obviously cash again. You see that the purchase of PP, so the CapEx line is almost unchanged to last year. But obviously, free cash flow then affected by this SEK 40,000,000 of additional investments into the net working capital. The capital allocation framework is almost unchanged to last year. So the focus is still to provide the funds for the strategy execution, which is Evolv, which is investing into organic growth and which is investing into an organic growth, meaning M and A. And how do we do that? Exactly as laid out last year, we will minimize and reduce to the max possible the payout to shareholders. So moderate payout ratio steadily increasing to the 2.80%. And we will use opportunities to delever our balance sheet. Maybe 2 words on the leverage. Those of you who have really started my financial report will have seen that I have regrouped in the statutory balance sheet for Siegfried Holding the first tranche of the hybrid bond from long term to short term, so current liabilities, which is a clear signal of our intent to call that first tranche on October 26 and then to redeem it. And we will use the newly signed syndicated loan to cover that next to obviously own generated cash. This newly signed syndicated loan, it's a great pleasure and a great joy for us, and we're really happy about it. A few of the bank representatives are here today. Thank you for participating, and thanks for all the trust that you have put in us the continued trust also going forward. The pay out proposal to the CHF2.80 per share, CHF2.80 per share, CHF2.80 per share, CHF scheduled for 17th April 2020, which is an increase of CHF0.20 per share. And remember, this will be effected through a reduction in nominal capital. So for Swiss, natural persons actually tax free, which is a result of our efforts last year to restructure the equity position, converting capital line log reserving into nominal capital. These have been my remarks for the year 2019. Wolfgang, back to you. Thank you, Reto, for guiding us through a good and successful year 2019. And I will now have the pleasure to discuss market strategy and outlook with you here and with the colleagues in the conference call. A brief 2 or 3 slides only on I mean reflecting on us as a company. Some of you might know this slide, but it's always worthwhile to remember because kind of makes clear what the company is good for and what actually drives us at Siegfried towards the future. First of all, Siegfried is a substantial source of active pharmaceutical ingredients to the pharmaceutical universe. Out of the approximately 1500 APIs being approved by the U. S. FDA, Seqwit is capable to manufacture approximately 200. That's almost 15%. So it's important that we actually as a supplier are efficient and actually are able to deliver active pharmaceutical ingredients to the world. 2nd of all, if you actually do not only look at the next parties in our value chain, but beyond our customers to the patients, we estimate that approximately 40,000,000 patients each year are either treated with a drug product, which contains an active pharmaceutical ingredient manufactured by Siegfried or might even be directly treated with a drug product manufactured by Siegfried. That's a privilege, of course, but it's, of course, also an obligation in terms of how we do our things and that we do our things in the right way. Then there is this special animal on our North German site in Minden, which came to us as part of the BASF acquisition in 2015. We are the last remaining Western Caffeine manufacturer to the pharmaceutical world and also to the food and beverage industry and also one of the largest Caffe e manufacturers. And if you look at these products, it is probably fair to say that up to €1,000,000,000 I would think even more people get in contact with a Siegfried product every year. So it's obviously important what we do and how we do it. We translated that early last year into our mission statement. We defined a new vision statement and spent time on discussing what are the 2 core values, what is our core mental framework when doing business. I would like to briefly guide you through them again. Mission, with mastery of science and technology, we take the precious innovations of our pharmaceutical customers to industrial scale and manufacture safe drugs for patients worldwide. Mastering of Science and Technology, I mean, that's core of what we do. We solve technological problems of our customers. Precious innovations. Last year, I told you the story about this passionate team of a small start up company closely working together with us at Siegfried on one of our manufacturing sites because they entrusted us with their most precious value, innovative product, relying on us that we would be able to actually create a commercially viable large scale commercial process for their product, Whole company depended on their product. And these gentlemen, together with our people, being part of the combined project team, literally slept besides the reactors. How did the story went on? We have been successful together with the company. The company was so happy with the services that we provided with the passion that our people displayed to make it happen and solve their technical issues. But actually now we got a follow-up project, same company, backward integration, new business. Even better, the company has been acquired by a big pharma company, a company where we didn't have inroads yet. But now I have a reference point them talking to that company and guiding that company to Seapri. So that's how our business functions. It's trust based. And if we as a company deliver upon that expectation, we can differentiate and create new business opportunities. Vision statement. 1st part, still worrying, want to be the leading CDMO in our space. 2nd part, still important. And you will see that, that part actually is reflected in what we did in 2019. We want to become the leader in the CDMO space by having the strongest team and the most competitive network. And remember, investment into technology, micronization in Avuna, high pressure hydrogenation in Soffing, R and D labs for biologics still finish in harmony, most competitive network. But you might also remember Siegfried Academy investing into our people on all levels, strongest team. So you see alignment between concrete actions in 2019 and the vision statement that we gave ourselves as a global team. Last but not least, excellence relating to mastery of science and technology passion. The team working together with a small start up sleeping besides reactors, integrity as the mental framework, how we do business, how we treat each other internally and also our business partners, quality as an entry ticket in our industry and sustainability. Sustainability, a few words on that. We do have actually 2 perspectives on that core value. 1 being an economic one. How do we make decisions at Siegfried? And we claim for ourselves that we don't sacrifice the mid- to long term future for short term gain. So we make decisions in a way that they hold true ideally or submit to long term. 2nd part is, of course, ecological footprint. And here, I can happily report that we included 5 of the sustainable development goals of United Nations into our sustainability report in the annual report for the first time and that we kind of summarized our activities, which are going on since quite some time at Siegfried under these categories provided by the United Nations. And Peter, not only him, also many other colleagues actually spend and have spent a lot of time over the past years to actually reduce our footprint in terms of water consumption and energy consumption and emissions. And I think we as a company are actually making good progress here. And for more details, please refer to our annual report. So the playing field. A few key characteristics of our environment of the CDMO market we are actually operating in, which are essentially all favorable, which is among others why we see so much potential for our business model and for us as a company in our space. First part is low cyclicality. So the health care systems, I mean, they are growing or they are steadily growing with the GDP and stay at probably 1.4% each year. So that's the kind of spending which is affected last by crisis, right? I mean, you might, in case of crisis, postpone the purchase of a car or of a house, but you won't postpone the purchase of a medicine and you're ill today because you can't, right? So it's a structurally market with low cyclicality. Also low volatility, which relates to the lifetime of a drug. Typically, a certain drug, which has proven to be efficient, stays on the market for 10, 20, 30, sometimes even 50 years, right? So if you are a supplier, if you have developed a competitive technology, a close relationship to your customer, then you've got a long standing relationship and long term business, low volatility. Resilient growth. Our target market, so pharmaceutical market, is growing at 4% to 5% year on year, relates to what I said before, low cyclicality. And that means that is at least the growth potential that we should have as a CDMO supplying the pharmaceutical market. On top of that healthy growth rate, there's a growth increment coming from a redistribution of activities within the value chain, meaning pharmaceutical companies less and less doing the manufacturing and the process development of their own active pharmaceutical ingredients or drug products internally. Big pharma companies divesting, shutting down capacities to actually streamline their balance sheets. So that's a positive trend for our business model, which gives us a growth increment of a +1 percent to 2%, 1.5%, leading to the 6% that we see approximately as the average growth rate in our market. Science, engineering science That's science, engineering science. If you are good at that, there's a lot of potential to differentiate. And if you've got an differentiated offering, that means you can protect margin. And that's what we see at Siegfried and with leading city malls like Siegfried. So it's a good playing field to be on. Where do we stand as a player on that specific playing field? On the left hand side, you see based on the market size of 2018, however, with actual data for 2019 available where we see ourselves in the pecking order of leading CDMOs. Left hand side CDMO market, probably in the range of $75,000,000,000 as a whole, with the top 10 players, including Siegfried on Play 7 when it comes to revenues, only accounting for even less than 20%. That's not so much a surprise if you think a bit closer about the situation because the business model itself is pretty young. It has been developed only in the 1990s by companies like Lonza and also Siegfried. And for young business model, you in many cases see fragmented competitive landscapes. However, there is a strong strategic imperative for scale. Also in our industry, it's not the typical economy of scale like with carmakers, but there's also a strong imperative and a strong benefit from scale. I will talk about that in a minute. Size matters. Before coming to why size matters, let's briefly look at 5 fundamental trends that we observed in our target markets, the pharmaceutical world, which have been the starting point for ourselves to actually define our actions because the better you can adjust and make use of these trends and prepare yourself for these trends, the better you can take advantage from them. First one being pharmaceutical companies more and more focus on their internal R and D activities and marketing and distribution and not on in house manufacturing anymore. Reason being, their true value driver is innovation, new therapeutic areas, new molecular entities and their ability to actually distribute and market their products. It's not manufacturing. It's not having a kingdom of sites all around the world with 50,000 people. There are specialists who can do that, who can do that in some cases even better than pharmaceutical companies. So that's something that we are seeing since probably 10 years. And you might yourself remember headlines that large pharmaceutical companies, also Swiss ones, actually decided to divest capacities. That's a good thing for our business model. 2nd part, increased cost awareness. If you look at some of these large pharmaceutical companies who are also the result themselves from M and A, they've got a zoo of suppliers to manage, 100, thousands of them. There's a high complexity costs related to scale in the pharmaceutical space. And for a company like Siegfried, who actually is able to take over significant parts of the value chain of a pharmaceutical company, that is a benefit if you fulfill yourself certain criteria. 3rd trend, breakthrough innovations. And referring again to the start up company I was talking about before. Breakthrough innovations in the pharmaceutical space more and more take also place by smaller companies, midsized companies, which by nature, by default, don't have internal manufacturing capacities. They have to focus their funds, limited funds on the true core value driver, which is innovation. They, by default, need companies like ourselves with our competencies, with our capacities. So another good thing for the CDMO business model. 4th trend, increasing complexity. So the molecules themselves get more and more demanding in terms of how to chemically build them together and how to actually manufacture them, the source for differentiation if you are able to do that in an efficient way. Last but not least, proactive life cycle management. Some, not all, but some innovative pharmaceutical companies do not necessarily give up anymore on their products after loss of exclusivity. So they try to protect revenues. And if you as a CDMO are able to provide the right cost structure for their products also for an off patent time in generic competition, that is of value. So bottom line, and we could go through each of these trends is you need scale, either for providing sufficient flexibility and capacity, global presence, either by providing the necessary expertise and broad technology toolbox to really take over significant parts of the value chain, either by having special expertise for to solve special chemical or pharmaceutical problems. So all that in the end relates to scale. And if you as a CDMO have the right scale, you can actually benefit from that. And the very instructive analysis shown on that slide, which kind of supports my previous statements, on the right hand side, we see on the X axis revenues for different CDMO companies for 2 points in time. 1st data point, 2012 second data point, latest available, 2017, 2018 for some, even 2019. On the y axis, you see the EBITDA margin as percentage of sales. And what you see is a clear correlation, a clear corridor. So those companies who have been able to actually grow the fastest through organic growth or M and A have also been those companies who have been able to increase profitability, competitiveness the most. And that also holds true for Siegfried. We see ourselves here, this little blue dot here, over time until 2019, moving up this corridor and our midterm target is to actually further accelerate on that trajectory. So clear quantitative support for my qualitative statements before in terms of size matters. How did it happen? A few words on that. On the right hand side, you see more specifics. In 2016, after the BASF acquisition in 2015, we kind of have achieved the lower end of what we call critical size. And that amplified our growth trajectory. So year on year, we have been growing, growing in Swiss francs here 5%, 6%, 5% and 7% in 2019 in local currencies and at the same time have been able to step by step increase our EBITDA profitability. So these are the details behind the trajectory that I've just shown to you on the previous slide, which probably looks similar for some of the other companies who have also been able to accelerate on that corridor. On the left hand side, roughly, how does it work? First of all, optimize utilization within our existing capacities. So free up, as Reito referred to before, high value capacity to make it available and ready to take on new business, transfer products to other capacities, which might be more cost efficient and create value by that. Grow profitable. I mean, how is it possible that we grow profitably? It is, of course, not only incremental costs that we need to add for additional business, it's more than that. That would be too easy. But in terms of infrastructure cost of the site, SG and A, a little bit R and D, there are efficiencies. And these efficiencies mean additional business comes in at a higher profitability, right? That's working out quite nicely for Siegfried. Idle capacity also relates to our ability to manage utilization, to manage a network, and idle capacity is important to be able to take on short term business opportunities. And all that, this profitable growth, this management of our utilization of our network of our portfolio leads to funds, funds available to invest into further growth in a growing market, either organically into new technologies, additional capacities or M and A. So that's the value creation cycle that we are actually applying at Siegfried over the past and that we will continue to apply in the years to come. I briefly alluded to network. I also qualified the statement size matters by it needs to be the right size. What do I mean with right size? Here, I've shown you the network of our drug substances operations, so chemistry, chemical operations, white powder as a result typically. If it's brown, it's not good. So we see 6 manufacturing sites, Soffing, Evianna, Minden, Samburban, Penzfiel, Nantong. And we also see that we only have 3 R and D hubs globally, Ensofing, Evionar and Nantong. They are actually supposed and they actually do support the whole manufacturing network. So products, projects coming in from customers are developed by these 3 R and D hubs. And these teams then do not necessarily only transfer the process to capacity on their own side, but to any side in our network. That sounds easy, it's not. You really need to make sure that people cooperate, that people understand that there is a greater good, which is the company good, not necessarily only the good for a specific side. But people understand it. They understand the mission, the vision statement, and it's working quite well. The benefit that we take from our ability to actually really manage a network of integrated sites is shown on the right hand side. What we can do with that sizable competitive network is we can create dual sourcing opportunities for our customers, right? Usually, a customer would never entrust a company, a supplier with 100% supply. But too risky. He wants to have 2 sources in case of emergency, coronavirus, whatever. We have been able to actually acquire in quite some examples 100% of the volumes of our customers because we could provide 2 sources within the same network with the benefit that the customer doesn't have to deal with 2 parties, doesn't have to deal with 2 quality management systems. So that's working out quite well. That needs scale. For that, you need a sizable global network. Size matters. Horizontal integration of the value chain. We do have a number of examples where we have been able to create a competitive position because we could actually, for a 10, 15 step synthesis, allocate the different steps to different sites. There's one instance where actually the synthesis starts in Nantong, is then taken over in Sampo Bar and the last steps being done in Minden. That you can only do when you have a diverse global competitive network. Size matters. Life cycle management for margin protection. So a certain product, which we look at the old Siegfried until 2012, 3 sites, essentially only one main chemical manufacturing site. A product that has been taken on in Sulfing maybe 15 years ago, essentially stayed there forever. What happens to price? It goes down. So you've got high value capacity being blocked by low margin products. Would it be necessary to just stop and say the customer goodbye? You don't do that. That's not our mission. Now we can actually transfer those products to on the cost end more competitive sites like Nantor. That's what we are constantly doing. And in 2019, we have transferred more products than ever before in our company's history. Last part is optimized utilization. That's kind of really balancing idle capacity and allocating it to the right side, which in cases where we are actually dual sourcing or dual supplying a customer is quite easy by allocating volumes to the respective sites. So we will talk about strategy M and A later. Today, I'm not able to present to you a similar picture for the Drug Products business because we lack size. We don't have that world scale global manufacturing network. We can't offer dual sourcing, which doesn't mean that the drug product business today is bad business, not at all. Got very good sites, very good business, very good people. But that strategic relationship to customers is not possible at the degree as it is possible for the drug substances part. So strategy. Three areas of activity when it comes to what can you expect from Siegfried and how will we actually support our growth ambitions as a company. First part is investments in technology and in our existing manufacturing network. That actually you see what happened in 2019. Soffingen, Gevionar, Hameen, that's going to go on Because we actually need to add capacity to support our growth trajectory of 4%, 5%, 6%, 7% year on year. That's not coming for free. So we will have to continuously invest into our existing infrastructure. However, we believe, and I think we have proven as a company in the past, that there is additional potential available to Siegfried through M and A. Size matters. And especially in the field of drug products, and I just explained it to you, we want to create scale. We don't want to do it by greenfield or brownfield investments. We want to do it by M and A, by acquiring assets, companies, ideally in Europe or the U. S. While the drug substance network is probably one of the most competitive ones in the world in the CDMO space, we would also be ready to acquire there. An acquisition like the BASF acquisition, we would do again anytime. And we constantly also look not only for drug product targets, but also for targets in the drug substances space. It also holds true for a special segment in the CDMO space, which is biologics, so proteins, monoclonal antibodies. We are and you see that on that slide, a second bullet, we have organically extended our capacities and capabilities in the biologics drug product space in Harman. And this business is still small, but growing very fast. So our aseptic finish service services for Biologics is an important part, and which is why we invested into this activity. In the drug substances space, we are actually fully integrated. We can offer our customers both services, drug substances and drug products, which again relates to taking out complexity from the supply chains of our customers. That is not yet possible on the drug substances space with regard to biologics, which is why we would be ready depending on opportunity to also acquire an asset in the drug substances biologics space. That was strategy. And to what does this strategy lead? That's kind of the growth cycle that we discussed before. However, I think quite useful to guide us through the last part of the presentation, strong top line growth as we have displayed it in 2019, profitable with expanding margins as we have displayed it in 2019, cash flow generative and investment in growth as we have displayed it in 2019, and that is fueling our growth trajectory. How risk maybe how risky is it that we actually deliver strong top line growth? And I think here it's useful to look at how we are diversified within our business model. And we are actually pretty well diversified. If you look at the 4 dimensions, broad customer and product portfolio, diversified, and I will give you some details on that later. Wide range of technological capabilities. We are not depending on one single technology, one single product. And if that is not working anymore or there might be a breakthrough technology overtaking us and then being dead as a company, that's not the case. It's quite the opposite. We need to be capable to essentially apply any chemical technology. That's what we are able to do. So there is a very low risk in terms of technological capabilities. Customer concentration, not very strong either. So good news in terms of risk here as well. And also services along the drugs lifecycle, we talked about this low volatility before, long product life cycles, right? So I think good news in terms of our top line development in the future. And also, and we alluded to that during our coronavirus discussion also on the supply side, yes, there is risk, right? But it's not catastrophic. It's well diversified. And based on our knowledge today, it will be manageable. Customer concentration 2019. So the top 10 customers account for less than 40% of revenues, largest one being at 6% as pretty diversified. Product similar picture, a bit more than 30% account for the top 10 products with the largest product accounting for 5%. Of course, you don't want to lose 5% of your revenues, but it's still low risk in terms of really having bad consequences on the company. So good news on the risk dimension here. So top line understood. How is EBITDA margin expansion supposed to work and how did it work in the past? Answer is actually on the next slide, 29, economy of scale. I talked about size matters and our ability based on scale to address the most attractive market segments with the highest willingness to pay of customers. 2nd part is our ability, again relating to scale, to have idle capacity sitting ready to take on short term opportunities, second element. 3rd element is our ambition to actually grow the Drug Products business, which structurally is more profitable than the Drug Substances part. So by building out that business through organic growth or acquisitions, we automatically increase the margin of the overall portfolio. And last but not least, and we also discussed that product allocation within our manufacturing network to the most competitive sites. So that's how margin expansion in the past did work at Siegfried and is going to work in the future as well. That all culminates in this last takeaway wrap up slide, which on the left hand side shows where we are today. Siegfried 2019, net sales of €834,000,000 On the right hand side, we see, let's say, the Siegfried vision, being a global leader in the CDMO space, most trusted partners, strongest team, most competitive network and so on. And on the way, you see actually our base case. I'm a shareholder obviously myself, and that's how I look at it. There's a base case, which builds on robust organic growth. In line, this is CMO market with the ambition to outgrow, which is our confirmed midterm guidance. On the way, by using the levers I just described to you before, expanding our core EBITDA margin up to 20%, having to selectively invest into technologies, invest into additional capacity in our existing network and further integrate our entire site network. So that's a base case, which in itself is a very attractive one. On top of that, there's the M and A case, where we as a management team are committed to actually execute and make use of growth potential, which is available to us through M and A. And this is supposed to be value accretive in our core areas, and we can also imagine to make an entry into adjacent areas within the CDMO space, meaning, for example, an entry into biologics, drug substances. That all leads to the guidance that I presented to you on the first slide already. Despite macro uncertainty, we discussed the background, we are still positive and project a low single digit sales growth in local currencies for 2020 with a modest expansion of our core EBITDA margin with important our midterm outlook being confirmed. That's what we wanted to present to you. And now we will be happy to actually take questions and provide answers. Thank you.